A Quick Catch-Up

It's been super busy around here!

• National Finals Rodeo is in town and there are cowboys everywhere!
• Work is busy but should slow down in a week or so. More than a dozen people that I work with are retiring and several have been laid off so the number of bounce-back emails has been startling.
• It's Christmas decor season everywhere (but it is still hard to get in the Christmas spirit when it is sunny and 65 degrees here!). OTOH, I'll take this weather over the weather in New England our family deals with each winter...no more snow blowing or snow shoveling for us!
• We are getting ready for our Hawaii cruise which should be a fun way to spend Christmas.
• The price of food (and everything else) is insane!

Quick Update

Here are my friend's nails all ready for the Christmas season...

And we finally picked a few lemons from our tree...

Early Black Friday Deals are killing me. I tried to do the no spend thing but Best Buy had the Sony WXM4 headphones for $159 (a $190 savings over the normal price!) and I couldn't resist. They are amazing headphones though.

On another note, the Dyson was returned. The charge only lasted for 25 minutes then it needed to charge for 3.5 hours before I got another 25 minutes of vacuuming in. At that rate, it would have taken me 9 hours to clean my house!

The storms in Las Vegas have passed and now we have right, sunny weather. I've had my doors open all day to air out the house and it isn't even cold. I can see why retirees like the desert southwest!

I sent a friend who lives in Japan a birthday gift and for the first time ever, there was a fee that she needs to pay to get the gift (tariff fee?). I couldn't pay it at the post office, and for the exorbitant cost of mailing anything overseas these days, I sent her a quick email saying we should probably skip sending Christmas gifts this year. I can't WAIT until the next presidential election!

I hope you all will have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

10 Random Things

In no particular order...

1) Our sky looked like this ^^^ today (following a couple days of pouring rain). I love storms in the desert!

2) And my friend bought me these (soon to be) pretty plants. I've never seen these start out as just a bulb. The package specifically says not to water them, just put them in a sunny place and let them grow. Hmmm

3) I bought a Dyson vacuum! Our trusty old vacuum has been working well for 20+ years (with a lot of preventive maintenance from hubby) but backing down the stairs and vacuuming each stair with a big vacuum seems like it could end in disaster as I age. The Dyson vacuum was $269 on a Black Friday sale instead of its usual $599 so I ordered it. On the plus side, it is cordless and super lightweight. On the negative side, it is cordless and the battery only lasts about 30 minutes then needs to be charged (charging takes about three hours!?!). The jury is still out on whether we like it enough to keep it.

4) Do you want to be a lighthouse keeper? Click here.

5) Apparently a 50-year mortgage will be a thing? That is a terrible idea!

6) Here is a cheap(er) way to order your prescription meds.

7) I know identity theft is a thing we have to worry about, but even after we are dead??? That is awful :(

8) Here is a great list of preparedness tips!

9) For you younger ladies out there, please commit this list to memory.

10) And here is a list of interesting legal loopholes.

10 Random Things

In no particular order...

1. I was trying to post a picture everyday but my life is fairly boring (plus I am often at my desk all day) so that has fallen by the wayside (along with any sentiment that inspired me to do this after Charlie Kirk was killed and we were told to believe that this guy sprinted off the roof after the shooting, and the 30.06 he used magically left the roof and ended up in the woods somehow because he certainly wasn't carrying it in this video). I hate politics and all things politics-related.
2. Did you know the US no longer makes pennies? This was news to me!
3. I didn't see the Northern Lights here in Vegas last night but I am hoping to catch them tonight.
4. Hubby and I made the rounds yesterday and he picked up several Veteran's Day freebies which included lots of food and a haircut. We went to our usual free buffet for veterans at the Southpoint Casino yesterday but the line was two+ hours long so we skipped it this year.
5. I saw a post on Lorraine's FB page about the differences between Medicare and Medicare Advantage. Since hubby uses the military's Tricare For Life program where everything is free, I didn't know there were so many differences between the two programs. Medicare is utterly confusing to me!
6. I have no illusions that my job couldn't be replaced by AI at a moment's notice (which is why we will never take out another loan for anything because who knows how long I will have a job), but AI as it relates to the job market is looking scarier by the minute these days. eeekkk
7. I'm glad we are not flying, relying on food stamps, or signing up for health insurance this month...what a shitshow our government is these days. Let's hope the Dems run a better candidate for president in the next election (ie: not this one). OK, enough politics...
8. Adding more misery, this month I am getting so many spam calls every day (no idea why the sudden steep increase) and I was bitten by mosquitoes and dozen times despite not even seeing said mosquitoes in more than a decade (apparently I'm not the only one). 
9. I needed something to equal up to $35 to get free shipping on Amazon so I added a Rubik's Cube, a toy I hadn't played with since I was a child. I scrambled the colors and hubby and I tried to put the colors back and now we have a messed up cube because neither one of us knows how to fix it!
10. Finally, if you need any cute cat pictures, here are thousands of them!

Super Moon

Today is the Beaver moon, the largest super moon of the year!

Also, a picture of the new feral cat that has been hanging around. 

Sunset

A beautiful--and early--sunset last night!

Quick tip: find my favorite cheap meal YouTubers here, here, and here.

So. Many. Sales.

Capitalism is relentless these days. For the longest time there wasn't even a Black Friday (it started in the 1950s). Then, advertising would come on hot and heavy towards the last week of November for after-Thanksgiving Black Friday sales. Then they invented Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Now they have 'Early Black Friday' which apparently starts in October!?! Ugh

Quick tip: Even if there is a great sale, unless you actually NEED the sale item, save you money and skip buying. You don't need two, three, or four of an item and, especially these days, the 'newest and greatest tech' is usually a tiny, incremental change over last year's newest and greatest tech item.