Manic Monday

I started out to write a short little 'something' for today's Manic Monday post. Well, somehow it got really long. I don't blame you if you aren't into reading a long post as I am not always into reading long ones when I surf to memes. Sooooo..... I decided to delete what I'd written and put something short. But deleting is not easy to do (I'm sure some of you might understand this while others will say "just hit the delete button"). What I've decided to do is make a short one and still leave the long one for those that choose to read past the flowers.

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Alice's
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Economically

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LOL

I trust that, at this time of year, most people will talk about Boxing Day and Boxing Week sales that they attended and bought great stuff at.... or not. I'm one of the not. I didn't even attend one after Christmas sale. "Why?", you might ask. Well, let tell you. Part of it was that I was too tired, part that I just didn't care and didn't want to venture out into those terrible crowds, and part of it was that i already spent a lot of money and must spend more in a 'non-sale' type way.

Before Christmas, I read a flyer in the news paper, one I don't usually read, and found some things I decided not to resist. There was a great sale on laminate flooring, so at 69 cents a square foot, I bought 720 square feet. At the same store, they had a great set of cordless Ryobi tools on sale (18 volt drill, 5 1/2" circular saw, hand vacuum, flashlight) with battery and charger, all for $69. Yup, I bought a set. Add taxes to those and it came to over $600 which I felt was well worth it as I've wanted new flooring for 18 years now, and the circular saw for many years too.

I also decided to buy myself a new printer as the other one died and untimely death. Forget now what I paid for it, but it wasn't a great deal. It's only a Lexmark, not high end but will do great for now. Got it at Canadian Tire on sale for somewhere around $40.

At Staples, they had a sale on digital cameras. Having already bought myself so much I just couldn't justify buying me more.... so my 'kids' bought me a Fujifilm digital camera, 10 mega pixel with a 12x zoom and all sorts of other good features. Gotta love that!! (For those of you that don't know... my 'kids' happen to be of the dog, cat, budgie, parrot, rabbit and chinchilla variety, not human though some think they are, and all are smarter and better behaved than some humans I've met).

Feeling all happy and great about the above, I looked forward to Christmas, until... Yup, until.

One of my dear Chinchillas got sick just before Christmas. After $400 in vet bills (no sale here), 4 trips to another town to take her to the vet that deals with 'exotics', and a lot of nurturing and nursing, she passed away Jan. 2.

One cold night my pellet stove broke down. I do have a furnace too, thank God, so I'm not cold, but with 3 ton of pellets sitting in my carport I am not happy to be spending hoards of money on natural gas.

Next day I discovered I had a broken water pipe (main one) under my home. For 4 days I could not get a plumber to come out to fix it, they were just too busy fixing other broken water lines because so many had frozen up and broken with record breaking cold temperatures in this area. Then, my older brother came up for Christmas and stopped in to look under the house. He exploded when he saw the flood and the damage that was happening. Having been a contractor in the next town over before he moved away, he knows people that know people. He has the connections that I don't. He got me a plumber in short order. He had to 'pressure' said plumber, but it worked... and so did he. Not only did the plumber come out the morning of Christmas Eve, but he charged me a lot less than my brother had figured I'd get hit with. Also... it turned out to be a hole due to age of the pipe, not breakage due to freezing as we'd assumed it would be. Hey... maybe that was a 'sale'.

When I was taking Cherry Chinchilla to the vet for her second, or was that third, visit there, my truck broke down. I had to get a friend to drive me to the vet while my truck was in the mechanic getting fixed. it sometimes pays to use the same mechanic all the time as I got better than a sale that day... he didn't charge me, said it didn't take much to fix the truck, so "Merry Christmas & Happy New Year".

I do want a good sale on glass bake ware though. When doing some Christmas baking, my glass pan I use for making Bread Pudding blew up into a million little pieces in my oven. I also need a good sale on rechargeable batteries for my new camera. As sale on key cutting to replace the ones I lost over the holidays would be great too, but I don't think they have that kind of sale.

And now, enough of this.... it's time for me to go do some cleaning to make putting down laminate flooring possible in an overly cluttered home.

Happy Manic Monday.
Remember, we will never have another First Manic Monday of 2009 again!!

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