THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

So, we didn’t get rid of our TV for the monetary savings, but since we have no TV, it seems kind of silly to pay for cable :-).

I called Time Warner yesterday, and it took awhile, but we were finally able to get things going. When I called initially, I told them that I wanted to cancel both my cable and my Roadrunner (high speed Internet). My thinking was that I would let them “convince” me to keep the RoadRunner at a discounted price. Luckily, they didn’t realize what a sad, sad bluff my cancelling the RoadRunner was. I had looked at Zoomtown a bit, but eventually decided I wanted to stay with RoadRunner.

Anyways, the guy cancelled the cable, and he offered $29.95 for 6 months for RoadRunner (regular price is $44.95). I asked if he would do 12 months at the lower price, since that’s the offer that Zoomtown has. He said he couldn’t do that, but maybe Customer Service could. He transferred me there, and after forever on hold, I got them. They said they couldn’t do that but Sales should be able to. They transferred me there, but then the call dropped. So I called back, and Sales couldn’t do it, but they transferred me to someone that they “knew could do that”. That ended up being the Retention department. The lady I spoke to there said that they could only do 6 months, but that after the promotional time was up, I should just call back and they’d be more than happy to give whatever promotional price they had then, or extend this current deal if that was the one that they had then. She said they do that all the time. I guess they’re the nice guys of the bland corporate giant of Time Warner. I had actually read about doing this to lower cable prices before on the various deal-saving message boards I frequent, but had never gotten around to doing it. It was actually very easy - I highly recommend it. Just call and say you’re going to cancel and then ask to speak to the Retention department. Our bill went for $95.17 to $29.99 + tax, a savings of about $60 a month.

In other money news, I was in a team meeting at work yesterday. We have a new high end brand of sunglass store coming out, and my boss mentioned that in that store there would be a $10,000 pair of sunglasses. Which is just insane. So I got to thinking, and if you take my net paychecks, which is what I bring home after taxes, insurance, savings, etc. and take out 10% tithing and our monthly mortgage payment, our family of 6 LIVES on about $10,000 for AN ENTIRE YEAR! Madness. Obviously some major expenses are not included in that 10K, but it does include clothes, food, all utility bills, entertainment, property taxes, house and car insurance, as well as other incidentals. And I don’t even really feel like we live spartan or without fun things. We have (some) nice things, we live in a nice area, we save, and we even go out to eat occasionally. But we just are smart about it. Any dollar spent on something is a dollar that can’t be spent somewhere else. We went out on Monday night to El Picante for a “No TV party”. I printed out a Buy 1 Dinner get 1 free coupon, and the total for our family of 6 was $9.56! I added a $5 tip since the bill was so low, the service was decent and the food was great. I browsed a book last time I was at Barnes and Noble called Half Price Living - it was just chapters on how to save 50% in every facet of your life. I didn’t get a chance to read it too much, but it looked interesting. And I certainly couldn’t pay full price for a book like that!

In other non-related news, the woman who was stalking me either has given up or is much more stealthy.

So, if you read my post from earlier today, you will know that we ran into this lady that works with me at Meijer, and then this morning, as I was pulling into work, she was crossing in the crosswalk in front of me from the parking lot into the building.

So that’s kind of odd but not that big of a deal. Still, enough that I thought it mentioned noting. So as I’m leaving work this afternoon, THIS SAME WOMAN IS LEAVING THE BUILDING IN THE SAME CROSSWALK. Literally exactly where I saw her this morning, except going the opposite direction.

So I’m not sure if I’m stalking her or if she’s stalking me?

The eyes are going well. I can pretty much see like I could before with glasses. My eyes are still healing and adjusting and that is normal, but overall I am extremely satisfied with how things are going. Actually I was talking to a guy at church yesterday and he said that when he had his eyes done, they actually reversed the numbers of his prescription for one of his eyes. So after the surgery, he could see perfectly in one eye and his other eye was worse. Eventually they fixed it, but just the same, I’m glad he didn’t tell me that before the surgery. Actually while I was laying on the surgery table I thought about that and I was going to have the doctor tell me what prescription he was doing, but they said it out loud amongst themselves and I heard it and recognized it as good numbers.

Also at church yesterday, one of the girls in my Sunday School class mentioned that her brother-in-law did Rubik’s Cube. His times are about 1:15 they said, so they were blown away when I said my record was like 35 seconds. Though after church I went back and looked, and actually my best time was 38.08 seconds, with a best average of 10 of 53.75 seconds. I saw him after church was over and started talking to him about it. He immediately got excited and started talking to me about what moves I did and such. His wife was there too and she immediately got the same glazed look that Carolyn always gets when I start talking about dumb stuff like this, so it sounds like I might have a Cube buddy. Carolyn says the true test will be to see if his cube is as beat up as mine is.

