My 2 Cents Worth

A month or so ago I posted about trying to talk my GMAC credit card down from their after introductory rate of 17.99% and when they wouldn't budge I paid the account off with another card that was offering 0% AND no transfer fee. In all the paying off mess I ended up still owing a bit over $2 in accrued interest and sent a check for that amount.

Last week I called to officially close the account. I was once again reminded that I was a valued customer and that they would hate to lose me and probed again as to why I was closing the account. They started telling me of all the benefits and asked what they could do to keep me as a customer. I simply said they could have dropped their rate under 10% 2 months ago. Even after I told them that I was trying to pay off all my debt the person offered to raise my limit. They were following the script so close they didn't hear what I said.

When I finally convinced them that I wanted to close the account for good I was told that I had a 2 cent credit. I asked them to mail me a check. So today I opened a letter that contained a check for 2 cents. Do I cash it? Do I deposit it? Or do I keep it as a reminder of how impersonable the credit card industry has become? Maybe try to cash it once we pay off our final credit card in about 5 months. NICE!

$3 Newspaper

It wasn't long ago that I faced a dilemna, pay 75 cents for the USA Today or just 50 cents for the Dallas Morning News. I still quartered up for the USA Today. That was about 2 years ago when the Sunday paper was still $1.50 for one and $2 for 2. I stopped in yesterday to get Sunday's paper just for the coupons. Guess what? This Sunday paper didn't have the coupons this go around. I don't know if I was more mad at the $3, the no coupons, or a combination of both.

I understand readership to newspapers that you actually hold is on a sharp decline, but wont raising your price so sharply, so quickly decrease a dwindling readership base even faster?

The best deal I saw 2 years ago was at the Texas State Fair when the Dallas Morning News was giving $50 in fair vouchers away for a 13 week subscription for about the same price. I didn't see that deal this year. You know I looked for it too!

2 Tacos for 99 cents

I grew up in St. Louis and when I was old enough to drive I often visited the Jack In the Box drive thru and took advantage of the 2 tacos for 99 cents sale. Now they are always 99 cents, what a value. I do like the deep fried appetizers and they are only 3 points each on the Weight Watchers plan. Yesterday while we were watching TV we saw a commercial spotlighting the 2 tacos for 99 cents. When they displayed the 2 tacos my wife and I both immediately laughed and made some snide remark that we've never seen a Jack In the Box taco that looked that fresh.

My wife made these when she worked there and when they went on sale 2 for 99 cents she said people would order 50 at a time. Kind of like ordering White Castles for the party. They are premade, frozen and deep fried. When they were done frying she had to pull the hot taco tips apart to squeeze in a 1/2 slice of american cheese, lettuce and hot sauce. She talked about how she couldn't feel her finger tips for days. On TV the lettuce looked juicy and fresh. In reality those tacos basically fuze the cheese and lettuce together. They are almost like little deep fried empanadas.

No complaints about false advertising because I love those tacos. Just ask BillyV how much I like them.

The Ballgame

Last night I had 4 free tickets to see the Frisco Roughriders. They are a AA minor league affiliation to the Texas Rangers. My school participated in an MVP program for 5th graders and I benefited from it as well. It was the perfect night for baseball and my son and I went with a friend of the family and his son.

We made it to about the 6th inning. My son did really well staying in his seat and watching the ballgame. His dinner included a kids hotdog pack for $4.50 which included a hotdog, chips and a drink. Not bad for ballpark prices. He also ended up with cotton candy which turned into a sugar disaster. I saw some of my students at the game.

This ballpark is perfect for taking the family to. They have a package for $29 and it includes 4 tickets, 4 McDonalds value meals and 4 hats. Every seat in the park is a great one as well.

Tonight I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Cardinals and Cubs were on WGN. Tomorrow night they will play on ESPN. NICE! Now if they would only win.

Family In Town

Picked up my parents from the airport Thursday night. My dad helped me mow and then they watched the kids that night. Friday night was my son's ballgame and we went out for pizza afterwards with a good friend and his family. Durkin's is GREAT stuff. Saturday rained out our ballgame, Trade Days and teacher appreciation day at the Heard Museum. Saturday night we did dinner and Sunday they flew home.

My dad and I were to meet the rest of the family Saturday at 5:15 at an On the Border nearby. As I pulled up I noticed the lot was near empty. As we waited for my wife and family we were approached by a manager saying they were closed for "routine" maintenance....meaning....they got shut down for something. EcoLab, a food sanitization company, had 4 trucks parked out back so they were taking care of something. The manager handed us a $10 voucher for any other visit along with a card for FREE chili con queso. I quickly called my wife and we planned to meet at a different OTB.

I had a $25 giftcard, we had a $10 voucher and we got free queso. My mom covered the $3 overage on the bill and we left an $11 tip. Great dinner for very little cost. NICE!

