Sweet Dreams: Saving on Meds, Selling Unwanted Furniture

How would you like to save money? Maybe even make a buck or two?

I’m not in the habit of promoting specific companies but will make two exceptions based on personal experience. My reluctance to hype a company perhaps stems from policies in place when I started at Chain Store Age 43 years ago. Back then, writers were forbidden to include in their copy brand names no matter how ubiquitous they might be. Let me illustrate: a “retractable spinning device” was our way of describing a ... yo-yo. Instead of five characters we had to use 25 with two spaces between words. Why? Because yo-yo was a trademark of the Duncan Toys Company and the founder of our company, Arnold D. Friedman, forbade us to include brand names in our articles. After Arnold died the rule was relaxed.  

Cutting Prescription Costs: Recently I received a text message from my AARP-affiliated prescription mail order drug provider. My 90-day supply of Dutasteride (generic for Avodart) was due for a refill. Cost would be $152.30. $609.20 for the year.

So I looked up what Dutasteride would cost on the GoodRx app on my iPhone. After surveying pharmacies near me GoodRx provided five choices, the cheapest of which was at a Stop & Shop supermarket—$28.55 for 90 day supply. $114.20 for the year.

No brainer from which pharmacy I will get my Dutasteride and other drugs IF the cost is lower than AARP’s provider. Gilda and I already selectively use GoodRx for some half a dozen meds (mostly mine). 

GoodRx costs nothing to use. Zero. Nada. Just download the app on your smartphone and input the drug you want, the number of pills, the dosage. When you pick up the Rx show the pharmacist the price quoted on your smartphone. That’s all it takes to save lots of money.

Keep in mind not all of your meds will cost less on GoodRx but it sure pays to compare prices. You don’t have to be a senior citizen to use GoodRx. You just have to want to save money.

Kaiyo Is A Knockout: Old furniture. Wha-dya do with it? Throw it out? Donate it to Habitat for Humanity or some other charity that will pick it up from your home? Sell it on Craig’s List? Give it away on Free Cycle?

Gilda and I found a better way to dispose of our 16-year old leather couch? We sold it on consignment through Kaiyo.com.

This was no ordinary couch. It was an attached sectional with recliners at each end. It fit into a curved wall in our family room. Its longest side measured 132 inches. The short side measured 68 inches. No way Gilda and I were going to be able to move that sucker.

The couch, or sofa if you prefer, was in excellent shape. As luck would have it I saw a Kaiyo truck one day. Its side panels advertised Kaiyo’s service. 

Kaiyo handles good quality used furniture. In our case, I first sent in several pictures of the couch. Kaiyo set up a pick-up date during which an on-site inspection verified the condition of the couch. Had it not passed, Kaiyo would have left empty-handed. No charge. 

Our couch passed. Off it went to the Kaiyo warehouse for further examination and cleaning. On the Kaiyo app I noted how much the couch would be worth. I determined the percentage of the sale price I would receive. Kaiyo set the sale price.  

Our couch sold within two weeks of posting on the Kaiyo Web site, kaiyo.com.

Truth be told, even if it didn’t sell we would have considered our experience a good one as just getting our couch removed from our home was a big, big plus. The $300-plus dollars we made on the sale was a nice bonus. 

For now Kaiyo serves the tri-state New York City metropolitan area and Philadelphia. 

Counting sheep: If you’ve stayed with me this long perhaps you’d also appreciate a sleep tip I read about several weeks ago. Most people I know go to sleep with their eyes closed. I do, too. Most nights.

Sometimes, though, I cannot. So I employ this sleep aid—I go to sleep with my eyes open. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it works.

Simply stare at an object while in bed. Try not to blink. In no time at all your eyelids will get heavy and close. You’ll fall asleep. I used this trick in the middle of the night yesterday after waking up at 2 am.

Sweet dreams. 

Rain or Shine, Donald J. Trump Takes Control Friday

As surely as the sun will rise Friday morning (though rain is in the midday forecast for Washington, D.C.), Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America at noon.

Under Trump’s presidency we’re going to see if the government can be run as a business or like a business. There’s a difference. 

To be run as a business requires a balanced budget (even a surplus), which means tough decisions on how revenues are raised and appropriated. The last president to produce a surplus was Bill Clinton. Generally speaking, Republican dogma has called for lower taxes tied to reduced expenditure allocations to social welfare programs. The GOP also advocates diluted, if not eliminated,  protections for consumers, workers, the environment, civil liberties and voting rights.

