Blogging from San Francisco! Just got to our hotel. Here's photos from our trek to the hotel (we flew into San Jose and took the scenic coastal route):

Ok, count me as totally befuddled. Got this in the mail today:


Umm, aside from not knowing why Tones' name is on mail arriving at our house, I don't think he's into hunting or fishing. :?

Today's garden haul:
I'll be making refrigerator pickles using the pickling cucumbers off to the left. The zucchini are marinating right now and will be part of kabobs on the grill tonight. On the right is another mystery plant. It's in the area where I planted cucumbers and melons, but after some Googling, it seems that it's a different zucchini-type summer squash. My seed packet must have had some not-as-labeled seeds. I'm not really in the mood for more squash, but am sort of curious if it has a flavr, so I'll cook it up with tomorrow's dinner.

Blackie has been a pain in the butt lately. I was hoping that he would gradually gain my trust, especially since he's made the connection that I control the food. But no, he just lounges on the back patio all day, moaning and whining for no apparent reason. Here's a video of the two of us singing a duet:



So our Wii Fit has quite the nerve! Since Ryan doesn't work out regularly on it but I do, it asked if I'd seen him and whether he looked lighter, heavier, or the same. I chose 'the same.' Then it said:


Ha!

Next installment!

I was just getting to our recent purchases (meaning, yes, PURCHASES, as opposed to all the stuff I get for free/ridiculously cheap, although of course we still tried to get the best deals).

We got a Wii Fit! It was very difficult to find one, as they're still super in demand. Here's Ryan doing yoga on it:

For the record, he tried a few yoga poses once and never did them again. He mainly plays the skiing game. I've been trying to work out on it 5 or so times per week, including yoga, strength training, aerobics, and the balance games. Like most video games, the first week or two I was totally hooked. Now it's a little harder to get myself to do it, but it is more fun than regular exercise nonetheless.

We also got a new laptop to replace Ryan's (5 years old, screen often blacks out). It's another Dell, basically a newer version of mine but with a standard screen instead of my widescreen. And it's blue, too!

We also (a month or so ago) got a china cabinet to house all our wedding booty. It looks waaaay nicer than the rest of our living/dining room furniture:
It's a Rick James china cabinet, because every time I pay attention to it, I think to myself, "I'm rich, bitch!"

Then something we didn't buy, but got as a late wedding present was a hammock. Here it is hung up:

The best part is that Jib likes to jump up in with us! He's done it 3 times so far, and each time he hangs out for 10 minutes or so. What a sweetie pie!
Not sure what caused the camera to put that line in, but that's the only picture with it. Ok, that sums up all the new stuff!

So, the schoolwork. Ugh. I think tomorrow I will be finished the first of the three papers I have to write. Truth be told, I ended up writing considerably more than I had to and will now have to axe some to fit in the page limit. So hopefully with the others I will have a better feel for how much to write, then won't have to cut out what it took me so long to write. It's been a really slow process, though. For one, I can't force myself to work more than 4 hours a day when I have no official deadline (but no, still don't want a deadline!). And secondly, it's a lot of ground to cover for each paper (which is the point, they want me to be well-educated or something. durrr...). Hoepfully I will get the second done before school starts...but realistically...hmmm...

Did I mention we're going to San Francisco for five nights in a couple weeks? Don't think I did. We're visiting Ryan's brother and seeing the sights. Should be fun, but also less time to work on my papers.

And I believe the last subject on the table of contents was wheeling and dealing. It's been going well, of course, and takes up most of my free time because I'm ADDICTED! We spent about $160 on food last month, which isn't too shabby. There's a town flea market in September and I'm going to get a table and sell some of my drugstore stuff- I figure I can make a couple hundred dollars easily. It should more than pay for the gas I use driving all over down searching for deals!

Since Christ asked about how I do so well at the grocery store, I thought I'd put together a mini-tutorial on how to "coupon." It's really quite simple on the surface, but can take a lot of time to really get into.

1. Amass coupons. Lots of them. The Sunday paper is a good start. Keep your eyes open for coupons being offered ANYWHERE. And get multiples; 10 free boxes of cereal are better than one!
Amassing all these coupons has Choco plum tuckered-out. I told you it was hard work!

2. Organize your coupons. Don't throw any away! Even if you don't use a product normally, what if you got paid to take it? I have!

3. Replace your Glamour, Cosmo, Harry Potter, or whatever it is you read with your local store flyers. Get to know the regular prices for stuff, typical sale prices for stuff, and rock-bottom prices for stuff. Also get to know the stores' coupon policies: many stores double small-value coupons, so your 50 cent off will turn into a dollar off! A couple of my stores occasionally have triple-coupon weeks, aka HEAVEN!

4. Combine incentives. The most common way I save money is buying at rock-bottom sale prices when I have coupons. You can only use one manufacturer's coupon per item, but can combine a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on the same item.

