37.56% in February 2010! Holy...

OK, so I know I'm behind a month in posting our results of our "Grocery Coupon Challenge" (which is what I'm calling it this week). But we lost a receipt so I got all flustered. But whatever, in February we saved an average of 37.56% and a total of $92.16, and that's with one Rainbow receipt missing. That brings our running total to $245.15. And that's no April Fool's Day Joke!

Tallying up the Coup's

OK, so I think I finally found a purpose for posting regularly on my otherwise completely useless blog: tallying up the awesome savings my illustrious spouse achieves by clipping and using coupons. She's been kicking so much grocery-chain rear lately, we decided to track it and total it up, just to satisfy our own curiosity.

Then I thought, "Why not broadcast it to the world?" (Or in this case, to my 3.6 readers.) It seems like folks at FiLife are always asking how much someone can really save by clipping coupons. Well, I figured I could provide an example for one family for one year. You'll have to take us for our word, but I don't have much incentive to overblow it. Here's the ground rules:

• My wife keeps her regular coupon-clipping routine: about an hour a week, mostly out of the Sunday paper circulars or what junk mailers send us. We don't have luck with printers, so we don't hunt for them online (sorry).


• We only count our three regular grocery destinations: Target, Cub Foods, and Rainbow Foods. No Dollar Store, Savers, or other places where beef jerky is prominently displayed.


• We trust whatever the store tells us on the receipt that we "saved" in dollars at the bottom of the receipt. This will count in-store specials and stuff, which might over-estimate our total, but I figure that's balanced out by skipping the smaller stores where we sometimes shop.

I'll post the results for each month here, although there will be a slight delay. The results for January, 2010: an average savings of 29% of the bill for a total of $152.99. Seriously.

Do I have an incredible wife, or what? The only downside to this that I can see is she'll want half the money back in spa treatments, and I'll have already spent it on Summit Horizon Red.

Land of 10,000 Heart Attacks

Well, the NFC championship was quite a game last night, and Vikings fans across the land are still recovering. You could say "at least it was more exciting than 41-0", but I'm not so sure that's a good thing, given our aging population. I think it's safe to assume that emergency rooms were filled last night with gray-haired Vikings fans either a) having a heart attack or b) filled with anxiety wondering, "Will they ever win one in my lifetime?!?!?!?" Another 40 years and they'll know what Red Sox fans felt like in 2003. Maybe it'll even produce the same result...naaaaaaah.

Another year, another heartbreak for Vikings fans. 0-for-4 in Super Bowls, 0-for-5 in Championship games since. They keep this up and they'll have to change their name to the OhFers. I blame Prince.

Well, at least now I won't have to spend the next two weeks as a nervous wreck, wondering how the local team will possibly stop Seyton Manning. As far as silver linings go, that has to be in the running for top ten worst.

Good luck, New Orleans. If you lose, welcome to the club.

I'm gonna go with TMQ on this one

Maybe I'm just drinkin' the Kool-Aid, but I say Belichick made the right call, and TMQ agrees. Manning was averaging like 45 seconds per touchdown. If Faulk doesn't bobble the ball, Pats win.

The Slow Churned phenomenon

It's been forever since I've posted, and mostly because I've been gorging on Slow Churned ice cream. Something like 50% less fat and 1/3 less calories, but most importantly, it STILL TASTES LIKE ICE CREAM, which is more than you can say for that frozen yogurt garbage. I can't believe someone finally figured it out! I'm so excited, I feel like Newman in Seinfeld:


Except, of course, Newman's favorite new treat eventually got "outed" as having fat in it. And when they took the fat out, it tasted horrible. Now, at least, we can thank the gods of food science for something that works. For an ice-cream freak like me with high cholesterol, every little bit counts. I think this revelation deserves its own holiday, but that's just me.

Jeebus, can it be that simple?

Saw a great article in one of my favorite online 'zines, www.slate.com, recently. It details how to solve the home mortgage crisis in this country at ZERO cost to the taxpayer. It's ridiculously simple. So c'mon, why can't our government make it happen? Anyone have a clue?

20 Albums

I originally wrote this for a Facebook (Crackbook?) tag, but thought it would be good to muse on here as well. Well, this is pretty embarrassing on a lot of levels, but that's life, isn't it? Asked to name 20 albums influential to my life in such a way that I'll always remember the time I listened to them, here's what I came up with. I've excluded any "Greatest Hits" albums that, while important to me, aren't really albums in the traditional sense. So here goes...


Early Years: NO CLUE AT ALL
Kenny Rogers - The Gambler
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Huey Lewis & the News - Sports

I didn't realize how important music would be to me at a young age, so it was pretty much buying whatever someone told me to buy, whether that was a commercial, a friend on the playground, or Michael J. Fox. Still, though, there are more embarrassing first concerts than Huey.


Early High School: STILL FIGURING IT OUT
Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
Peter Gabriel - So
Don Henly - End of the Innocence

The first two came out long before the time I bought them, but I knew I liked 'em and I wore out the tapes playing them in my parents' cars. Those are two records that are way better as a whole than the hits they spawned. And you probably remember Bruce Hornsby's piano playing in "Innocence", but did you know that record also feature cameos by Axl Rose (washed up) and Sheryl Crow (unknown)? While it wasn't exactly innovative, there's not a bad song on that album.


Late High School and Early College: FINDING A VOICE
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear
Dada - Puzzle
Pearl Jam - Ten
Nirvana - Nevermind

Between senior year of HS and freshman year of college, I constantly spun two tapes dubbed from my brother's CD collection. The first two were on one tape and the other two were on another. From alt-folk to pop-guitar to heavy-grunge, these covered so many bases and set the soundtrack for some pretty intense drives.


Late College and Post-Grad: AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Dulcinea
Say Zuzu - Highway Signs & Driving Songs
Summercamp - Pure Juice
Barenaked Ladies - Stunt

I blasted "Siamese Dream" from my dorm room the weekend freshmen moved in, wrote English papers while listening to "Dulcinea", and got inspired to form a band by "Highway Signs". And even though we weren't dating yet, I'll never forget trekking to Boston with Robin and our friend David to see the 'Ladies "CD release party" of "Stunt", which filled all of Government Center.

Married with Children: NOT CARING ABOUT MY IMAGE
Cake - Prolonging the Magic
Sister Hazel - Fortress
The Push Stars - After the Party
Jayhawks - Rainy Day Music
Jonatha Brooke - Steady Pull

Cake taught me how important percussion was to making me want to move (and yes, a phone keypad IS percussion), Sister Hazel's "Champagne High" still brings goosebumps, and The Push Stars and Jayhawks have never disappointed in over a dozen shows across three states. As for Jonatha, let's just say that no other voice can hypnotize me as quickly, and I can't wait to add more of her albums to my collection. I wish I had been listening closer all along...

There you have it. 20 albums that did it for me. But the hard part of this list? Paring it down to 20. I still feel like I left a few out...