Go Enter this Giveaway

Linda over at the Practical Parsimony Blog is having a giveaway to celebrate her 1000th Post.

She's giving away a Bear Grylls Paracord Bracelet, a Digital Camera and a Battery Charger at last count.
Go enter it HERE.
But hurry!

Sluggy

And The Giveaway Winner is.....

I gathered up all 51 of the valid entries on the Giveaway and drew a name out of a hat.
The winner is.....

Frances in TX!

Congratulations Frances.
Email me your mailing address and I'll get this box of goodies out to you asap.

Thank you to everyone who played this time.
Is anyone up for 1 more Box of Goodies Giveway this year?

Sluggy
 

What's Been Happening at Chez Sluggy

Frankly, most of what's been happening is quite boring so I don't mind if you just skip over this post. 8-)

This......

 

 

....is now firmly secured back into place in my mouth.
A big shout out to my Awesome Dentist!
She responded to my emergency call within the hour and 2 hours later I was in her office getting my crown but back in.
And she didn't even charge me anything. 8-)

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It's been a week now and still no word from the contractor about a new compressor for the HVAC system.
Sigh.
I am guessing this lack of information means we are going to have to wait for something to be shipped from overseas.
Sigh.

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And while I am sighing.....lol.......let's discuss eBay sales.
I am just gob smacked at how anemic eBay sales have been.  It's so slow I just cant' even get up enough enthusiasm to finish listing the entirety of my 50 free listings!
I finally sold 1 item this week!
Then I had put an item on auction instead of BIN and it ended last Sunday for a very disappointing amount.  Even so, it DID sell, but as of this morning the buyer/winner has NOT paid me for it.
So frustrating....

And the other HIGHLIGHT of my eBay week was a potential buyer who wanted to buy a pretty rare NIB old Power Rangers toy I have listed.
It's so rare I have it listed for $175.
Gulp
And that price is very reasonable compared what others have sold for.
My target buyer is an adult collector, not someone's mom or dad buying this for Junior to play with.

Anyway, I get someone emailing me about the toy.
There are 3 possibilities on who this buyer is....either a collector, a dealer who wants it for pennies to resell it to a collector or a kid using his parent's eBay account.

Potential buyer says they really really really want it and to make HIM an offer.
What???   This person has it all backwards.....he's suppose to offer ME something.  lol

As for how much I want for it?
Duh....$175.

They go on to tell me they can't afford that.
So I retort that I have "Make an Offer" feature enabled on the item so they can offer me less.
(I also have MAO set up to automatically accept offers of at least XX$s so serious buyers aren't waiting around on me to respond when they make an offer.)

So they go and make me an offer.....guess how much this clown offers me?

$11

And when I rejected it I enclosed a note like this....
"$11?  Seriously dude??
Yah, I'm probably dealing with a kid here or someone pretending to be a kid so I take pity on them and sell it for nothing.

"$11 Man" has now been blocked from buying/bidding on my crap.

As of now I am up to 3 items sold(2 paid for)on eBay in the last 14 days.
Pitiful......

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In better news, over on Etsy I have now sold 21 items in the 19 days it's been open.
I have over 1000 views in my shop so traffic is building.
One thing I don't get over on Etsy is this "favorite" feature.  Someone can "favorite" an item in your store.  What significance does this have?  Is it making me money?  No.

If they like something so much, why don't they BUY it?? lolz
Someone buying one of my fabrics is the only true indicator of "favorite" I care about.  8-))

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And since eBay seems to be rolling over and playing dead and the local Fire Dept. lady who asks for donations for their raffle each year never called me this year, there is all this that went to the Salvation Army last weekend.....

 

And there is all this that is going there later today.....

 

And today I am collecting more items to ship off to Sallie's.  If we go out Sunday I might have another load full by then to drop off.

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I went to the Podiatrist earlier this week as well.

The verdict is that my feet are too small.
Earth shattering I know......lolz

Add in that my legs are not straight so when I step my feet roll to the outside and then to compensate, the feet roll to the inside, which puts stress on certain muscles and joints, which makes my feet hurt like a sonofabitch sometimes.
Ok, so he explained it differently but that's what I heard.

Otherwise my feet are normal structurally, nothing broken or severely out of place, and I have good range of motion.
So the only thing that will help me at this point is to continue to lose weight(duh)and to wear diabetic shoes with good insoles or some other custom made footwear, since my feet are oddly shaped(wide as they are long.....I have cubed feet).