To run the government like a business implies leeway in strict adherence to capitalism, layering in programs to help the less fortunate and vulnerable. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address in 1937, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

A few months prior, in the acceptance speech for his renomination, FDR said, “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.” 

Those are compelling thoughts during a time when health care coverage for 20 million people hangs in the balance, when environmental regulations may be stripped away in the name of creating a better business climate, and social service initiatives, such as Medicare and Medicaid, may be severely cut back because Republicans have never been supporters of FDR’s New Deal or Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs.

Trump can claim he saved jobs at Carrier (700 or 1,100 depending on whom you believe) and 700 more at Ford, both rescues the result of pressuring those companies to jettison projected job relocations to plants in Mexico. Whether you like Trump or not, you’ve got to be happy for those who will continue to receive paychecks.

But Trump’s bully pulpit to end globalization that kills American jobs, coupled with his determination to Make America Great Again, ignores seismic changes occurring throughout the national and international economies. As much as he might want us to return to a simpler time, progress—the future—will not be stopped.

Take, for example, what is happening in the retail industry. More and more sales are transpiring over the Internet. The industry has known for decades that it is overstored. Macy’s is but one of many chains that will shutter stores. It will close 100 of its 730 units and lay off 10,000 workers. Their jobs are not going south or to some other exotic locale. The jobs are lost to cyberspace. 

King-of-electronic-retailing Amazon says it will hire 100,000 workers, an impressive sum, but hardly as many as the workers at brick and mortar retailers dislocated by the emergence of electronic retailing. 

Retailing is like the taxi/limousine field affected by Uber and Lyft, like the hotel business assaulted by Airbnb, like the newspaper business devastated first by Craig’s List and then by Web news sites, real and fake—it is being intermediated by technology. No amount of jawboning or handwringing will slow the inevitable adaptation of our  economy. 

Going forward we are also going to see how thick is the Trump straw that stirs the drink, or if Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, in concert or separately, can sway Republican control of the government. Trump’s stated views on a replacement for Obamacare, for example, differ markedly from Ryan’s and McConnell’s. 

In addition, we will wait to see which John McCain will show up for what probably is his last term in the Senate. Will it be the maverick straight shooter who charmed the electorate in the mid-2000s, or the sycophantic senator who clutched Trump’s coattails to win reelection last year?

It’s politics as usual down in the swamp. After campaigning he would drain the swamp Trump is the head of a muck mired in self-aggrandizement, ethical challenges and broken campaign promises. 

Throughout his campaign he railed against the influence of Wall Street and specifically Goldman Sachs. Yet since the election he has proposed filling three key financial spots with men affiliated with Goldman Sachs and is in favor of reducing constraints on the financial community. 

Politics will color our interpretation of events during the next four years. But hard facts will provide an objective report card on Trump’s vow to “make America great again.”

Trump will be judged on the state of the country and the world in 2020, so here are markers, financial and global, we should check in September 2020 against September 2016, with specific attention to results in the four swing states that chose him over Hillary Clinton—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio:

*Annual domestic economic growth rate

*Size of national debt

*Size of annual deficit 

*Size of trade imbalance

*Small business growth rate overall 

*Small business growth rates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Level of Dow Jones Industrial Averages 

*Unemployment rate overall

*Unemployment rates in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Black/African-American unemployment rate overall

*Black/African-American unemployment rate (16-19 year olds)

*Labor force participation rate overall

*Labor force participation rate among Black/Afro-Americans

*Jobs created last four years nationally

*Civilian jobs in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Number of manufacturing jobs nationally

*Number of manufacturing jobs Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Average weekly earnings manufacturing jobs

*Number of construction jobs nationally

*Number of construction jobs Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Average weekly earnings construction jobs

*Number of mining/logging/oil/gas jobs nationally

*Number of mining/logging/oil/gas jobs Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio

*Average weekly earnings mining/logging/oil/gas jobs

*Number of federal government jobs

*Number of government jobs nationally

*Number of uninsured for health care

*Average tax bill for middle class family

*Average national price of gallon of regular gasoline

*Inflation rate

*30 year mortgage rate

*Number of homicides

*Number of hate crimes

*Number of people living in poverty

*Number of military personnel in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, South Korea

