And another thing . . .

I forgot to tell you we bought a DVD/VCR combo player last Sunday. We had gone to Blockbuster Saturday night to find a movie to rent and ended up with a VHS tape and 2 DVDs. We can use Simon's PlayStation 2 as a DVD player but he's been using it a lot and it's not all that convenient. We knew the time would come when we'd buy a DVD player and after seeing how many DVDs there are to rent and how few VHS tapes, we decided to take the plunge. I'd seen DVD players in the paper for about $66, which is what we intended to buy and keep our existing VCR set up there too. But we saw the combination player at a good price so decided to go for it. We'll put the old VCR in Lizz's room. (I'm embarrassed to tell you we have 7 TV/VCR/cable hook-up in our house. Only the living room, kitchen and bathrooms are lacking. So far.)

Oh - and we ended up with a tape and 2 DVDs because a Blockbuster employee was walking around handing out coupons. I saw later on the receipt we saved a whopping 48 cents. I didn't pay much attention to the actual value of the coupon in the store because I was too busy having a minor meltdown. I was hot and cranky and couldn't find anything worth viewing. At this point my eyes glazed over and I told Steve to just pick something, pretty much.

Then I stood in the wrong place for the common line that feeds to the different cashiers. Another customer pointed me in the right direction, which prompted Steve and I to make "addled old people" jokes about ourselves. First we can't find any movies we like, then they are all these new fangled, what do you call them - DVDs? I told him I was probably this close to driving down the road with my raincoat belt hanging out the door dragging along the ground.

We ended up with "Fallen" with Denzel, which was pretty okay. I didn't realize it had to do with supernatural, a genre that's not my favorite. We also watched "View from Above" with Gwyneth Paltrow. It was a silly comedy, which we hardly ever watch, but it was enjoyable. And I managed to stay up for all of "Panic Room" last night - until midnight. Me!

The best part about owning a DVD player is now we can sign up for Netflix - and so I did. For $20/month you can rent, three at a time, DVDs and keep them as long as you want. Shipping is free both ways. You build a queue on their website and as soon as one DVD is returned (in mailers they provide), they ship the next one out. You can have up to 500 movies in your queue. We have 16 - but first up is where we left off with The Sopranos series. Steve picked all sports movies, some of which I want to see too and I picked Stefani movies and interspersed them with his in the queue. (Your selections are numbered and you can change the order.) I think this is the best thing going and their site is very user friendly. And just in time for the summer rerun season. We're excited.

Time to tidy up the desk and studio, finish making the turkey noodle soup and get to bed early. I really could use a week off to get caught up. At least this Wednesday afternoon should be pretty productive. There's a garage door guy coming to look at our hell hole of a garage door - to give us an estimate. I don't even mind that much that it looks like shit, but it works like shit too. I have no idea how much these things cost but I'm trying to prepare for sticker shock now.

Dinner: Reruns of last night's dinner: pizza, wings and some chicken salad I made with leftover grilled chicken breasts.

Listening to in the car: The Beardstown Ladies' Guide to Smart Spending for Big Savings: How to Save for a Rainy Day Without Sacrificing Your Lifestyle by Beardstown Ladies' Investment Club, Robin Dellabough, Beardstown Ladies. I loved one of the very first things I heard. This is not about clipping coupons and saving pennies, this is about saving $1000 on a car, for instance. I'm a mediocre coupon clipper but I've been thinking about giving it up again. The negativity of the time-consuming-ness of it outweighs the couple of dollars I save per trip. The scale has been tipping towards giving it up for a month or so and that one sentence I heard in that creaky old lady's voice was enough to convince me. Update: I'm having trouble going coupon-less cold turkey! I cut a couple out of the Sunday flyers today. How weird is that?