Money Talk$

Ok, I understand. I know that no one wants to sign up for something without understanding the fine print. So click these links and read the fine print. Then sign up to get your $25 free!!(limited time, according to the refer-a-friend website it expires on May 15th) The money is there immediately after your account is accepted-which for me was also immediately. If you have a significant other, they can sign up as well. Basically one account per person. You must be 18 or the age a majority in your area. And it is currently only available to US residents. There are no fees to open the account, link the account to your checking account, load money to the account, or withdrawal money from the account to your linking checking account. The schedule of fees is defined as follows:

Terms of Use
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Referral links removed so as not to offend

The Compact Fluorescent light bulbs have mercury in them. The package says they must be disposed of properly. Did you know that this is as simple as a google search for HHW (hazardous household waste) and the name of the nearest major city? Google should be able to find the nearest HHW recycling center for you. I was able to find that Charmeck - Charlotte and the nearby communities, has 4 HHW centers that offer free disposal of most HHW. I also found many, many articles advising that although the mercury in a CFL bulb is dangerous and needs to be disposed of properly when the bulb needs replaced or is broken, it can be done simply and you do not need to call a HAZMAT team!

Do not use a vacuum to clean the residue from a broken CFL!! Open windows to allow the mercury vapor to dissipate while you work. Clean up the dust and glass fragments with a disposable towel. Place the peices, and the towel in a sealable bag or container (Zip lock should work). Take it to the HHW recycling center.

Well, I had to be the Judge, the Jury, and the Executioner again. I had 4 and one half dozen eggs. Their crime was being boring white eggs the day before Easter. I found them guilty of blandness and colorlessness (heh heh) and sentenced them to .....DYE.

We prepared 7 small vats of boiling vinegar water, in different colors of course, for them to dye in. The children took great joy in assisting in the process of making sure that each egg had dyed. A few of the eggs were drowned in more than one vat! I myself took responsibility for holding one unlucky egg over the edge so that only half of it were in the green vat. Then I repeated the process putting the other half in the blue vat. It was eggsellent fun. I then hatched up a plan to dye the middle of an egg by rotating it in a spoonful of the red vat's dye. I did not ask the egg what it's dying wish was, I simply dipped the ends into two other colors!! Oh the humaneggty!

Those eggs dyed right in front of my children, who were egging me on. And for the first time in years I did not tell the story of the cowboy dying eggs that was 'cooked' up in my Father's sometimes soft-boiled mind. See my Dad envisions a lot of scenes or skits in his head, as do I. He concocted this scene of a not so intelligent cowboy in a western comedy. The cowboy is staying with a single women and her children (Widow most likely thanks to the local unlawful men)and they are preparing for Easter Sunday. The cowboy asks if he can help and she says he can. He asks what they are doing and she says dying eggs. He says do you need help with that. She says yes and he pulls out his six shooter and starts blowing the eggs away right there on the counter as he yells , 'DIE you rotten eggs, DIE!!'

The apple didn't fall too far from the tree I suppose.

I was reading my posts saying wow I haven't posted in a while, when I read

BOOM and cracked up laughing. The guy in the cubicle acrossed from me heard me and came over. He read the story and said man that is funny, so I thought I would bring it back to everyone's attention again. The last paragragh, in the silly mood that I am in was ridiculous.

Hey look it is September, guess I should post some goals or something. First I want to remain completely on-board the no vending machine wagon. This is hard to do as I now eat lunch with Joe a lot and he has Reese's peanut butter cups every day. I want peanut butter cups...but I am not buying them.

By the end of the month I should be a certified Cub Scout Den leader.

I suppose a goal of mine ought to be to make sure the kids in my den have the most fun that they will have through their entire scout career during this year.

I want to finish watching the rest of the Firefly episodes on the current run I am on (disk 3), so I can watch the collector's edition of Serenity.

I want to get the bike's out of the garage to get my car in their before the weather gets cooler and the feral kittens decide to keep warm under the hood in the driveway.

I want to get my kids to help me make some terrain again, that was fun. So far they helped me to make trapdoors and helped to glue the foilage onto the tree armatures. I want to get them to make boulders or rocky outcrops out of some of the styrene insulation that I have in the garage.

I want to make fences out of balsa, pillars out of foamboard, and rocky terrain out of styrene...paint, finish, and SELL...just to see if I can.

I still want to write more...never enough hours to spend time with the kids, finish whatever my wife signs me up for, and have enough left for work and fun.

I still want a way to record my 8mm video tapes onto DVD.

I would like to play poker on poker night...

I am still not telling my wife what I got, but I have one of her Christmas presents already... in one of the boxes that she hates so much!!

