One step closer

Today I bought my suit for the wedding. And I got the best deal ever, if I do say so myself. My favorite suit store, Men's Warehouse, currently has their buy one get one suit sale going on. So if you're in the market for a new suit, why not get two! Anyway, They always have some sort of sale going on. So you really shouldn't ever have to pay full price for a suit. And that's where this story begins...

K and I have been looking for the perfect gray summer suit for me to wear for our wedding for the past couple months and have been getting nowhere. First, we were too early in the season, and no store had gray suits. Then when we tried later, all the gray suits we could find had a thread pattern that K did not find appealing at all. I didn't mind half of them, but this is her day. So I will wear the suit she likes the most. A week ago K finally goes to Men's Warehouse, the store I had told her was our best bet all the long. We hadn't made it there though because my shopping tolerance is about 2 hours and we'd always stop at some other store first and then I'd be too tired to go to Men's Warehouse. But we finally made it a week ago and lo and behold, K immediately finds "the perfect suit" I was ecstatic. Then I noticed the price... $600. And it was the only suit I saw that had no sale tag on it. I was very bummed to say the least. I almost gave up, but K said that to have faith that it would all work out. And as we walked out of the store, no suit in hand and with my thoughts of my money vanishing before my eyes, I tried to remind myself that this was a once in a lifetime event and that "all working out" meant that I get the suit and make K very happy, no matter what the cost.

So I go home and scour my email for any coupon codes in my MW emails that I subscribe to, and I found a 20% off coupon for Memorial Day purchases made online only. So I was a little happy, but I still felt like spending $480 on one suit was a lot. Most my suits were $250 or less... But $480 wasn't THAT bad. So I was happy. So I just waited until today. And I kept faithfully checking my email for an even BETTER coupon. And what do you know? a couple days ago MW announced a buy one get one sale on designer suits! So I did the math and re-read the terms of my 20% of coupon. And nothing said that the coupon only applied to one item or did not apply to on sale items. Now I was getting excited... I thought to myself, "2 suits for the price of 80% of one! what a deal!!!!" I couldn't wait to buy my suit now. I just had to pick another suit. So I decided to maximize my discount and get 2 equally priced suits. And today I bought them both. I am so happy. I get two awesome suits and K gets the suit she really wanted me to get. What an awesome ending. It really did all work out and I am glad that K had the faith and foresight to know that no matter what happened it would all work out!

So without further ado, here are the two suits I bought! ...for the price of 80% of one :)

Shorts for tall people

Why is it most clothing companies make varying length pants, but they only have one length of shorts in a certain style? I never understood this. I have been avoiding buying shorts for years because each time I go to the store, all I find are shorts that are above my knees or the couple pairs that aren't are some weird plaid or ultra baggy urban. I don't understand why this is not an issue to people because everybody in America is getting taller on average and my height of 6'4" really isn't even that tall anymore, I know plenty of people taller than me. OK, not plenty, but I bet that 1 in 10 guys is taller than me... So does that mean that 15/20% of the population has the same issues I do?

On Monday I went to four stores and looked through every single pair of shorts they had to find 1 out of 2 pairs that were actually longer and didn't look weird in some way. I got my extra 6" of length, but the same pair was $20 less if I didn't get the "elongated" version... That's pretty crappy. I still bought my $60 pair of shorts, because, frankly, I wanted a pair of darn shorts! Thank goodness they had my size, otherwise I'd be writing this blog with a sad ending!

Update from Deutschland

So I woke up exactly 34 hours ago and I have gotten about 2 hours of sleep from power naps during the flight and while riding around in Europe, but I can't complain because I've had a great time so far. We arrived at 6AM Germany time and after renting the car, the first thing we do is decide to drive to Zurich in Switzerland to go shopping :) My dad bought some watches for his relatives, and I bought a Cuckoo clock that actually has a little bird that pops out every 3o minutes and counts out the hours at every hour! It is so much fun. And it requires no batteries or electricity!

After Switzerland we really started getting tired but we really wanted to keep moving but it was so hard, and we took several power naps during the drive back to Munich :) When all was said and done, we finally made it to Munich at about 7PM or so because of traffic at the Austrian/Swiss border.

It's about 25 degrees here and there's a ton of snow on the ground, but that didn't stop us from walking about 2-3 miles in Zurich between stores and going grocery shopping after the long trip in Munich. I am glad that we got all this done today because we probably would be tired tomorrow. I'll try to get a couple good pics uploaded in the next few days if I can but it may be a challenge since I have limited internet access times and free time :) Until my next entry... adios!

