Rant Update and More Shopping

First off, it was hotter than Hades today!

Last night, my 9 pm run was wonderful. I felt like I could do 10 miles but had to come home to put the kids in bed and clean up from dinner so I only ran 3. I'm a night owl. Plus, my sleep was all screwed up because I got home at 3:30 am yesterday then only slept 4 hours. I didn't truly feel awake until about 6 pm... then I couldn't go to sleep so I was up til 2 am.

I had a conference call for work today from 7:30 am to 9 am so I didn't get out the door to run until 10 am. My intent was to run 10 miles. No go. I did a very UGLY 5 miles. I didn't even run all of it. Somewhere after 3.5 miles I had two bouts where I just felt the need to walk for no particular reason except my legs hurt, I was HOT, I wanted to lay down, etc. I think it was about 80 degrees when I got done but you could wring all my clothes out. It was just miserable.

So... 5 mile run today.
Now it's pouring rain. I'm going to try 10 again tomorrow.

Before my run, the store manager from CVS called me. She apologized profusely about that cashier's behavior last night and told me I was totally right. She also pulled the transaction numbers that I was concerned about and verified that no additional charges were on my credit card. Looks like the cashier tried to re-ring the transaction 3 more times, maybe in an attempt to figure out how to ring the gas card, and voided all of them.

Well, it was back to CVS today for some more shopping...

I am a Diet Coke addict. I also won't pay more than $2.50 a 12-pack for Diet Coke. Usually I stock up when it goes on sale around whatever holiday is next. This time, the Diet Coke supply didn't make it to Memorial Day. We ran out about a week ago. I thought I could hold out til this weekend but I started getting the shakes and broke down and paid $1 at Meijer yesterday for a 2 L bottle. I know. Pathetic.

So today I discover on my coupon forums that the Diet Coke 12-packs that CVS has on sale this week that are part of the "Buy $30" gas card deal are giving you credit for $5 a 12-pack (which is how much it is this week if you buy one) but if you buy 4 at a time, it only costs $12. So, essentially, you are getting an $8 "free" credit for every 4 12-packs.

The limit is 3 gas cards. The amounts carry over, meaning, yesterday when I bought my items, I got credit for $35.94. That means I had $5.94 carry over and I needed to spend $24.06 for my next gas card. I ran out to CVS this afternoon and got another package of paper towels and 4 12-packs of Diet Coke. That should have put me over $30. Well, I got $20 credit for the Diet Cokes as planned but somehow the $5.94 that should have carried over from last night disappeared altogether so I was still about $5 short. It looks like the whole deal on my ExtraCare Card reset... meaning I could do the deal 3 more times if I wanted to...

So now "think" I told myself... get 4 more 12-packs, that gets me another gas card and $15.49 will carry over. Then get 4 more 12-packs for $12 but that gets credited for $20 so I'll get another gas card...

Back out the gas cards and I paid $45.53 for all this

I ended up with 12 12-packs of Diet Coke, 4 6-roll packs of paper towels, 2 18-roll packs of toilet paper, and a gallon of milk for $75.53 and received $30 in gas cards.

I could potentially earn one more gas card since the deal "reset" on my ExtraCare Card but I'm probably set for now.

Next stop was Menards. They have 5-pack brats on sale for $1.99. This is a great price by itself. I had a $5.88 Menards rebate check so I got 3 packages and paid $0.09.

Final stop was Walgreens to try out some "new" things. They have Velveeta Cheesy Skillets for $1.99. Buy one and get a $2 Register Rewards (RR) i.e. fake Walgreens money. I bought one and used $1 worth of Balance Rewards points (Walgreens rewards program) so I paid $0.99 and got $2 in fake money. Then, I bought 2 bags of Lancaster caramels and a package of Ramen noodles. The noodles were a "filler" - I had a $1.50 coupon for each bag of caramels and I wanted to use the $2 RR but at Walgreens your item count has to match your coupon count so I needed a cheap third item or "filler." The caramels were $3 each; buy 2, get 500 Balance Rewards points. Ramen noodles were $0.39. Total for second transaction was $1.88.

$2.87 for $8.38 worth of food plus 500 BR points

 

The kids had to try the "new" food as soon as they got home. The Lancaster caramels are really good. The Velveeta Cheesy Skillet was bleh.

 

Finally, I got rid of 34 books... that were left over from, ahem, college...

 



My husband majored in English and I minored in it so we had doubles of a lot of books since we both took classes together... back in the late '80's! They all went bye-bye today.

Come back and see me tomorrow as I run, purge, and shop some more!