Shopping at Meijer and the mPerk mishap

J had a list for Meijer that was too overwhelming for my liking to go alone, so the whole family went.

She said somethings to me that I thought I understood, but I guess I didn't. See we had a mail-in rebate for a product that if you sent upc and receipt, you'd get your money back up to $9. J wanted the purchase on a separate receipt, I figured to make sending the receipt easier since it didn't have $200 of other things listed. So after we got the cart unloaded onto the conveyor belt, I went to self checkout with the items to be free via mail-in rebate. Upon getting my receipt I figured something was wrong, for I was charged $2.18. A rogue mPerk was counted against MY checkout which was to be dredited to J's still processing purchase.

J was not happy with me. I told her that I hadn't used the mPerk since it didn't ask me if I wanted to use the $5 off my total purchase, but she was made that I logged on with the id. If she told me not sign in, I must must not of heard her. Regardless, I went to customer service with the two receipts.

Meijer has the best customer service I've EVER encountered. Sure I was there a while, but no one said "no" to me, but rather checked with a higher up to see if there was a way to fix MY mistake. After the 4 had huddled made calls, they were going to give me a store credit, but that change when I showed them a text forwarded from J. Meijer sent her a text that started with "Ooops..." and went on to say that an mPerk was hasily applied and that a new $5 was being available until November 23rd.

Wow. Just plan wow.
The things one does to save $5. I am very thankful for the attitude I got from the customer service counter. Meijer ROCKS!

Last landline in America

So I have a thing about being thrifty. I hate spending money. If I weren't married, I'd have died years ago from lack of food or something silly. I think my wife's willingness to share trivial things like her leftover Papa John's is why I fell for her. I'd never would have bought something that luxurious. $5 for a mere meal seemed too much when I was used to living on 1)rice, 2)oatmeal, 3)Brita water, and 4)coffee, where $5 would get me through a week. I actually may have only went grocery shopping once while in grad school. My parents brought foodstuffs when they visited a few times. A six pack of toilet paper lasted me the entire year.

I may be exaggerating, but I seriously didn't eat anything that could spoil. I was lactose intolerant after a year from not eating anything dairy. I remember thinking I was going to die from gas around my birthday, and it was because of an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. I had a borrowed mini-fridge, a microwave, a toast-r-oven and a coffee maker. My kitchen was a card table in the corner of a 12 by 12 room that used to be part of another apartment but since had a private entrance to a hallway and its own bathroom, the connecting doorway to the main apartment was boarded over.

Rent was $249 a month, including utilities except for phone and water. My neighbor paid my electric bill since he had the main portion of the apartment from which my was sealed off. I had free dial-up internet and I got a few stations with the rabbit ears. I didn't own a car. I walked everywhere. I don't think I had my bike there.

Not much to remember. Makes me wonder what J was thinking when she said yes to my proposal.

Anyways, I've adjusted to spending money on things deemed reasonable by J. We don't spend much on frills when you consider we spend less than $40 a month on DSL, Netflix, and Sunday Paper. We have a landline that is roughly $31 month after having gone up a few times in the past 6 years, but we bundle our dumb phones and DSL to where we don't pay a too hateful amount. We need phones. With children, it's best to have a landline in case of an emergency.

I frequently get the urge to shop around for cheaper plans, but  I usually find myself saying I HAVE the cheapest plans without going a flaky route like StraightTalk or whatever those Walmart phone plans are.  I will check out Clark Howard and see what he says, but he says some sketchy things at times.

I remember him saying something like there's an app that turns a iPod into a phone through Google Voice. It was a while ago, but it popped into my head the other night and I looked into Google Voice and set up my own number.

I was really bummed that it appears that you have to OWN a phone to use the damn thing, though they give you a number that can be used for forwarding to any phone. I might be missing something but I was hoping to just use wi-fi to make calls like I saw a guy use a MagicJack app on his tablet.

Regardless, the Google Voice number is local which got me thinking, and I figured that I could forward to my parents phone thus making a call to their house a "free" local call and not use minutes from my cell when I call them. It works, so I can call them guilt-free whenever rather than only on weekends(they are asleep well before peak hour end).

Hmm... I wonder what I would be like if I'd never married. It's a scary thought.

Day of dread

I wonder if it will matter that I'm weary of today... I will avoid roller coasters. I will avoid shelving units. I will look both ways when crossing streets. I will refrain from backing my car up by parking where I can pull-through. I will park away from cars. I will drink plenty of fluids. I will tie my shoes securely. I will hug my children regularly throughout the day.
Actually, I'm being silly for the sake of it. I don't do risky things and I learn from my mistakes. As long as I remember that gravity can crush bones, I should be able to avoid some self-inflicted accidents.

