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We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Because we are all burned out with holiday shopping, and don’t you dare Betty Lou Who me and be all “Oh, I just LOVE this” because I will be sore with you, at the very least, I wanted to share a good shopping experience with you.
Some of you follow my twitter feed and some of you know better than to rock the image of the good wife and mom you think I am. Those that follow understand that the reason my posts have been scarce is that, immediately following my finals, AJ got incredibly sick. Within 48 hours, I, too, got sick and Leon followed. Then, yesterday, AJ had to go to the hospital for chest pains. He got the all clear after an x-ray and CT-scan. None of us are completely healed from the stomach virus of last week and we are about to travel for the holidays.
We haven’t really had time to shop for the holidays.
Tonight, I took an hour to go get Leon his presents, as it is the one duty I cannot schluff off onto him. Part of that trip led me to Best Buy (who is not paying me, nor do they know about this post–I’m irritated with the need for disclosure, but there it is). Best Buy was packed, even at 9pm at night. I expected to leave irritated and wanting to sleep.
Instead, I walked in, found exactly what I wanted, talked to an uber cheerful cashier and, when I beeped when walking out, I slowly turned around to face the music. No, I didn’t steal anything. What do you people think of me?
I turned to hand my bag to the man at the door and he laughed at waved me out. I heard, from behind me, “You really oughtta quit stealing stuff! Run! Run for the car!” I laughed and went back to my car where Molly was waiting for me to drive home with the windows down. She wants to freeze to death.
Why bother writing this? Well, mainly because I spend a lot of time talking, thinking and taking in energy about what is wrong in my world. I had expectations that my experience was going to bite and it was the exact opposite. It was a great experience. I got what I needed and everyone was friendly and I was home within an hour. It was time to share a positive experience and increase the positive energy that is out there.
Take some time to appreciate those out in the retail world right now. I worked it for four years during this time of year and it is a hard job for little pay around the holidays. If someone is particularly nice, please return the kindness.
For someone that has expensive taste, it can be a real bummer to also have a cheapskate personality. It’s true. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance where the two conflict. For those who are not psych junkies like me, that means that I have a lot of internal warring; I want to buy nice fancy things, but it bothers me to do so and creates anxiety. Generally, it’s better for me to not do it. Then I don’t have to justify it to myself and, every now and then, someone buys the expensive thing for me for a gift and I don’t have to worry about it. Everyone wins.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love a good bargain. I love goodwill, garage sales and places like Ebay and TJMaxx that give me cool, designer type goods for cheaper prices. Half.com and Chegg.com have been lifesavers when book buying time rolls around each semester. I have a list of places in my head that I go for a great bargain, and, when I’m shopping, I will often run the list before buying.
It was time for another series, if I could find one. I was lucky enough to stumble upon My Weird School #1: Miss Daisy Is Crazy! and I was sold! There are a TON of books in this series, as well as a secondary series! We may be set for the summer.
And, best of all? Amazon gives you free shipping at $25, so I bought 8 books. They also give you buy 4-for-3, so I got 8 books (2 totally free!) for a total of $23. Not bad, not bad at all. I couldn’t have bought them used for that! Oh, and Amazon isn’t paying me to say that they have these deals. I just wanted to rub my bargain in your face. Isn’t that the best part of bargain shopping? It’s not nice? What? Oh. Sorry. My bad.
It was a bargain. And I love a good bargain. I’ll let you know what A.J. thinks of the series. He loved the first 3 series I was able to find.
Where does my love of the bargain stem? Let me quote my mother: “Don’t you dare buy anything unless it’s on sale. If it’s not on sale now, it will eventually be on sale and if it’s sold out before then, you’ll find something else.” Which of course is a total lie, but something in that idea has stuck with me, otherwise I wouldn’t be so reluctant to spend money on things that I consider to be too expensive.
She was here, recently, and found a shirt at Macys that was originally $48 and had been marked down to $13. She considered it a good shopping day. I would have, too, but she was also bummed that she “couldn’t find anything else” and that the “selection was so dismal.” Let’s be clear: selection here is fine–sales weren’t going on because it was the week before memorial day and everyone knows that the sales really happen that weekend.
I don’t take my love of a bargain to that extent. If something looks amazing, my vanity will force me to buy something that looks nice. However, I won’t go into stores that charge a lot for clothes in the first place. I don’t care if they have great sales, I won’t step foot in there.
She planted the neurotic apple and I fell from the tree.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about detailing the contents of my bag. As you can tell, for me, less is more. Because I have to carry about 4 keys that are specifically for my office, alone, and then several for home, and about 3 that I have no idea where they belong, my key ring is growing larger by the day. The heaviness of my key chain could, eventually, affect my starter on my car.
Well, all those things, and I’m lazy. I don’t want to carry around a bunch of visually unappealing cards on my cute little keychain. Not to mention that I break those cute little keychains like crazy on a regular basis and don’t want someone using my perks, benefits or gym memberships for their own sordid means. So, how do I get around the hullaballoo of the plastic membership cards?
