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Great Falls, woven painting
I tried a recipe for lentil burgers that someone posted on a Facebook site I frequent and it came out really good. It was equal parts rice/quinoa (but you could use any kind of grain) and walnuts, and a bit less lentils, plus carrot and spices. I think it was the walnuts that made it so appealing. I'm having the last patty for dinner tonight.
Speaking of food, I was at Trader Joe's today and will be at BJs tomorrow. There are certain items I like to get at certain stores, either because of price or because I can only get a particular brand at a certain store, so I end up going to countless grocery stores, it seems.
Now that I'm getting the $10 off Staples coupons with some regularity (because I'm using them), I'm going to start using those coupons exclusively on Charmin TP. When I calculated the per roll price I pay at BJs, even with their $3 coupon, it's not especially cheap at .84/roll. The price for same item at Staples would be .79/roll, and if I use the $10 coupon for it, it's just .37 a roll.
It's the little things that make me giddy.
Today I was up at the gallery to fetch the art (nothing sold) and hopefully collect payment for art sold last year. Seems she has cash flow issues so I should receive half of it in a week or so. And she can keep all the art for another month, which is fine by me, cus i don't have room at home and it won't sell sitting at home.
She also put me in touch with a place that can scan large photos. I have an old family portrait from probably the late 1930s which is beginning to develop tiny black spots of mold or whatever. It's upsetting, given it sat in my grandmother's dining room for decades perfectly fine. I guess it's just age, but I do feel responsible for preserving this irreplaceable sepia photo of 20 members of my grandfather's family.
The photo is too big for my printer scanner and the place is local, so I will go there tomorrow. He can create digitized copies I can mail to my cousins and to keep myself, but I probably can do nothing to preserve the original itself, which makes me a little sad. Photos just don't last forever, and the high summer humidity in my home probably didn't help. So I'm anxious to do this. My cousin's son will ultimately get the original from me anyway, in about 30 years, but in the meantime he could get an enlargement made with what I send him.
I'm totally annoyed with the woman who is supposed to be feeding me freelance assignments at this website where I wrote 2 pieces. She is totally unreliable. She keeps saying she will get me the next assignment "next week," and then by next Friday when I say do you have something for me, she says I'll have something for you today, and still nothing. Just annoying. It's happened 3 times already, and I'm still waiting. NOt much I can do about it but I almost feel like sending a note to someone at her company.
I squeezed in a walk toward day's end and ran into a neighbor who used to live on my street but then got divorced and later moved into a house still very nearby. She's always out walking her dog so we walked together for a bit, and she invited me to "knock on my door" if I ever want to go walking together. Which I think would be nice. She works at home part of the week and at some other job 3x a week, exactly the kind of schedule I aspire to, although I really need employer-subsidized health insurance.
I met with my Vanguard adviser today to discuss in more detail my retirement savings and the report they did in response to my question, if i never again get a f/t job, will i manage in retirement? The plan still includes my earning at least $24k annually starting this year and until I'm age 65. I need to do some rearranging of my portfolio, consolidating certain funds and so on, which could somewhat reduce my annual fees becus I'd be consolidating into fewer funds. But overall it looks okay.
I managed to copy all my photos and disks onto 3 CDs for backup, something I'm really bad at doing and of course I'd be horrified if my computer ever went on the fritz. Not sure if I'm crazy about storing stuff "in the cloud."
I'm making progress finishing reading Garth Davis' book on proteinaholics.
Mundane details of my life
January 4th, 2017 at 11:17 pm
January 5th, 2017 at 12:25 am 1483575953
January 5th, 2017 at 12:48 am 1483577297
January 5th, 2017 at 01:37 am 1483580231
I also have been getting the $10 Staples coupon (it is linked to my e-mail address with my former employer, but it does come to my personal e-mail - - win/win. I get the coupon/discount they get the points) This has been going on for about a year now. I have had quite a/the stockpile of toilet paper and paper towels. Only downside is that the item can't be on sale. The products I buy are either 9.99 (which means I have to buy something to make the $10 threshold) or the product is 10.99. Either way it costs me OOP $1.05 for either 8-12 rolls of paper towels or 20-24 rolls of toilet paper. Score!
January 5th, 2017 at 03:53 am 1483588431
January 5th, 2017 at 01:51 pm 1483624317
But like you said, the $10 coupon still makes any small purchase dirt cheap. It's too bad you can't use the coupons on ink cartridges, which is really the only other thing i would use on a regular basis. So it's TP and paper towels for me.
I fondly remember a job I had about 8 years ago where part of my job was maintaining and ordering office supplies for a very small office (2 of us). I opened the account with Staples and signed up for their rewards program, which was very worthwhile at the time. When I signed up, Staples told me that rewards earned from our office in CT (before I signed up for the rewards program) were going to our bookkeeper and her assistant in another location! I am sure they were enjoying that little perk before I learned of it and of course they never breathed a word about it to us. But after signing up myself, I'd get a quarterly rewards check of about $100 I could spend on anything i wanted.
FrugalTexan, I'm not sure how you get the coupons to start, but I imagine buying something at Staples with a credit card after making sure you're already enrolled in their rewards program would put you on their mail list.
January 5th, 2017 at 04:46 pm 1483634809