Warnng: This post is only marginally related to personal finances. Proceed at your own risk.

One thing I noticed in recent years is all the different free skin cancer screenings they used to do at area hospitals are now nowhere to be found. They are usually held in May. Yes, I could make an appointment with a dermatologist, but I probably wouldn't bother unless I had a pressing concern. Still, I like to take advantage of the free clinics just as a peace of mind thing as I do have fair skin and have my share of freckles and moles.

So after wading through the many online notices of such clinics from 5 years ago (wish they'd take those things down already), I managed to find one for this year in a town about 40 minutes away, down county, and I decided to go.

I was also trying to schedule a possible walk, workout and coffee with a friend of mine after we'd already cancelled once. This is a friend who lives literally around the block from me but whom I don't see very often, just once in a while. Still, she is so appreciative as I've helped her get serious about her bone health and exercise; she's a nurse, but works these crazy hours and has a lot of demands on her time. She also is very health-conscious, as I am, so we have a lot in common. She told me yesterday that I was her inspiration and that she was so glad she met me. Which kind of melted my heart.

When I told her about the skin cancer clinic, she really wanted to go, so she joined me, and we were able to fit in some extended quality time together on the ride down there. Then we walked downtown to a local coffee shop with a lot of personality (kind of a funky vibe going on, which was surprising in such an upscale town) and ended up having a light lunch there.  I dropped her off back home and we reconnected again at the gym around dinner time, even getting one of the trainers there to show us the proper form for doing a Romanian deadlift. All in all, a fun and productive day!

Today is a day I set aside for yard work and more mowing. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to an afternoon program on the battle at Gettsyburg. Seeing as how I just returned from a trip to Gettysburg Nat'l Park, I thought it would be interesting to see how the speaker at today's program either reinforces what I just learned about that moment in history, or adds to it.

Then on Monday a small group of us from 3 different local environmental groups are coming together (thanks to me!) to walk a section of a local high vaue river and tape knotweed, the hope being we can return after July (optimal time to treat with herbicide is July-October). 

It's in a very sensitive riparian area, so we won't do foliar spraying, which is very nontargeted, nonspecifc and harder to control.  (You can't dig this stuff out; the roots go down 10 feet.) We may use an injection method for the herbicide (depending on how much knotweed we find, it may or may not be feasible), or possibly paint it on with a small paintbrush.

I have also ordered, for my own use at home, 100 very small mesh bags with a drawstring attached (typically used for wedding party favors). I plan to use these on the cut stems of an invasive vine I have in my yard. Out of an abundance of caution, I will attach these small bags around each cut stem I treat with painted-on herbicide so that no insects are harmed by landing on the stem. So I'm going to ask the people in these other groups if they'd want to use them also. They're very inexpensive. However, we have not secured any permits from the town or state yet, and that could really delay us big time. We have the town land use director joining the walk so am hoping he agrees the need to tackle the knotweed is urgent.

I hope you all had a nice Mother's Day. I had an old friend come up for lunch and we spent a nice couple of hours. After he left, I set about to repair a kitchen cabinet where the trim that covered the gap in the middle of 2 corner cabinets had broken off. I happened to have a handy clamp that I found outside on a street sign that one of the utility companies must have left, so I used it here, along with some rubber brands to hold it in place while the gorilla glue dries.

I also was mowing the lawn until I had a recurring wheel issue occur.

But onto the focus of my post: Groceries are consistently one of my biggest expenses. In fact, last year, it was my #2 expense after property taxes, at $4,700, and I'm shopping for one.

It seems like for years now I've have a goal of lowering my grocery expenses but haven't made measurable progress. So for the past couple of months, I've been working on another Grocery Price List, where I track costs for individual items I buy regularly, at about a half dozen stores I frequent.

I thought I knew that in general, Aldi's had the best prices. HOWEVER, after analyzing the prices of 58 food items, I was surprised to see that BJs edged out Aldi's with 16 best prices while Aldi's had just 13. I've had a half-price membership at BJs for about 5 years now but only shop there once a month or so, but now I see from my spreadsheet I created that they actually have the best prices among BJs, Aldi's, Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, Trader Joes and Big Y for:

Bananas, organic raisins, mushrooms, avocado, fresh carrots, frozen berries, organic pears, prunes, gold kiwi, pink grapefruit, raisins, frozen turkey meatblls, red onions, organic celery, organic corn and kiwi.

