Deal of the Day

I don't promise to be consistent with these but I keep up on a lot of deals & thought I would share with our lovely readers from time to time. So today's deal:

Carabella's is having a sale & to add to the excitement, use coupon code C384 & get 30% off of already low-priced items.

This had me rolling

This made my day. Hope you all have a wonderful & safe weekend.

Tales from the trip

Savannah- Glad we went it was good to get away but there were some disappointments. Here come the negativity: ;)

the "dueling" piano bar we went to check out was a step below upstairs @ Wild Wings including a "divorce party" like a bachelorette party but she was wearing a black veil & the group were all wearing black. I'm not making this up. The pianos didn't duel so much as take turns playing different songs.

Hotel room - we only had to pay for one night because we had free night points stocked up from Wyndham Rewards fka TripRewards. First room had ants crawling all over the air conditioner. Second room was perfect

Eating in Savannah was difficult for every meal. The advertised restaurants in town were mostly overpriced & had long waits due to the holiday weekend. Our eating schedule was totally off beginning the day we arrived in Savannah having us eating lunch between 2 & 3 and dinner as late as 9 one night.

Southern hospitality at all places that we went to (exception being Paula Dean's) was lacking BIG TIME. Including the visitor's center. They had pamphlets on a tack board that you had to ask for & one was called "Park Smart". So we asked the guy behind the counter for one & he says ,"I'll tell you how to park smart, it's free after 5 downtown". We were kind of taken aback & didn't get the pamphlet. We got back to the car & were discussing & decided to go back & park because HELLO where do we park BEFORE 5pm?

Tybee Beach was great. We went & toured a lighthouse (yes i went up the stairs but not out on the ledge) and just chilled at the beach for a few hours. We had planned to go to a highly advertised restaurant.. our lack of planning got us again. we went, just beating the dinner crowd (actually were there by 6) sat down & realized ummm we don't like seafood. LOL. We already knew that but they had no FRIED seafood. That is the only kind I will eat. Takes that whole fish taste out of eating fish. :) So we left & went to a restaurant back near the beach that had no wait time & had fried seafood. It was a good meal & we were able to sit & watch the traffic leaving the beach rather than being stuck in it.

Working Hard for The Money

I had another one of my hair-brained schemes the other day. I'm always looking for ways to bring in more money & save it up. I 'm a big saver & tend to spend more on loved ones then myself. So since we've had the recent car purchase & with Phil going back to school, I thought it was valid to want to pull in some extra cash. There is a publication that gets delivered in our neighborhood. We'll call it the Neighborhood News. In the NN I saw an ad that you could get extra money to deliver the NN & to email if you were interested. I emailed them right up & didn't hear anything. Figured they filled up fast since it was summertime & there were prob. a lot of college kids home for the summer until I got a phone call 2 weeks ago. Those of you locals know that 2 weeks ago we had record highs in temp on the weekend. The lady called & said that someone had cancelled their route & they needed to have the NN distributed by Tuesday & she told me how much it was & that it was only 400 houses & was I interested? Well of course I was! :) We were having a lazy Saturday so we were able to meet her in town to get the NN that was already supposed to be stuffed in the bags that you hang on the doors. - only to later find out that she lived in my neighborhood & I could have walked to her house to get them-
Well when we met she noticed that there were not in fact stuffed so she told me how much more I would get for stuffing them. Then she told me that the neighborhood had to be done by Tuesday (it was about 4PM on Saturday). Then I realized that 400 houses, is well FOUR HUNDRED houses. I will just come right out and tell you I am NOT directionally savy in any sense. The way the neighborhood was laid out practically every street was connected to the next so it would be hard to just stay on one side of the street without missing houses. We had plans with our Lifegroup for Sunday night, Phil had school on Monday & I didn't want to hand them out last minute. Now you are prob. wondering why does it matter if phil had school on Monday? Well I roped him in to help me with MY project because of the amount of houses & because it was so freaking hot. So we traveled out to the neighborhood, and for 3 straight hours on Saturday night in the heat we handed out the NN on all the doors. It wouldn't have taken nearly that long if you didn't have to actually walk up to every door of all 400 houses, which I knew I would have to do, but didn't realize how much time that would add. We ran out of daylight on Saturday & finished up the last 100 or so homes on Sunday after church, again in the blistering heat. I swear I sweated off at least 4 pounds that weekend, but never fear I ate plenty of Salsarita's with the Lifers that night. I am going to continue to try & hand out the NN as new routes become available, but I told the lady in charge that I think I would prefer to do smaller neighborhoods. (You know that way I don't have to rope my wonderful husband - who by the way has been roped into plenty of other 'I'm in over my head' projects that I decide to take on without ever complaining.)