In weird coincidences, we were at Meijer on Saturday and in front of us in the checkout line was a woman who I was pretty sure worked at Lux. Then when I was driving in this morning, pulling into the parking lot, she was in the crosswalk! Wacky.

In other things I hope to remember, when I go into work early (7:15-7:30) I really need to remember to not go my usual way, as the traffic at Locust and Miami is just insane due to all the folks going to the high school.

I know that this has been kind of a mishmash of various things, but the final thing is that if you haven’t seen it over on Carolyn’s blog, we got rid of our TV last night. So if you don’t hear from us, it may be due to the kids having risen up and overthrown us and locked US in the basement.

So, as you may or may not already know, I’ve been wanting to get LASIK eye surgery for quite awhile. We put in some money into our flexible spending account this year for it, and Carolyn has been on me for awhile to call folks and get things going. I went in for a consultation this past Tuesday and scheduled my appointment for Thursday (yesterday). I was originally going to do it for this upcoming Thursday but I’m heading out of town next weekend so that wouldn’t have worked.

It all kind of went so fast, but it’s done. And ummm I can see! :-). The surgery itself was a little scary going into it but it really was pretty painless. I went in yesterday morning and sat in like a pre-operating room. An orderly type guy was telling me about the surgery and what to expect and all that. Then I went into the surgery room. Laid town on the table and they positioned the laser over my right eye first. They put some drops in which made my vision go dark (expected result). Then it cleared up and they told me to focus on a blinking red light, which I did. Then the laser started umm lasing? and it took maybe 20 seconds. Then they put some more drops in and moved the laser over to my left eye, where the process repeated. I was in the surgery room maybe 3-5 minutes or so. When I got up, my vision was hazy, which they said was normal, but I could definitely see some improvements, for instance I could read the clock across the room (it was hazy but still much better). They suggested I take a nap right away, so I did that (after I got home). I woke up around 1 or so and just kind of hung out for the rest of the day.

This morning it was very strange being able to see stuff. I took today off work also, though I probably could have gone in. Instead I went out shopping with Scott.

Anyways, I also had a follow up visit at the doctor this morning - they measured my vision and said everything is looking good. I could see 20/20, though it was 20/30 I think with my left eye. They said that is normal and that it will continue to get better as my eyes heal over the next few weeks.

I heartily recommend it!

So… it snowed last night. This winter has been unseasonably warm, to a crazy extreme. I mean we’ve had several January days in the 60s, and it’s only snowed once all winter, about 2-3 months ago.

It didn’t snow all that much - maybe 3-4 inches, but as we were getting ready for church this morning, we were wondering if it might be cancelled. Then about 8:15 we got 2 calls, saying that they were having church but just sacrament meeting. I’m not sure why that was - my feeling is that hey we’re all here anyways, might as well go all 3 hours. Anyways…

So after we got back home and ate and schtuff, the kids went out and played in the snow. I went out and shovelled the driveway - it was nice because it had warmed up and the snow just peeled off pretty much. Then we built a snowman in our yard, and then we made a snow fort in the neighbors’ yard.

Of course, a snow fort just begs a snowball fight… It was the neighbor kid (I think he’s 7 or so) vs. Scott and I. Of course, it did occur to me that it was a bit unfair that he got to hang out behind a giant snow fort that *I* had made while I was stuck in my “ghetto” fort which consisted of an upside down wheelbarrow stuck in the snow. I guess that makes up for my advantage of being bigger and smarter :-).

He did not show a very good grasp of military tactics by continually abandoning his fort to come into our yard (and get pelted by snowballs). Then again I guess he is only 7… There was one move that kept working which kept cracking me up. I wasn’t throwing the snowballs at him very hard (again, 7), so he would try and catch or knock down the snowballs I would throw. So I would lob one up with my left hand, and while he was looking at that one, nail him with another one from my right hand. Hee hee.

It was a lot of fun and Scott also said that he had a lot of fun.

It’s been awhile since I posted about some grocery adventures. To tell the truth, it’s been awhile since I’ve even DONE much grocery adventuring. I’m not sure if it’s just been a dearth of good deals, or just a lack of desire, or if it was my coupon book being stolen, or some combination of the 3, but I’ve paid full price for some things lately!!!! I know, I know, the horror! And the General Store has been dwindling too as we’ve eaten a lot of our surplus - it doesn’t look quite like this anymore. Though there is definitely that much teriyaki still

Anyways, we went to Meijer this morning, as we typically do. And while this deal was not quite up to Dan Miller standards, it was pretty good for recent activities.

The background: Kraft has a deal at Meijer where if you buy 6 Kraft items, you get a coupon for $4 off your next order. (You can also buy 4 for $2 or 5 for $3 but 6/$4 is the best deal). Additionally, I had picked up a bunch of $1/3 Kraft coupons at Kroger when I was there last.