I want to want to do some cub scout things...sounds silly but I really do want to want to camp out...I just do not at this time. I do want to fire a bow on the archery range, but I would like to want to do some other things...I am after all going to be a den leader, I should want to be more involved.

I want to talk to my Nephew about his first day as a tax-paying employee. He is seventeen and had his first day of his first job yesterday!! I worked seasonally in a very similar store when I was 18 or 19 myself.

I want to find out when my Wife's Brother is leaving for his next trip in the battle against terrorism abroad and take my Wife to visit him and his family before he does.

I want to have better communication with a few of my friends back up North. I talked to my friend, the one who introduced me to my wife today on instant messenger. I would like to talk to him and the best man at my wedding more often.

Goal number 1, I am going to post my goals for the month. Check

One down...That seems silly but since I did not post goals for several months, it is a step in the right direction.

I plan to include my children more in my hobby. More details to follow in a later post, but I spent naptime with my 5-year old, and allowed him to help me make a trapdoor and paint some trees. It was a lot of fun and a great bonding experience for both of us. Of course now my daughter wants me to paint at night instead of naptime, so that she can paint too. I foresee a lot of trapdoors, and fences being made soon.

As usual I want to be able to devote more time to writing. If I do some of the terrain modelling and building during the day with my children, it will free up more night time for writing.

I want to take a few packs of ramen noodles to work, to avoid having to buy a lunch if we are running late and dinner does not carry over into a lunch for me the next day. I have only had to buy a lunch maybe 6 times in the last 3 or 4 months, but that is still $30 or so more than ramen noodles and/or a few cans of tuna.

I want to sell the last few things on Ebay that I need to clear out the boxes and make my wife happy. I have repacked the minatures that I have been buying with my Ebay profits to get them to fit nicely in the closet. I am still selling a few more peices that I got great deals on as well as a few old comic books and items that I used to sell at flea markets over a decade ago. I need to finish organizing the Star Wars cards to get them listed.

I plan on making a few pieces of terrain and listing them on Ebay just to see if it is viable to make a little side money doing so. I do not think that I will sell the ones that my kids help with, but my Son's trapdoor has a very good crude look to it, and that is important to a lot of players of orcs / goblins / other crude factions. I can make a few crates, trapdoors, fences, or barrels for very little out of pocket expense. The time it takes is considered my hobby time, so if I am going to spend an hour making a few fences, I can spend a little more time and make three times as many. If I can sell them, all the better. If the hobby can become self-sufficient, bonus.

While working on the terrain, I would like to get a squad or two or the miniatures based and primed, and maybe work on a little paint on them as well.

Once I clear out the living room and sell all of the items that I currently have set aside for Ebay, I want to get a few good deals on the things on my want list: I want an 8mm camcorder and a converter to copy the tapes I currently have onto my PC to burn to DVDs. I want a digital sound processor to play my guitar through my PC and record the tunes. I want to fix my old laptop or replace it. The wife somehow allowed the kids to drop it one too many times. I bought her a new display to fix the crack from the last drop two days before the final drop damaged the Hard Drive connector on the Motherboard (to the technically challeged read that as: I fixed the broken glass on the monitor just before they broke the computer real good)

Whatever you thought you saw...you didn't.

Trust me...

One of the secrets to paying off debt is that instead of living within your means, you should strive to live beneath your means. I am planning on a series of articles to help define where changes can be made and provide some suggestions to help acheive the goal. Details and other ideas can be found at

http://www.debtreduction101.com/. One of the easiest places to change your habits to qualify as beneath your current means is shopping. For a lot of people this can be further scrutinized to be clothes shopping. Let me get to the article...


If you are trying to live beneath your means, you should not dress above your means. This does not mean that you should sell all of your fine jewelry or any nice clothes that you currently own, although that may prove more useful than having the items sit around in your closet forever. What I mean is that you must curb your spending on any new clothes to the bare minimum. Once you adjust your budget to reflect less discretionary spending, you will use the extra money to help with your goal of reducing your debt. This should then logically progress from clothes to shopping in general.

Starting with the clothes, you do not really need to have new outfits. You want them. You do not need new shoes unless your only pair is detrimental to your feet. It is more important to lower the amount of money that you are losing each month to interest than it is that you have a nice new outfit to wear to work, school, or Church. The objective here is to pay off your debt as aggressively as possible. This is easier to do if you are not going to the mall spending money that you should be sending toward your highest interest debt. So in the short term your wardrobe should not see any new items. That is not to say that until you have reduced your debt you have to dress like a street urchin.