Family = GOOD

Family In Town

My parents came to visit today and the sole purpose is to visit the grandkids with the intent of seeing one of my son's ball games. He doesn't hit from a tee anymore so I dropped the TEE part. Some kids still do though. Today I took a personal day just to pick them up from the airport. I had intended on mowing early, but woke up to heavy storms. Plan B was to work out, pick up my daughter and pick up the grandparents. Their flight was delayed an hour so we actually stopped at McD's on the way.

Grandparents watched the kids tonight as my wife and I had 2 different agendas. I had staff appreciation dinner at La Hacienda Ranch and my wife met with a special friend for the evening. I made it home by 9pm and as of 10:45pm my wife is still unaccounted for and must be having a great time.

I really appreciate the effort my parents put forth in seeing my kids. These are good times and they are creating some special memories. My kids are almost 8 and 5 respectively and they will most likely remember these times. I know for sure I will! We'll have a great weekend.

UN KFC'D

I, like many people across the country it seems, printed of the coupons for the free 2 piece grilled chicken meal for KFC the other day. It seems OPRAH did some promotion and you could print up to 4 coupons within a 24 hour window period for this meal, no restrictions other than it couldn't be used on Mother's Day. Can't imagine taking mom to KFC for her favorite meal.

Tonight I figured we would go for a cheap dinner since I had 3 of these coupons. It would be plenty of food for my family. When we walkd up I saw the sign saying they were only offering rainchecks and not chicken since the promotion was overwhelmingly successful.

My dilemna at that time was to figure out where we were going to eat dinner. No way was I going to spend $15-$20 on KFC. I really just don't like the place well enough to spend that kind of money. Instead we went to Scotty P's for chicken strips and their skin on french fries. We had a great time and only spent $17 for fresh food.

We had fun waiting for our food. I started a game using the device they give you that vibrates when your order is ready. We took turns pretending like it was something else. Ideas included: a Wii remote, electric shaver, nail trimmers, stun gun, tv remote, a gun, guitar, cell phone. The kids actually did pretty well with it. It buzzed when my son had it so he "lost", but said he won!

NO Donuts?

Sunday morning I had a flashback to the late 80's when I was with BillyV and we stopped by Church's Chicken one day and was told it would be 13 minutes before we could order some chicken, they ran out. WHAT? It was a chicken place.

Well on our way to church I stopped by the local Yummy Donuts for a quick, light breakfast. Didn't want a heavy breakfast that would ruin a Mother's Day lunch. To save time I took orders from my family before pulling up to a front row parking spot. I walked in to see a near empty display case. So much for 2 cinnamon rolls, chocolate donut holes. All they had were kolaches, pretzel dogs, an apple fritter, 10 plain donut holes, a coffee flavored long john and about 12 plain cake donuts.

I ordered 3 kolaches(what the wife wanted), a pretzel dog(daughter ate), an apple fritter(my son chowed, and the remaining donut holes. I got in the truck and asked for the donut holes only to be told there weren't any. I went back in an asked about the donut holes and was told the lady behind me ordered them.

What a rough visit to the donut shop. Not only did I not get what I originally wanted, but didn't get the donut holes I thought I settled for. My wife did share a kolache with me and it was good, but who would have thought a donut shop would run out of donuts by 10:20am on a Sunday. Darn Baptists!

5 of a Kind

I hosted cards tonight and during one hand a player asked another person who was out what he thought. He said he would probably fold. She then brought more attention to the kind of card she had in her hand and then we had a dilemna pop up. During Texas Hold Em there was a 9 of clubs on the table AND she had a 9 of clubs in her hand. WHAT?????

We suspended play and checked things out. The deck of cards was from Palace Station Hotel and Casinos or www.stationcasinos.com. I have no idea where that is. Anyway I bought the deck from The Dollar Bee which was going out of sale a few months ago.

After we suspended play we found out that there were 6 nines in the deck. 2 hearts and 2 clubs. For that hand we just refunded the money and laughed about it. Kind of crazy really.

Tonight I broke my adkins diet of no carbs and plan on shifting to more of a Weight Watcher's diet where I will count points. I'm down to 204 and knocking on the door of under 200. Hope I can keep it up!

I Didn't Love, "I Love You Man"

Took a much needed day off just to rest mentally and emotionally. It has been a rough few months for me professionally. After dropping my daughter off at school I took my truck to have the tires rotated. While waiting I walked to my nearby gym and worked out.

Afterwards I went with a friend to see I Love You Man. Decent storyline, decent actors, soaked with unnecessary profanity. Must have heard 30 "F" words. Awkward at times sitting through it.

I then watched a 2nd movie, Wolverine X Men. I liked this one MUCH better and I've never seen any of the X-Men movies. If I didn't have a tee ball game tonight I would have went with old church friends to see Star Wars.

