I want to get married. That is, I want to get married after I’ve finagled an introduction to J. Money of the Budgets Are Sexy personal finance blog. Once he and I are best buds I want to get married a whole bunch of times, because J. Money’s wedding gift of choice is a hundred-dollar bill.
Donna Freedman
Turning invisibility into stealth.
In the summer of 2007 I won a fellowship to attend the University of Washington’s two-month Summer Institute in the Arts and Humanities. One day we were given 20 minutes to write something about a specific aspect of our identities.
Here’s an excerpt from mine:
“All terrorists should be middle-aged women,” I once said – only partly in jest.
When you buy cheap, you get…longevity?
I am wearing flip-flops that I bought at Rite Aid when my daughter was two years old. Abby will be 32 in August.
Granted, these zoris didn’t get a whole lot of use during my 17 years in Alaska. But I’m still amazed how well they’ve held up. I’m also grateful: They kept my feet off the ground for three days straight when my broken toe convinced me not to put on a real shoe.
Abby has her own cheap-but-dependable anecdote, which she detailed in a blog post called “Unexpected quality.” Her favorite pair of shorts, which she’s been wearing for 11 years, cost $10. It amuses her how “some of the cheapest things turn out to be so ridiculously durable.”
Inattention can cost you. Ask me how I know.
On Friday morning I was rushing through my exercises, as usual, and thinking about five other things, as usual. Preparing for a hamstring stretch, I swung my left foot up toward the cedar chest. I missed, and the top of my foot hit the couch.
Side note: It’s not really a couch. It’s a loveseat/sleeper, a purply-pink fabric stretched over a frame made of steel, or possibly bricks. The corner, where the steel/bricks meet, was where my second toe connected.
Instantly I unleashed multi-syllabic swear words. The air turned blue overhead. I swear the loveseat blushed. After hobbling around the living room like a football player who’s just taken a crotch shot (Walk it off, Freedman, walk it off), I said out loud, “I have got to start paying attention to one thing at a time.”
Calypso bread.
Every so often I stop by the Jimmy John’s sandwich shop near my apartment. Not to buy a sandwich, though: To spend 50 cents on one of yesterday’s baguettes, which I call “calypso bread.”
That’s because it’s day-old.
Daaaaaay-old.
Daaaaaaa-aaaay old.
Any of you who aren’t laughing yet, follow this link. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
I have given birth to nerd-dom.
Today is my daughter’s second wedding anniversary, and the blog post she wrote confirms what I already knew: She’s as big a geek as her mom, and she found herself a geek to marry, too.
The cellphone as Romulan Cloaking Device.
Have you ever used a Blackberry or a Bluetooth to get out of interacting with a crashing bore or an insistent vendor of organic skin care products?
Fabulous freebies for Friday. (Also, always achieve alliteration.)
To celebrate this site’s first week of existence, I’m staging a giveaway of logo items donated by the friendly folks at FatWallet.com. First prize consists of an “I am the revolution” T-shirt plus a FatWallet.com baseball cap, pen, water bottle (stainless steel, BPA-free, made by Klean Kanteen) and, believe it or not, FatWallet chocolates and … Read more
Happy graduation! Here’s a toilet brush.
Know a college senior who’s moving into his own place post-diploma? Want to give a gift even though you’re on a budget? Forget the $20 bill or the iTunes card. Instead, buy some dishtowels, a laundry basket or a johnny mop.
Your preparing-to-launch student may have saved up the first and last month’s security on an apartment. But does he have a can opener?
BOGO, meet GOGO.
Surviving and Thriving is not a “bargain of the day” site. Plenty of other blogs already do that, and do it much better than I ever could. However, at times I’ll be writing about deals that I think are too good to pass up.
The “GOGO” deal at CVS is a good example. The drugstore chain has introduced e-gift cards, and during the month of May you can get a free gift card every time you give one.
(“Give one, get one” as opposed to “buy one, get one.” Cute, huh?)