Our Cutting Edge Lifestyle

If You’re Not Living On The Edge, You’re Taking Up Too Much Room

The Bargain DVD Player
Several weeks ago, my husband Ian and I purchased a DVD player that was on sale at Sears. In addition to the sale, we had a five dollar off coupon, bringing the final price of the equipment to $37.58. Our television is about seven years old but works perfectly fine, except it doesn’t have the proper hook-ups for the DVD player. No problem! We just ran the DVD hook-ups through the eight dollar VCR we purchased some time ago at the local thrift store. The only downside to the entire system is that in order to watch a DVD, a person has to navigate three (count ’em, three) remote controls.

The Bargain DVD Burner
This DVD business all started about a year ago when the internal CD burner/player in my Husband’s G4 just quit working. Constantly on the lookout for the bargain, he finally found one compatible with his system that was also a DVD burner/player. I think he paid around $50 for it. Since I don’t care much for huddling up in an office chair in front of a computer monitor to watch movies, it made sense to find and buy the DVD player mentioned above. Movies we have seen recently include Finding Nemo, The Shipping News, The Full Monty, Fahrenheit 9/11, Monty Python’s In Search of the Holy Grail, two of the Harry Potter Movies, and something with Nicholas Cage.

The Bargain 40 gig USB Hard Disk
So, while he was out meandering around the net, he also happened to run into a deal on an internal Seagate 120 gig drive that was compatible with his G4 system. Which kinda made his external USB 40 gig hard drive superfulous. Well not really, I suppose, because if you knew my husband you’d know he never throws anything away, so storage is something that he lusts after. But I needed a storage drive for work so we made a deal. I’d buy the Seagate internal for him, and he’d give me the 40 gig external for work. No money out of his pocket, my company gets a $120 hard drive for $89, and my husband, who has had two years of use out of the external, gets an additional 80 gigs of storage for free. Being a belt and suspenders kind of guy, he can further back up his back ups on the above mentioned DVD burner.

More on how the 40 gig USB hard disk has complicated my own life will be the subject of another blog.

Bargain Meat
I like to food shop at Albertsons because they have the reduced meat bin. Often they have buy one/get one free offers on roasts or pork chops. The produce isn’t so good though, I like to get that at our local Lin’s Marketplace. Shopping bonus at Lin’s, when company is here, is watching the polygamist women food shop. The downside is getting in line behind them, their two sister wives, their multiple children and several shopping baskets full of cases of canned goods.

Our car
In June we bought a 1998 Subaru Impreza sedan that had 62,000 miles on it for a couple thousand under book price. (It has a ding in it. It’s not very noticable because the car is dark green. I can live with it.) It is the newest car I’ve ever owned. I love this car. We retired the Toyota Cresside with 243,000 miles, but kept the Chevy S-10 truck with 189,000 miles. The Subaru is a lively little car that handles well, accelerates well, and gets very good gas mileage. Did I mention I love this car? It’s just my size.

Things I splurge on
Coffee beans. Anything pre-moistened, such as antibacterial towelettes for wiping the kitchen counters. Expensive bathroom cleaners, which cut cleaning time in half. (No scrubbing, see? Spray, rinse, done.) Shampoo. Moisturizer. Body lotion. The best soap on the planet. New splurge item, discovered just this last weekend, good pillows. What a difference in a night’s sleep they make! I’ll bet it’s been six years since I bought new pillows, and even then they were bargains. Well, let me tell you my friend, bargain pillows are no bargain. And the expensive ones aren’t that much more expensive. Get good pillows, you’ll thank me for it.

Why I want a new computer
I love my iBook, don’t get me wrong, but it’s four and a half years old now. I’m complacent running OS 9.1. Everything I need to make work on it, works. Everything, that is, but gmail. A real prince of a fellow sent me a gmail invite. I was so excited! Wow! Then I found out that it only supports OSX browsers. Bummer! And if you think I’m gonna try to upgrade my iBook to OSX, you’ve got another think coming, buster. So now I want a new computer, for the stupid reason that I can’t upgrade my browser. So that I can get a beta gmail account. So that gmail can invade my life, take over my thoughts, study my purchasing habits, examine my colon for polyops, and make me vote Republican.

I guess that’s enough rambling for today. Happy trails, bargain hunters!

The CKS I invite because I love Tridiot Rating today is over the top, completely, at 129.921%