Yogurt Cups
I mentioned on Friday a stop at the Yogurt shop. This too is a tradition. There are these coupons, and our family loves coupons. These coupons give you the first three ounces of yogurt plus toppings for free after that it is 35 cents an ounce. An ounce of yogurt plus toppings (It’s the toppings that will get you every time) isn’t much.
We have a running bet on who can get the closest to 3 oz. I usually win 🙂 I win because I don’t get toppings, that’s more a survival instinct for a diabetic than a strategy to win. But this time, I wasn’t even close. Double Dutch Chocolate and Creme Brule mixed and I went over 98 cents. Justan was next (Suzi was at “Revisit” day) Even with toppings he came in at 54 cents and a grin on his face at finally beating the old guy at “closest to 3 ounces”. I’m sure the three of us will end up there sometime today.
The Jar of Coins
I’ve been throwing change in a jar off and on for the past 10 years. Not so much as a savings plans as a reminder from my mom who had to keep sowing holes in my pockets made from carrying around too much change. While some people hoard food in their rooms, I like the jingle of coin in my pocket. As far as fetishes go that’s not a bad one.
So when the weight even gets to me I throw a pocket full of change in the jar. For the fun of it, I threw the jar in a bin of stuff I was bringing with me to Irvine because that’s the kind of thing you do on vacation, right? You go threw all the coins in the jar. Well, I didn’t go through the jar Justan did hoping to find more than the occasional wheatie. Alas, all he found was one Canadian quarter and a Polish coin that some how had been thrown in the jar.
I didn’t want to haul that jar of coin back to Tucson and I didn’t want to spend time putting them in wrappers and taking them to the bank. I knew there were coin machines, but I didn’t want to pay 6% to the machine for sorting.
Suzi mentioned that if you took the total as a credit you got the full amount and two places you could get credit for were Amazon and Starbucks. Two of my favorite places. So yesterday afternoon (when we were getting beer and pizza for the movie) I carted the jar of coin and began feeding it in the machine. This time I didn’t wager a guess, but since Justan had been the one going through the coins the day before I asked him for an estimate. $60 sounded about right and that made my choice easier. I didn’t want to put $60 on my Starbucks account; so Amazon got the nod.
It took about three minutes to gradually feed the coins into the machine. It was like watching a slot machine in reverse. Your total keep going up on the screen as the machine sorts the incoming coins. We were just over half empty when we passed $60. When we hit $100 there were still coins in the jar. Final total was $141.70. I was tempted to trow another 30 cents in from my pocket but decided against it; I didn’t want to be caught short on change in my pocket.