I'm hungry for Deep Dish pizza from Little Caesar's.  I ate a tasty double-decker hamburger tonight. The patties we leftover from Father's Day. My inlaws don't eat left-overs so I take things home to see that they aren't wasted.

The burgers were rather dry out of the fridge. They use lean meat, and lean meat isn't the best to grill. Hamburgers off the grill should be juicy. Whenever I grill on my Char-Broil TRU  Infrared, I use fatty ground chuck from Dot's, so the best thing to do when re-heating burger without juice is to grab A1 Steak Sauce and coat the patty before nuking it for 20-30 seconds then flipping and re-heating another 20-30 seconds.

I got some Aunt Millie's buns from Meijer's when they had a BOGO sale in mid-May. J put one of them in the freezer and pulled it out last week. Frozen bread tends to be hard and any bread of a certain age can get moldy. I made sure it didn't have any moldy spots, and decided to toast the buns in my Black and Decker Toast R Oven. Toasting stale bread makes it better, since TOAST IS MEANT NOT TO BE SOFT except for French Toast which is meant to be soggy with butter and maple syrup! I set the T-R-O for low, then I buttered both inner parts of the bun to give moisture.

I like cheese on my burgers, so I got out a slice of American Cheese. The cheese was cold, so I assembled the sandwich and placed into the Toast R Oven. The burger was looking good and melty, but I knew the center of the patties would be dry so I got out some Heinz, shook the bottle to give the ketchup a more thorough consistency, for ketchup always separates, and that made a tasty left-over meal.

 (I shared a dorm room with a guy that didn't refrigerate ketchup for he argued that restaurants didn't and that vinegar based products don't need it.)

 .

Grill purchase

So I bought a grill today that was on sale. Do I have buyer's remorse? Probably. I tend to feel ill when I buy things regardless of the rationale for the purchase (I read a lot of reviews on Lowe's website in addition to the rating of Consumer Reports. Heck, I even asked a guy I know that bought the deluxe version  of the grill for his opinion. No one deterred me from making my less than impulsive purchase).
In the grand scheme of things, grilling is a luxury. Old grill was a gift that merely set us back the price of the propane tank. That was at least 5 years ago. Got a lot of use out the grill, but I feel the need to log all of the new grill's usage. Maybe I'll make a spreadsheet of the cost for steaks and such made and cross reference with a comparable restaurant until I feel I get my $ worth for the grill.
Even could keep track of burgers made on the grill. Steak N' Shake will be hard to beat price-wise with Kids eating Free on Weekends, their $3.99 meal menu, and their bombardment of coupons.  We ate there yesterday for lunch and the meal cost a whopping $13.02! That's including drinks, soul, and milkshake.

A pound of ground beef costs X. A quart of ice cream costs Y. A bag of buns costs Z.

Venturing to Walgreens via Target

So we had places to go and things to do, the first stop was to PetSmart to look at aquariums to replace or 10 gallon tank. Our tank is a couple years old and our fish need a bigger home. We've had to move our male betta out to heal up from being attacked. Saw some aquariums, but nothing said "buy me now."

We went to Target next. I had to see the Pharmacist about getting the second half of K's medication. He'd left a vm while we were at PetSmart, so he was expecting us. Got word that the Walgreen's down the street had the script waiting for us, but we did some shopping at Target before leaving.

Had a coupon for $3 off a $25 or more purchases of groceries, and we had to look a while for $25 worth of food since there's quite a few things I will not buy at Target. But we found enough food and bought some things that we needed.

We left for real groceries that were at Dot's Market in Bellbrook. We buy all our meat there. Never heard of them having a meat recall like Sam's and Kroger, plus they don't use Pink Slime.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at Dairy Shed. I prefer Dixie Dairy Dreem. The chocolate from my dipped cone was like syrup and dripped a puddle upon reception. B got the brunt of the mess as it was handed to me while she was standing by my feet. A lot of ugly kids were staring about, which hadn't been a concern when were ate at Dixie where most people use the drive thru.

We made our way to Walgreen's upon returning towards home. It was a nice and easy in and out stop.

Got home, and made dinner using the items we got from Target and Dot's. Cheaper than eating at Steak'n Shake, but most things are cheaper when you fix them yourself and don't have to leave a tip.