Yummy Saves

Bought two items on ebay yesterday. While I can afford some spending on fiesta I have to be very careful not to go crazy. They make it so easy with paypal and how it is connected to your bank account and credit card.

On good news I only bought a coffee out yesterday as I bought my lunch. That's a must if I'm gonna start buying on ebay!

That's one way to describe surfing Fiestaware on ebay isn't it? So far I've just put items on my wish list and have refrained from buying.

So far so good. I'm pretty good at not getting caught up in buying frenzies so I'm relying on that not to go crazy.

The local store is cleaning out their 250ml Fructus shampoo and conditers for $1.49. I went up there this morning and bought 14 of them. After the buy 2 get $3.00 off coupons I had I got them all for about $3.00 (taxes).

That's what I call nice shopping.

I'm going to keep 2 or 3 "sets" - the rest will go towards an Xmas hamper the local drop in centre.

I have more coupons. I may go up in the morning or later tonight to see if they have more and buy more so I can give it. I know homeless shelters want mostly foodstuffs - but people need to be clean to and this is just a bit I can add to what I give.

My telephone works (and seems to have call display), my dsl is up and running and my wireless network is allowing me to e where i want to in the apt on the computer.

Life is good.

Life is good!

Got a new modem but can't get through to technical support. A 20 minute hold is what they WARN you of - which to my mind means more likely it will be an hour or more. Seems their registration server is down.

I think I'm asking for another credit.

*sigh*.

I'd really prefer to have the services I want with them.

In my paper purging today I have found a number of cheques (totalling about $12 .. a number of free product coupons (at least 3 all still good) and some uncancelled and some unused stamps..

Oh and a $10 bill

Who says purging is a bad thing? I'm finding it nicely lucerative!

I'm in the middle of purging paper. Mail, flyers and coupons soon mean piles of paper everywhere. So far 1 large grocery store bag of shredded paper and about 2 of various paper crap that can go!

Nice to be able to open drawers and such again and not cringe and watch paper fall out. I don't know if I'll get done or not but I've made good inroads.

Everything went okay this morning at the hospital. Cost was approx $2 for my share of the antibiotic prescription that I needed and $1 for the parking meter. I was 4 minutes over my time but lucked out as the meter maids weren't nearby!

Glad its done with. Doc talked to me after. I don't need a follow up! Yeah!

Internet troubles continue.

Had a horrible migraine Friday night so spent most of the weekend recouperating. I need to go to the doc's to talk about somethign stronger than IB or Excedrin Migraine to kill the pain. Going to try to see the doctor tonight about that.

Going for a small hospital procedure on Tuesday. In by 7am and they say out by 8:30am. Will likely take the day off as a sick day though I likely won't be too ouchy. Thank god for provincial coverage -no out of pocket cost to me.

Spending under control though I feel like I have a lot of "I wanna's". I'm glad I'm mature enough to know the difference between a need and a "wanna".

Got my home phone service back and i think they got the physical line fixed. The phone now works nicely - and am getting better lines than i did before.

Spent endless hours on hold (if I'm so freaking important to you hire more customer service and tech support staff) they decided it was my modem that went. Why? Cause its old. Strange it worked before. So using dial up til i get that.

I owned that modem. They are sending me a new one if I send them back the old one. I don't get it. (Is the new one mine to keep?)
but i'll wait to question until I get the new one and then ask! I'm not too fussed about sending them the old one.. I think I got it in 1999 or 2000 - so not likes it hasn't served me well!

In the process of switching to a new home phone provider it seems I've lost both my phone and internet services. As I'm one of the last in the civilized world without a cell phone this leaves me with way to contact my 75 year old father or to get in touch with emergency services should I need them.

Lots of fruitless calls to the "customer care" centre. They should call it the "holds and plattitudes centre" as they do more of that than helping.

A supervisor is looking into it today for me.

I've told her I'm not impressed by the "seamless transition" their promotional material promised.

A while back I had asked if I could get a new fridge. Well today it came! Woo hoo!

It has a separate door for the freezer and is frost free. Technology decades ahead of what I had!

I'm a happy girl!

I won't even discuss the mess under the old one - lets just say it got deal with before the super came ... YUCK. I mop my floor but under there had gotten missed for a longish while, LOL...

Damn Primus who i have my interent with now. I have had great service so i'm moving my home phone to them. To promptly get my dsl cut off while they make the transfer

"sorry lady it takes a week"

&Y#$# @#$#

Yeah right...

Its gonna be a long week

The sales guy assured me they'd be no issues and my service would not be down. The tech and customer support jail that does not allow you out of it to real people assure me I should have been told this and it is 100% necessary and unavoidable.