For men this is easy, we only need a few pairs of pants and a few shirts because most of our clothes mix and match. Women will have to learn to be a bit more creative with accessories if they want to vary their ensembles. Once you have controlled your spending on clothes, you can move on to other items that you want but do not need. First off if you are serious about reducing your debt and you want to meet that goal as soon as possible, you do not need to belong to any purchasing clubs, be it for DVDs, music CDs, books, or whatever.

Anything where you are tempted to make a purchase on a regular basis via email, or your mailbox should be avoided. This includes movie rental agreements where you pay a monthly fee to have borrowed movies sent to you. If you have the option to do so with no penalty, you should cancel all of these memberships immediately. Even if you are getting a CD that is $18 in the stores for an average price of $10, that is still $10 that you could pay towards reducing your debt, not to mention the interest that you save. You can also call the customer service number on the sales magazines that you get in the mail and have them take your name and address off of their mailing list. It is too easy to flip through a catalog and see something that you want on sale and forget that even that lower price is more than you want to spend right now.

Your new attitude of not spending money on wants must become a habit if you are going to pay off your debt as quickly as possible. Exceptions to this rule could be made as a reward. For instance, you could buy an inexpensive item from your want list when you pay off a credit card or loan. This will give you incentive to work just as hard or harder to pay off the next. Once you have paid off all of your debt you should attempt to continue to maintain limits on your want buying. The extra money could then be put away to add to your retirement savings.

Where I work, they have raffles from time to time to raise money for the Juvenille diabetis research foundation.
I walked out in the atrium where they lay out the goodies that you can win, and the tables were stocked full of piles of sh-tuff. You pick a table of goodies that you want and buy tickets to put in the bag on each table. They will draw winning tickets after lunch.

This is all fine, but the problem is that some of the tables had so much stuff on them that I would need to rent a U-Haul to get it home!! Take the bedding table for instance. Even if I were a lot less masculine and could feel comfortable sleeping in a pastel fuscia bed, I still could not win that prize because my vehicle would not hold it all! They have the entire ensemble: sheets, pillow cases, pillow shams, bed skirts, comfoters, throw pillows, a frilly piece of cloth, two round disks of the same cloth, a few other things that I did not know what they were, a shower rod, a cloth to hang from the shower rod, a blanket two crystal candle holders, and a pair of candles the same color as the stuff.

Who exactly has the time to make a bed with al of that junk on it in the morning? Matching candles? WTF? All of the tables were like this. One of them had no less than a dozen ceramic turtles, that I would need to leave in the yard, because I have no room in my house large enough for them to fit comfortably. Another had a centerpeice the size of my entire table and six smaller versions of the same.

One prize was a big stuffed chair thing that rocks and has audio inputs on the arm to feed the speakers in the head rest. That one would fit in my car if I folded the seats down, but where would I put it once I got it home? In the end, I made a donation and gave my tickets to an associate, who said he wanted to win the bedding for his mother-in-law, in order to stuff her room as full as she tries to stuff his with junk. I liked his reasoning so I doubled his chances to win!

I think I can handle that!

See my Role Model, no wait my Dad is my Role Model...well then my Hero...nope Dad again...sigh. Ok so my favorite hockey player of all time is Mario Lemieux (my Dad can not skate ), and he just signed a lease to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh for 30 years! So that gives me a long time to get myself and a kid or two, or more, up to Pittsburgh to see a game. Before I left PA, I was going to an average of fifteen or twenty games per season. I was going to Pitt University which is only a few miles from the Arena. Add that to the fact that they used to sell you the best available seat in the house for $15 if you showed your college ID, and you can see how I found it easy to make it from my late class, down to the Arena.

What is not so easy is explaining how class ends at 8:30 and I made it to the game before the 7:30 faceoff to my Mother. She was too smart to buy that in my physics class we were working on time travel. She also never would have believed that they delayed the start of the game to give me a little more time to get there. Maybe that is why I never tried those excuses. Oh yeah, that is right, I never said a word and just hoped my Dad never saw me on TV at the game. It could have been worse, I could have skipped all my classes, never graduated, and ... oh wait, heh.

With the onset of Spring in the next few weeks, I thought it was time to write down my goals. Then in the middle of summer I can say heh guess I should start thinking about cut those weeds down...nah it is too late now!

I need a machete...I could get a gas weedeater with a metal blade, but I just know the neighbors would rather see me use a machete on the weeds that are taking over the hillside. Also, if I fall down the hillside with a power tool, I am far more likely to hurt myself than if I am holding a machete...or not.