My son got the game ball tonight. He was 2 for 2 at the plate with one true double. He also caught one ball in the field.

$60 wipers, REALLY?

No wonder the Big 3 are in trouble. GM feels the need to build a car that requires $30 to replace EACH wiper blade. My wife's car is one year old and the rubber on the wipers are coming apart and do about a half way job so I went on a quest to replace them. First stop, O'Reilly Auto Parts. I bought 2 recommended Bosch wipers and walked about to put them on. I struggled in front of the store so I figured I'd take them home to do the job in private. No luck getting them on. Took em back and even the guy couldn't get them on. Next stop, AutoZone(It's always going to be AutoSHACK to me). They didn't have them.

The next day I drove to the Pontiac dealer and he said $60 plus tax, but he didn't have them in stock. WOW! All it needs is the refill that easily slides in the arm. BUT NO, they don't make it and you have to buy the whole thing. It should be a $10 or less fix and it's not. That night I drove to NAPA and bought 2 wiper blades and paid $45 with tax. They fit and work so now it can rain and my wife will be able to see.

That is ridiculous that replacing wipers on a yearly basis is going to cost me $45. Almost more expensive than buying tires for the car. A thief would slide the rubber out of new ones and and replace them with the olds ones before returning them for a refund. It would take a month or 2 before they realized they'd been had.

Imagine if I wanted some high performance triple blade wipers.

Catching Up

21 days of school left IF we don't close down for the Flu thing like many districts around us have done.

A parent bought me a carb-free lunch today only to accidentally give it to her son's other teacher. My lunch was after hers so I missed out on grilled chicken and veggies. Her lunch....pasta.

Another parent who had a running tab on my team's lunches since January sent us bill that said Paid in Full for teacher appreciation week. I was graced $67 worth. The grade level tab was just over $366. WOW! I joked that I would have eaten a LOT more if I had known that. (:

I dabbled with Facebook for a while. It's not me. I do like taking quizzes, but don't feel the need to tell everyone what I'm doing at various times of the day. Also, my neighbor wanted to know why I didn't accept her as a "friend." Felt kind of like middle school stuff with accepting, rejecting or ignoring friend requests. She then went on to tell us that she broke the 300 friend barrier. Wouldn't that be acquaintance or I at least know your name barrier?

Love that a longshot 50-1 Mine That Bird won the Kentucky Derby.

Thought I was going to have to repair my weed eater until I noticed that the "kill" switch was stuck on kill. "That's why it wouldn't start after 100 pulls."

Of the 21 days left I'll probably take at least 2 off........NICE!

Crunch Time

I teach science and this week the students are taking the state science test. This is their 3rd year of testing, but the first time they will take science. After Thursday testing is over, the teachers will relax and have more fun. Tensions always run pretty high this time of year, but for some reason this year I seem to be closer to the flame. Not having as much fun teaching professionally this year than I had last year. I do have an awesome homeroom with relatively NO issues so that is a welcome blessing compared to what I dealt with last year.

Yesterday I joined my wife in dieting the Atkins way. She just finished her first week and lost 7 pounds. The last 2 weeks I've gone to the gym 11 days out of 14, put in 42 miles and did not lose any weight. So I'll try this along with working out.

The scripture that comes to mind is:
Hebrews 12:11 (New Living Translation)
11 No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.

We went to nasty CiCis pizza last night and were so disappointed compared to our favorite Durkins(kids ate free). Doing Atkins was tough since they have great buttered cinnamon rolls. SO TOUGH!

One Simple Phone Call

I called the RadioShack credit card people to find out why I had a $42 finance charge when it was 18 months NO interest. I got a nice guy named Miles who was easy to understand and who was very helpful. I purchased my computer and TV in February and in March never remembered opening a bill. I finally called the number on my credit card and my first payment was due THAT day. This guy said something like,"I see the problem, since your first payment was late it automatically took you off the NO interest. I can fix that." After a few moments of silence he came back and said, "I can also take off the $35 late fee as well."

In a matter of 10 minutes I saved $77 that I possibly could not have had an argument or a foot to stand on. I'll hurry up and pay off the balance.

We are moving to pay off debt. And it feels good.

Closing Accounts

I received notification from my GMAC card that my newest statement was available. I called and found out that I had a balance just under $3. I sent in the latest due amount about as quick as I got that bill and thought I had zeroed out the account. The frustrating thing with charge cards is that it appears that they make just as much on late fees and fines as they do charging interest. The reason we transfered the balance anyway was that the initial 0% went to 17.99% and they refused to lower the rate. When I called tonight to get an official payoff without getting another bill for 2 cents or so the lady acted surprised and wanted to know what they could do and asked why I was interested in closing my account. DUH? I talked to them about 6 weeks ago and even told them I'd close the account if they couldn't help us. She then went on to try and sell me the service that pays your bills if you become unemployed. WHAT? I have a $3 balance and she is trying to sell me payment protection services that helps me avoid late fees and such.

