THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

Well it’s been awhile since I posted, but I thought I would let everyone know about my very hard week that I’m going to have at work the rest of the week. It’s veeerrrry difficult. First, today (Wednesday) I have a free 10 minute massage in the morning. Then an ice cream social at 3 pm. Tomorrow I have a team fun day with a picnic and cornhole and such for lunch. Then on Friday we have a department-wide lunch to celebrate last year’s recycle challenge (I know, we’re slow). Since our team won the challenge, we get steaks for lunch. Then the CIO said we could leave work an hour early on Friday to start celebrating the holiday weekend.

Everyone take pity on me for having to work my fingers to the bone this week!

Happy Father’s Day to all those fathers out there!!! I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes, and certainly my favorite Father’s Day quote:

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It should have great meaning that of all the titles of respect and honor and admiration that could be given him, that God himself, he who is the highest of all, chose to be addressed simply as “Father”

–A. Theodore Tuttle
LDS General Conference Oct. 1973

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Quick recap of my super double coupons week last week at Meijer. My goal was $1000 of groceries for no money, and I am sorry to report that I failed on both counts. Still, I had a pretty good week, with $871.16 of groceries for $2.54. I was negative for most of the week, but I messed up a couple of things on Saturday that caused me to pay for some stuff. All in all a good week. What I bought can be broken down in a few categories:

Stuff I had to buy with no coupons ($23.92):

• 1 dozen eggs
• .71 lb tomatoes
• 1 lb strawberries
• 1.96 lb peaches
• 1 bottle of astringent
• 4 gallons of milk
• Also $10.44 of sales tax

Stuff I had coupons for, but still had to pay a bit for ($10.80)

• 9 Nexcare bandages
• 8 boxes of Huggies wipes
• 6 boxes of Tyson chicken nuggets
• 9 Crest Toothpaste

Stuff I got for free (not including tax)

• 40 cans of Red Gold Tomatoes
• 20 Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner
• 19 Fantastik Cleaner (this should have been 20 – I might have miscounted)
• 13 Dannon 4-packs of yogurt
• 12 Mott’s applesauce
• 11 Ban Deodorant
• 8 Bisquick 96 oz
• 8 Cinnamon Toast Crunch
• 8 Golden Grahams
• 4 Aunt Jemima French Toast
• 4 Cheerios
• 4 Lucky Charms
• 2 Ken’s Ranch Salad Dressing
• 2 Nature Valley Granola Bar
• 2 Pillsbury Strudel
• 1 Bic Shaver 4-pack

Stuff I got paid to take (-$32.18):

• 10 Open Pit BBQ Sauce (made $4.85)
• 12 Sargento Bistro Cheese ($3.96)
• 10 Chi-Chi’s Fiesta Dips ($3.55)
• 10 Krusteaz Low Carb Brownie mix ($3.31) – these are not very good
• 5 Choice Protein bar 4-pack ($3.05)
• 4 Colgate Toothbrushes ($2.13)
• 4 Speed Stick 24/7 deodorant ($2.04)
• 8 Peanut Butter Crunch Cereal ($2.00)
• 10 Land O Lakes Spread ($1.55)
• 40 Martha White Pizza Crust ($1.48)
• 30 Suave Conditioner ($1.40)
• 20 Old El Paso Dinner Kits ($1.11)
• 20 Suave Shampoo ($0.75)
• 1 Revlon Nail Clipper ($0.51)
• 1 Cascade Dish Detergent ($0.21)
• 19 Purell Hand Sanitizer ($0.19)
• 2 White Rain Shampoo ($0.08)
• 1 Mt. Olive Peppers ($0.01)

Well, it’s just about midway through the week so I thought I’d post for a super double coupons update at Meijer. Unfortunately most of my records are elsewhere, but I think I can give you an estimate. About $420 of stuff for about negative $4. So, given that I should have some more coupons coming in the mail over the next few days, my goal of $1000 this week certainly looks doable.

Some of the deals I’ve gotten:

Chi Chis Fiesta Dip – this stuff is hardly usable by us and didn’t sell well at the garage sale, but if Meijer wants to continue to pay me 35 cents per container, I will continue to “buy” them.

Open Pit BBQ Sauce – I still had one raincheck for 99 cents left over, so combined with the 55/1 blinkies at Kroger, they’re better than the free I’ve been getting them at Kroger for, not to mention they also give out .75 per 2 bought in Meijer Fuel rewards.

GM Cereal is on sale for $1.75, so with $1/1 peelies, they’re free, plus there are other peelies for buy 2 of assorted kinds, get a free something else (Bisquick, Toaster Strudel or Nature Valley Granola bars, depending on if you’re buying Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms or Cheerios). The Bisquick seems to be the best deal – oddly enough this coupon says it’s good for a free box of Bisquick 40 oz or MORE (whereas I’d expect it to say 40 oz or less) – so I got the 96 oz box that retails for $6.29, natch.

I was able to pricematch Speed Stick deodorant that is on sale for 99 cents at CVS. Coupled with .75/1 coupons that was good overage. Meijer has a policy where they price match “general merchandise” but not food. I wasn’t sure if they’d price match deodorant or not, but they did. I even had a snappy comeback (“how does it taste?”) if they were going to tell me it was classified as grocery, but I didn’t get to use it . Tragically my good cashier (that I’ve been to before and who is coincidentally also LDS) told me that she is leaving Meijer in a week and moving to Salt Lake City and getting married though perhaps not necessarily in that order. So I guess I’ll have to train a new cashier…

Another thing of note – Meijer has some sort of deal with NASCAR and the GM Cereal this week – it’s in the ad. They also sponsor some races down at the Kentucky Speedway. So 3 times so far this week I’ve gotten printouts for 2 free tickets to some NASCAR race. Since I have little to no desire to go to the race, I put them up on eBay – not bad huh? (no crank bids please!)

I will post more later in the week and/or give a full recap at the end of the week.

Well it’s that time again – Super Double coupons at Meijer. I actually missed it in my first run through of the ad yesterday morning. I went through the whole ad – noted a few deals, and then when I got to the end I thought hey I didn’t check for super doubles – so I flipped back to page 1 and there it was. It’s actually only been 8 weeks since the last one, when before I think they were doing it every 10 weeks. That would make the next one the first week of August, which would be annoying for any 7/31 expiring coupons.

My goals for this week are $1000 of food and stuff for free. Last time it was $700 for $100, which I demolished. $1000 may be a bit optimistic, but we’ll see.

I made my first trips at lunch.

I ended up with $95.16 of stuff for 15 cents, combined on 2 separate orders. It actually was $2.15 but they missed one of my coupons, so I’ll have to go back to the service desk to get my 2 bucks.

Carolyn and I tuned into Discovery Channel’s 100 Greatest Americans show this Sunday. Joseph Smith was listed as one of the top 100, so we were interested in seeing where he ended up.

To start off, there were some pretty questionable entries – John Edwards at #98? Football player Brett Favre? Dr. Phil?

Anyway, JS ended up at #43. The little segment on him was pretty crappy. Lots of talk about polygamy, and not to mention that they called the Church “The Church of Latter Day Saints” sheesh.

I was looking at some of the message boards on discovery.com, and there was lots of back and forth between antis and pro-LDS folks. I just thought that was somewhat interesting, and in some ways a testament to his greatness. Kind of like Moroni’s quote about his name being had for good and evil. Also saw a quote that is somewhat similar, from Josiah Quincy, who was the mayor of Boston in the mid 1800s

“It is by no means improbable that some future textbook, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants.”