While Aldi's had the best prices for:

Mango, yogurt, soymilk, Dave's bread, cantaloupe, organic blakberries, frozen peas, frozen broccoli, butternut squash, organi grape tomatoes, organic mini cucumbers, kefir and pineapple.

I eat a plant-based diet but supplement with eggs (2x weekly), small portions of meat or wild salmon, and I avoid processed foods, so I mostly shop the fresh produce section.

Whole Foods has the best price for organic canned, sodium-free beans, at 99 each. I also will continue to buy the 2 lb bags of wild sockeye salmon there. Stop & Shop seems to have the best price on dried split peas and their Nature's Promise organic soymilk has a great price at $2.99 a half gallon although I don't like the sugar in it, but will no longer pay inflated $5 for Silk brand, which is unsweetened.

Tracking all these prices is time-consuming, especially since prices DO fluctuate, and also, some stores are sneaky (like Trader Joe's and S&S) where they sell you an odd amount, like 12 oz instead of 16, or they sell by the piece of fruit, instead of by the pound. That's ok, then I just calculate what the "per ounce" price is instead of "per pound."

So I'm going to try to go to BJs more regularly, much as I complain about the drive (16 min) and their overly sensitive self-scanners. Their gas prices, the lowest around, is also another incentive. I also noticed that while S&S has quietly increased prices on a few items I'd recorded just a month or so ago, the other stores have not.

Also, I have to say in the past when I bought fresh bagged fruit like oranges, there could be smushed ones, but today i bought a bag of their organic Cosmic Crisp apples with a coupon and they are delicious! Super crunchy!

I am back, safe and sound, from a 4 day trip out to see Dido. It's a 3-hour trip there, so I spent Monday night, then Tuesday we left for Gettysburg, which I believe is another 2 hours.

Gettysburg National Park was really really awesome. I especially liked seeing the battlefield, which is quite spread apart and maintained by the park service as rolling hills of green, but you can definitely see how the hills were used by both sides for defensive purposes.

We signed up for the guided bus tour and I was delighted to find out that the two of us were the only ones on the tour (!) so the guide gave us his full attention. He said he'd been doing the tours for 41 years, so yes, he had an encyclopediac mind chock full of all sorts of fascinating details.

For example, there is a memorial/statue dedicated to the last documented Civil War veteran to die at the age of 106, in 1956. He was a Union Army drummer boy from Minnesota who enlisted at 14.

One of my favorite photos above.

This is part of the cyclorama, a massive, 360-degree painting done in 1883.

This is the Pennyslvania Memorial, the largest one at the park, representing the 34,000 Pennyslvania soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Each state that fought there has its own memorial.

This is Little Round Top, site of a pivotal battle and intense fighting that purportedly decided the direction of the war.

General George Meade, who President Lincoln put in command of the Army only 3 days before the battle at Gettysburg.

You can also drive around the park yourself and look at the many statues and plaques.

There are 3 battlefield observation towers, and we climbed this one.

From atop the tower you could see the small stone farmhouse that had been purchased by a newly freed slave who worked very hard to fix up his farm, only to have to run with his family for their lives when the Confederates were coming. When he returned after the battle of Gettysburg, there were shallow graves dug all over his land, the farmhouse demolished. A sad story. He got reparations, but less than he asked for.

Before leaving Gettysburg, we also stopped by the farmhouse that Eisenhauer purchased upon his retirement. It's pretty modest for a former president, but he had many famous visitors, including Winston Churchill, Nikita Khrushchev and Charles De Gaulle. This is the back of the house. We were not allowed to go inside, unfortunately.

After that, we stopped at the Hawk Mountain raptor center and walked the trails to take a break from the driving.

I have been busy as a bee since my arrival home Thursday. I mowed the lawn, planted my vegetable garden, went grocery shopping, went to the gym, etc etc. I missed the May Day demonstration in my town.

It's good to be home, but it was a really great trip. The weather was divine the whole time, there were no crowds and I hit no major traffic jams coming or going!