The sound of "Ka-ching" is ringing in my ears since this doesn't sound inexpensive.
Heck, I am really going to have to get $175 for that Power Rangers toy now to pay for these sort of shoes! ;-)

The only other thing the podiatrist can do for my feet if icing, resting them and pricey shoes doesn't help is to give me cortisone injections where the pain is located every few months.  But we aren't looking at that yet.

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On the Turkey Day grocery tally to get to my gift certificate front......went to that store earlier this week and I am $6.48 from having spent enough to trigger the cert.   So Saturday we'll be picking up about that much in groceries and then I am DONE.

I've got my menu made up for Turkey Day too.  Now to make sure I have everything I need to cook it.

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Can you believe that November is half over already!?!?
Dang.

The first paycheck of the month flew into the account yesterday so now I can start paying bills.
Goody! lol

I sent off a check for Daughter's next 6 months of rent yesterday and then transferred that amount from the college account back into our checking account.

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I did a little genealogy work for someone this week.  Found them some goodies they didn't have.
I really need to email a couple of folks who contacted me from Ancestry and a post I did on Philip Packer a few months ago.  Might be that we all are related.

The tests came back from my son's Y-DNA sample last week too.  Very curious findings on that and not at all what my Hubs thought his DNA is/was.  More later on that.

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Speaking of living rooms......when I went to return the wheelchair we rented in October I stopped over at Big Lots since I was in that area.  They have a sofa advertised that I think might fit in the living room plan.
It's a small chaise sectional like the one we found at Just Cabinets this Summer......

It's a better maker than the other one at Just Cabinets and they want $100 less than JC for it.
Comfort is comparable to the other one too.
In person though, this one had this green cast to the color.  I am thinking it was because of the fluorescent lighting in the store but can't be sure.  Maybe I'll go back with Hubs and see if they'll let me take one of the pillows(the backs are the same fabric as the upholstery on the sofa)outside to see it in natural light.  I didn't think to do that yesterday.

Here is the other sofa contender.....

What I REALLY want is a leather or faux leather chaise sofa in this color and small size/style.
If anybody knows where they sell that, please let me know!  I hate to have to settle this time.

Here's the co-ordinating accent chair.....

Only thing is this chair is for looking at and not sitting on.
Very uncomfortable so I think I'll take a pass on this.

They also had this recliner that I think my Daughter would just ADORE for her Birthday.......

Now how to get it to Louisiana is the problem! lolz

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This weekend I need to get out into the garage and do some organizing and cleaning since the temps are going to get into the 50's(and maybe 60's)here.
It's a disaster out there....again!
Too much hauling stuff into the garage and NOT putting it away in the correct spot and not enough hauling stuff OUT of the garage.
Plus we still have boxes out there from cleaning out the dining/living room so those need to be dealt with.

And Hubs and I have been on a liquor bender of sorts.  The last few months have been a Spending Spree of adult beverages.  And as I don't NEARLY drink the stuff as quickly as Hubs seems to be going through it my stuff is all over the place.  Add in that some beer I bought this summer for #1 Son for part of his Christmas present he doesn't want.(He is uber picky about not letting beer sit for 2-3 months between when you buy it and you consume it)  I now have about 3 6-packs of microbrewery beers I can't give him and I don't drink beer! lol  I'm going to try to get Hubs to drink it instead....I don't think that will be a hard sell. ;-)

And the bbq smoker & wood chips needs to be unearthed out there, so we can use it soon.

Otherwise this weekend we don't have much planned.  Cleaning, Salvation Army, a quick trip to the grocery store, maybe cleaning out the roots from the garden beds but no other outside work as the leaves are all raked and hauled off already.  I could get Hubs to rake the leftover leaves into the back garden bed though to decompose there.  Yep, I think I'll do that.

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Ok, I have stuff to do.....more fabric to photograph and measure for Etsy, toys to list on eBay, a garage to organize and on and on and on.

So what's going on at your place this week/weekend?

Sluggy
 

The Great Summer Road Trip of 2013.....Day One

The time finally arrived for the big adventure of 2013 to take place--our Summer Road Trip.

Hubs sister was finally remarrying in August so since none of the rest of her siblings/family were going to go to Illinois to see her tie the knot(again), we decided we would go.
And since we were going all the way across a third of the US for this grand event, we figured Hubs might as well take some of all that vacation time he has saved up for the year, and make this a vacation.

