Rockin' the Rewards, Rollin' the Rebates

When planning my trip to visit my Dear Daughter in Jackson, Mississippi, she was trying to help me scope out possibilities for flights as opposed to my driving down- solo. The short version of the story is that for the time span I wanted, the flights weren't really cheap.

It's cheaper to drive. Then I have more flexibility, too.

And, I said to my daughter, I don't mind the drive.

Also- I didn't mention, but I will mention now, in this current quarter, I get additional reward points when I use my credit card at gas stations.

I work all the reward and rebate angles I can.

This quarter, my main credit card, in addition to the 1% on all purchases, is awarding 5% on purchases at gas stations.

When I accumulate enough points, I ask them to cut me a reward check for real money.

But that's not the only way I'm accumulating points. Because, during the month of July, if I make purchases on 10 separate days at my usual gas station, and use *their* reward card, I will get 7000 bonus points on my gas station rewards card.

I can't get *cash* back with this card. However, when I accumulate enough points, I redeem these rewards for gift cards. One holiday, I was able to get 3 different $25 gift cards just with reward points.

I have so many reward cards that it's hard to keep track of them all. I have reward cards for gas, office supplies, printer ink, pet supplies, groceries (2 different chains), cinema, restaurants, department stores. I use some cards more than others, but I have a ton.

Plus the credit card reward program.

One of my restaurant cards is a "club". We pay $59 a year for the club; in return, we get $59 credit towards food, 20% discount on food at the restaurant, a free brunch for me on my birthday, and a free brunch for my husband on his birthday, a free brunch on our anniversary AND on the anniversary of the restaurant. AND 20 free passes to the Comedy Club in the basement  of said restaurant. SUCH a deal!

Since we dine out, and enjoy taking friends to the comedy club, it feels like a deal to us. And since we buy drinks- which aren't covered by the discounts or credits- and because when we redeem the free birthday brunch we buy brunch for the one who *isn't* having a birthday, it works out well for the restaurant, too.

I love working the rewards system. This is how I score better wine: I look at what wine is on sale. I see a nice pinot noir, regular price $23.99, on sale when I use my card for $14.99. BUT WAIT! If I  buy 4 or more bottles of any wines, I get an additional 10% of the sale price! Winning!!

AND, with this grocery reward card, every time I use the card, the store donates a percentage of what I spend to the charity of my choice. I have them donate to my theater troupe.

WINNING!

What was I saying? Oh, yeah...

So, I drove to visit Dear Daughter. Next quarter, though, gas stations are done- we are on to Amazon gift cards and department stores for the holidays. So then I could fly.

A swinging day and good clean fun

I was trying to post some pictures that I discovered have motion- to share with my Facebook friends in a private group. The pictures would post, but only as still shots.

I think they will post here. These are photos that I took when Dear Husband K and I were babysitting for #1 grandson. I hadn't realized that these pictures had motion until the photos uploaded to my Google+ site.

All of this is still mysterious to me; I will keep investigating. Meanwhile, we can enjoy these here. I think.

Do Stuff, Write About It

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.”
― Neil Gaiman

It is that easy, and it is that hard.

If I write, every day, I will find that I have things to say.

So I believe.

A few days ago, I did a lot of stuff. I will write some of it down.

Friday was the day we had decided to have family over to celebrate my birthday.*

I got up relatively early. The day before, I had spent a long time cleaning the living room: moving couches and sweeping underneath them, dusting everything, putting away clutter. I'd made a start on the two bedrooms. I made more progress on the bedrooms and kitchen, and then I went out for errands - stopping to get cash to pay my nephews, gas to rack up the Rewards Visits, make some returns of retail therapy merchandise, and then on to pick up nephews.

My nephews did tons of work at my house: they trimmed the lawn (Dear Husband had mowed the day before) and cleaned my car (we had driven dogs to and from the Pet Hotel and fetched Dear Daughter's dog from Dear Almost-Son-In-Law's parents place). The  nephews swept and mopped and cleaned and cleared. Then, before and after they showered- each choosing a bathroom- they cleaned the bathrooms.

I wasn't idle, either. I worked hard on continuing to sort and pitch and recycle the STUFF that I had been clearing and cleaning from the various Convenient Flat Surfaces in bedrooms and on snack bars.

Then I got busy cooking. Even though it was my birthday, I was cooking. Yes I was! Because one of the things I have remembered is that I like to cook for people. So I made my famous macaroni and cheese, steamed broccoli, and had chilled pears and watermelon chunks. I also was about to make a delicious baby spinach and mandarin orange salad- but found that the salad spinach that I had bought JUST THAT DAY was slimed! EW! So Dear Husband was sent out to fetch more salad, while I made my famous herb mayonnaise salad dressing and visited with the first arrivals- Auntie B and Cousin S Lee.

I had bought a Bumpy Cake because I love it and because calories don't count on your birthday (that is my story and I am sticking to it. Besides, I had worked off cake and ice cream with all the housework that day and the day before.) And ice cream. Because it is summertime and because Bumpy Cake loves ice cream.

As it turned out, my mom couldn't help herself, and bought me a Bumpy Cake as well.

An embarrassment of riches. We sent left over Bumpy Cake off with the nephews, because it won't be my birthday forever** and the calories will eventually catch up.