*Status of wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan

*Status of Iran nuclear deal

*Level of imports from China

*Status of North Korea

*Status of Israel-Palestinian conflict

*Number of police officers killed nationally

*Number of minorities killed by police

Four years is a long time to wait for results. But they need not be filled with cowering. If you want to see how Trump and his advisors, particularly Kellyanne Conway, can be handled politely but appropriately, watch how Seth Meyers interviewed her last week. It’s a seminar in solid interviewing/reporting all journalists and TV/radio talk show hosts should study and learn from: https://youtu.be/U_dv5qAsJMU

That said, there is reason to not be comfortable after 12:01 pm Friday. Take the time to read Politico’s roundtable discussion with three of Trump’s biographers about what to expect from the new president: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/trump-biographers-presidency-legitimate-214655

If you made it through the depths of that article, you might not be criticized for believing this is a time to worry and fret. But do not despair. For encouragement read David Leonhardt’s analysis of President Obama’s impact and the difficulty Republicans will have in trying to knock down his legacy: https://nyti.ms/2jAji0t

Beyond that, take heart in Orphan Annie’s ballad to FDR: “The sun will come out tomorrow …”

Doing Our Part to Save the Planet

There was snow on our roof but that didn’t stop the field crew from installing solar panels on our house last week, Gilda’s and my latest attempt to be responsible citizens of the world.

According to our provider, SolarCity, during the course of our 20-year, no money down, lease we will offset 381,219 pounds of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of driving a car 409,434 miles, or the CO2 absorbed by 206 trees, or the use of 96,134 gallons of water to make electricity.

Of course, we also will save thousands of dollars we would ordinarily be sending to ConEd during the next two decades. SolarCity estimates the panels on our southern facing roof and on the east-west sides of the garage will produce 87% of our power needs. 

We are waiting for final White Plains Building Department inspection and approval before we go live, sometime in the next few weeks I hope.

Solar panels are the latest artillery in our battle to live a more ecologically healthy life. We’ve reduced by about 50% our garbage production, and thus landfill contribution, by composting almost every bit of natural, uncooked waste from fruits and vegetables. Last year I built two compost pens at the side of our yard while Gilda bought a compost bin at a Westchester County-sponsored environmental event at Croton Point Park.

Raw produce is mixed with leaves I shred each fall. Like people you see collecting discarded empty cans and bottles, I scavenge our neighborhood, scooping up leaves piled up in the street, usually about 16 33-gallons bags each foray. I chop them up in a funnel-shaped shredder bought from Craig’s List before putting them in the compost piles where the mixture will eventually turn into black gold for Gilda’s garden.

I’ve previously written about Gilda’s hybrid car, a Ford C-Max that even in this frigid winter is conveying us at 44.2 miles per gallon.

Coupled with lower thermostat settings during the day—yes, I wear extra layers indoors, sometimes even a baseball hat to keep warmth inside my body—and a more energy efficient oil burner that replaced a 35-year-old unit, we are burning less fuel to heat our home. We also replaced most incandescent bulbs with LEDs or fluorescents.

A final healthful tactic is more personal than environmental. As much as possible we have eliminated plastic containers, even ones claiming to be BPA-free, replacing them with glass. That includes how I quench my soda habit. I now buy Diet Coke in 8-oz. glass bottles which has the added benefit of influencing me to reduce my consumption of soda with each meal. 

My Inner Lumberjack, SleepIQ and Does Hollywood Think the Bible Is a True Story?

You probably wouldn’t assume it by looking at me but I have a streak of lumberjack in me. It’s not just the flannel and chamois shirts I favor once the air becomes nippy.

My constant gardener, aka Gilda, loves her compost and mulch, resulting in many an afternoon spent by yours truly collecting fallen leaves to be pulverized in my Sears Craftsman Leafwacker Plus. One day last week after chopping up 15 bags of leaves I filled another 18 black, 40-gallon Hefty bags with the discards from maple and oak trees. I shredded those leaves this afternoon. 

A few years ago I bought the Leafwacker from a Craig’s List poster in New Jersey for $25 and have enjoyed the annual autumn ritual of mulching leaves. It’s a lot less laborious than my two decades-ago lumberjack toil of collecting, chainsawing, chopping and stacking tree limbs culled from the roadside for our wood-burning stove.

