In the Land of Randomness...Welcome to My World! Sept.10th

This is a photo of Little Edie aka Edith Bouvier Beale taken around 1972.  She was the cousin of Jackie Kennedy(as in First Lady Jackie Kennedy).  If you haven't been under a rock for the last couple of years you already have some inkling who this woman was.  If you want to watch the documentary the Maysles Brothers made, that brought her and her mother, Big Edie Beale, to the attention of the public, go to Hulu and find "Grey Gardens".  It's much better than that movie HBO put out last year.  Too bad the Broadway show of their lives isn't still running.  Christine Ebersole was grand in the role of Little Edie.  To find one of the few clips of her in the role, performing at the 2007 Tony Awards go HERE.
I think this documentary is a mesmerizing and wonderful study of two amazing women who were both trapped by their time/society and made free by their approach to that life.
If I can be half the Staunch Women that the Edies were, I'll be happy with how my life turns out.

It's here!!!

It's so nice to have a real working refrigerator again.....
Now I need to clean up the inside of the old one that is sitting in the garage and after Jury Duty month I can try to arrange for a repairman to look at it again.

From the annuals of "I just don't get it".  How come people who realize that they are on the brink of disaster won't change their behaviors...or won't even do the few things they need to do to make their situation not-so dire?  It's one thing to not know that the cliff is there but when you know it's there and you are standing on it, why do you insist on taking that one step over it when you know how to take a step back instead??
I just don't get it....
I do get that you can't force someone to change if they are not ready.  If you try, they just get all passive/aggressive on you.
And then later, after the sh** hits the fan, others will blame you for not helping, when in fact you tried to help.  The other people's definition of help is really 'enable' anyway, and enabling does everyone involved a disservice and makes nothing better.

My friend Brenda said I could share this photo with ya'll.  She did something creative this year in her garden.  If I had a wooden shed that got good sun, I'd do this too in a heartbeat next year!

It's sections of gutter, nailed to her shed and used as a planter box.  Just fill with some soil and sew lettuce seeds and pretty soon you have salad!  Salad greens without ANY BENDING OVER TO PICK!
It's genius I tell ya, Genuis!...lolol


Tomorrow we say goodbye to our dog Peanut.  With the loss of his bladder and bowel control as well as the deterioration of his back legs, the time has come.  He will have family there with him as he takes that last walk to the Rainbow Bridge and a steak dinner in his belly.

As Edie Beale might have said,  "He was a Staunch Character".....

Sluggy

Sluggy's Boring Blog Box #3 Giveaway....WINNER!

There were 58 valid entries to the 3rd Boring Blog Box Giveaway.
I listed the names in order of them being received and assigned a number to each entry.
Then I plugged the parameters into Random.Org and it spit out the Winner.


And the winner is......


Entry Number 41

I'm So Pretty said... and you are so on my blogroll! ;)

Congratulations "I'm So Pretty" and please email me your snail mail info. within the next 48 hours from this time stamp and this lovely box of assorted Boring Blog Stuff will be on it's way to you!

And thank you to everyone who entered!!  We picked up a couple new readers along the way during this Giveaway and I'd like to say Welcome to them! and I do hope they stick around and keep reading and participating.

More Giveaway Fun coming soon....

Sluggy

Renting College Textbooks....A Great Idea in Theory

In theory I am all for renting college textbooks as opposed to buying them.
This is especially a good idea if the books are for your students classes that they don't think they will need ever again as a reference material in their college career or out in the working world.

College textbooks are insanely expensive today!   I haven't bought a college textbook since 1981, and I about dropped a rectal plate when #1 son handed me the price list of the books he needed last fall for his freshman courses.
So we explored buying used textbooks and even buying them used, can cost a whole lot of money.

And they go out of date so quickly too.  Companies will release new editions of a book after changing small amounts of information in them.  This makes the last edition of the book basically worthless and most college bookstores will NOT even buyback the book.  You are stuck with a heavy, expensive paperweight in these cases.  All those newer editions just so publishing companies can produce/sell more books.  It keeps students from recycling their books and gobbles up natural resources to print more and more books and we are left with a growing problem of what to do with all those old textbooks.

So when I heard about renting college textbooks as opposed to buying them, I was all over that concept!
It's brilliant really.....rent your books for cheap & turn them in to be re-rented by someone else for the next semester.
Lower amount of money out of pocket and no books to have to resell or otherwise dispose of when you are done with them!

So we decided to rent #1 son's college books his first semester in college.
That was a good thing.

We decided to rent them from a company called CHEGG.
That was a very bad thing!