1. I want to cut down the dead weeds before they turn green in the Spring and are much harder to deal with.

2. I want (need) to finish the doors under the kitchen bench.

3. I want to organize my old computer parts in the file cabinet..possibly even selling some/giving some away.

4. I want to get my audio equipment set up so that I can play my guitar and record it to my computer.

5. I want to get myself setup and motivated to paint some of my miniatures a night or two a week.

6. I want to write again, possibly another night or two a week.

7. I want more nights a week, so that I can also play poker a few nights, watch a movie on a night, play board games on a night, etc.

8. I want to sell some old comic books, but I am going to wait until the Spiderman movie comes out to drive up interest, as most of my comics are Spiderman.

Turns out I had the Original of this one and not the Original of Halloween Lights. Party Preparation was written to be very detail oriented and give the feeling of October and autumn. It is a lot less horrific than Massacre at the Pumpkin Parade (both stories can be found at

Wixx's Wasteland)It is 7 pages in this form. Later I went back and added even more detail and particular told more of the story of the villagers that were invited to the castle as 'guests' for the party.

I started a romantic plotline between the narrator and one particular villager that had several twists in my mind. I was not sure how to proceed as all of my ideas were processing in thought but not in type, so there the story sits,waiting for a decision on what will become of the beautiful Ravari and our main character as he completes his Party Preparations.

Halloween Lights was written to give the reader a feeling of early afternoon on Halloween as the characters are finishing up on their Halloween decorating. It was a campy short story with an ending that made me smile and chuckle. It then eveolved into something a lot darker as I tried to bring out more of a contrast between the good exterior and the evil within...it also became more erotic and as such I am not quite ready to release it to the general public. I may tone it down a bit and release it shorty...or save it for next Halloween...

The kids had a great time trick or treating, as expected and most of the kids were actually wearing costumes this year.

I am round but not always easy to find around, Yet sometimes I am found just laying around. People seem to want to get as far away from me as they can, but they always come back to find me in the end. I am not really associated with Hearts and Spades, but I am with Diamonds and Clubs. I am not sharp but I have been known to slice. You will never see me smile, but you can see my dimples. What am I?

Click here for the answer

I am not an article of clothing but I do have buttons. I am not an animal but I do have some form of tail. I do not speak, but I help others get their voice heard. A lot of people look down on me, others take advantage of me, by using me but not even showing the courtesy of making eye contact with me. I am useless by myself, but in the right environment I am not...in fact I'd say it is safe to say that just about all of you reading this have me close at hnad. What am I?

Click here for the answer

The story was published at

wixxswasteland.com last night as advertised. Background information. The story was originally written in summer 2001 and edited/updated just before Halloween that year. It has been on my computer/USB flash drive ever since, until last night when it was posted for all to see. I converted it to PDF so you need Adobe acrobat reader to view it. A link is provided to get the latest version of that software under the link to the PDF of the story.

I also wrote 2 other short stories in September/October 2001. One called Halloween Lights and another titled Party Preparations. Party Preparations was then rewritten in to a longer story that was never finished, because it evolved into an even longer story...

Halloween Lights also transformed from a short 7 or 8 page story that appeared to me to make an excellent short movie such as on Tales from the Crypt on HBO back in the day, into a longer work that also never quite got rewritten to its entirety. I have the original version of Halloween Lights that I may very well post tonight on Wixx's Wasteland. I have not found an old enough version of Party Preparations yet, and it would take a few nights of dedicated writing to complete.

Fellow Blog Mates,
I Have Something Tto Ssay
Thank You For Reading

I have been blogging here for a while now, mainly ranting about everyday nuisances and money thoughts, but sometimes about funny things that happened and blah blah...anyway. I see a lot of DS and DD and DH etc. in the other blogs. I have been wasting my time saying My Son and My younger Son or My Daughter when referring to my kids because I was not a member of the blogging inner circle. I was not given a handbook of acceptible blogger shorthand (ABS) so I was simply not in the know. Now that I know, I am sure to try hard to say my DS1 DD and DS2 were with DW and she said to me "DH your DS1 and DD and DS2 are really cute. Look at the way DS2 smiles, and listen to how pretty DS's voice is. DS1 was a pretty GB 2day don't U thnk? I spose he's ...really I ran out of stuff to say here but...

heh I need a guidebook of shorthand so I can write more posts instead of using more lettrs in my posts!! It's not fair that I am wasting letters and wearing out my poor fingers...

When you get a $5500 a year raise that is good right? This monetary raise was supposed to cover that fact that I will not get paid time off from my new company...

Well how about if you then find out that Health Insurance is $225 a week...you read that right WEEK. I paid $400 a month for health dental and vision with the other company...I flipped out when I first saw this. But I had a day and a half to relax and think of a way to explain this without screaming and with fine and Friday being the only words I used starting with an F...

