10 Random Things

It's still busy around here but here are some random things from my favorites list...

1. I traded my old cell phone for a Galaxy S25+ phone and I am loving the detail in the photos it takes (see photo above)!
2. I just learned that there are a variety of ways you can become a NOAA volunteer.  Cool!
3. This past week, Las Vegas broke a 214-day rainless streak.  We had a much-needed rainstorm which was a nice change of pace.
4. This lady wrote about a wonderful way to spend a major birthday year!
5. Here are a bunch of ways to save money.
6. And speaking of frugal, here are pages and pages of frugal tips.
7. This guy's YT channel features a lot of useful, and most often free, website lists...good info here!
8. Here is an article on five big things that disappear after you retire...hubby and I can confirm pretty much all of these things happened to us immediately after retiring (so these are definitely things to plan for if you are planning for retirement).
9. A friend of ours is dealing with and-of-life stuff will an ill, very elderly parent.  When I asked if she and her husband have updated their wills lately, I was shocked that neither one has a will!  And they are in their early 70s!  Here are documents everyone should have in place no matter how old (or young) you are.
10. Finally, I am so thankful that all passengers survived the horrible plane crash in Toronto yesterday.  What is going on with all of these plane crashes lately???

All of This for $20!

Hubby and I stopped by the grocery store today and picked up a bunch of loss leaders.  For a grand total of $20.30 we got...

• a loaf of French bread
• a loaf of white bread
• 10 pounds of potatoes
• 20 limes
• a pound of tomatoes
• a half gallon of milk
• a pound of grapes
• 7.5 pounds of chicken

Overall, it was a pretty good--and cheap--haul!

Long Time No Post!

 

I just realized it's been a few weeks since my last post!  Among our recent activities...

• Family and friends have been coming and going for the past few weeks for vacation--it's been busy around here!
• Hubby turned 76 last week so we celebrated at his favorite Italian restaurant.  The service was good, the food was just OK, and the prices were astronomical.  I've noticed prices at every restaurant, from the cheap fast food places to the higher end places, seem to increase every time we go out.
• One of our guests has been sick as a dog for more than a week; apparently the flu, covid, RSV, and a couple other illnesses are going around our city now.  I get hospital reports for the state I work in and it is the same there...patients are stacked up everywhere, for hours on end, before being seen.  Yikes
• The kittens haven't been seen in weeks, the mom cat. above, comes by very occasionally for a piece of bacon.
• Everyone is busy watching the Super Bowl as I type this.  This may be my least favorite game to watch because there seems to be one play followed by a half dozen commercials, rinse and repeat. Ugh
• Here is an interesting idea for inexpensive dental work.
• I did our taxes and was pleasantly surprised that we only owed about $600; I was thinking we would owe much more so this was great!

Now back to cooking...I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

10 Things From This Week

In no particular order...

1. Today is MLK Jr Day and Inauguration Day.  It's also a paid holiday from work so hubby and I are just chilling out today watching movies...back to the grind tomorrow!
2. I don't like how my every move is tracked via my cell phone so I bought a Pixel and De-Googled it.  There's a bit of a learning curve but so far it works perfectly...and privately!
3. I'll probably try to load Linux on my laptop next weekend for pretty much the same reason (one big tech project a weekend is more than enough for my brain to deal with!).
4. Three take-aways from the recent wildfires in nearby California...have a go bag, have a wildfire checklist, and note the GPS location of our house in case the entire neighborhood is wiped off the map.
5. Fortunately, while our weather is a chilly 48 degrees today, it is nowhere near as cold as most other parts of the country--I can't believe it is 20 degrees in Atlanta today!
6. So far this year, all 20 days of it, hubby and I have significantly cut down on the number of times we have been eating out.  It is much healthier--and cheaper--to eat at home!
7. I love the movie channels on Roku.  There are so many movies, generally older movies but the occasional newer movie, and they are all free!
8. A small news article about a fatal car wreck came across my FB feed and it highlights two important things...#1, always wear your seat belt when driving, these two people would probably still be alive if they had done this simple thing, and #2, when you are in a very remote area, EMS services can be few and response times can be long.
9. Here are some great tips in case you hit the lottery or receive any other huge financial windfall.
10. Finally, even though I buy literally all of my clothes at the Goodwill, for people who use Amazon's 'Try Before You Buy' program, it will be ending soon so just a FYI.

A Full Moon!

