![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We went to my parents for the weekend, and ended up staying an extra night so I could go with my mom for her MRI yesterday (back/hip pain) It was a good weekend, though I came home with some sort of illness that has yet to make itself fully at home, but has given me plenty of acheyness and misery already. Advil is a truly remarkable invention. I love it with a fiery devotion. It should make for a short week, though, unless the rest of them are also consumed by my plague. Our anniversary is on Friday and the kidlet is heading to my mom. We're going to have four! days! home alone. We were going to go somewhere for the weekend but I think we talked ourselves out of that last night. Knock on wood that we're all healthy again by Thursday.
Evie just told me a story about The Bad Pig's Christmas, where some bad pigs were going to celebrate Christmas the wrong way and they cut down some other pigs' Christmas tree! And those pigs were mad, and then they got another tree just like it and they were happy. hehe. I know I'm partial but I thought it was a cute story. It kind of gave me a David Shannon sort of vibe. As a book concept, it needs a little work but it's at least as sensible as some of the other junk we've read together over the years.
We have a bunch of large Walmart gift cards at the moment due to my current pastime of taking advantage of multiple credit card bonus offers* and we're coming up on the annual Sam's Club shopping spree that M's boss, S, sponsors every year. (I know I talk about this every year and I'm sure it makes people want to hit me since it's the coolest Christmas bonus I've personally ever heard of--and it's just PART of the Christmas bonus--but he gets a $500 gift card to spend at Sam's, with the restriction that it has to be within three hours on a certain Saturday--you go under, he keeps the remaining money, and if you don't finish up by eleven, you lose it. Theoretically. I doubt that's ever happened, but he does get gift cards back with cash still on them, which is INSANE to me because seriously, people, bring a calculator). While less practical than cash, it's awesome because how often do you get to spend $500 on something that someone else pays for? ANYWAY. It's all very festive and you see just about everyone from work while you're there. I was thinking tonight that we should totally go in and load a couple of carts with twice as much stuff as we need, because everyone else is always noticing what everyone else is buying. When we get to the register, we could casually pay with all of the extra gift cards (you can use Walmart cards at Sam's and vice versa), and then M could casually mention, when asked, that S is "doing a little something special for me this year." It would be HILARIOUS because the people he works with are largely middle-aged women who sit around and look for miniscule amounts of drama that they can freak out over. And, if [they think] M got twice as much Sam's money as they did???? OMG THE END OF THE WORLD. It would be the perfect prank to pull on his co-workers. Alas, we will not do this because... well, it'd be a fun prank but not exactly worth the price of admission. We have a difficult enough time trying to figure out what to spend $500 on at Sam's, much less $1000. (Note: couponing did not make it easier. Now I know what stuff should cost elsewhere and warehouse prices are not actually that good, most of the time.) Oh, spending the cash is easy but narrowing it down is harder. :)
*I'm referring to opening credit card accounts when they offer some promotional offer for free money. I don't open cards for less than $100 anymore--well, almost never. We had five or six going at once this fall, which really stretched the limits of what was feasible, since you have to spend a certain amount of money on each one and keep track. There's not usually that many available at the same time, but it all just sort of came together that way. We put everything on credit cards anyway--and pay off every month--but it was a pretty serious juggle with the varying limits and time frames. However, we came out $1,350 ahead, which was fun. I finally got them all finished up and all rewards redeemed this week--still waiting on a few to arrive. If you've never tried this and you decide to give it a whirl... start with one at a time. I'm about to start the next round... with any luck. Looks like they'd stop giving me credit cards at some point but I sure hope they don't. :) It's fun.
Spotify. Spotify is amazingly awesome. Pinterest is crack. And Evernote is bliss. I used to love finding new programs and internet stuff but I haven't made time for it in the last few years, I guess. These three things have dropped into my lap at around the same time and I feel evangelical about them all. It's nice. :) Evernote, if you haven't heard of it before, is a system for keeping all sorts of information together. You can put lots of stuff into it--text or pictures or anything. Recipes, lists, stories about your kids, book notes, whatever. I am currently using it for, among other things, a weekly schedule keeper. I have a page with recurring to-do checklists for every weekday. I have a separate list of crafty things I'd like to do. I'm planning on keeping my recipes in it--only have a few in there so far. You can keep entire web pages if you want. Then it does this little syncing magic and your most important stuff is available on the web, on a windows program and on your mobile device and.. I don't know. It's just cool. Anyone else love it like I do?
