Check, Please! — January 29, 2012

If you know me at all, then you already know how much I love eating out.   It’s like one of my favorites.  I don’t actually mind the act of cooking, all in all, but it just seems like such a chore to do anything when I’m hungry that the idea of trying to work with food when ALREADY hungry is just sometimes too daunting of a task.  hehe.  Eating out is like an escape from the kitchen duties of normal life, and I also like the factored in “quality time” element that it involves.  (I think I’ve talked about that before!)  Well, lately, we’ve been getting all kinds of incentives that have made eating out actually kind of lucrative!  It’s funny how all of this has happened right together in the last few weeks too.

Case #1 – David and I went to Olive Garden a couple of weeks ago.  We like Olive Garden, but this particular trip was unlike no other.  I’m not sure what was going on, but I everything about the trip was just “off.”  We had issues with ordering, issues with drink refills, issues with them being out of breadsticks (oh no!!! I must have bread!) :) and after I looked at David and said, “Where ARE WE?  This is not normal.”  I finally got annoyed and asked for the manager.  I did not really know what to expect with my complaint, but he totally took care of us!  He comped our entire meal, AND gave us a $40 gift card so we would come back and have a better experience another day.  That’s pretty amazing!  Yay for Olive Garden’s problem solving skills.  I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Case #2 – I went to visit my grandparents this week and made a stop at Freebirds World Burrito on the way down.  We don’t have a Freebirds anywhere near us, so I always try to go to one when I am nearby.  I like it there!  (I just wouldn’t choose to dine in if I had any other choice — the music level is so loud that it makes you want to squint. hehe, yes, I am old!)

Anyway, the first time I went they gave me one of their loyalty cards.  I was aware that I was earning points for each purchase, but I really had no idea how it worked beyond that.  (One point per burrito, as it turns out.)  I remembered to get out my card on this trip too and I gave it to the guy to scan during my checkout.

He scanned it for me and was like, “Okay, so with today’s purchase you now have….”

“Probably like zero points!”, I butted in laughingly.

He smiled and said, “Yeah.  Now you have two points.  Did you just redeem some points or something?”

“No, that’s all the points I have so far.  I live really far away from here so I just never get a chance to come.”  (I think I looked very sad here, hehe.)

“Oh!  Well, let me see your card again.”  He took the card, pushed a lot of buttons and then hands it back to me.  “Well, now you have 11 points!  You get a free burrito next time you come in!”

Woohoo, free burrito!  It takes 10 points for a free burrito, so that saved me like a million visits to get my free one.  It seriously would have taken me YEARS to get 10 points.  That made me happy.

Case #3 – This weekend, David and I went to Jalapeno Tree for lunch before I had to head to CVS for the day.  We go to Jalapeno Tree pretty frequently anyway, and we’ve become friends with the manager there.  We were there just after they opened, and it had gotten really chilly during the night and the restaurant was very cold inside.  I was huddling up in my jacket (my usual look for this time of year!) when the manager came by.  He greeted us and then said, “Do you think I should turn the heater on in here?  Is it cold?”

I was like, “Yes!  I am freeeezing!”

The next thing we knew, he was telling our waitress to go get us two cups of soup, on the house, to help warm us up.  Nice!  She brought out two cups of their new beef taco soup. Of course, that meant that David got to eat both bowls.  He was happy about that outcome because the soup was really good!

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So, do good things tend to come in groups of three, just like the saying goes about bad things?  If so, then we’ve had a great run!  :)  If not, then let’s keep the good things coming!

Yo Hee Ho!! — January 24, 2012

The “Yo Hee Ho” song has been playing through my mind more and more lately.  (more than usual, even)  I’ve found myself singing “Yo Hee Ho” (loudly) while driving in my car, and it only takes a small reminder to get the song playing in my head for hours on end.

“Yo Hee Ho” was one of those songs from childhood that has stuck with me all this time.  It was from the Nickelodeon show “Today’s Special”   I watched this show every day!  The show was centered around the idea that department store mannequins come to life at night and have adventures.  :)  One of these episodes featured the song “Yo Hee Ho”, and my brain has featured this song ever since:

Why is this song stuck in my head these days?  Exciting news for us!  We are going on a 7 day cruise in April!  Yay!!!!

I’ve been wanting to go on another cruise since the second we disembarked from our first cruise nearly five years ago.  (I can’t believe it’s been that long.)  This will be a (slightly early) celebration for our 10-year wedding anniversary in May.  We are so excited!

We have fewer than 90 days until our sailing date with Royal Caribbean.  So much to do!  So many lists to make – we can’t forget to take anything! So much shopping to be done!  :)

There is fun in our future!  :)

Let’s Get Our Life in Order — January 10, 2012

First post of the new year!  Welcome 2012.  Let’s see what you bring us.

I think my focus for this year is to try to get life in some sort of order.  My daily existence is already pretty orderly, but right now I’m thinking of things that I need to tackle to help bring order to our future.

One thing 2011 taught me is the importance of detailing the minutiae of your life on paper, somewhere, so that your little world can continue on if you become unable to care for yourself.  Every family unit runs a household so completely differently from another that it is next to impossible for a third party to step in and help with the controls.  However, my goal for this year is to try to take specific steps to ensure that if something major were to happen to me, David, or both of us, that the person who ends up handling our affairs can do so with as little red tape as possible.

My grandparents had a rough 2011 and 2012 doesn’t look much brighter.  Trying to figure out how to find order in their situation has been an un-ending and very complicated task.  I would like to think that my cousin and I have done a remarkable job piecing it all together, but how we really know if we have?  She’s done many hours of work trying to sort insurance policies, and bills, and random bits of information here and there, but it still feels like we could easily be missing something important.  The only thing of all of this that we’ve had in our favor is that we have been very close to our grandparents throughout the years, and between me living with them for many years combined with her frequent visits, we know enough about them that we’ve been able to put together a somewhat workable system to help them out.  It’s been such an arduous task that it is hard for me to think that I might be doing the exact same thing in my own life to someone who has to take care of our affairs in the future.

It is surprising – the random things that we take care of without thought every day.  I began to realize -

*if David and I both suddenly died, does any family member have the name and contact information for our landlord?  How would they even find him?

*how would anyone find out that I participate in the 401(k) program at CVS?

*who would know to cancel our Lifelock service once we no longer need it?

There’s just so many details of life beyond the obvious!  It’s a little scary when you think about it.

So, this year, I am working on a detailed list of the what, where, and how to contact.  I want to make things easier for the person who has to come behind us.  Not the most enjoyable goal for a new year, but I think it’s important!

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On the lighter side, I’ve been having a series of recurring dreams lately about our old apartment.  I have no idea why!  All the dreams are extremely vivid and happily pleasant.  Each time, I am aware that I don’t live there anymore, but I always seem to have an excuse ready about why I need to go inside.  Sometimes the new tenants are home and sometimes they are not, hehe.  (Although they are different people every time.)  I usually enter the apartment and just take a look around to see what they’ve done with it.  I think I ate a meal in the apartment last night.  hehe.  Sometimes I just go in and take a nap since it’s so close to work.  :)

Hope your 2012 has gotten off to a great start!