johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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savings galore
I don't know if "my day" is an accurate description for something that started when I got out of bed at 10:00 P.M., but whatever it's called, I'm having a good one.
I didn't walk Thursday morning. I'm not aware of an excuse. So I was sat here late last night trying to wake up, and the drunks in the neighborhood were kind of noisy, and trying to figure some reason why a walk at eleven or so at night with drunks around would be better than a two-thirty walk after the drunks were gone, but before the Royal Wedding coverage. I couldn't come up with one.
But then 11:30 approached, and something kicked in, and I was compelled to hurry out there and get in a pre-midnight walk to keep my streak alive. I went the back way down dark sidewalks, and sucked air pretty hard, but I made the effort, and at some point, that will matter.
I sat here for the whole Royal Wedding, switching between the BBC. BBC America, CNN, MSNBC and the Today Show. Other people will have much more interesting things to say about it, so I won't go on, but I really enjoyed the experience. When the Princes first went into the Abbey, and walked over to the Spencers, there was a blond in the third row who made me happy for a second, then vanished from my life forever. Later, the woman got out with the flower girls, and I didn't know who she was at the time (hot nanny?) but even on a nineteen inch monitor, I knew the dress was something special. Later, when she picked up the train of the gown and started walking inside, I had a Wedding Crashers moment. Cheers, Pippa:) The trees were a nice touch as well.
My own experience with Westminster Abbey was on a one day mandatory British Studies Field Trip to London late in my semester abroad. We started at St. Paul's, where there were things we had to locate, like Florence Nightingale's tomb, with that and a bunch of museum paintings testable on the final exam.
At some point in the day, I ran into Andy, the first friend I made there, who I hadn't seen much of lately as I had gone into hiding with a broken heart. We decided to hang out, do the Royal Portrait Museum and the other assignments, and catch up. When the museum bits were done, we had a nice relaxing buffet at a Pizza Hut. We were enrolled in different Music courses but had the same professor, and she offered extra credit for anyone who showed up for Evensong at Westminster.
We walked there, and while looking around the outside, I ran into a school mate named Katie - the really smart one with the brown eyes that sparkled, who I described as having enough personality to make two perfectly good women. She had met up with some relatives on the day, but she really wanted to talk to me. I'd flirted with her before - usually with her thinking I was being sarcastic rather than sincere, like when we were all up at the library doing an all-nighter for Shakespeare papers, and I walked in to print something and saw her with color coded index cards and told her how impressed I was.
I tore myself away from her to convince the guy at the door that we weren't tourists trying to invade the Abbey, but actually there for Evensong. Andy and I walked in. I saw the professor turn around and mark us off on her list. I enjoyed the choir and the ceremony, but Andy fell asleep sat on an aluminum folding chair, which was pretty impressive unless he's narcoleptic and it comes easily.
Later on, we had hours to kill before catching the late coach back to school at Trafalgar Square, so we tried a pub. I hated it instantly. It was hot like a boiler room, and the only woman in the place was a waitress who held no attraction for me. I didn't even want a drink, but Andy wanted to stay. We discussed it for a while, then I offered to wait outside for him in the nice November weather until he was content and ready to go. He came out some time later, declaring it the friendliest place he'd ever been to. He said that the minute I left, he had guys coming up offering to buy him drinks and stuff. When he first said that, I wondered for a minute why people wanted to be friendly to him and not me. It was ages later, probably back in the United States, when I figured out that it was a gay bar, and the patrons had thought they saw a young, tall, long-haired American with a Southern accent, who had just had a tiff with his boyfriend.
We sat at an outdoor pub in Covent Garden that had space heaters, and drank beer and talked music. Later we stumbled across a basement dance club, where I taught him everything I knew about attracting women (a lot of it gleaned from magazines). That was fun, as there were two beautiful women at a nearby table, one wearing a flowered dress, who we could practice on. The end.
Weeks ago, there was a Slickdeal for a free glucose meter. You'll recall that I was really worried at the time about possibly being diabetic, so I ordered one. Actually, I couldn't get the website to work at the time - it kept failing, and telling m to call in, but I didn't want to tell them I had no doctor and wasn't sure I was diabetic. It was a week or two later when I got scared, tracked down the link, and requested one.
Yesterday I got a letter saying they'd run out due to demand, but they didn't want me to have to wait, so they gave me a coupon for a free one of one kind and another for ten bucks off a different kind. I decided I'd head to Walgreens Friday. Then Walgreens sent an e-mail with a preview of their weekly ads, but I clicked the wrong spot and saw the current one. They had both types of monitor on sale for $19.95, but if you bought one, you'd also get a ten dollar Walgreens Reward to use on anything next time.
Before I amaze you, you'll need to know that I've got four days to get through until Food Stamps hit, that I got my monthly loan from my sister a few days early, and I hated both the idea of scraping by on the food I have here, or spending cash money on food when I should have made my stamps last.
OK. Step 1. Buy the glucose monitor using the coupon to get it free. Pay 35 cents sales tax. Get my $10 Walgreens Rewards. Ask the clerk, who wasn't busy, if I could leave the bag there a minute.
Step 2. Get the monitor that had the ten dollar coupon. I tried to use the WR to buy it, but that didn't work, so I paid $10.34. She gave me $10 more Walgrees Rewards.
Step 3 Grocery shop, looking for entertaining food that was also on sale. There were a lot of two-fers. I bought:
2 jars of Jif Extra Crunch Peanut Butter
2 Red Baron pizzas
2 half gallons of the good brand of ice cream I stopped buying when dairy prices went so high
an eight pack of mini Snickers
one of those $4+ bags of Dove Dark Chocolate pieces
a 2-liter bottle of Diet Sunkist
I used the Walgreens Rewards. The Dove bag was only $3.50, a bargain, and the cashier came up with a 50 cent off coupon making it even less. I paid $4.22.
All told, I spent less than fifteen bucks, I got two $19.95 glucose monitors plus about thirty bucks worth of nice groceries. I call it a win. Today I enjoy myself. Saturday I test my fasting blood sugar.
Have a great weekend. I hope my British friends really enjoyed the wedding celebration, and the bookend bank holiday weekend.
10:15 a.m. - Friday, Apr. 29, 2011
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