I began dealing with this Nightmare of a Company in August of 2009!
I was so glad when it finally came to a close in March of 2010.
Please, do NOT use them.  Use anybody else, just not this one!

They sent 3 shipments total, because of books that never arrived the 1st time or in some cases even the 2nd time.  We live in eastern PA and had the books delivered to #1 son's dorm in western PA.  I spent hours on the phone trying to trace these book shipments over the course of a month.  1 shipment of books was delivered finally....to an address in eastern NEW JERSEY!  Another shipment of a book was mailed for delivery with NO STREET ADDRESS.....just #1 son's name, the town, state and zip code.

I come to find out later that this company does not always have the books you order so they buy them off of other sellers, like from private sellers on Amazon.com.  So not only are you at the mercy of the company(a middleman really)you are renting the book from, but you are at the mercy of the seller who is supplying the book for Chegg to you.  If that seller Chegg buys your book from is clueless about how to properly ship something(the guy who shipped a book with no street address), YOU bear the brunt of it.

I fought with this company over a book that was ordered 3 times and was NEVER delivered.  They claim it was delivered.  Yes, it arrived at the University(to their mail room were somebody signed for it and then either misdelivered it or never delivered it via the on-campus mail system)but in the end, my son never got the book.  The incompetence of college mail systems is yet another problem and a reason not to have rented books sent directly to your school, especially a large public university.  But I digress....

So I paid over $55 to rent a book that never arrived, plus #1 son had to go out and buy this book for $65+.  Then Chegg expected me to return said book-which #1 son never got-when I returned the rest of the books at the end of the semester.  Since we don't have said book, they said I had to buy the book and tried to charge me for the cost of the book.
I don't think so!
In the end, this company did me the favor of dropping the charges that I owed them for the book that never arrived.
So nice of them, wasn't it?

Perhaps I should have sent them the bill for the blood pressure pills I needed after I started dealing with them....

After this fiasco Hubs is dead set against renting textbooks again...EVER!...from Anyone!  So we are stuck with buying...used at least, whenever possible.
Unless of course the college goes to in-house rentals or eBooks or Kindle books.
I think that would be a good thing.

Do you have a college student?
What are your textbooks costs like?  We got off easy this semester for ONLY $515!
Have you rented textbooks?  Who did you use and what was your experience like?
Leave a comment!

Sluggy

Weekend Stuff....And Tuesday Feeling Like Monday

Well Hubs and I found a fridge that would fit into the space that we have in the kitchen for it, so we bit the bullet and bought it from the Home Despot on Saturday.  The funds will come out of the Savings Challenge cash we saved last year that we have left. 
The clerk showed us the one we bought(which is almost 2 cubit feet smaller inside than the current non-working fridge)and another one that was the EXACT SAME Fridge we have now.
Ummm, I don't THINK I want to buy the same fridge....unless of course, I WANT to have to replace it again in less than 5 years.lolol

We'll keep the broken fridge and put it out in the garage and look into fixing it at some later date.  We found out that the local power company will haul the old fridge off for free if at some point in the future we decide it isn't worth or can't be repaired.
It also took a bit of the financial sting off of the fridge purchase when we found out that it qualifies for a rebate of sorts from the power company.  Since it's an Energy Star appliance, it qualifies us for a $50 Visa Card.
Nice.....

We got the deck cleaned and sealed this weekend.  Since we weren't suppose to get any precipitation, we hired the nephew and #2 son to do the job.  No bending for us and walking around money for them...
It was a 2 day job.....cleaning on Saturday and staining/sealing on Sunday.....and dry enough to put everything back on the deck Monday.
Hubs and I spent a good while on Monday in the garage making room for the broken fridge and doing a bit of reorganizing in there.
Then we finished off the 3 day weekend by picking ripe Roma tomatoes off the plants.
Here's the harvest we ended up with.....

 And there are still a TON of tomatoes out there that are yet to ripen!  These are headed into the freezer now so that I can skin them easily when I get the chance to process and can them.

This Harvest--
TOTAL....10 lb. 12.2 oz.
Garden Harvest Weight Total to date....52 lb. 8.02 oz.

I made myself a BLT for dinner.....anybody wonder why? ;-)
Hubs & #1 son had a traditional American Labor Day meal....Taco Bell.lolol
After dinner I went through the island cabinets in the kitchen and started throwing the accumulated leftover Chinese take-out container into the plastic recycling bin.

I woke up this morning with the decluttering bug still up my rear so I've done some throwing out and "Salvation Army setting aside" as I move around the house.  I'll be interested to see how much I can let go of by the end of today.