Incentives you can double- or triple-dip on (aka, you can do them all at once and get a great deal or turn a profit):
manufacturer's coupons
store coupons (usually in the weekly ad)
mail-in rebates (offered by specific companies or by the store)
online rebates (Walgreeens, Rite Aid do these)
instant rebates: CVS Extra Care bucks
"Catalina" offers: ever have the cashier hand you a coupon printed on receipt-type paper that spit out of a little machine next to the cash register? It's called a Catalina machine. What it prints is triggered by your purchase. Often stores have deals such as, "Buy $20 Proctor & Gamble items and get $5 off your next purchase!" So you buy the stuff ($20 before coupons, less after) and get a store coupon that's good for $5 of pretty much anything at the store.

You really have to be the sort of person who enjoys the thrill of the hunt, but I sure do!

1. Talk about major blog slacking! Oy, it's August already! I feel like there's so much to cover that I'll need to make an outline.

1. Introduction (above)
2. Garden
A. Written update
B. Pictures
3. Kitties
A. Residents
B. Ferals
4. Rachel and Don's Wedding
5. Recent purchases
A. Wii Fit
B. Laptop
6. Schoolwork
A. Slowness
B. Boringness
C. Suckiness
7. Wheeling and Dealing
A. Bragging
B. Tutorial
8. Conclusion

2. Garden
A. We've been continuing to get enough veggies to cover side dishes for dinners (and since we eat leftovers for lunch, lunches as well). It's pretty much exactly how much food we need that's been ready to harvest. I think we only bought veggies at the store 3 times during July, and mainly just because we wanted more variety. Come September/October, traditional "harvest time," I'm expecting at least a month's worth of veggies to store in the freezer/basement.

B. Onto the pictures. I didn't take pictures of everything, just highlights.
This is where the broccoli used to be. In the front are cucumbers, which are just starting to blossom, meaning cukes in a week or two. Behind them are the corn, which should be mature in early September.
Potatoes starting to sprout. They're where the snap peas used to be. Following the success of my first round of potatoes (very tasty, good yields), I planted a lot more. We'll have plenty of potatoes for late September through November, maybe even enough to store into December if we're lucky. Nice thing about potatoes is they cover a second side dish ("carbs") for meals.
Itty bitty watermelon! It's about the size of a walnut right now. Yes, watermelon, like many squash, cukes, etc, has a vining habit, so I directed it up the fence to save space. When the melon gets bigger I'll have to harness it to the fence so it doesn't rip off under its own weight. I'm really excited about it, because it's fruit instead of veggie.

The beast. It's still adding 6" per day to each of its vines. Craaaazy! A close-up of the squash (these four just happened to grow right next to each other, the rest of the plant is not nearly as prolific) is below. The plant they're on top of is sage that I started from seed in early spring.
We've had some of these with dinner a couple times. They taste just like normal yellow summer squash, even though they aren't as big and have that funny green bottom. I've nicknamed them "grenade squash" because of their size and shape.

Lastly, not only have I not managed to kill the big houseplant (I have way worse luck with houseplants versus outdoor plants), but it has its first flower! And that concludes the garden update.

3. Kitties
A. Residents. Well, Jib, Choco, and Grem are happy and cute. They spend a couple hours outside each day lounging in the shade and watching squirrels and birds. Not much new here.

B. Ferals. So, I'm now feeding six cats off the porch! And four of them are the WIDDLE KITTENS! They're super shy and skittish and will run away if they see a person (hence, no pics), but we've been able to spy on them out the window while they're eating. I'm still hoping to catch them and get them fixed, but since they're so skittish and fast runners, I'll have to devise some sort of trap. We've named them Lil' Blackie (black coat), Lil' Whitie (mostly white coat), Bitey (hogs the food and gets aggressive when its siblings try to get some), and Almost Caught (needs a new name, but I actually got my hands on this one and it managed to wriggle free). Their mom also feeds with them ("Mama Cat"), and she's got a black coat as well. She's almost as skittish as they are.

The sixth cat is Blackie, and he is the cat that I mentioned had been almost getting into fights with our cats. And it's definitely a He, he's got a big set of harbls. He and our kitties are getting along better- he still doesn't like it and starts to howl when they get too close- but they can lie down on opposite sides of the patio and coexist. I don't have to worry about them fighting if I leave them unsupervised anymore. He actually lets me get a few feet away from him when I'm refilling the food bowl, but runs away if I try to get closer. Here he is (he really likes our patio furniture):

4. Rachel and Don's Wedding
We went up to the good 'ol Hudson Valley for Rachel and Don's wedding last weekend. Jen was the only other person we knew there, so we did a lot of talking to her (hi, Jen!). The ceremony was held by a lake and was even shorter than ours, which I thought was pretty short itself:

I did think that our officiant was much sexier than theirs, though (hee hee). The reception was up the hill in a big open-air pavilion that had a nice casual feel to it. Here's me and the bride:
For fun, here's us roughly two months before:

The newlyweds.

They had the BEST Best Man speech ever. He wore a mask and tore open his shirt to reveal his "Best Man" superhero undershirt, then had a superhero theme (Don is big on superheroes). He also told about his role in getting them together, which was cute. There were a lot of funny anecdotes, too. And later he danced with his (very bulky) dog:

Ok, so this entry is taking for-freakin-ever. I will spread your enjoyment over two days and stop here, then pick up later this weekend. Ta ta.