Anyway, there’s a back-to-nature type of pleasure I get from this exercise, which almost got stopped in its tracks this year. Shortly after starting last week, the Leafwacker ground to a halt. I thought it might have shorted out on the foil wrapper of a Twix bar that had infiltrated the leaves. I took the machine to the Sears repair shop. They said it would cost some $125 with no guarantee they could fix it. 

I passed on that “reassuring” estimate and turned to Google. Sure enough, there were several posts about sudden stoppages of a Leafwacker, including one suggestion to hit the reset button on the bottom of the inverted machine. Who knew there was a reset button? Again sure enough, the Leafwacker sprung back to life. A short while later the mulcher stopped again in mid-stream but this time I knew what to do. Hooray for technology. 

Sleep Tight: The good people who sold us our Sleep Number bed called over the weekend to ask how we’ve been slumbering and to suggest a technology add-on. With SleepIQ, we’d be able to monitor things like how many times we got up in the middle of the night, how often we tossed and turned, our heart rate and breathing rate, and how our diet affected our sleep. All this for $499.

I respectfully declined, though I would have liked to find out how SleepIQ distinguishes normal tossing and turning from the bodily movements of two people making love. 

Here’s another question I’d like the answer to—when Gilda and I recently went to the movies, we saw a preview for "50 to 1," what was said to be “based on the true story of horse racing legend Mine That Bird.”

Okay, lots of pictures these days originate from “true” stories. The next preview was for “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” It did not say the movie was based on a true story. I’m guessing the producers did not want to take sides on whether the Bible was fact- or myth-based, but I’d like to know their reasoning. 

Spoiler Alert: The movie we saw was “Gone Girl,” which contained one of the best puns I’ve heard recently. It concerned Amy Dunne who masquerades her own disappearance and possible murder. In describing missing person Amy, a TV personality said she “forged a successful career in journalism.” As the British say, brilliant.

Look to the News for Inspiration

Whenever I lack inspiration for a blog post all I need do is read the newspaper or listen to the news on TV or radio. Some cases in point:

Watching CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday I couldn’t help but be thrilled by the show’s choice of Santa Fe as the backdrop for its annual special edition on design. Gilda and I will shortly be visiting the colorful capital of New Mexico, though not as a replacement for our previously planned and now scrapped cruise of the Black Sea with stops in Odessa, Yalta, Sevastopol and Sochi. 

CBS Sunday Morning also ran a feature on tennis great Venus Williams and her apparel company. She named it “Eleven,” a number dear to Gilda’s and my heart (among other reasons, we were born 11 days apart 65 years ago and our house number is 11). I liked Williams’ reasoning behind her name choice: “Eleven stands for being better than a 10.”

A third tie-in appeared, courtesy of a piece on treadmill desks (for the uninformed, these are raised desks you work at while walking on a treadmill underneath at roughly two miles per hour). 

Joanna Coles, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, shown in the segment walking on her treadmill desk, said, “I’m more contemplative on the treadmill desk. I find the action of walking helps me think better.”

Steelcase manager of health and wellness Carlene Stevens explained, “As we exercise we send endorphins to our brain which then kind of increases our innovation, creativity and it could increase productivity, as well.”

Which might explain why some of my best ideas came to me as I walked up and down Park Avenue on my way to and from Grand Central Terminal and work.

Road Trip: The Travel section of the Sunday New York Times carried an article entitled “To Campuses Without a Campus.” I was hooked by the first sentence: “The last thing a dad gets to really teach his daughter is how to drive a car.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/travel/to-campuses-without-a-compass.html?_r=0)

It reminded me of a trip Ellie and I took to Oberlin College in Ohio when she was 16 and recently licensed to drive. On our way home along Interstate 80, I felt sufficiently comfortable to let her drive across half of Pennsylvania and all of New Jersey while I dozed in the shotgun seat. Before nodding off I told her, just go straight, no turns. 

I awoke as we passed the toll booth for the George Washington Bridge. I panicked as I realized Ellie had never crossed a bridge and as soon as she entered Manhattan she would be an illegal, underage driver on a highway. The alternatives were frightening—proceed straight onto the heavily trafficked Cross Bronx Expressway or take the exit ramp from the bridge onto the Henry Hudson Parkway North, with some of the most belly-churning curves in the region. 

We chose the latter with Ellie trying to calm me down. Only, we didn’t go north, we wound up going south, while all I could do was loudly tell her to get off at the first exit. Ellie successfully maneuvered us off the highway. 