Yesterday was the full moon (Wolf Moon) and people were certainly acting like it--besides the usual crazy drivers (we watched one guy, third in line to turn left out of a parking lot, drive around the two cars in front of him and race out into a left turn causing all of the cross traffic to slam on their brakes to avoid an accident) then when we were at self-checkout at Sam's Club, the lady in front of us did the slowest job ever--after scanning an item she would tell the lady in the next lane about her colonoscopy, scan another item, continue her conversation, rinse, repeat.  I can totally understand why people have meltdowns in public over other people's behavior!   

On a side note, if you live in/near LA, I hope you are OK.  I've been watching videos of the wildfires in that area and it looks totally terrifying!

It's Been a (Tech) Week

It's been a busy tech week around here...

• CES just wrapped up in Las Vegas.  This is a big consumer electronics show which used to be easy to attend (just print up a business card and walk right in) but these days they have increased the requirements to attend (thank goodness so many people post videos of the event on YouTube!).
• We got a new range recently and hubby asked why it keeps trying to connect with his cell phone.  I guess there is an app for everything these days and while many people like all of this consumer tech, I would go back to the wood-burning cookstove if it was possible!
• New Samsung phones are being released soon.  I signed up to pre-order so I can get a discount if I decide to upgrade my phone (this is free to do but you aren't required to buy a phone if you change your mind).
• My ancient printer/scanner was having issues connecting to my laptop because I changed the router/network.  I thought I would just buy a new printer/scanner since one was on sale for $35 but when I read the reviews, it said the scanner (which does not use ink) would not work if you didn't have ink in the printer.  What a scam!  I haven't had ink in my printer/scanner for years.  I make so few copies that I just pay 10 cents a copy at the local library on those rare occasions when I need to print something.  So I redoubled my efforts and got my old printer/scanner to connect.  I also backed up the device software since it is no longer supported by the company and I am also going to order a printer USB cord for around $5 so that if it can't connect to wifi I can still connect it to my laptop.
• Then I sent a coupon to an old Yahoo email account that I rarely check because I only use it for junk email and found I have lost access to it! When it said it would send a code to the backup email address, it went to another Yahoo email account that I rarely use and when I went to check that old account, it said it sent a code to that email's backup account which happens to be the first account I couldn't log in to.  Ugh
• Finally, here is how tech can be used to increase your car insurance and here are some generally annoying tech trends. 

10 Consumer-ish Things

Instead of ranting about the news and politics (since this doesn't do any good and only serves to jack up my blood pressure!), I will talk about consumer-related things today...

1. Eggs are back in the stores (see photo above).  Our local stores were out of eggs for the past week or so, I guess due to bird flu, but now they are back--for $4.49 a dozen on sale.  eeekkk
2. And for my Filipino friends, bagoong and a couple other cooking items were suddenly banned a couple months ago which sent Filipino cooks into a tizzy (including hubby, but we got creative and learned how to make products similar to these banned items so that was interesting).  Anyway, today we found bagoong in our local Asian grocery store.  It is now being made by a US company but the price shot up from $5.99 a jar to $12.99 a jar so hubby said he would just continue to make his own!
3. There will be two free entrance days to the National Parks this month.
4. Hubby is having a harder time stepping over the edge of the bathtub to take showers now so we got two estimates to remove his bathtub and make it a step-in shower.  Both came in around $11,000.  I told the guy I thought this project would cost around $7,000 but he said the price hadn't been that low since before covid!  We will decide if we will go this route or just buy a single-story house that already has step-in showers.
5. We got our car insurance bill this week and it steadily increases with each renewal.  Apparently this is a thing nationwide although drivers in my city are particularly awful.  Fortunately our car insurance is only a fraction of this guy's.
6. Right on time, I got an email from H & R Block last week to sign in and start my taxes (I file online with them every year) so we will pay less than $40 to file our taxes this year.  Now I just need to wait for all of the tax-related documents to get sent to us (and hope I don't end up paying this year!).
7. According to this reddit post, gas prices in my city may start to drop.  That would be a welcome change!
8. Today hubby and I went to the Goodwill and got six pairs of pants and six shirts for a grand total of $12!  Every Monday is dollar day at our local Goodwill so all grey-tagged items today were only a dollar (and you need to get there early because it looks like the swap meet people fill huge baskets full of any item with a sale-colored tag and sort them out later).
9. We have been really good with not eating out since January 1st, I hope we can keep this up!
10. We have also been doing a cash-only, low-spend month and so far, so good.  I am hoping my credit card bill will be precisely $0 at the end of the month!