I can't wait until we climb out from under the credit card demons. They are evil!

22 Miles

I tried something new this week. I was committed to going to the gym no matter what. It has really been hard to consistently go in the evenings with tee ball twice a week, gymnastics, church Tuesday and Wednesday. So I did something 3 times this week that I've only done ONCE in my life. I got out of bed at 5am and went to the gym and did cardio. The only day I didn't work out this week was Saturday. Looks like I'll be at the gym 5am Monday morning as well.

Observation: I've come to the conclusion that using profane language is correlated closely to lack of education. The less schooling someone has the more likely they are to use fowl language.

Did you know? I lemon typically will float in water while a lime will typically sink. Their buoyancy mass/volume is close to that of water which has a 1 to 1 ratio. 5 mass grams of water would be equal to 5 mL of water.

Toilet Paper

Early February I was picking up medicine at Walgreens and while I was waiting for the pharmacy I did a little browsing around. That's when I spotted the Scott's 12 pack MEGA rolls for $5.99. That was a great deal so I purchased it knowing that my family normally likes the Scott brand. Well, it didn't take long to realize that the paper might have been a grade below sub-par quality that you'd find at schools or major sporting events. It didn't take long for me to be scorned by my wife for buying such thin paper.

On a positive side these 12 rolls last 2 months. It survived 2 visits from family and 1 visit from friends of the family. I got worried last week when we were down to the last 2 rolls, one in each bathroom. That's when I went ahead and picked up a 9 pack of Charmin at a local grocery store. I did use my 35 cent coupon which was tripled.

Immediately I was back in my wife's graces. Now it feels like I'm using a high thread count hand towel. I no longer have to pull out about 6 feet of paper before using. It is more like using just 2 to 3 squares. I doubt this pack lasts to the end of the month though. It is a nice treat on the tush.

Things I Despise

I really do not like poodles. It is not their fault, it is me. If I saw one out in the street I'd probably run over it if I could. The other thing I really despise and have great disdain for is the Lance Armstrong wanna be bicylcists who take up a full lane on city streets. I'm sure I'll make a life altering decision someday and confuse a bicyclists for a poodle and take them out. Hope not.

Well, my patience was tested today as my son and I went to QT to get drinks. As I pulled into the lot I saw at least 30+ bikes and many middle aged men and a few women dressed in official varying "team" gear. Most of these outfits weren't that flattering for the guys. I decided to fill up before getting drinks. My son says he is going to grow up and ride bikes like them. I quickly said, "NO." It so happened that when I jumped in my truck to leave all of the bicyclists hopped on their bikes and headed out, THE WAY I NEEDED TO GO.

The saving grace for me was that they quickly pulled to the stop light and were going straight. I was able to pull to the left turn lane unabaited.

Like the poodles, it's not their fault. It's just me. It drives me crazy that they can go 20 miles per hour in 45 mph zone. If I was going 20 mph in my truck people would honk, be rude and even give me the finger as they would cuss at me. I'm sure this happens to the bicyclists as well.

Do the bicyclists drive you crazy as well?

Tragic Loss of Life

Wednesday night Nick Adenhart, an Anaheim Angels player, pitched 6 solid scoreless innings against the A's. His best game ever in the big leagues. He was 22 years old and was pitching in his first game of the year and 5th of his short career. His father had flown in from the East Coast to watch his son play. It appears that Nick went out with 3 friends after the game and just after midnight his car was hit by a minivan that ran a red light. 3 people in the car including Nick were killed. The driver of the minivan was also 22 years old and was probably 3 times over the legal blood alcohol limit at the time.

As I read this on ESPN http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4055343 I almost began crying. It brought forth the emotions I experienced last summer when I lost a good friend in a drunk driving crash. Both cases show us how precious life is and how you never know how much time you have. My friend had just finished our last day of school last June and went to celebrate with friends. I still remember the last time I saw her alive that Friday. Just about every day I walk by her room and still want to believe she is still with us.

My emotions are pretty raw on this. I'm very thankful that my thoughtless actions in the past haven't cost any lives. I'm glad I always made it home safely after latenight little league games when my father had too much to drink. I also pray regularly that me and my family never experience such senseless tragedy as well.

I miss my friend and think of her all the time. I'm sure her family does as well.

Working Out

I was so excited Monday night when I finally got to work out. All I really did was put in 4 miles on the treadmill. Since it was Monday I thought I could possibly work out every day this week. No such luck. We are possibly going to list our house and 2 nights this week I painted trim. Add in tee ball practice and a tee ball game and our time gets away pretty quickly. Tomorrow we are having a yardsale so IF I get to the gym it will have to be in the afternoon.

I really do enjoy working out and really want to get back into it.