I also made rice and black beans, with shredded cheese, salsa, and sour cream on the side, because nephew M doesn't like cheese, and we couldn't have the poor boy starve, now could we?

Eventually, my mom and my sister and her hubby joined Auntie B and Cousin S Lee; and later son J, his wife J, and my grandson J (we call them J3 from A2, since they are from Ann Arbor) arrived.

Lots of food was eaten by all and we were all delighted watching grandson J discover the delights of delicious pears and it was a good night.

I took Ibuprofen and two senna tablets before bed. I already ached from the housework, and I didn't want to get constipated from the pain killer.

I know, too much information.


* One can never celebrate a birthday often enough. As of this writing, I have celebrated my birthday before (while up North with family and friends), on (at a Tigers baseball game) and after (twice so far) the actual date. I will be celebrating at least once more, as I have a birthday credit at a local fancy-shmancy restaurant. So there!

**Somehow, no matter how many celebrations we manage, the birthday excuse eventually expires. Usually in less than a month.

The To Do List

What a to-do to do today!

I am a list-maker. There is no point in denying it.

There is quite the list for today.

I have a play to read and review for a friend.

Follow up on the play I'll be directing in Detroit in the fall.

Follow up on the play I'll be directing in Chicago in January 2014.

Follow up on the play I finished directing last month.

Laundry.

Dishes.

Writing of my own. Which also requires a list: topics for scholarly articles must move up the list, returning to the NaNoWriMo novel, plays to return to and revise. A long list of anecdotes and topics for this blog and others. Letters to friends.

At the top of the list: Coffee.

First things first.

Litter on the Information Superhighway

The "Information Superhighway" is one of the names we once gave the Internet and World Wide Web.

Lately, I've been thinking about the trash, litter and abandoned rusty vehicles we've been leaving behind.

I need to clean up the old Livejournal, MySpace, and started-then-abandoned blogs, email entities and web pages that I've left behind.

There are links to functions that I no longer have, positions that I no longer have- jobs I have grown out of or out grown.

It's still out there. Litter and clutter.

Adventures in baking

On the last night of The Good Person of Szechuan, I presented Director's Awards for Excellence in Ensemble.

I wanted to recognize and celebrate the helpful, generous and dedicated members of the company that contributed to ensemble- that magic that takes a group of disparate individuals and makes us and our project greater as a whole than the sum of our individual parts.

The winners would be recognized with our words of appreciation and a special date with the director (me).

And a cheesecake. That I would make for them.

We closed the show, and the actors finished out the school year and I went to the auditions for my next round of shows.

Then the time came for dates and cheesecakes.

We checked our calendars and I made my plans to make the cheesecakes. I had it all scheduled tightly.

I was on track to get the cheesecakes done with time to chill (the cheesecakes and I would both have time to chill) before picking up my actors - when disaster struck.

My beater blade broke midway through the second of three cheesecakes. Yikes!

Below: Bad Broken Beaters

 

 

Now I have gone from having plenty of time to chill to not having time or tools to finish cheesecakes!

Fortunately, I had a back up mixer- the one I use for Passover- in the basement. So I fetched that from the basement.

 

Guess what? That mixer is so ancient that it struggles and moans and emits I-am-a-motor-straining smells.

 

BUT I finish the cheesecakes. Not much chill time for me or the cheesecakes, but it is done!

 

On my way home from my director date (and first round of cheesecake deliveries), I stopped at the store.

 

And bought a new mixer.

 

 



 



The N word

I can't say it. I'm a white woman of a certain age, raised in a certain place, in a certain era, and I can't say that word.

The following incident happened with a group of teens that I'd been working with a few summers ago. In the teen theater troupe I was directing, we have occasionally had Hispanic or Black youth as participants, but only occasionally. There were no youth of color in our troupe at the time of this incident.

During this particular summer, an incident occurred. Not during rehearsal, thank goodness, but after, when some of the teen boys were hanging out being cool together.

So, imagine three guys, 14 or 15 years old, hanging out.

Chillin'.

Three white, suburban boys, who think they are gangsta.

So, they are hanging out, goofing around, yelling back and forth to each other outdoors in this public park.

Calling one another the N word.

I wasn't there (rehearsal was over, and I had headed home). The boys' moms were around, but not right near them ('cause that wouldn't have been cool).

And I might never have heard about the incident at all, except that-

As it happened, in this public park, there was a Black man and his child.

Who heard the boys- gave them a look- and took his child and got in his car and left.

Enough was observed by one of the moms so that she talked to her son and to the other moms who talked to their sons and then I heard about it. The moms told me about the incident, and asked me to talk to the boys, because I wasn't their mom, maybe they would hear me.
 
  I tried to talk to the boys.

JE, I said, you aren't Black.

Yeah I am he said.

NO, I said, you're NOT, and that is not your word.

I don't think the boys ever "got" it.

I felt terribly disturbed, though. It still bothers me.

It makes me cringe and it makes me want to slap those privileged white boys upside the head.

Even being 15 doesn't excuse being ignorant, when people have first gently then firmly tried to point out the error of your ways.

Part of what disturbs me about this is the lack of understanding/appreciation of history.