Also, when I got there, I saw that Meijer was having a 2-day sale where if you bought $25 of stuff you got a $5 coupon off your next order. I figured that this was before coupons as these deals usually are. So naturally I figured to split up my order into $25 increments. I’m really surprised more people don’t do that in situations like this. Though I guess it does pay to be able to calculate $25 in your head

I ended up with 5 separate orders, whose totals (before coupons) were $26.01, $25.82, $28.70, $25.28, and $26.52. In addition to $89.27 of in-store savings (sale prices and such), my gross grocery total was $221.60.

So, taking $221.60, we subtract out the $89.27 of in-store savings (big winners were the Kraft Cheese being on sale for $1.67 and Dynamo at B1G2F). Then I got 5 $5 off coupons for next week (though it looks like I will annoyingly have to use them in 5 separate orders), 5 $4 off coupons from Kraft and 1 $1 Fuel reward from buying 4 pop-tarts (the fuel reward sheet says it’s supposedly only for the 12-ct, but I’ve found that certain flavors of the 8-ct - at least blueberry and brown sugar cinnamon will also give you a $1 Fuel Reward). Then there were 3 $3/5 Mueller Pasta coupons (though they only gave me up to the price of the 1/2 price pasta and even that I had to fight for, so $7.50), plus the 10 $1/3 Kraft coupons and a coupon that had spit out for me last week for a free hot pocket ($2.35), and topping it off was a $10 coupon for a transferred prescription that I had used to get some prenatal vitamins, and the net total was $56.48, for a savings of $165.12, or 74.5%.

A few notes - the Kraft was on sale for $1.67 (for 8 oz shredded). After my coupon, the 6/$4 deal, and considering it counts for 10/25 of $5 off (or $2) it makes my price $2 for 6 of them, or 33 cents a bag. A very good deal for shredded. American cheese slices were also on sale, but it was the 24 oz for $2.50, so I only bought 3 of those because we’re out.

Also, they have coupons for $10 off any new and transferred prescriptions on the back of their ad this week - I picked up a bunch to use in the upcoming weeks / months. It pays to keep transferring your prescriptions around, and pretty much all the places (Kroger, Meijer and CVS at least) will accept competitor’s pharmacy coupons.

So, along with various other Christmas presents, I’ve been playing myself some Madden NFL 2006 on my PS2. Now, I realize that nobody besides me cares about the rise and fall of my fantasy sports teams. And so I can imagine that the same would hold true for my Madden seasons. If not more so considering how these aren’t even REAL people. But nevertheless, this is my blog, so I’ll do what I want, thank you very much.

I started my franchise out as the Browns, of course, and on the “Pro” level, which was the default it came with. I went 18-1, destroying everything in my path, and easily won the Super Bowl. In the offseason, I created “Dan Miller” a 6′4″ 240 lb. (cough, cough) middle linebacker who of course has awesome stats and signed with the Browns. Naturally in one of the pre-season games, he breaks his upper arm and is out for the season. I also lose my QB and RB for 9 and 8 weeks respectively. This, combined with the fact I moved up to “All-Pro” has made this season a bit more challenging. There are a few problems, one of which being that, just like in real life, Charlie Frye sucks.

The chief problem however is that the kicking meter moves so fast I can’t reliably get any kicks going. I routinely shank extra points, field goals, punts, kickoffs, whatever. It’s very frustrating. Possibly even MORE annoying though is the fact that on kickoffs after I score, AFTER the kicking meter pops up and says “Press X to start the kickoff” or whatever, a recap graphic of the last drive pops up. This interrupts the kicking meter, and doesn’t let you finish the kick, causing you to boot a “0-accuracy” kick out of bounds, giving the other team awesome field position. Very annoying.

In other facets of the game, my passing is mediocre, my running game is pretty good, and my defense is amazing, and the only reason I’m not 0-16. There was one game, against the hated Bengals, that kind of typifies my season:

I manage to score 2 early TDs. Of course, since I earlier mentioned how much I suck at kicking, I missed both extra points. I know I should probably just go for 2 but I am trying to get better.
I lead 12-3 going into halftime. The Bengals have the ball deep in their own territory and with 1 second left, just hand the ball off to Rudi Johnson to run out the clock. Of course, instead he breaks it for a 75 yard TD.
I get the 2nd half kickoff and drive down for another score. I’m inside the 10, and throw a pass. But instead of it being caught for a score and me going up 19-10, it’s picked off and returned the other way to make it 16-12 (they went for 2 and did not make it).
Despite multiple opportunities, I cannot get anything else going offensively until I stop them again late after using all my timeouts. I string together a few good plays and am inside the 10 again. Because it’s 16-12 I can’t kick a FG (not that I’d make it anyways) but there’s only a few seconds left. Clock is running so I’m trying to spike the ball, but I hit the wrong button and instead call another play. Since I don’t know what play it was, I end up throwing the ball out of the endzone, and lose the game. Very annoying.

