The hat you see in this photo is close to 15 years old, made out of felt, and is now my lucky shopping hat. I found this out on Sunday after embarking on a couple of very fruitful shopping trips.
It all started like this: I returned home from Sunday morning coffee talk with Carolyn and Sue at Beaner's to find Chuck perched at the top of a ladder, tearing down the siding behind the gutters. Flash-backward to earlier that morning: while in our first floor bathroom getting ready to leave for coffee, I thought I heard Chuck in the upstairs bathroom directly above me, though his shuffling sounded funny. When I returned to our bedroom, I found him still in bed. I told him about the odd noises, but he hadn't heard anything. After I left, he started to hear some sort of scraping noise, but thought it came from outside the upstairs bathroom window. He then went outside to investigate and found that the gutter right above the bathroom window had chew marks on it.
What kind of a crazy bastard of a squirrel chews through metal?!? We know a few people who have had issues with this vermin wreaking havoc on their homes (and each are in nearby subdivisions), so Chuck went into immediate action mode. The spot the squirrel chose to target was a good one -- once he got thru the gutter, he would have easily passed thru the decaying wood panel behind the gutter. We hadn't noticed the condition of this piece last year while painting because we never took down that set of gutters. The squirrel hadn't gotten in yet, and Chuck inspected the rest of the dormer for trouble areas.
Okay, so you're probably wondering what all of this has to do with shopping -- seeing Chuck on the ladder and busy with that repair, I knew that our plans for a relaxing Sunday of leisure were scrapped, so I donned some house clothes and got started with chores. While Chuck was waiting for the paint to dry on the new panel piece, I told him about deals on a couple of desks that Sue had found at OfficeMax last week. His response was, "Well, we're looking for a desk for Sylvain anyways, why don't we see what they have right now?" Since I was looking pretty schlubby anyways, I decided not to fuss with my hair and threw on my MSU hat. We scored big at OfficeMax by finding a desk and matching bookcase for Sylvain for $50 total (originally priced at $480). There was also a matching hutch for $12, but because of the cape cod-style of our house and the configuration of his room, it wouldn't fit atop the desk.
Feeling quite content, I dropped Chuck off at home to finish his work and headed to Meijerfor groceries. Being a creature of habit, I entered the store through the Garden Section and was very warmly greeted by the two guys working there. Remembering that Sue had also found at natural light floor lamp also on clearance, I decided to detour through the housewares aisle once inside the store. Sue's husband Cameron had the same gripes about trying to watch movies or TV with Sue that Chuck has with me -- we both prefer to have the lights on because we usually have some sort of fiber craft in hand. Lately, Chuck and I have taken to watching the same shows but not together; he takes over the den and I prefer to hang out upstairs in our room. The lamp Sue had found is shaped so that it casts its light downwards and seems to keep the peace during TV time. Anyways, there was only one of the lamps left and it was priced down to $10.49 from $41.99. My only reservation was that the bulb was an odd 27-watt fluorescent one, and I didn't see any replacements by the rest of the lamps. I tracked down a Meijer employee to help me find one in the light bulb aisle, but we both came up empty-handed. The employee offered to call one of the other Meijer stores to see if they happened to have any in stock, and that seemed fine with me.
While on hold, he saw my hat and asked, "So, do you go to State? I'm a student there now."
"Yes, but it's been a while," I quickly replied, but then felt bad because here he was doing me a favor and I was being brisk. "Let's just say that Nick Sabin was the new guy when I was a student." What, football?!? Why in the hell did I have to start talking football!?!
Thankfully, he didn't go that route and just proceeded to tell me that he was an Econ student and that he was looking forward towards graduating, though the job outlook isn't very promising.
After a few more of minutes of small talk, we found that none of the Lansing-area stores had replacement bulbs on hand, so that definitely took the damper off of my zeal to buy the lamp. After thanking him for his help, he smiled and said, "Well, you know, since we don't have any bulbs for that, I can take an extra $5 off the price for you." What?!? Wow, sure! I may have a hard time finding a bulb, but the lamp has got to be worth more than $5.49, right?
Taking one last gander down the clearance aisle, I found two electronic kitchen scales for $6.99 each (originally $34.99 a piece). Knowing that Chuck's family are full of foodies, these will come in handy if we ever need an emergency gift. So, over the course of a few hours, I managed to save just over $520 and kept my impulse purchases down to $20 total. That's not bad at all in my book.
No comments:
Post a Comment