Shopping Maniac

Great products, Bargains and gift ideas


You are here: Home / Archives for House and Home

What’s with all the furnace care companies offering their services this week

by

I think the home service companies are having a little customer war in my area of Toronto.

This week along I’ve received letters from three different companies asking me to switch from my current furnace maintenance company to their company. Of course their offering deals for the first year, but then their prices revert back to normal in the second year and well … that’s higher than what I’m paying now, so uh … I think I’ll stick with my current company.

It’s just odd that I got three of these letters from different companies all in the same week.

A few weeks ago something like this happened with companies calling us on the telephone and offering cheap auto insurance quotes. I guess these things happen in cycles.

Do you ever get mail or phone calls from similar companies around the same time?

Worried about an elderly neighbor

by

I’m starting to get worried about one of my elderly neighbors. She’s in her late 80’s and over the last couple of years it’s become obvious that her memory is going.

She lives with her son, but he works in the evening and often doesn’t come home until Midnight or the early morning hours. Her daughter lives in the city and visits at least twice a week, but given her mothers condition I think her daughter could possibly be visiting a little more often.

So … since our neighbor is alone quite a bit she tends to turn to my husband and I for company and for help when she can’t do something. She calls us when she hears noises in the house next door … The house between our two homes is empty at the moment, the new neighbors bought it about 4 months ago, but they are renovating sporadically and haven’t moved in yet so it’s mostly empty … but I guess any little noise next door gets our elderly neighbor wondering if it’s the new neighbors or if someone is breaking in.

Also … she sometimes forgets that new people own the house next door and repeatedly asks if they are nice people and so on.

According to our neighbors son and daughter she’s been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s and she’s taking quite a few medications to help slow the progress of the disease. She’s also taking a supplement called acetyl l-carnitine to help her memory as well.

I’m a nurse and I don’t think her memory and or early Alzheimer’s is all that bad, especially considering that she’s in her late 80’s, but her family is becoming concerned enough that they’re considering putting her in a nursing home. I feel bad for my elderly neighbor, but I also kind of understand her childrens concerns.

My guess is that we’ll have another new neighbor a year from now – even if our elderly neighbor is still alive. She’ll either be living in a nursing home or with her daughter and her son will likely sell the house if his mom is no longer living in the house. That’s my best guess. Our neighborhood keeps changing … especially the houses closest to us. Sigh.

Bargain hunting

by

I just got back from a shopping trip … or should I say spree.

You know, for someone with almost no extra money to spare it sure seems like I’m out shopping a lot lately! I think it’s mostly because I’m bargain hunting and stocking up for the month ahead. Honestly.

The weekly flyers were delivered to our house earlier today and I noticed that M & M Meats had some of our favorite food items on sale for half price so off I went.

We’re on such a tight budget though that I have to admit that each time the barcode scanner passed over an item I cringed a little bit. Luckily the bill wasn’t all that much and we have some tasty food to eat over the next month or so thanks to the great sale.

Do you shop around for bargains? Food, clothes or otherwise? Obviously I do, but if I have to drive for an hour to buy a few sale items it’s not really worth the gas and my time – unless it’s a massive deal. I search for deals that are nearby in most case – at least for every day items and I search further out for big ticket items.

Woman freaks out in Walmart over coupon

by

My husband and I were out shopping this afternoon at Walmart and this woman totally freaked out in the checkout line over a coupon.

I guess she was purchasing flavored creamers and there was a coupon loosely attached to the top of it that said buy one and get the second one free. Well, since it was a two pack that she was buying I guess she thought she’d get it for half price or something.

I wasn’t listening to the whole flare up, but that’s what I think was going on.

What it seems really happened was that the coupon was for some other product or maybe for a single flavored creamer so the cashier told the woman that the coupon couldn’t be applied.

The woman started freaking out and demanded to talk to the manager. Then she started pounding on the item conveyor belt and slamming her grocery cart around. Then she started yelling at the cashier because she was packing the woman’s’ items in plastic bags when the woman had said “no” to the bags when asked.

My husband and I felt really bad for the cashier. She was just doing her job. It’s not her fault if someone put a coupon for another product on the double creamers, plus she did call for her manager like the woman had asked. Oh and the woman’s husband and young son were just standing there while all this was going on. I wonder how often they have to go through this with this woman?

We had been at a cash right beside the woman who was freaking out, and when we finished paying for our items the manager came along and she actually took us aside to ask us what we’d witnessed. I guess it’s not every day that a woman freaks out to the degree that this one did – I think she actually damaged the cash conveyor belt area. We went into this room that had what looked like Industrial computers and she took a statement from us. I wonder if we’ll be contacted about what we witnessed sometime in the future?

I don’t know about you but I hate seeing people loose it like that in public. Especially when it’s over something so trivial as a coupon. What was the woman going to save anyway? 25 cents?

Long Weekend Plans?

by

I was just talking to my sister in law on the phone. She was making one last ditch attempt to get us to come up to their “cottage” for the long weekend.

They bought a new RV trailer last year. I think it sleeps six people quite comfortably and now – every long weekend – they call wanting us to come for a visit.

If it were closer I’m sure we’d go more often, but from Toronto it takes about four hours to drive there and that’s not including the likelihood of getting stuck in slow moving traffic on the way in and out of the city so make that more like 6 hours.

She was also telling me that they have their rv insurance all paid off for the year so she’s happy about that. No more bills other than utility bills for their RV for the rest of the year.

Anyway … we can’t go away to her cottage this weekend. She had forgotten that her (and my husbands) nephew and niece are flying in this evening from Chicago for the weekend. The kids are doing their own thing in the city but we’re picking them up at the airport in an hour and we’ll be getting together with them for lunch or dinner at least once. So that nixes going out of town.

What are your plans for the long weekend?

Meta

Pages