I love my family but boy!....I am glad they all went back to school or work today. ;-)

Here's hoping your day goes the way you want it to!

Sluggy

Sunday's Rite-Aid Trip....Thank Goodness for Tax!

I never did go back to Rite-Aid last week to do the "Buy $50 in P&G products, Get a $15+Ups Reward" deal.  Frankly, I don't need most of the stuff that qualified for the deal....except for the Gain Dishwashing Liquid that was free after coupons....that would have been sweet!

But I did run out Sunday morning to Rite-Aid because I had to get a notebook for my nephew for school, so I went ahead and got my total to $25 so I could use a $5 off coupon.

Here's what I bought.....

1 x Mead Notebook $5.79--with 20% wellness discount=$4.63
1 x L'Oreal Haircolor on sale $8.99/reg. $9.29--20% wellness discount was cheaper than sale price=$7.43
1 x Crest Toothpaste on sale=$2.99
1 x BioTrue $4.99--with 20% wellness discount=$3.99
2 x Right Guard Deodorant BOGO sale($4.69 ea.)=$4.69
1 x KitKat Bar $.50--with 20% wellness discount=$.40
SubTotal....$24.13***

Coupons Used
1 x $5 off $25 AdPerks/VV IPQ=$5.00
1 x $2/1 L'Oreal HairColor In-Ad Q=$2.00
1 x $2/1 L'Oreal HairColor ManuQ=$2.00
1 x $1/1 Crest Toothpaste ManuQ=$1.00
1 x $2/1 BioTrue IPQ=$2.00
2 x $1.50/ RightGuard Defense 5 IPQ=$3.00
Coupon Total.....$15.00

$24.13-$15.00=$9.13

Used
$2 Rite-Aid Q-good on anything in the store(sent to me for +Ups that didn't print)
$5 +Ups from Garnier purchase of last week
Equals....$7.00

$9.13-$7.00=$2.13 Total, put on free Rite-Aid Gift Cards so ZERO OOP.

+Ups Rewards earned.....$4(BioTrue), $2(Crest Toothpaste), $2(L'Oreal), $1(Dial-RightGuard)=$9.00


***According to my calculator(which I use to add up my total before I get to the register), I had $27 and change worth of items to buy.  I didn't figure in the wellness disc. on the BioTrue(I assumed that $4.99 was a sale price!)and that a 20% wellness disc. was LOWER than the sale price on the L'Oreal Haircolor.  So instead of being over $25 in purchases I was UNDER by about 2 cents, according to the cashier.  So I grabbed the KitKat bar, which also was only $.40 rather than the sale price of $.50 with the 20% wellness discount.  After adding in the candy bar, the register showed I was over the $25 threshold($25.15) and the cashier took my $5 off $25 Q.
When I add it all up above, it shows I am only at $24.13 before the coupons are deducted....WTF

I have finally figured out that when the register shows your total(with sale or wellness disc. prices, before the cashier starts deducting Qs)it is including SALES TAX.....so your sales tax could be what is getting you over the magical $25 mark.  But many times when I use Qs, the registers here take all sales tax off, even if you buy an item that is taxed and you don't have enough Qs to make that item free.....all sales tax is wiped off of your transaction.
The sales taxed items on my transaction added $1.02 to my total at the register after the addition of the candy bar and BEFORE the Qs were deducted.
After the Qs, my $25.15 total went to $2.13.  I used $22 in QS/+Ups--which brings my total to $3.15.  So if you deduct the sales tax of $1.02 as well, the total drops to $2.13--which was my amount due.

So this must be what is happening-the sales tax on the taxable items is getting me over the $25 mark in the register but then when the Qs are deducted on the sale, the sales tax is also deducted from your transaction, making your grand total even lower.
It is thoroughly confusing....but nearly HALF as confusing as the hinky way that Target receipts show how your purchases were figured!  Am I right people??lol


THIS TRIP
Total Spent....$2.13 (put on free Rite-Aid gift card)
Value of Items....$34.74
SCR qualified for...$0.00
+Up Rewards earned...$9.00


MONTHLY TOTALS-September Rebate Period

Number of Transactions......3
Total Spent....$11.58 put on free Gift Cards/Certificates so ZERO OOP
Value of Items purchased....$115.84
SCR qualified for....$0 in cash and $0 in Gift Cards
Other Cash....$0
Additional Non-Cash Rewards....$0
+Up Rewards spent....$18.00
+Up Rewards earned....$16.00

Total 'Spent'...$11.58 on gift cards
Total Cash I'm getting Back=$0
Total Gift Cards I'm getting=$0
+Up Rewards left to spend=$10.00



Sluggy