Odds and Ends

So my local grocery store (Giant) has occasionally been sending out these special coupons that triple coupons up to $.99. The latest round expired today and I had a (rare) opportunity to go to the grocery store sans kids, so we made good use of them. My favorite deal was the Ziplock containers I got. Regular price: $3.50. After two tripled $.75 off coupons, they were $1.25 each. That by itself was a great deal, but then when I scanned them at the check out, the Catalina machine printed out a coupon for $1.50 off your "next" order (as a "thank you" from Ziplock), which made them $.50 each. I'm a little proud of myself. :) If only they had been on sale too. That would have been the ultimate jackpot.

In "good"-ish news, we paid off our other car yesterday! We've been socking away the dough the past few months and had built up a decent "down payment" fund (and by "we," I mean my darling financial whiz of a husband). But then we realized how impossible it would be to sell our current place even for what we bought it for (making the "down payment" fund into the "closing costs" fund)...and given that even refinancing right now would cost us most of that fund...we began looking for other possible uses. The car payment was the clear winner since we have no other consumer debt (this just leaves us with student loans and mortgage - go us!). Adding to our decision was the phone call I had with my division directors and HR contact at work on Tuesday. They just don't have any work for me right now. They hope to really soon, but nothing right now. So they're moving me to "occasional" status which means that instead of being salaried, I only get paid for the hours I work. They'll (theoretically) move me back to salaried once they get work again that will fill my time. So, given less money coming in, even though it took most of our nest egg, we figured it would be a good idea to get rid of a payment if we could. And we could. So we did. And we're staying in our tiny little condo for the foreseeable future. But looking on the bright side, we just paid off our car! Woohoo! :)

And two rants:

Like it wasn't bad enough hearing the stupid commercials and PSA for the "great changeover" to DTV for like a year and a half (believe me, I wish I were exaggerating)...but now they decide to _extend_ the deadline to June?!!! Another FOUR WHOLE MONTHS? Please just shoot me now.

And finally, why can't websites just _tell_ you that your login ID is your email address? I mean seriously. Every single stinking website nowadays wants you to register and while I have the same login info for most, there is _NO_WAY_ for me to remember which websites actually use a login ID, and which use your email address instead (and don't get me started on trying to remember which ones require a number and/or uppercase letter...). I vote that the websites that use your email address change all of their "login ID"s to "email address"es. And state their password requirements next to the password box. It would save everyone a lot of "lost" passwords.

Thank you, and have a nice day!