The Noveau Frugal and other thoughs

I saw yet another newspaper article the other day about a family that has discovered the joys of being frugal. In this instance the young woman was touting coupons for food shopping. Another article showed a woman who was cutting the plastic tubes of hand cream in half so that she could get the remains of the cream from the bottom of the tube. Then there are the people that are only buying Starbuck overpriced and over hyped coffee twice a week instead of every day. It is enough to make me scream! It is newsworthy to report about discovering coupons? I would be embarrassed to let the world know that I had been so stupid as to give money away all of these years. I'm so frugal that I pick up pop cans and bottles when I'm out for a walk to get the deposit on them. It embarrasses my children, or at least some of them We've been living the frugal lifestyle forever - as our children can attest to. Except for the Starbucks thing. We don't drink coffee and wouldn't drink it at a Starbuck's anyway. Talk about pretentious. If you want some coffee when you are away from home get it from 7-11. And speaking of people buying coffee, what is it with people who have to stop on the way to work to buy coffee? Make it at home! On the unfortunate days that I have to drive to work the stream of cars pulling into the local McDonalds to buy coffee is amazing. Whatever time they saved by not making it at home is taken up by sitting in the drive through line and they are not living the frugal lifestyle since their car's engine is idling using up gas.

I had to travel to the east coast last week for business. On the flight back I had the middle seat between two rather large individuals, a man and woman. They each claimed a piece of my seat space along with theirs. I shortly learned that they were husband and wife as they proceeded to talk through me and hand stuff back and forth in front of me for much of the flight. I counted the number of times the wife bonked me with her travel pillow - 6 - as she tried to get comfortable in her seat. I was stuck for 5 long hours. It was good to get home.

It's raining, it's pouring and this old man isn't snoring since I don't indulge in such behavior..but we have rain for the first time in quite awhile. It rained heavily overnight and looks like it will be raining off and on all day. Marla departed for a dog event this morning. Since dog events are like soccer and don't stop for the rain I hope she doesn't get too wet. As they say around here 'we can use the rain'.

I forgot to mention one of the star attractions at the Madonna Inn where we spent our Anniversary weekend recently: the heated toilet seat. The toilet did other things as well but we only indulged in the heated seat. Ain't technology grand!

Postscript: I just read in the paper this morning that in order to save money people are now...are you ready for it?...shoveling their own snow and cutting their own grass!! I have no doubt why this country is in such trouble and it has very little to do with greedy bankers and unscrupulous stockbrokers. The people need to look into a mirror to see who is at the root of the country's woes.