So a couple of days ago another mysterious charge appears on my bank statement:  Chicago Tribune.  As always, there is no way to determine what account.  I get 8 Sunday papers…and I have 6 accounts.  Do you wonder why the Trib is in bankruptcy?  I don’t.

Call.  Customer Service people are always exceedingly polite.  Can’t help you worth a damn, but they surely are polite.  This time I get wise, though:  I ask for all the account numbers, what they cover and the dates they expire.  No charges have been made since July…  Ah, no, that’s not quite right.  I have a charge here from last week.  Fax us a copy of your bank records and we’ll have to research it.  No, you can’t research a bank charge that says Chicago Tribune and your 800 number AND I’ve reached the limits of my patience (which admittedly is in short supply to begin with) AND you’re getting paid for this call and I’m not…so just transfer me to your supervisor.  Thank you.  Supervisor comes on in a few minutes, acknowledges being So-and-So’s supervisor and then asks me for my name and address!  Did she think I moved while on hold?   Or are there so many people on hold waiting for supervisors that a logjam has formed?

Either way, we get right down to it…turns out that they are charging me a renewal fee for a gift subscription – the ultimate gift that keeps on giving.  Cancel that, drop all easy-billing on all accounts (’cause let’s face it, it’s only easy on the Trib’s end) and go back to sending me a bill when a payment is due.  Done.  They assure me that if there’s a mixup my service will not be cancelled.  Ha!  My distributor has already told me that if there’s ever a problem with paperwork she knows it’s on the Tribune’s end…I’m not worried.

end of rant…to be continued

The EC premiere was last night.  Those of you without cable (most of you) should watch it on letmewatchthis.ch (check out earlier posts about ditching the box).  If you wanna just read recaps, Slick Deals does them beautifully (this recap is from the 9/28 season premiere).

So we start off with some kid who wants to put some Swiss Cake Rolls in the basket because they are on sale 2 for $3.00. Evil mom says hell to the NO, if ve haff no koupon ve haff no CAKE ROLLS, dahlink! As if they ever have coupons for Little Debbies anyway. That would really be hazardous to my health! And the evil mom is named April and she’s from Erie PA, and she is known as the “coupon general” because she’s running a houseful of 7 teenagers. So she has to be a bit militant, and we have some gratuitous militant ordering around in the store.

Now we see a Wall-o-Colgate to rival Nathan’s, and a Wall-o-Stove Top, and several other Wall-O’s, and this bizarre heavy metal music which is apropos of nothing, and we see the rest of her stockpile which Mr. Narrator claims is worth $30,000. April would like you to know that she is not a hoarder, and she says what sets her apart from a hoarder is the lack of dust in her stockpile.   But Mr. Narrator points out that she has 500 bottles of Ragu and 200 bottles of BBQ sauce – which does not have unlimited shelf life. So unless they are drinking that stuff right out of the bottle, I still think we have a problem here, but of course no one ever asks me – and now we see the portion of her stockpile that is SO coveted that she keeps it locked up with a padlock, and the door is labeled “The Cookie Jar”. This room contains all the junk food that she doesn’t want her 7 teenagers to get their hands on freely.

We are told that every Sunday she feeds her church of 200 people, so today she is going to aim to purchase $1000 worth of stuff for only $100. And I guess that’s where that Ragu is going as well, The store is called Bello’s Market, and she’s bringing 6 of the kids along to help. She has them line up in a single file line and march into the store, and we have this goofy WWII whistling to accompany the marching, and this show is making me very weary already. So the two boys are going to push carts and we are at the spaghetti aisle, where they are $1 each and she has a 50¢ coupon which will double. So 200 boxes of various Ronzoni go into the cart. Next we are at Chex Mix and she’s getting a crapload of those too. Then we are buying bagged salad, and and we have an encounter with a peelie – but oh horror, the peelie is a DND-9, and she has to explain that to us, and apparently she already had a better coupon because she’s “saving” the peelies, and getting 60 bags of salad, and now we are already checking out with 6 cartfuls of junk. ScannerCam™ shots galore, and we see that she has bought $70 worth of Beef Tenderloin, which I can only presume she’s getting with Overage that they didn’t show us on screen. She’s getting nervous, she might have to borrow a trash can, yada yada yada. And with 200 parishioners counting on her, will the Coupon General crack? We’ll have to find out after the break!

So now she’s at $600.00 and handing over “the Holy Grail of Coupons”, whatever that means, and she’s nervous & asking for liquor, and generally being an extreme drama queen, and wait! The system hits a snag! A popup says “Maximum Capacity Reached”! And we have more phony beeping! And extra-super-dramatic music! I am sure this will cause April to just pass out right there on the floor. And the checker clears the error and tries it again. And then here comes some manager dude who clears the error and scans the coupon and gets the same error. Don’t you love how people do this with computers? If it doesn’t work the first three times, let’s try it again 5 or 10 more times, because the computer might change its mind. So Manager Jim goes up to the office and they are futzing around on the computer and they conclude that they do not have the “security clearance” to launch nukes from this terminal, nor to override the maximum item count either. So we will have to enter the coupons “manually”, with more phony beeping, and to make a long and needlessly dramatic exercise short(er), her final total is $33.61 and April says the following: “I feel like Brad Pitt just walked up to the register and said he broke up with Angelina Jolie and says he’s into big women”.

I wanted to end on that very special statement, but I have to mention the next bit where she and the kids are at the church making pasta and meatballs (and salad) and serving it up to the church folks. Mr. Narrator said that she bought enough food to feed the church for 2 months. I hope they like pasta and meatballs. Lots and Lots of Pasta. And Chex Mix.