I so feel like a loved and cherished customer

I did some things today that have been on my to do list for a long time

* Changed my home phone provider to the same provider as my internet - this should save me some $$

* got the password for my email from my internet provider so i can change my mail set up

* Got new bank card so i can use interac (debit) and not be refused cause the card won't work cause its too old (humiliation is a great motivator)

* ordered cheques from the bank (I have two left)

It feels good to have these taken care of!

Went to walmart because they had splenda on sale.

Got the splenda and a bunch of other items. Nothing outlandish. Got to the cash register and had coupons for 8 of the 11 items I bought.

I wait while the cashier serves the girl ahead of me. She does quickly and pleasantly and then does my order. As I hand her my stack a woman two back in the line does this incredibly loud noise of disapproval and huffs off. I was very very bad and turned and looked at her and said "you'll survive". I know man but gees which barn did she learn her manners in?

The cashier took forever with the coupons as she had to write the price!! on every coupon!!! I apologized to her for this being a bother but that with how much I saved it is like not picking up a $10 bill floating on the ground. I think I had about $12-$13 in coupons - so saved about 20% on my bill.

The cashier was an absolute (abet slow) sweetie. No hassle at all. Said this was her job and didn't mind and kept a smile the entire time.


But man.. its like stores work at putting an obstacle course in your way when you use coupons.

Of course my interac (debit) card took this opportunity not to work and another 5 minutes was spent playing "swipe the card". I guess I'll need to go to the bank today to get a replacement. Being without my interac would be like going naked to work.. it just is too painful to think about.

I'm back from a mini holiday.

A friend was at a conference in Quebec City and with how his meetings went he was able to make some time for sightseeing - so I tagged along...

We stayed at this hotel outside Quebec City - says it is 4 stars but I'd say more like 3.5 stars... our room was a bit surreal - a bit of Star Wars meets the cottage (paneled walls with this space aged drop ceiling and the best soaker oval bath tub I've seen in a while).

Anyways while not doing the museum thing (a shame as we both love them) we did get to spend quite a bit of time in Quebec City. The city is gorgeous. Well preserved and touristy yes, but still alive - people still live in the city and you can feel the energy. We were blessed in that we had a local person to take us around - a good tour guide always makes things more fun!

The biggest surprise was that the stereotype of the french as snotty and unapproachable if you are engish was totally false. The people were AMAZING. Not snotty at all and I think they all could speak English or were willing to try!

I now so want to go back there to explore more!

I went to the local Sears Outlet store yesterday to look for a suitcase. I didn't buy the cheapest available rather I bought a roots one with plenty of pockets to lose things in and an expandable feature. I've been using a duffel bag to travel (since college) or an old suitcase of my parents. I figure it was time to upgrade (okay so I no longer want to lug a too heavy bag cause it will hurt my back).

I looked around at the discount clothes and such but I stayed strong (okay so the stuff was crap) and only bought what I had planned to buy.

My best advise for saving money is to use the 24 hour rule.

Never by anything that you haven't thought of for 24 hours. So if you see that bright shiny gizmo you NEED, either at the dollar store or at th electronics store don't buy it. If you really want it, go back for it tomorrow or the day after.

Most of the time by then you have forgotten what it is you couldn't live without or you have realized its not something you can either afford or need.

I love this rule because it doesn't make me feel deprived yet it saves me money and helps me distinguish between wants and needs.

Wow

The same store where I won a gift basket around 5:30 called me up at 7 to tell me that I'd won another gift basket.

This one had 4 Biotherm products in it.

Moisturizer (value about $15 - a tiny sample size - I've used this product before and loved it)

Body Wash $32

Hand and Nail Treatment (aka handlotion) $27

Body Milk $30

Wow .. retail value of $104.00.

Today's lesson.. enter contests at local drug store

I went to the local drug store for a free make over by a Canadian cosmetics company. When I was there I entered a draw for some Vichy products. I won a small basket of three full size facial cleaning products.

I looked for pricing online for Vichy but I can't find it anywhere other than the UK - LOL... I'm guessing the value of this is around $70 plus or minus.. Nice!

Yeah me!!!

On the way to the Blue Jay's game with the girls I walkedfrom Union Station (subway and communter train, and passenger train station) through the walkway called "Skywalk" that goes to the CN Tower and Skydome over the railway lands.

On the walk I saw a plaque and stopped and read about two hero's who saved some lives in 1999

I have very soft nails that keep breaking. I've done acrylic nails in the past and didn't really like them.