Ellie chose not to apply to Oberlin.

Recycling: The Sunday Business section depicted how cities and companies are trying to minimize food waste by encouraging composting (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/business/cities-and-companies-tackle-the-food-waste-problem.html). 

Gilda and I have been doing our fair share. For the last 18 months we’ve been placing uncooked organic waste in a countertop compost bin. When full, we dump the contents into an outdoor plastic garbage can aerated by holes I drilled into the sides and cover. The food is mixed with dry leaves I process in the fall in a leaf shredder I purchased for $25 off of Craig’s List.  

When the garbage can is full we transfer the contents to an outdoor compost heap. Last weekend we went to Croton Point Park for Earth Day celebration and picked up a plastic compost bin. 

Gilda the Gardener is thrilled. She considers her home made compost to be black gold.

In case you’re wondering, the organic compost does not smell.

Nail-Biting Time: Finally, the Workologist column of The Times dealt with a thorny problem of office etiquette, namely, what to do when co-workers cut their fingernails in public.

True confession time—until I was 28 I bit my nails. I couldn’t stop. Like smoking, I was addicted. But the day I started working in Manhattan 37 years ago I stopped. Cold turkey. 

That day I also began carrying a nail clipper wherever I went. It turned out to be among the most useful tools I could ever imagine. I prefer a nail clipper with a small file, the kind the Transportation Security Administration at first deemed a weapon and wouldn’t permit you to carry onto a plane in the months after September 11. I’ve used a nail clipper to cut those pesky strings that tie shoes together in stores. To slice through package wrappings. To cut a nail that I would otherwise bite off.  

But I try to never cut my nails in public. 

Bizarre and Bazaar Turn of Events

I made Gilda promise me that when the time came, and I’ll explain shortly why that time seems to be rapidly approaching, she’ll place me in a nice, nearby facility for the memory challenged, one that she’ll visit at least weekly, a home with good looking attendants, for after all, I might become forgetful but I would hope I would retain my appreciation of the finer things of life. 

I told her Sunday morning I had found the missing white sheet. 

“Where was it?, she asked. 

“On the bed,” I sheepishly replied.

“You mean we were sleeping on it all this time?”

“Yes, and no.” Thinking the white sheet was a cover for the new Sleep Number mattress, I had somehow placed the next sheet set on top of it. It was only when I went to plug in our heated mattress pad that I discovered my mistake. 

Now, if I could only find that missing dryer ball ...

My initial optimism about a negotiated settlement for the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stash has dissipated. We've now entered what may be called the “Arab suk” phase, and the bizarre twists and turns Assad has begun to play would make any bazaar merchant proud. He's trying to impose conditions on President Obama, not the reverse, despite the deal the U.S. and Russia seemingly reached. 

So let’s just employ the age-old tactic of walking away. If Assad doesn't capitulate and live up to the schedule in the Russo-American deal, strike. Don't wait for Congress or the United Nations to act. The “consequences” Secretary of State John Kerry said would rain down on Syria will never force Assad’s hand. Only action will. 

I'm reminded of when I sold one of my cars, a Buick, to a young man in Yonkers back in 1982. Not in any way comparable in importance to negotiations on chemical weapons, but instructive, nevertheless, on the give and take (mostly take) tactics of the Middle Eastern mind. 

The young man in question was a Palestinian student. I met him in Yonkers. His uncle represented him. He told me how much he liked Buicks. Solid, reliable cars. Still, his nephew was not rich. He couldn’t afford the $2,000 price tag. We haggled. The give and take was fun, but we reached an impasse. I wanted $1,600. He was stuck at $1,550. We didn’t split the difference. I said I was going home. 

Would I mind driving his nephew home as it was on my way to the parkway? No problem. When we arrived in front of his building, he asked if I would like to come up for tea. Recognizing this as a further attempt to negotiate the price down, I declined. Twenty minutes later I walked into our home. Just as I finished telling Gilda I should have accepted the lower price as the $50 difference would be eaten up by another newspaper ad (yes, these were pre-Craig’s List days; newspapers actually carried classified ads), the phone rang. The uncle called to say they’d pay $1,600.  

I don’t normally advocate military action. But this is an exceptional situation, one that Assad will play out. In the end, I doubt he will comply with any of the deadlines set in the agreement. We must be prepared to act. And act quickly.

