Musings on Life and Living

The other day I was talking on Facebook about my hilarious adventures in looking for part-time summer work, most notably the fake job interview I went to in the morning. I guess it would be more accurate to describe it as a non-existent interview for a most-likely fake job, but whatever. In the course of the discussion, a dear family friend suggested I go into business for myself doing cleaning. I apparently never told her or her husband about the cleaning business that Gretch and I had owned for a year, run for about six months longer than that, and worked for for the course of three years total. I explained that, having been there and done that, I was never going to do it again. My father-in-law was surprised by my determination to never again own a cleaning business, particularly since I had seemingly enjoyed it when I did. Here's the thing: I did enjoy being a small business owner. I did enjoy having a cleaning business. Despite the headaches, the heartaches, the stress, ...

Last night (Friday), Gretch and I went to one of our local County Market grocery stores with two other couples with whom we are good friends to attend a seminar on couponing. Now, to some of the older readers of our blog, this probably sounds like a silly thing to do on a Friday night. After all, what is there to learn about coupons? I remember a time in my life when my sister and I would sit with our mum on the living room floor, each armed with a pair of scissors, and spent an hour or so clipping coupons. This was a labour-intensive task because, with several paper carriers in the family, we had access to many newspapers every day, including the coupon-laden Sunday edition. So clipping coupons was a big deal. And yet, I really don't have many recollections of seeing Mum use the coupons when we went shopping (and we did go shopping with her quite often). It may have been because we seemed to do a large bulk of our grocery shopping at either Sam's Club or Aldi, neither of whi...