New Car

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and bought a new car. I'd been looking for one since February, I've driven tons of different makes and models, visited umpteen different car lots across several cities. I hate car dealerships. I hate car shopping. Even when I would find a model I liked, I had trouble finding a car dealer I could haggle with to get the price down to what I wanted to pay for it. Things with my car got worse and it began overheating and needed some work done. At least it has been paid off since March. Anyway, that escalated our search considerably and right as we were at our wits end, we came across our dream car at our dream price. It's great. I love the car. It drives amazing, has a 3.2L VTEC V6, so she has tons of horsepower when needed. It's sporty, but it also has a lot of luxury, which I require in my cars. So, what did I buy. A 2005 Acura TL.

Blind Cat

Jeni and I woke up refreshed Sunday morning after the best night of sleep we'd had in almost a month. Why? Because we finally outsmarted our cat, Dirty Sox. It took us a couple weeks, but we did it. See, Dirty had gotten into this nasty little habit of messing with the blinds in our room starting around 5:45-6:00 am time period. After she'd woke us up playing with the blinds, she'd start crying. We tried petting her and giving her attention. Didn't work. We tried messing with the blinds when she sleep. Backfired. She started coming in earlier. We tried locking her in her room when she played with them. (Have you ever tried to wrangle a cat into a room at 5 in the morning? I don't advise it) Somehow she kept managing to get out. She must have some Macgyver in her. So, we tried closing our door. No blinds, but now we had two cats ramming themselves into our door trying to get in and/or crying relentlessly all night. We put doublesided tape on the window sill. Turns out, she likes the flavor of tape. So, we took every stuffed monkey we had, and lined them up on the window sill. There was no where for her to jump up there. And it worked. She still stared right up at one of them and 'gave it the business' as I like to say, basically meowed at it as loud as she could. But that little stuffed monkey stood strong. He wasn't intimidated. So, the monkeys have a new home for a few weeks, retraining the cat not to get up there. Back to sleeping in as late as possible for us! It feels good to win.

You have to get up pretty early in the morning .....

.... to eat at Paula Dean's restaurant. Very early. Jeni and I visited Savannah over Memorial Day weekend, more on that trip later. One of the things we wanted to do while there was to eat at Paula's restaurant, The Lady and Sons. Jeni is a big fan of Paula and I like to eat Southern cooking, so it was a win-win, we thought. (We've also listened to her autobiography book on CD on a trip, so we felt connected to her). However, they don't take reservations in advance. Every morning at 9:30 am, the hostess comes out to her stand and starts taking names and giving out times for that day. We thought we'd saunter up there around 2 or so and be able to get a dinner slot. Not so. Booked for the day. The hostess said we should come back the next morning [pause] between 7:30 and 8 and get in line if we expected a reservation. [insert Phil jaw drop here] So, the next morning, we got there about 7:40. The line was already well formed. In fact, at 7:40, we were 64th in line. No, I didn't count, the guy behind me did. By 9:30 when the hostess did come out, the line wrapped halfway around the block, crossed the street and wrapped 3/4 the way around the next block. When I say 3/4 the block, I mean, 3 of the 4 sides of the block were all line. We did get to eat there, however, we needed an early time because we wanted to go to the beach that day, So, at 10:10 when we were given our 11:00 time and had to be back there at 10:45 again for opening bell and to get in another shorter line of all the 11:00 times, we didn't have much time to go and do anything. I can tell you that by 10:50, all the times for the day were gone and hundreds of people were then turned away. [As a brief aside, people are stupid. Like I said, this is a LONG line, and yet, I can't tell you how many people just walked up to the front of it and asked if this was the line to get reservations. Um, no, it's that really short line 3 blocks away. It isn't the long line that starts in front of the restaurant at the hostess stand, that wouldn't make any sense. Then, after the hostess is there, countless people just walk right up to her and ask for a time. Can they not see the line of people? In fact, this is such a problem, that they actually have two hostess. One to take peoples names from the line and one to stand there and turn the idiots who can't see the line away and tell them how a line works.] So anyway, as I'm sure you are all wondering, yes, the food was great. The fried chicken on the buffet was piled high and was delicious. Probably the best restaurant fried chicken I've ever had (still can't beat Grandma's), and everything on the buffet was excellent. Neither of us were fans of the hoe cakes though (cornbread pancakes). The biggest letdown factor for us is that hardly any restaurant could live up to the essential 3.5 hour wait we had. We are glad we went, but be prepared to wait if you go. Below is a picture the line with Jeni asleep in it soon after we got there. And also a picture of fried chicken on the buffet.