Background information: I am sitting in the same seat, have the same phone number and do the same job, just the money is coming from someone else now.

So that makes the net raise about -$1750 with dental and vision. So...I called the company and politely asked for more money to counter the increased costs of their benefits package... They increased my pay rate by another $5000!!! This will go up more with OT. Man am I glad I called them back and politely explained the costs associated with what was supposed to be a move that was done to benefit me!!

Halloween has always been my favorite time of year. The nights are cool, the air smells crisp, wind blows through what leaves are left on the trees. I have many good memories of Hanging with friends, sometimes up to no good, more often just eating and drinking together while always talking and laughing.

The more family oriented Holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. The night comes faster with the wonderful invention of daylight saving time. ( don't get me started ...) Carving Pumpkins, especially those picked yourself at a pumpkin patch is fun to do. But you see more and more people wasting a lot of money on costumes. We had a Halloween (they called it Fall Festival to avoid all ties with Pagan Holidays...how thoughful) Party at our church and I noticed many things. Most of the children wearing homemade costumed looked like they were having more fun than those in store bought outfits. This could becasue because while that girl over there in a fancy expensive Disney Princess getup is scratching at the seems where all of the fancy cheap plastic beading was attached, the other girl in the homemade princess dress was laughing and bouncing in one of those giant inflatable bouncing thingies.

Another boy had on a store bought hulk outfit, he had fun sure, but his parents paid a lot of money for that outfit and do you think he had more fun than the girl wearing her communion dress with a tiara or the boy in a jedi outfit. His jedi shirt was custom made to fit for HIM and not one sizes fits all...I was partial to his costume, not because his Father is the Pastor and I want a free ticket to God's graces, but because he was carrying the same lightsaber that I was!

I am not saying that store bought costumes are bad, I am just saying that they can be found r made cheaper. THey have a Pirates of the Caribean Captain Jack getup that is like $30...my Mom found a cheaper pirate dealie for around $15...half price...did my son have half as much fun as if he were struggling to keep the Captain Jack pants on his thin waist, while his broad shoulders were uncomfortable in the shirt that went with it? I doubt it. The older kids all had costumes that they made themselves...by older i mean high schoolish aged, so they had more fun building their costume than they would have at Party City standing in line to pay for one.

Happy Halloween...

I invented Instant Poems...this means I started typing before I thought about the poem. So it might suck because I did not think on it long, nor is it edited or re-written blah blah...here it is

October 31st and what am I to do,

I do not have a costume on to be like you.

I am lying here, pondering my life,

Thinking of times of good, and times of strife.

As I look back I think of many things,

And all of the emotions that each memorance brings.

I will not go out and knock on neightbor's door.

As has been customary from the time of yore.

I also have no candy that I can give away,

To the costumed children, as dusk takes over the day.

I tried to stand and get my keys,

But it seems that darkness is all that either of my eyes sees.

They are not closed, of this I am sure,

but perhaps I need to try and remember a little more.

Autumn is here the leaves are surely changing,

Throughout colors and hues that are very wide-ranging.

As the seasons pass I try to recollect,

Just what I have become as I feel no respect.

But then the thoughts return to my empty head,

I can not trick or treat, because I am dead!

I have been having trouble finding time to write...and by write I mean a lot more than just entries here. I have several novels in my mind that I have started to type up but have never finished. I do however have a few short stories finished...and most of them were written for Halloween...so what better time to put them online. I have finally registered wixxswasteland.com and will publish The Massacre at the Pumpkin Parade tonight...on the Eve of Halloween...if all goes as planned I will re-edit one or two of the other stories and publish them tomorrow. Just so you know these are as stated Halloween stories and are not quite as whimsical and humorous as my entries here.

In the future I hope to publish more of my works as seeing them printed on my browser will hopefully entice me to complete more of what I have started, and then start more that I have drempt up.

Happy Halloween

So I was in the beer aisle again, one of these days after all of the savings I am going to actually buy some beer, and I found my new favorite coupn. Good for $1 off meat or buns. Expires middle of November, limit one per QUALIFYING PURCHASE. That last part is what makes this coupon so awesome. I go to the meat section on markdown day...and find 3 packs of meat marked down half price. Now I can take an extra Buck off of each, so that is $3 more off the savings I was already going to get. Then I go down the bread aisle and find some buns to put the burgers on for 99 cents a pack...those are FREE after the coupon...I picked up enough coupons for the day, and a few extra for next week as well.