Other annoying games were a 0-0 tie in my other game with the Bengals, when I couldn’t get any offense going and missed a 30 yard FG as time ran out in OT, and a 7-6 loss to the Ravens when I missed the XP on my touchdown AND missed a 23 yard FG as time ran out (I considered going for it on 4th and goal from the 5 but wasn’t sure I could get in).

Anyway, that brings me to the question I wanted to pose with this post. After starting out the season 3-7-1, I’ve won 3 straight and now stand at 6-7-1. With 2 games left, the best I can finish is 8-7-1. There are 5 AFC teams already with at least 9 wins, so I’m fighting for the 6th and final playoff spot. Thare are 2 teams (Patriots and Ravens I think) that are 8-6 and 2 teams (Chiefs and Raiders?) that are 7-7. Obviously, I need the Pats and Ravens to lose their last 2 games for me to make the playoffs.

So, is it acceptable for me to (in addition to playing my games as the Browns) play the Patriots game? For example last game, the Patriots played the Jets. I didn’t want to just leave it up to the computer to decide who won, so I played it. But I don’t want to be “cheating”. I think it would be cheating if I played the game as the Patriots, and intentionally lost the game. That seems shady to me. But I played it as the Jets, so I still had to win the game (which I did, barely, because the Jets are even worse than the Browns!) So to me, because I still have to win the game. So in order for me to win the Super Bowl, I have to win 2 more games for the Browns, 2 games vs. the Ravens, 2 games vs. the Patriots, and 1 game vs. both the Chiefs and the Raiders. In addition to the 3 straight I already have won and the 4 playoff games, that’s 15 straight games. If I can do that, then I will crown myself Super Bowl champion! Of my pretend league! With made up players! go me!

I’ve been meaning to write a little post here for awhile, but it just keeps avoiding me. I have various things that I have wanted to mention, but I keep not posting. I’ve been meaning to save them somehow, so that I can post about them eventually, but I keep not doing that either. I’m not sure the best way to even do that, though maybe it’s just creating them as drafts in the Blogger interface.

Anyway, here’s a little recap of some of the things we’ve been doing the last couple of nights.

2 nights ago, I was going to watch the Boise State / Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl, but was convinced instead to watch our new Seinfeld Season 7 DVDs. They were good, of course. We have a lot of funny episodes. I was a bit bummed to wake up the next morning and find out that it was possibly one of the best games ever. Here’s a brief recap of what happened in the last 1:30 of regulation (and overtime)

• Oklahoma, down 28-20, throws a TD pass and then a 2 point conversion
• Then, on the next play, Boise throws an interception that is returned for a touchdown - 35-28 Oklahoma
• Boise gets the ball back, and on 4th and 18 from midfield throws a hook and ladder pass that goes for the tying touchdown.
• In overtime, Oklahoma busts out a 25 yard TD run
• Boise gets the ball back in overtime. Drives down to a 4th and goal at about the 3. They send the QB in motion left, directly snap it to the running back, who runs right and throws a halfback pass for the TD.
• Then, not to be outdone, instead of kicking the PAT to go to a 2nd overtime, they decide to go for 2. Fake pass right, then a Statue of Liberty play (kind of a behind the back handoff) to the running back going left, good, game over.

Here’s a Youtube video with those highlights. It does not include the proposal from said running back who scored the game winning conversion - he proposed to his girlfriend right after the game.

Sounds like a great game, though even had I started watching it, I’m sure I wouldn’t have stayed up to watch the whole game anyways - it probably didn’t end till midnight or so.

Anyways, a few nights ago, we watched another of our Christmas presents - The Other Side of Heaven. I thought it was a great movie, and I highly recommend it for Mormons and non-Mormons alike. One thing that I especially liked was that they were consistent to Elder Groberg actually being a Mormon missionary. Things like accurately depicting the baptismal prayer etc. Though the opening dance scene seemed a bit risque for BYU…

So, last night, we played the 24 board game that my m-i-l got me for Christmas. It was fun. Rather than competing against each other, we decided to just play together. The first time we tried the terrorists blew up Los Angeles. Unfortunately we did not get to see a nice picture of the nuclear bomb (which we were kind of hoping for). Still, Kiefer certainly let Agent Scapa (us) know how disappointed he was. Our major problem was trying to get the hospital scene right. A little Googling turned up that we were far from the only ones. After trying again, we were able to get through that scene and Agent Landy saved the day! There are still 2 more days to play too, plus “extended coverage”.

Anyway, that’s it from here!