Next up is Carla, from Wahpeton, N.D., who says she is the “Queen of the Coupon Mafia”. She runs a frame shop and apparently sells papers out of the frame shop, and she says some confusing words about how she gets “the best inserts, the only inserts”, and I really don’t understand any of this at all so far, but it’s too late – we’ve moved on to her stockpile, which Mr. Narrator claims to be worth $30,000. Her boyfriend Frank is shopping in the stockpile to get stuff to feed 20 people at their lake house this weekend. They make a list of the necessaries which may cost $500+, but Carla is going to spend only $55. Off we go already to the store, called Econo Foods, and she’s taking her friend Amanda with her. But once they get in the door – high drama! Amanda has her own shopping list and her own set of coupons! Carla thought that Amanda was here to help, not stab her in the back! And we even have some spaghetti-western style whistling showdown music , and apparently this is going to be a “competition”.

They clear the shelf of “flavored water” (aka Vitamin Water™) which is free, and then they nearly jump out of their shoes when they meet a peelie guy who gives them some 55¢ coupons for “locally produced” cheese. Mr. Narrator says they are trying to “out-coupon” one another, and apparently Carla is planting sabotage items into Amanda’s cart, and then Carla says she’s going to abandon her $55 budget in an attempt to “out-coupon” her friend – to “beat her and win” – and what does that even mean? Maybe we’ll find out after the break!

We’re back and Carla has filled two carts full of junk to Amanda’s one, and we have some smack talk between about whose coupons are better, and who is going to kick who’s butt, …. and I must give these two credit for doing a fairly good job of keeping straight faces during what is clearly scripted and very contrived nonsense. Carla visits Amanda’s register to like mock her measly little total of $160.00, and we have phony beeping, and I Do Not Have $160.00 In My Pocket ™, and ScannerCam action, and more beeping, and Amanda’s basket totaled $27 and change.

Now flash over to Carla’s cart, where her total is $437 before coupon, and now we are scanning coupons, and more high drama! Her coupons have stopped doubling! A manager is required! He must go to the back room and investigate! Carla still has many more coupons that need to be doubled! Amanda is giving her sass, saying she’s going to lose this competition! Manager man worries that the whole transaction will have to be rescanned! I worry about baseball this weekend. Will the Rangers beat the Rays? Who is better? Looks of Concern™ from manager man as he clicks and points. What will happen? Then we come out smiling. He’s made an “adjustment” but unfortunately it won’t take effect until a new transaction is started. Amanda is all ‘neener-neener-neener” at Carla, and it appears the cashier is actually in tears at the prospect of re-scanning all that crap, but then they decide to just keep track of the un-doubled coupons and add them at the end. Whew, I was so worried! And more dramatic music, more ScannerCam, more Las Vegas Beeping™, oh and hey, here are the Random Disinterested People™, I was wondering when/if we might see them! And Carla’s total is $43.87, and she saved 95% vs. Amanda’s 90%, and who’s butt got kicked here? Amanda sheepishly concedes the butt kicking. I can’t believe how toolish these poor ladies are acting for a show that pays them nothing.

OMG I completely forgot about this one:  Starting today, you can check out library books onto your Kindle!  Finally the publishers and library have gotten their act together.  So now I can read library books on both my Kindle and my iPad…oh, and of course, actually hard copies.

I received this post earlier, but wanted to clear posting this with her.  I think it’s funny because every time something goes wrong in our lives we adapt and say It’s not so bad. At some point though, we have to wake up and smell the coffee…

I am learning to appreciate every single thing in my life.  Those little tiny things that make such a difference in our lives that we just take for granted. I have this huge laundry list of stuff that is broken.  It started with the pool heater, before the holiday.  Not that big of a deal. It is the end of the season, so we can live without the heat.  Oh, except the pool cover collapsed this past winter, and would you believe the pool places are too busy to even come out to measure it to replace the cover??? I get the pleasure of looking at the acorns dropping by the dozen into the sub zero temperatures of that water, AND there is no way my body is going into it to fetch them out!!!  Again, not that big of a deal.  So we are going to keep cycling the pool so that it keeps it clean, somewhat.  It is bleeding off some of the water, so I grab the hose and start filling the pool.  When the water is at an acceptable level, I ask Miss 14 year old to please turn it off. She returns with a bewildered look and says simply, “I can’t turn the hose off.”  What?!  So, I paddle on back there and sure enough, I literally can’t turn the hose off. So, we kink the hose and put on a sprinkler to water the lawn.  Multitaskers that we are.  My darling husband comes home and tells me he has a surprise for me.  I told him I had one for him as well!  He hands me this beautiful white chocolate truffle, my favorite. I request he changed out of his suit before I tell him my surprise.  Needless to say, I enjoyed mine more.  He did turn it off with some tools, but it is currently inoperable.  No biggie again, right?!

As a way to make money part-time, Avon is pretty good, ’cause let’s face it, the Jewel cash station just shut down on us.  Avon started as the California Perfume Company in 1886; it didn’t become Avon until 1939, so it’s not like it’s going to disappear any time soon.  You don’t have to put money upfront buying kits and products like other companies and you set your own schedule.  I’ve known people in the past who actually made more than they spent!

I’m posting this Avon link so anyone with any interest can check it out.  That is all…now back to deals.

Please read the comments section, as Avon has apparently made some rather widespread changes to their commission and shipping fees which would make this much less lucrative for the very small potatoes representatives.