I put out a call to friends and family, letting them know where we were headed and said we'd like to see/visit with anyone who could stand to have us around if we could work it in.  Nothing was planned ahead at this point, except for being at the wedding, so we just let the adventure grow organically from there.

By the week before we left, all the plans/stops were firmed up.
We headed out the morning of August 13th.
It was a Tuesday.

We rented a car for this trip.  Since we were traveling so many miles and my minivan is elderly(getting where it needs work and doesn't get the greatest gas mileage), it made sense not to pile those miles up on the Mango-mobile(named after my dead Chihuahua), but to spend the cash and let Enterprise's car take the hit.
We got this mid-sized beauty for the ride.
Here is Hubs posing during our first rest stop with the Adventure-mobile.....

Another shot of Hubs at the rest stop area......

It was roomy enough for us plus had quite a bit of trunk and backseat room(which we tried out best to fill up with crap by the time we left to return home).
It even had XM Radio which was great and meant we didn't have to keep finding local station signals every hundred miles or so, amidst the static.

We were cruising along that first day, west on I-80 making our escape from Pennsyltucky, when we came upon a State Police detour.  Seems a massive accident on 80 had closed down a stretch of it totally, shortly before we got to that point, so we had to detour through beautiful downtown Brockway....population about 2,000.

You may have seen the little video I posted back during the trip when we were stuck in the traffic jam leading into Brockway.  It's a tiny little one stop light town(not even a town, a borough)with a single 2 lane main street.

 

Once we got to the main street, we hung a left onto Rte. 28 and headed through beautiful downtown Brockway.  About a 1/4 mile past the BI-LO grocery store and the middle of town I spotted this beauty of a house for sale.  It would make a sweet place to retire to, don't you think?

I looked it up online once we got to the hotel that night and I believe it was listed for under $100K.
You could walk or bike from there to the grocery store, the Dollar General or even Mickey D's for that matter.

Once we got out of Brockway, it was a hilly windy ride on country roads back to the Interstate.
I noticed some old farm houses we passed and from the clothes hung on the clotheslines and the lack of power lines around,  I could tell there was a community of Amish or Old Order Mennonite in this area.
And then we passed a gravel lane and I got off this shot.....

Yep, an Amish community of some size is located here.

Then we saw this......

and I started asking Hubs to stop so I could do a little tombstone picture taking for F.A.G.
But we had already lost so much time on the detour and it was the first day so Hubs didn't stop.

Then we hit this.....

Ah yes, the joys of road construction in PA.
It never ends.....but luckily this patch was not so large and didn't hold us up much.
And you will notice that we are STILL behind that 18 wheeler truck for the entirety of this detour.

Finally back to I-80.
Then a stop for a late-ish lunch at Pizza Hut outside the town were Daughter went to college her first year, Clarion.

Then back on I-80 into Ohio and finally we arrived at our hotel for the night, in Milan, OH.
Milan OH....birthplace of Thomas Edison.
Bet you didn't know that!
And neither did I until we arrived there and I saw directional signs to his birthplace, though we didn't have time to visit it.

Here's what we found in our room.....

A ginormous whirlpool tub IN the bedroom.
They gave us an extra large room(which we hadn't asked for)but didn't charge us extra since the whirlpool was broken.
It would have made a very nice ice bucket IF we were throwing a party in there(and believe me, there was enough space in this room to throw one!).

Then I opened the curtains and looked out our bedroom window at the view.........

Oh goody....a corn field.  How exciting!
 I guess it beats looking out onto a parking lot though, right?

After resting a bit we headed out to find something for dinner.  We drove down the highway south into Norwalk, OH.  After driving into the center of downtown, we headed back north a bit and stopped at the Fortune Buffet.
The food was pretty good except for a few items that were super spicy, which usually aren't so hot at most Chinese restaurants.
They should bottle and sell their Hot and Sour Soup as a sinus treatment.  One sip of it and my sinuses were cleared right out!!!




After dinner I had to get my photo taken to immortalize the stop.
I hope the Chinese gods don't take offense at me making bunny ears on that lion....

After dinner, we stopped along the way back to the hotel at a local K-Mart.  Partly to get some exercise and walk off dinner and partly because we needed to buy a "Church key" because we forgot to bring one from home.
And because we are who we are, we walked and shopped that store, buying various and sundry items and got into the car and realized we forgot the one thing we went in there to buy.
Doh.

