Now that Irene has said good night – and as a topical storm rather than a hurricane – it’s time for everyone to attack the news media for hype and scare tactics.
Month: August 2011
Come on, Irene.
At about 10:30 a.m. this morning I suddenly came to my senses: Why in the world was I considering making the next leg of my trip to Washington, D.C.?
Need to cut costs? Read these books (for free).
This week’s giveaway is a pair of books by a civilian savings expert.
If I lived here, I’d be dead now.
Carved on my gravestone would be the phrase, “Died of surfeit. She was smiling at the time.”
Getting out of town.
I got back from BlogHer 2011 late in the evening on July 9. Since then I’ve been hitting MSN Money and Get Rich Slowly deadlines pretty hard, and spending time (including a day in Vancouver, B.C.) with an old friend who’s here in town.
Just before midnight tonight I get on a plane for the East Coast, where I’ll be spending just over a month:
Let me help you clean your toilet.
Well, not really. But I’m giving away a product that will.
How to complain.
After BlogHer 2011 ended my daughter and I stayed in San Diego for a couple of extra days. I’d used a Travelocity voucher I’d gotten through Eversave to get a decent deal for a hotel in the city’s Gaslamp section.
The conference had been pretty tiring, so we were ready to lie down by the time we showed up for the 3 p.m. check-in. A desk clerk told us it would be another 20 minutes because our room had not been cleaned.
Twenty minutes went by. Abby, who has a chronic health condition, was so fatigued she could barely sit upright. I inquired again. Still not clean, but they’d let us know as soon as something was available.
Another 20 minutes elapsed, during which I saw the clerk have a soft drink and chat with co-workers. What he didn’t do was call housekeeping to ask about the progress of the room. Meanwhile, I was wondering just how big a bitch I needed to be to get this fixed.
My mom, the frugal role model.
Editor’s note: A version of this post (written by me) originally appeared on MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog.
The older I get the more I miss my mother, who died eight years ago this month. Geneva Hanes was the youngest of 10 kids born to an uneducated Tennessee couple who eventually pulled up stakes and moved north for opportunity – that is, to work in South Jersey factories and vegetable fields.
Despite hunger, poverty and violence, my mother became the first in her family to finish high school. Mom owned two dresses (“one on, one off”) and never had a square meal or a bath in a real tub until she married my dad right after graduation.
They had four kids in five years, which sounds impossibly grim by today’s standards. But we didn’t seem to notice that we were poor. Everyone we knew pinched pennies. Nobody did it like my mom, though.
Live from BlogHer 2011: Forgetfulness!
I’ve been so disoriented and exhausted since getting to San Diego on Thursday that I completely forgot to put up a giveaway on Friday — and when I remembered, the Internet was down at the hotel.
That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. So next week I’ll probably give away two things to make up for it.
After the expo hall at BlogHer, the pickings will be pretty rich. Among the things they’re handing out away:
The bank of BFFs.
Do you always grab for the tab, or do you and friends/roommates split even the smallest expenditures?
The first can leave you open to exploitation. The second can be aggravating if it becomes an exercise in, “SonyaAnn got the extra cup of ranch dressing so she owes 30 cents more.”
Treading that ticklish territory is the subject of my latest column over at MSN Money, “Your best friends’ bank: You.” (Edited to add: This article is no longer available since Microsoft changed platforms. Sorry about that.)