Have any of you tried silk wrap or gel nails? Any preference between the two? would you recommend either?

How often do you have to get them "touched up" or filled or whatever?

I would like prettier hands so am considering this.. but not sure if it is a bad way to go. I've been told that sometimes after your nails can be horrible.

I don't want talon length ones. Just long enough so they look polished and pretty. - And maybe I'll stop biting my fingers

Yes I know this isn't overly frugal but with the rent reduction I'm feeling girly and like looking pretty. I might not do it but i want nice options.

Got my rent notice today for Nov 1 - here landlords have to give you 60 days notice of an increase. My rent hasn't gone up in a LONG time. Good vacancy rates are a blessing for tenants!

This rent notice is unlike any I have ever had. Its actually a decrease of about $18 - and the accompanying sticky tells me I've paid too much rent the last 7 months so my next rent cheque I can reduce by approximately $200. Nice!

I can handle more rent "increases" like this one!

I had mentioned to a friend ages ago that I'd love to tag along to a conference he was attending in Quebec City.

Yesterday he called me up and we booked my ticket (he had already booked his!). I have to give him a cheque to cover the cost (I hate owing money but this was the easier way to do it as I didn't have an account set up with the airline).

So next Friday morning we head out to Quebec City and return on Tuesday morning. The nice thing is that cause he has to be there anyways that I have no hotel costs. The flight was pricy but this nicely makes up for it.

I'm so excited!

Was going around the grocery store and noticing all the nice new coupon displays. Seems I was following the lady who puts out the coupons.

She was a sweetie. Showed me all the coupons she was putting out and even handed me 4 or 5 coupons for purfiltre milk. Normally I'd grab more than that for trading but I was gracious and said thank you. I like that type of milk so 4 will go way before the coupons expire.

She said she goes around the store once a week but once a month is the "big" coupon day.

On friday night I dropped my laptop computer. Visions of replacement and using it as a door stop danced in my head. Yes it was on when it was dropped.

I brought it to a friend to look at on Saturday morning but alas that didn't work out as he didn't get a chance to look at it.

Saturday night I looked online for information on how to get a recovery disk (I couldn't find one in my computer stuff). But I found this exciting thing.

Turned my computer on, hit F10 and voila a brand new computer that worked. Yup. It completely reformatted my drive and put it back to factory specs within a 1/2 hour.

Annoying cause I lost a lot of programs but I'm not a big downloader so it wasn't a huge issue that way.

The relief in not having to buy a new computer or spend $$$ getting it fixed - huge. I had visions of really having some large expenses.

That is the liscence state motto in the province of Quebec. A friend is going there for work and I might tag along. He has a conference there in a coupls of weeks and it would be very nice to go there with him

Airfare is shockingly expensive but he'd cover the hotel costs or his employer would.

It is only in two weeks so if I do go it won't be long ...

I got told on June 18th that I was getting a letter regarding my attitude and how I had to shape it up during the next 90 days or start thinking about a new job.

My boss was told by his boss who was told by his boss tht my attitude sucks. I have mega attitude and I did tell someone my opinion and they didn't want to hear it. Lesson learned yummy - shut up.

Anyways. It is now approximately 9 weeks later. No letter. My boss said that he thinks it might never show up. Last he knew he had brought the draft letter to HR. HR had issues about the letter being not specific enough and not giving the type of feedback one needs to address the issue. His boss had a meeting with HR to discuss it that never as far as I know happened.

Boss asked me if I wanted this followed up on. My answer was no. Why remind anyone its not done. I'm going to wait until Sept 18th and figure by then its pretty much dead - that being three month's after I was told about it.

Until then I am careful on adding to the Gross National Product by buying things.

Oh and the Sr Director was in today. I had two meetings with him where I got lots of new exciting projects.

My advice... if you are gonna do stupid stuff don't do it to people who have political connections and bitch to the very senior uppper management folks.

Geeky happiness is realising you are not connecting to your wireless network but rather someone elses.

Geeky glee is realising you can remove that network from your list of networks you attach to automatically.

Geeky euphoria is realizing that geeks don't use names for things like the name of your network but rather random codes eush as EISSN (something like that)

Geeky giddiness is realising you can stop others from seeing your newly named network by stopping it broadcasting.

Such much pleasure. So litle extra expense to achieve it.

Life is good.

Think how I'll be next week when I figure out the defrost setting on the microwave.

I used some $2 off any lysol product coupons today on some lysol wipes and spray that were on sale for $1.99.

Its sweet shopping when they give it to you to take home!

Okay so I did have to pay that tax. I'm set for wet cleaning wipes and spray for a while now!