I was being a good shopper. I found 2 meat rebates in the beer section...why else would I be in the beer section right...Anyway 1 was for Johnsonville sausage $2 off instantly, the other was a mail in rebate good for $10 off of $20 meat purchase. I found 2 packs of sausage expiring that day marked down to 99 cents from original $2.79 so that was $5.58 for free! Also I found a roast that was around $14 on sale for $7 then marked down to $3.44!! I bought 2 of these and some steaks that were above my $2 per pound threshold, but still regular $5.99 per pound on sale for $3.99 per pound with my I have your card in my wallet too card, to get me to $20. So I got $28.10 worth of roasts one as roast one to cut up to make fajitas, and stew, and $21 worth of sirloin steaks for $20.66 and will get $10 back by mail. $54.68 worth of meat for $10.66. That was by far my best grocery deal to date.

I was playing online Texas Hold'em last night, and without boring you with the details I knew that I had the winning hand and was raising and reraising and then the very last time I needed to hit the button to call the other guys raise back to me before the animation of the chips sliding to me came up, my son, who I was holding while walking around the living room in order to get him back to sleep, kicked my hand! He made my hand hit the mouse button just after he made the mouse move so that instead of pointing to the call button, it was pointing to the fold button. So the $25 worth of chips went to the other guy.

I did not buy anything from a vending machine.

I managed to curb the car a bit more on Saturdays and got an extra day between refills of gas twice.

I sat down at my computer for the purpose of writing a bit on a story twice. (Ok so writing on a story while I played online poker in the background)

My children made it through the month without really spilling much milk or wasting too much food. This is important because I am trying to teach them that money spent replacing things that we waste is money that we can not spend on things we want.

I renewed the library books online and avoided late fees. This has a similar affect as above, where money spent on fees that could have been avoided is money that can not be spent on a want or saved.

Ohhhh a big one here, I set my paypal up to the mutual fund plan where I am now getting a return on the money that is sitting in my account waiting for me to find those perfect deals on ebay.

Speaking of perfect deals, I bought 3 WarMachine minis that have a combined retail price of $30 for $4.58.

I did good on the food budget...I even got commended by my wife for coming in under budget two weeks this month.

This means by Brother will be enticing me to come to his house to watch my beloved Steelers play. THis year however...he did NOT get the Sunday Ticket where he got so like every game last year. Well if he had 5 or six TVs and 5 or 6 sets of eyes he could have watched them all at least. This year he was smart, he decided that since the Steelers are the defending champs they will have plenty of nationally televised games on and he can save his money.

I am so proud, he is thinking of saving money. This is a breakthrough moment for him I think. I might have to celebrate with him by going to his house and watching a game in a few weeks...

The wife helped me take the pics for star wars cards to sell...no buyers though.

I spent nothing on ebay other then some money I had in paypal account, and actually had a net gain for the month!!

I took the kids out not once but twice to launch rockets...ran out of igniters so I have to buy more before we can go again.

I bought nothing from a vending machine the entire month.

I did not paint a single bit on any of my models, but I did write most of the next update for the Omega story, as well as writing more ideas for other things so that I do not forget them and a paragraph on another older story.

I went back to Wendy's and said Hello to my favorite manager. I used her coupon to get the free burgers. One Big Bacon classic, with lettuce mayo on the side. One spicy chicken sandwich, and two Jr. Cheeseburger kids meals, one with no tomatoes and one with pickles only. I got the chocolate milk for the kids which they both liked. I got back to my table and guess what...there was no mayonaisse on the side for my wife's burger. She said it was fine so we continued to hand out the food. My daughter's burger had pickles on it like I said, but it also had, ummm, everything else that comes on a Jr cheeseburger.

That is slightly annoying. I said pickles only, the nice young man who took my order both this and the previous time said 'pickles only' into his microphone, but I did not get pickles only. My son dropped his burger on the floor, and I considered picking it up and saying this was supposed to have pickles only, to get a replacement burger for him...but I did not, I purchased a burger for $1.07 and everyone was content. I probably should have complained again about the lack of mayonaisse and lack of no lack of ketchup, mustard, and lettuce or whatever they put on her burger.

For July I plan to:

Continue the antivending machine campaign

Take the blasted pics to Ebay the Star Wars cards

Only spend money on Ebay that I have in Paypal, or make from selling said cards.

Write more of my stories...I have been putting this on the back burner and I really want to find some time to get back to writing.

Take my kids out to a field somewhere and launch some rockets. I really haven't done this since back before my own kids were born when I used to take my Nieces and Nephews and let them pack and load one of the little rockets each and then launch them all.

Paint a little on my Warmachine models. I have a set of nicely primed Long Gunners thanks to my MIL, that would be a great place to start. So far I painted the hair brown on two of them.

