Frugal is good

Posted on 17th December 2011 in Friends and Family, Life, Money and/or Finances

I was surprised earlier today when my wife pulled out three “empty” bottles of Gold Bond hand lotion (the pump style) and cut them open with a knife. I asked “what in the world are you doing?” She replied “salvaging hand lotion. There’s a lot of lotion left in these bottles!” She ended up getting about eight ounces of lotion out of the bottles! She used a rubber cooking spatula to scoop out the lotion and transferred the lotion into four empty night cream jars she had been saving.

I was so impressed by how much lotion she salvaged from being thrown away! That is a lesson I’ve learned today – when you think your pump bottle of something is empty, there really is a lot left – you can cut it open and transfer the contents to a jar and use it up! It may not seem like a lot at the time, but it adds up!

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Made in America

Posted on 11th December 2011 in Friends and Family, Home and Garden, Internet, Life, Opinion, Shopping

I’m trying to buy Made in America products for Christmas presents this year. I am finding it to be a very difficult task. Many of the gifts that people want are electronic in nature, and most of those items are made overseas. When I Google “Made in USA” very few items actually show up that would be things that the people on my gift list would really like to have.

I’d like to shop local, but I don’t want to pick up every item on the shelf and turn it over to see where it was made. I figure that if I look online first for the product itself, then I can go to the local store to buy it. If you have any suggestions about where to find items that are Made in USA, please let me know, I’m interested!

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The Golden Corral – a great all you can eat buffet

Posted on 5th December 2011 in Food, Friends and Family, Life

The Golden Corral restaurant is one of my very favorite restaurants. It is an all you can eat buffet restaurant that actually has food you want to eat! I’ve been to restaurants that advertise that they have an all you can eat buffet but when you get up to the buffet table you find only five or six items, mostly cheap fillers like macaroni and cheese or spaghetti. The Golden Corral restaurant has no options except all you can eat, and their buffet tables include several types of chicken, several types of beef, several types of fish, a lot of different veggies and fruits, shrimp, and lots of different desserts too.

My wife really likes their yeast dinner rolls that they bring to your table. I know they keep bringing them endlessly, hoping to fill you up on them, but they really are good! We know that the rolls they bring to our table have to be thrown away if we don’t eat them, so my wife brings an extra large purse with her and a large gallon size zipper style plastic storage bag with her so when we are finished eating if there are any dinner rolls left over that we didn’t eat she can bring them home with us. We don’t think that is stealing because we didn’t ASK for the rolls, they just keep bringing them! She doesn’t keep slipping rolls in her purse continuously, she just puts the leftovers in after the meal. And we know they will just get tossed out when we leave if we don’t take them. So we take them and eat them the next day. They are almost as good reheated in the microwave the next day if you wrap them in a paper towel and nuke them for ten seconds.

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Telecommuting – just for management?

Posted on 30th November 2011 in Business and/or office, Life, Opinion

From time to time I see an article that sings the praises of telecommuting. I think that telecommuting is a great thing because it saves the employees a lot of time and money when they don’t have to drive to work. The only problem I’ve run into is that some companies only allow telecommuting to a select few management employees, and refuse to allow non-management employees that opportunity. I know quite a few people who feel that they could do their job just fine from home but their company won’t allow it. It seems that the company doesn’t trust the non-management employees to do their work if a manager isn’t standing right over their desks breathing down their necks.

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Company is coming for Turkey Day

Posted on 24th November 2011 in Food, Friends and Family, Life

This afternoon we are expecting a lot of company. My wife’s side of the family is coming over for Thanksgiving. We are expecting about twenty two people to come over, everyone is supposed to bring some kind of food to share with everyone else. They are supposed to start arriving around 3pm today and leave around 8pm.

So my wife is running around the house trying to get the house “company ready.” I’m going to go outside and mow the lawn and hide in the garage as much as possible so she doesn’t ask me to do anything inside the house to help.

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