Just The Two of Us

Questionable Terminology

Remember how I told you that Karen and I do some of our drugstore shopping together?  Well a couple of weeks ago we were at Walgreens, getting all of our free and cheap stuff for the week.  Now I have always had a habit of being really nice to cashiers - I used to be one back in high school, and I know what it's like.  Lately, I have discovered that this has an additional benefit - if you are using coupons, being super chatty and nice to a cashier greatly increases the odds that if the cash register beeps at one of your coupons (which is NOT a good thing), that cashier will continue chatting and override the "beep" for you.

Now don't get me wrong - I am not using expired coupons or anything else immoral or illegal.  Just sometimes, your coupons don't work exactly how they are supposed to.

So, we were chattin' it up with this young, male cashier.  Somehow we got on the topic of his recent car accident.

MALE CASHIER: "Oh!  My buddy injured his CERVIX!"

Karen and I didn't dare glance at each other, for fear we'd burst out laughing.

MALE CASHIER: "That's what it's called, right?  By the collarbone?  His CERVICAL bone?"

We may have mumbled a few things back to him. 

I will give it to him that it is easily confused, as one CAN have cervical disc and neck pain, although this particular pain doesn't take place in your CERVIX. It reminded me of something that happened back in college.  One of my African brothers (long story), either JudBum or Vern, convinced one of their freshman roommates that ALL freshmen were required to report to the student health nurse for pap smears.

The roommate had never before heard of such a thing as a pap smear.  "No - really", they said - "it's required for EVERYONE."

So this poor chap headed for the student health nurse and asked for his pap smear.  And this poor chap never EVER heard the end of it.

Hopefully our cashier didn't repeat this story to very many people before realizing the error of his medical terminology.  We wouldn't want him to be completely embarrassed next time we are there.  Because clearly, we'll need our coupons to go through just like they are supposed to.

What DOES That Say About Us?

I recently had a job change.  Well - I work in the same place and the same department, but my job title changed.  Along with that change, my hours went down (YAY!) from 7 days per pay period to 5 days per pay period.  I know - how blessed am I?!  At least they SAY they went down - we'll see.  I actually don't mind working more.

Anyway. Since I was to have more free time, I decided that I was going to play The Drugstore Game.  What is that, you ask?  Well, Walgreens and CVS have many ways that you can get all sorts of products for free or close to free if you know how to play the game.  I extended that to several grocery stores, too.  As way of example, here is what I purchased at (2) grocery stores yesterday, for $15.31 (oh - plus a container of refrigerated biscuits - I forgot to include that in the picture):

More specifically, I spent $15.31 on only a small part - all of this I got for completely free:

 After doing this for a couple of months, I finally convinced Karen that she needed to do this with me.  Having a shopping partner makes it all so much more fun.  So last Sunday night, Karen and I headed to CVS together, to try our skills at scoring a bunch of drugstore merchandise for not a lot of money.

We were there a good 40 minutes, finding everything we needed, looking for the best deals, and asking the manager & cashier question after question.  Hopefully the manager won't remember us next time, although I'm fairly certain... he will (as will the lady in line behind us...In FACT, she may be blogging about us too, but not in a good way).  Right before we left, we realized that many of the cosmetic products were marked at 75% off.  Total SCORE!  These were the good cosmetics too -not those weird brands that no one has ever heard of.  We loaded up (although, neither of us actually wear that much make-up, so why we bought so much is debatable).

On the way home we were comparing notes and verbally high-fiving ourselves for collectively buying something like $150 of merchandise for $40 - 50 bucks or so.  We wandered to the topic of the cosmetics.

Karen: "Can you even BELIEVE how much that stuff was marked down?!!"

ME: "NO!  And it was all the colors/stuff we actually used.  How lucky were we?!"

[Long pause]

Karen: "Um, Deb?... what does that say about us?"

ME: "What do you mean?"

Karen: "All the product that they discontinued?  That's all the stuff we use."

ME: "Oh. [very much deflated] Good point."

I guess we aren't as styling as we thought.