2008 October | The Ramblings of Jenn Shuey

October 27th, 2008

Birthday Shopping

Whew. I got the bathroom mess taken care of, and believe me it was a horrible mess. I washed each load of towels twice because just the thought of those towels being soaked in toilet water freaked me out. I scrubbed the bathroom down twice as well.

We didn’t make it to Home Depot to get a new toilet, so for now I told Hubby to just turn the water off on it, then we can turn it on when we need to use it. We’ve been running around doing so much over the last few weeks that we never make it to the store when we need to.

Hubby said he’s going to definitely set aside time to go shopping without me one day this week. He has to get birthday presents for his dad, sister, and of course ME! He figured out a long time ago not to buy my present early and try to hide it. I always find it, on accident. For awhile he didn’t try to keep my presents a secret. He’d just take me to the store and tell me to pick something out because he can’t keep a secret.

That’s mainly because he always buys me the one thing I talk about the most. This year he’s asked me to make a list of a few things I want, so I know I’ll be getting something off the list but I won’t know exactly what. If I don’t give him the list he’s going to buy me some sexy lingerie and be done with it. I told him I have enough lingerie as it is, so I better get to making that list.

Maybe I should put “toilet” on the list and see if he actually buys one!

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October 26th, 2008

Big Stinky Mess

What a weekend this has been! We spent most of the weekend doing funeral stuff because the father of Hubby’s best friend passed away. It’s definitely a sad time, and we lost a wonderful man. We spent Friday night at the funeral home, then yesterday between the funeral and the family’s home. Both nights it was well into the late night when we finally made it back home, and Friday night we came home to a huge mess.

When it rains really hard our septic line gets backed up. We can thank the old irrigation line style sewer pipes for that. The line backs up, and we can’t flush the toilet without it overflowing. It only happens once every few months, and we’ve learned how to work around it, but not this time.

There’s apparently a slow leak in the toilet’s tank. That explains why I’ve thought I’ve heard the toilet running a few times at night, and why our water bill has been so high. When the toilet got backed up this time we weren’t home using it, but the tank was slowly releasing extra water that had no where to go. We came home to a flood out bathroom.

I was up ’til 3am Friday night cleaning up the mess, and I didn’t get even half the soaking wet towels washed. After we took our showers Saturday morning we tossed them all in the tub because we knew we wouldn’t have time to do anything about it yesterday. In my book a funeral trumps soggy wet towels. I can buy new towels.

Today is D-day for towel washing. I’m just waiting on my coffee to kick in so I have enough energy to finish cleaning this mess up. Right now we’ve got the water turned off on the toilet, and we’re only turning it on when we need it. Later this afternoon we’re going to head to Home Depot to pick up a new toilet, and I think I’ll check out some faucets while we’re there. I’ve been trying to convince Hubby to install a new faucet in the bathroom, and now might be my chance. He’ll get it done if we do it all at once. If not, I’ll be waiting months for him to decide he wants to do it.

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October 22nd, 2008

Calculate Your Cost To Drive

Here’s a cool site some of you may want to check out. The site is called Cost To Drive, and it tells you just that. You enter your starting city and your final destination along with some very simple info about your car…the year, make, and model. Then the website “galculates” how much it’s going to cost you to make your trip.

This could definitely come in handy with the holiday season approaching. A lot of people will be traveling to visit family and friends, and in some cases you may not know whether it will be cheaper to drive or fly. Before you settle on thinking flying may be cheaper, check out Cost To Drive. You may be surprised to see how much it will really cost you to buy the gas to get there!

I tested it out by choosing my starting location as my hometown and my end location as Edisto Island, SC. Since we went to Edisto last month I know exactly how much we spent on gas. Gas prices were about the same price then as they are now, around $2.30-$2.65 depending on the gas station.

We spent about $75, and Cost To Drive calculated 15.6 gallons and $35.77 each way @ $2.30 a gallon for a round trip total of $71.54. Clicking on the “How did we get these numbers?” button tells me my Blazer should be getting 19mpg which is exactly what I get with interstate driving. Around town we get from 15-17mpg, so I’d have to say this little tool is pretty accurate.

*Edit*

I decided to use this little tool to check out something else, how much my daily trips to town, etc, cost. Hubby and I signed up for Netflix because we figured it would be much cheaper than driving to the video store to pick up a video and return it even if we’re only renting 1-2 DVDs a month. Turns out we were right.

The closest video store is about 20 miles away, so we’re using right at 1.1 gallons of gas just to drive to the store. Round trip just to drive there, rent the video, and return home is costing us $5.74. Factor in that it’s $3.99 to rent a video, and that’s $9.73. Then returning the video to the store costs another $5.74 bumping the total to $15.47. My $8.99/month Netflix account is paid for in 1 DVD Rental with savings already going into my pocket!

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