The kids joined a summer reading program and they got their first rewards today. My son received a little green frog toy and a coupon for a junior frosty at Wendy's. My daughter got a sticker and a coupon for her very own junior frosty. Our neighbor got a pencil and a coupon for a junior bacon cheeseburger. This slight difference in coupons causes the need for this rant. We got up early to get out of the house in an attempt to get to the library sometime close to its 9am opening time.

It was early, but I could hear the birds chirping happy little tunes as I drove to the library. The City has about eight or nine libraries spread out, but of course the one with the nice little children's section that we like is on the other side of town. The Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck shaped clouds followed us the whole drive. They waved gently in the early morning breeze. We arrived at the library got our booty, stopped at my Brother's house to say goodbye to my parents on their way home after a nice vacation, and then went to Wendy's for lunch.

I ordered burgers for my wife and the kids, the bacon cheeseburger for the neighbor and a spicy chicken sandwich for myself. I got two drinks and the two free frosties, figuring the neighbor can have one, my kids can share one and everyone has food and a beverage for $16. The young man who rang me up did not know how to ring up the free junior bacon cheeseburger coupon so he had to call the manager...and then call again when no one came...finally one of the people working the burger manufactoring assembly line yelled back for her.

She came to the front counter finally and said, 'Oh, we do not accept this coupon' to the man ringing me up, not to me. She then turned to me and showed me on the coupon where it says available at participating Wendy's only.

'I see, it says the same thing that it says on the free frosty coupons which you do accept.' This confused her, and caused her to reread all of the coupons involved.

'We do not honor the free cheeseburger coupon.' She says and begins to hand it back to me. I quickly think about this. I bring three children, well two children and a teenager, who were rewarded by the library, but this manager does not want to honor the reward for one of the trio. So I decide that this is unacceptable, and I can solve this the way most times I would be too timid to do. Egged on my the Mickey and Donald clouds, I reply, 'That is fine, then I want to cancel my entire order.'

The manager had the expected look on her face, however it was because she did not understand what I was saying. She thought for a second and then spouted out her unintelligent words, 'I am not saying that you can not get your food, just that we do not honor this coupon.'

I look out the window shake my head at Mickey, and use smaller words. 'I am going to take my business to a Wendy's that will honor all of my coupons.'

More discussion occurs but I am not getting through to her, so I ask, 'How much is a junior bacon cheeseburger?'

'99 cents.' She answered quickly in such a way that indicated that I was making a big deal out of a measly buck.

'I am going to cancel my $16 order if I do not get a 99 cent burger.' My words finally reached her just as my wife came to explain that the coupons all came from the library and she does not understand why they would accept some but not all of them.

'I do not understand what you are doing.' She states the obvious. 'You can change your order if you want to, but I am giving you back your coupon so that you can use it at a Wendy's that will accept it, rather than throw it away.' Ummm what? Is she saying she will give me the free burger but let me keep the coupon?

'I want a junior bacon cheeseburger, and if you will not give me one for the coupon, we will go to a Wendy's that will, now.' My wife took the liberty of stating our intentions again.

'You can get your burger but I can not do anything with the coupon so I am giving it back to you.' She replied and then answered yes when we asked her to explain that she was going to give us the burger but not take the coupon for it...what a deal a free burger and we can use the coupon over again. Based on her inability to fathom what was going on, I imagined myself eating junior bacon cheeseburgers for life with the coupon that will not be taken.

She takes the Junior bacon cheeseburger off of my bill, takes my $15, and they prepare my meal. The wife goes back to the table satisfied that we are getting all of the rewards due to the people in our care. I get the tray dole out the burgers..all five..wait four, what oh man they did not give us the junior bacon cheeseburger after all. I go back to the front to explain the situation. My wife collects all of the food in order to make it easier to return it if in fact I am not getting a free burger, after all I said I would cancel if I did not get the free reward.

In my mind I foresee the conversation the length of time it would take to drive my already hungry children not to mention cranky wife and self to the next Wendy's and try again. Making a quick decision I gave permission to eat the food, and took $1.07 out of my pocket...I explained quite loudly that I would buy the burger, get the store number and I already had the manager's name and I would take up my complaint on the internet.

They obviously relayed this information on because while we were eating our food the manager came over and struck up a polite conversation, 'You have a big family.'

'A big family of readers with coupons from the library, but unfortunately one of them does not get her reward.' My wife said smugly.

At this we explained that we had to buy that burger and she seemed surprised by this. She appologized several times and said, 'before you leave come up to the front and we will get frosties for all of the kids.'

My initial thought was ummm I already have frosties for the kids, but I guess she forgot that she accepted those coupons...