While in K-Mart, I went over to the drink aisle to see if they carried any Vernor's Ginger-Ale.
Sister in-laws old boyfriend was from OH and since he has lived in Weehawken, NJ for many years now since she moved to IL, she was always stopping in OH to buy and bring him some Vernor's Ginger-Ale when she came out East, because it's just "Deliciously Different".

                  Image from groceries-express.com

And as I took the Ginger-Ale off the shelf, I turned to face the opposite shelves and saw this.....

Here's a close up since looking at adult beverages is always interesting....

The skies opened up and angels descended from the heavens.......they sell BOOZE in K-Mart in Ohio!!!
Except on Sundays because you just can't have people getting liquored up on the Lord's Day evidently.....

So needless to say, we left with some adult beverages(Great Lakes Burning River beer and Mike's hard lemonade) to enjoy back at the hotel and to cart with us to our next stop in IL.

Thus ended Day One of the Great Road Trip of Summer 2013.
We started with the Amish and ended with booze.....nice combo, huh?

Stay tuned for Day Two coming soon.

Sluggy

This Week on the Dining Table

The "Thank Goodness Marching Band Season is Over" Edition.......

 

 

 

 

#2 Son is happy that his last season of Marching Band finished up on Sunday.  Now he just has 2 Concert Band concerts, 2 Jazz Band concerts and Pitt Orchestra for the School Musical and ALL the rehearsals for each to go before he graduates in the Spring.
The photo is of some of the band kids after a meet performance back in October that our group hosted.  #2 Son is standing on the track(behind the fence)right above the drum in this shot.

Here are the meals that were planned last week--
 

Sunday--Chinese Take-Out  Treating ourselves tonight
Monday--Mushroom Alfredo shells with leftover London Broil, Spinach Salad(Hubs is craving pasta)
Tuesday--Baked Fish(in freezer) and crab cakes(freezer), coleslaw, some veggie(freezer)
Wednesday--Lasagna(leftover-then the rest gets put into the freezer for later)
Thursday--Chicken Pot Pie(using leftover chicken, carrots, potatoes + fresh broccoli)
Friday--maybe Domino's pizza using one of my free coupons + a big salad for me
Saturday--leftovers or something scrounged around the house

Everything eaten as planned except Friday's dinner was Saturday's and vice versa.
I used the leftover Broccoli Soup from weeks ago in my pot pie instead of making a sauce/cream from scratch or opening a can of soup to use.  I am so proud of me......!

And I ended up eating too much pizza.  I hadn't had any in so long and it was so good that I just couldn't eat one slice. lol

As for food spending last week....you might want to look away as it's going to be bad(spendy).  There were 6 trips to the store and I spent $287.01 on $554.87 worth of groceries at 5 different stores.  I've spent $385.79 of my $400 November food budget so far and there are 17 days left for this month. 
bleh.
Hubs made a stop after work at a store we don't often go to.  There was the monthly trip to the Bakery/Bread Outlet and I had a 15% off discount card for Ollie's(Good Stuff Cheap!)I had to use or lose and they had some good food buys, even before that discount.  So we blew through a bit of money on foodstuffs last week.

Not to worry though as we have extra funds each month plus I am stockpiling last week and this week so we spend enough to get our Thanksgiving gift certificate at one of my stores.  Might as well buy the items that will keep now and they count toward our spending rather than buying them next month and not having them count, right?  I am hoping that my December spending will reflect these buying ahead deals and be lower than my usual.
We shall see.....

Leftovers going into this week--1/2 a large family-sized chicken pot pie and a whole pizza(but that will most likely be scarfed down between meals or as lunches).

Here's this week's meal plan---

Sunday--Burgers on Rolls, Collard Greens
Monday--Mushroom Parmesan, Salad
Tuesday--Roasted Chicken, Carrots, Stuffing
Wednesday--leftover Chicken Pot Pie
Thursday--Steak, Roasted Asparagus & Potatoes
Friday--Baked Fish, Coleslaw, Green Beans
Saturday--Chicken & Dumplings

What I need to purchase for this menu?......
I still need to spend about $55 this week to get to our Turkey Day gift certificate.
I'm going to try to keep the spending to $55 but even so, that will put us over budget in November by $40+ and that's not counting buying a turkey.
bleh again.
Oh what the hell......I am going to fly the white flag this month.
I give up. ;-)

What got fixed and served at your house this week?

Sluggy