Do We Really Need to Know This?

How would you like to have been the PR person assigned to write the press release accompanying the following headline?

“More than 38 Million Online Americans Shopped While on the Toilet”

Do we really need to know this? I know shopping has become more than just part of the fabric of the American way of life. To many it has become the total blanket. Still, do we really need to know that even on the potty people are dialing up their smartphones so they won’t miss that bargain of a lifetime. It used to be sitting on the john was reserved as “quality” reading time. If you remember the movie The Big Chill, the Jeff Goldblum character, a writer for People, said he and his colleagues were instructed to keep stories short enough so they could be read in total during the time it takes to complete one average dump. 

Anyway, back to the, ahem, news ... A Harris Interactive survey paid for by CashStar, suggests “that more than 38 million online adult Americans admit to having shopped online while on the toilet.” Compare that to “almost 17 million shopping via a mobile device while standing in the retailer's physical store.”

Among the other enlightening though not projectable findings of this online survey of 2,104 adults aged 18 and older conducted Nov. 6-8:

*Potty shopping was more of a male than female activity;

*Shopping online trumps safety as more than four million said they shopped while driving;

*The business of business is business, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that more than nine million said they have secretly shopped while in a business meeting;

*Seven million-plus Americans shopped from their mobile device while at the grocery store.

Get to Work Thursday: I never liked Sunday Blue Laws, the civic ordinances that required retailers to be closed Sundays, or another day of the week if one’s religion celebrated the sabbath on a different schedule that Christian America. Blue Laws mostly vanished in the last 25 years except in some hamlets like Paramus, NJ; some companies, such as Chick-fil-A, remain closed on Sundays because of the religious belief of their founders, Truett Cathy in the case of Chick-fil-A. 

I like having access to stores every day. But I also believe store personnel are entitled to some family life. They should not be deprived of holidays with their families. Or friends. With the exception of drug stores and partial hours for supermarkets, stores should be closed on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. I’m also okay with no retailing on Christmas and Easter. No one should go into cardiac arrest because they can’t get their Target or Victoria’s Secret fix. Yet these stores, and a whole lot more, have scheduled openings for Thanksgiving. It’s not enough they make workers get to the store before the sun rises for Black Friday sales, now they are thrusting a consumer frenzy mindset onto a day that had always been reserved for family. There’s enough tension already in these family gatherings without the extra hype shopping demands. 

My daughter’s brother-in-law Rob posted a neat idea—“Any stores that start Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving this year will be getting zero business from us.” He included a list of stores opening on Thanksgiving: 

http://retailindustry.about.com/od/2012ThanksgivingDay11222012/a/2012-Thanksgiving-Day-Store-Hours-Opening-Times-November-22-Complete-Roundup-List_2.htm. It’s going to be pretty hard to stay away from many of these stores, but the sentiment is one worth considering.

Lots of people, nearly half the country, will struggle to shop in stores this weekend, but there’s growing evidence the activity does not rate high on people’s preferred activities. According to Western Union Holiday Gifting Index, 68% of those who shopped on Black Friday last year said they did not think the experience was worth the money they saved. 

I Love You, Craig: As long as we are on the subject of waste matter (see above), Gilda has embarked on a composting binge. All manner of uncooked vegetables, fruits, tea leaves, cooked egg shells and cardboard egg cartons are making their way into our compost pile. Normally, I fill up the pile with free compost from our city municipal dump. But I got there too late this year. Without compost, Gilda’s flower and vegetable garden would not be extraordinary, so we’re now a composting family. 

Composting, however, requires leaves. Lots of leaves. Shredded leaves. The electric blower/shredder I borrowed from my brother last year doesn’t really work (no wonder he let me have it). New electric leaf shredders cost about $200. I opted to try to find a used on on Craig’s List. Score! I found one today 60 miles away in New Jersey for just $25. 

While I’m at a meeting tonight, Gilda will be surprised when she comes home from work and sees the Craftsman Leafwacker Plus where my car usually rests in the garage (don't worry about her finding out before she gets home; she rarely reads my posts the day they go up). I even bagged six large loads of leaves from around the neighborhood. I know what you’re thinking—I’m such a thoughtful husband. There’s lots of truth to that. It also doesn’t hurt that I’m retired and able to spend time, thanks to Craig’s List, fulfilling her dreams.