'I will also give you one of my personal management coupons.' This was said low so that no one else could hear her. I assume because Dave Thomas' Secret agents would have to wipe the minds of any who heard her.

'Thank you.' I replied happy with the new accord that has been struck...we would all get frosties now and some new coupon that probably will get a new article here on my blog written about it as well. We ate our meals with our neighbor getting her frosty and then taking the kids up one at a time to get theirs, which my wife and I confiscated and replaced with the junior versions that we already had.

I went to the front after we finished eating and told that nice young man that I needed to speak to the manager again. I called her by name to drive the point home, I do not know who I was driving it to though. She came out, a bit quicker this time and asked what I needed.

'You said something about a secret coupon...' I said after looking left then right for the agents first.

'Oh ok one second sir.' She said and then disappeared in the secret manager room. I imagine she was pressing the hidden buttons on the picture above her chair to open the coupon vailt. After scanning her left retina she returned with, get this, a hand written coupon on the back of her business card. SO you will not take a professionally made coupon from the library, but you will take a business card that says free stuff on it and her signature scribbled at the bottom. 'This is good for any two free large combo meals and 2 free kids meals.'

So three frosties, 2 large combo meals, and two kids meals were given to us as a substitute, for one junior bacon cheeseburger that I still have the coupon for. Sounds fair. My neightbor summed up all of my thoughts when she said, 'I will come back with my family and use the coupon again, this is great.'

It did not sound like that but , well let me take my time and tell the story right. I got a roast beef club sandwich on white bread with no cheese (that costs extra) with lettuce tomatoes pickles and mayonaisse for lunch...like I said in the post before. The nice man that is very hard to understand stuck a little extra beef on it with a wink and a nod. His company lost their contract so they are done in a week, I assume that he is getting rid of the inventory in his own way, and I am thankful. He carefully stacked the roast beef, roast turkey, and bacon and then asked 'Blauftome?' ( Anyone who has ever seen the movie quick change should get the humor) I asked him to repeat, which he did and I still do not speak ummm whateverian but the second time he waved his hand over the bountiful spread of toppings in front of him.

I knew what he meant now and said lettuce tomatoes and pickles please. I wondered if what I said sounded like 'blauftome por favor' to him, but he placed a pair of perfectly sliced tomatoes with precision onto the slabs of meat, and loaded so many halves of pickle chips that I was not sure how I was going to fit the mammoth sandwich into my mouth. He stuck the top on, smooshed it down, put two of those fancy little toothpick things with the colored plastic on the back in it, and cut it in half. His knife went right between the toothpicks thereby creating two identical halves of a marvelous sandwich, each held together by a wooden arrow with yellow flights...

I proudly carried my heavy little sandwich back to my walled bastion (cubicle, fine) While I loaded the image on the computer under my desk, I opened the container and basked in the glory of the mighty sandwich. A smile crept slowly across my face, and before long I could feel the muscles around my eyes tensing up, so I knew it was a big smile. I rammed a straw into the lid of my drink in such a way that would have made Bram Stoker proud. The sandwich expanded slightly as I removed the wooden stake the was holding it all down. Actually it was nailed to the bottom of the take out container, probably to keep it from shifting as I walked back to my desk.

You know how grass shows its resiliency by slowly going back in place if you step on it? That is what my sandwich was doing once I removed it from the container. I held on tight and took a bite. The bacon tasted sooooo good, that I, remember that I am a carnivore to the extreme, for one brief moment, forgot that I had beef on my sandwich. Then I tasted the beef, and the turkey, oh man this was a great sandwich. I took a second, even more scrumptious bite. The tomatoes slid slightly under the weight of all of the meat stacked on top of them. I had to shift the angle that I held the half of sandwich in my hand to keep the tomatoes from slipping completely out, perhaps I should have allowed this to happen, for what happened next may have been avoided if I did.

I picked up the sandwich, raising it back toward my mouth for another delicious taste. The tomato in the back near my pinkies, gave way, causing a chain reaction that started with the meat shifting quickly down and ended with the mayonnaise soaked bread tearing in half, spilling the contents of one half on my lunch into the styrofoam container below. I was left holding the other tomato and a fistful of pickles and lettuce, staring down at a pile of meat in disbelief. I licked the pickle juice and mayonnaise from my fingers and thought to myself, 'My sandwich just exploded, wtf?' I began looking for a fork to finish my lunch, but alas I still had another half to enjoy. It would appear that while I was eating the first half, the second half was succumbing to the same soggy bread syndrome, because I only got one bite of this half before Boom!, it exploded like the first half. I resorted to stabbing the remnants of the inards of my sandwich with the little wooden arrows to finish my lunch. It was still rather tasty...