Evie just told me a story about The Bad Pig's Christmas, where some bad pigs were going to celebrate Christmas the wrong way and they cut down some other pigs' Christmas tree! And those pigs were mad, and then they got another tree just like it and they were happy. hehe. I know I'm partial but I thought it was a cute story. It kind of gave me a David Shannon sort of vibe. As a book concept, it needs a little work but it's at least as sensible as some of the other junk we've read together over the years.
We have a bunch of large Walmart gift cards at the moment due to my current pastime of taking advantage of multiple credit card bonus offers* and we're coming up on the annual Sam's Club shopping spree that M's boss, S, sponsors every year. (I know I talk about this every year and I'm sure it makes people want to hit me since it's the coolest Christmas bonus I've personally ever heard of--and it's just PART of the Christmas bonus--but he gets a $500 gift card to spend at Sam's, with the restriction that it has to be within three hours on a certain Saturday--you go under, he keeps the remaining money, and if you don't finish up by eleven, you lose it. Theoretically. I doubt that's ever happened, but he does get gift cards back with cash still on them, which is INSANE to me because seriously, people, bring a calculator). While less practical than cash, it's awesome because how often do you get to spend $500 on something that someone else pays for? ANYWAY. It's all very festive and you see just about everyone from work while you're there. I was thinking tonight that we should totally go in and load a couple of carts with twice as much stuff as we need, because everyone else is always noticing what everyone else is buying. When we get to the register, we could casually pay with all of the extra gift cards (you can use Walmart cards at Sam's and vice versa), and then M could casually mention, when asked, that S is "doing a little something special for me this year." It would be HILARIOUS because the people he works with are largely middle-aged women who sit around and look for miniscule amounts of drama that they can freak out over. And, if [they think] M got twice as much Sam's money as they did???? OMG THE END OF THE WORLD. It would be the perfect prank to pull on his co-workers. Alas, we will not do this because... well, it'd be a fun prank but not exactly worth the price of admission. We have a difficult enough time trying to figure out what to spend $500 on at Sam's, much less $1000. (Note: couponing did not make it easier. Now I know what stuff should cost elsewhere and warehouse prices are not actually that good, most of the time.) Oh, spending the cash is easy but narrowing it down is harder. :)
*I'm referring to opening credit card accounts when they offer some promotional offer for free money. I don't open cards for less than $100 anymore--well, almost never. We had five or six going at once this fall, which really stretched the limits of what was feasible, since you have to spend a certain amount of money on each one and keep track. There's not usually that many available at the same time, but it all just sort of came together that way. We put everything on credit cards anyway--and pay off every month--but it was a pretty serious juggle with the varying limits and time frames. However, we came out $1,350 ahead, which was fun. I finally got them all finished up and all rewards redeemed this week--still waiting on a few to arrive. If you've never tried this and you decide to give it a whirl... start with one at a time. I'm about to start the next round... with any luck. Looks like they'd stop giving me credit cards at some point but I sure hope they don't. :) It's fun.
Spotify. Spotify is amazingly awesome. Pinterest is crack. And Evernote is bliss. I used to love finding new programs and internet stuff but I haven't made time for it in the last few years, I guess. These three things have dropped into my lap at around the same time and I feel evangelical about them all. It's nice. :) Evernote, if you haven't heard of it before, is a system for keeping all sorts of information together. You can put lots of stuff into it--text or pictures or anything. Recipes, lists, stories about your kids, book notes, whatever. I am currently using it for, among other things, a weekly schedule keeper. I have a page with recurring to-do checklists for every weekday. I have a separate list of crafty things I'd like to do. I'm planning on keeping my recipes in it--only have a few in there so far. You can keep entire web pages if you want. Then it does this little syncing magic and your most important stuff is available on the web, on a windows program and on your mobile device and.. I don't know. It's just cool. Anyone else love it like I do?