I recently discovered a couple of free services (one is free, the other is free for you NOW, but will cost soon, so get it while it’s hot). The one that is free for NOW, but usually costs $0.99 is called Cardstar. It’s for those of you with iphones or an ipod touch (neither of which I have, but might be nice). It allows you to download the Cardstar application to your device and then put your membership numbers into the application. When you get to a place that has a program for rewards or membership, you pull up your card on your iphone or your ipod touch and a bar code will show up on your device. Again, this is currently only available on IPHONE devices, but they are working on it for Blackberries, Androids and Palms. Hopefully it will stay free until they get the Blackberry app developed, because I’m intrigued! They are in the process of adding new reward/membership programs, but you can request any that are not currently available.
For those of you non-Appleites, there is another FREE program that sounds really promising! It’s called Just One Club Card and it will allow you to put up to 8 barcodes on a single card that you can carry in your wallet. You can create as many cards as you need and you print out your barcodes on a sheet of paper. There are some restrictions on cards, such as Blockbuster, due to barcode issues, but they are well-addressed in the FAQ and this can decrease the amount you carry in your wallet by a great amount.
One card you SHOULD carry, if you don’t already, is one more FREEBIE I found and it is the Wallet Medication Card offered by Mercy Hospital. I requested some about 3 months ago and received them within 2 weeks. Carrying mine has been invaluable because I always know my meds when I go to the doctor. I don’t have to carry pill bottles or question my dosage. It’s all there.
Here’s to lighter bags and wallets and happier shoulders!
For my part, I’m good at admitting when I’m wrong or ill-informed and I’ll be the first to say that I am not a greenie. I’m not. I recycle when I remember, I turn down plastic and paper bags when they aren’t necessary. I have my steel bottles for water, when my water doesn’t taste like leaves. However, it’s not an exaggeration when I say that my mind is nowhere close to being eco-friendly.
Before you tear me to pieces, which sounds reasonable enough, I’m sure, try to keep in mind that last semester (Spring 2009), I worked two part time jobs, that both require massive amounts of at-home work as well, and did several hours in a doctoral program. Oh yeah, and I did the wife and mom thing, too. I’m not trying to be eco-unfriendly and I would hate for Captain Planet to show me the errors of my way. Many days, I’m too tired to know where to put the toilet paper, let alone where to put he empty water bottles.
So, when I find something that makes being eco-friendly easy, convenient and gives me pizza, I say, KUDOS to you, inventor. You have effectively saved me money on those oft-unavailable when needed paper plates. Take a look.
Ok, despite my flippant title, I’m intrigued by the idea I’m about to present to you. Many of my friends and family are aware that I enjoy finding new and different gifts for the various gift-giving occasions. What this means is that I’m always finding websites and resources that I think are worthy of sharing with them. Because of this, I often become overly eager in my sharing and this results in them getting multiple emails about websites that they might not be as eager to peruse.
Recently, there was a fantastic discussion on my blog about what happens to cadavers when they are donated to science. Many ethical questions were explored and I’m still bouncing the final thoughts around in my mind. I enjoy well-presented debates a great deal and have had this one on my mind. Because of it, I was googling around (googling around sounds much naughtier than it is) and found the Lifegem website.
Initially, I was as repelled by the idea brought forth in this website as I would be by the thought of wearing 6 inch heels and running a marathon. My initial take on Lifegem is that it is a website that offers to take the carbon from the cremated ashes of your loved one and make it in to a sparkling diamond that you can then wear in jewelry. This allows you both closure and the ability to wear your loved one and keep them with you until you die and then, HEY! Maybe your next of kin will make you into a sparkler!
Look, I never said my empathy extended into what I consider hairbrained ideas.
And yet, the further I read into the website, the more this seems like a decent, feasible idea to me. When people are grieving, memories are so terribly important and if they can afford this, why should it bother me? As I continued to read, the key aspect that changed my opinion was that, in order to create the diamond, they don’t have to use ashes, rather they can use hair from your loved one. Heck, your loved one doesn’t even have to be dead! If you are a stalker and have your “loved one’s” hairbrush, as long as you have the equivilent of 8oz worth of hair (a typical men’s haircut worth), you’ve got enough to create a piece of jewelry.
Personally, the more I think about this, the more I think that it isn’t any different than getting a tattoo or a painting to memorialize a lost loved one. The ashes part creeped me out because the idea of someone possibly cremating someone they love against that person’s wishes just to create jewelry from their remains is a little abnormal for me, however, I think that is an extreme thought as opposed to the “norm” for this situation.
What do you think? Beautiful memory keeper or creepy sparkly no-no?
Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
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Because we are all burned out with holiday shopping, and don’t you dare Betty Lou Who me and be all “Oh, I just LOVE this” because I will be sore with you, at the very least, I wanted to share a good shopping experience with you. 
, 
, as well as 
and other various single books. 
and I was sold! There are a TON of books in this series, as well as a secondary series! We may be set for the summer. 
Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