Edit: uploaded pictures here and to Flickr

clicky!

Tires are expensive

I just bought some new Dunlop Radial Rover A/T tires online because they had a $100 off 4 discount with free shipping. I did some quick research and found that this was in fact the best deal online. And typically buying stuff online is always a better deal than buying in a store. So I decided to buy them. But then, the fun really started. I figured it wouldn't bee too expensive to mount, balance, and align 4 tires, you know, because they're just tires. But I was wrong. So I quickly learned that buying from a tire store that offers free mounting/balancing, alignment or a free tire, wasn't really as bad of a deal as I thought.

	Online	NTB (cheapest store)
Tires + Valve Stems	$88.00x4-$100.00 ______________ $252.00	$91x3 (Free Tire) ______ 273.00
Mounting + Balancing	$75.00	14.95x4=$59.80
Total	$327.00+tax (on $75)	$332.80+tax

Phew, it looks like I still saved a whopping $5.80! With that kind of cash, I guess I could buy a whole meal at McDonalds! Luckily for me, either of those prices are better than the original $600 I was quoted by Midas for tires, mounting, balancing, and alignment. Midas charges $89.98 for alignment, but I found a price as low as $58.00. Funny, that's exactly 10x as much as my savings from buying online. Now if only I could find an alignment for $5.80 and I'll really have a deal on my hands.

Weekend, The

Friday was pretty uneventful. Kristin and I hung out, but we didn't really do anything besides watch TV. I ordered pizza and ate it. It was good.

Saturday we went shopping for a track jacket for myself. I found one that I liked a bit and it was on sale for only $30, but Kristin wasn't digging it so we didn't get it. The other ones I saw were around $70, yikes!!! After that we did the whole youth group leader thing and I brought donuts. They were hyper little boogers and they also scratched up one of those thin plastic table cloths. I told them to stop, but at the same time, I was remembering how I used to do that so I kept laughing and they took it as a sign of my approval. ooops. I guess I'm a little immature for my age! After all that fun, Kristin and I went to a haunted house with 3 separate attractions. Kristin got scared, I keep talking to the people running around trying to scare us. Only once did I jump slightly. It was fun though!

On Sunday Kristin and I bought two pumpkins to carve since they were on sale at the local grocery store. After that We went to Oktoberfest at Lynfred Winery and walked around the area and looked at some of the older architecture. We then rented a few scary movies to watch. Kristin got scared again, but I was A-OK. Kristin even got scared of Dino, her beloved stuffed dinosaur. But after some coaxing she came to love him again. I was worried because Dino was the first "sweet" gift I got her and if she didn't like it anymore I'd have been sad :(

But on a sad note. during that weekend a friend of mine called off his wedding a week before it's scheduled date. I dunno what happened, but I'm sure there are some very hurt people. And I hope that their emotional wounds will heal over quickly.

lets say you went shopping to buy a bunch of things

and when you buy all these things you think you are going to be excited when you see the receipt because of all the super awesome coupons you clipped and by random chance the store actually marked discounts on the shelf for most of the items you are buying. But after you check out you and get a receipt for $18 and you look at your two, not completely full, grocery bags of stuff you didn't really need to buy but only bought because you had coupons and kind of wouldn't mind eating it, you see that your two boxes of cereal, 2 pillsbury breads in an exploding can, 8 cups of yogurt, 2 boxes of granola bars, and 2 pouches of taco seasoning really wasn't that much of a deal even though you saved 46%. But if you really weren't going to buy even one thing on that list if you didn't have a coupon for it, you really didn't get much of a deal at all. And in that 30 seconds it takes you to walk to your car with your two, not completely full, bags of stuff you didn't really want, you start to feel like a sucker for spending any money in the first place, especially when you originally decided to go to the store to buy milk and eggs and they're nowhere to be found in your two not completely full bags of stuff that you didn't really want anyway.

new clothes

This weekend K wanted me to buy some new clothes because apparently buying new clothes only once a year is too seldom :P So with her super girl-power persuading skills she convinced me to go to the mall with her. She told me she had a 20% off coupon for Express so we went there first. We picked out some button-up shirts and some graphic T's to wear in combination. She had me try on about 10 different pieces of clothing. This is a lot more than my average shopping visit. So after all of the experimentation with combinations I decided to get 2 shirts and 2 T's But then I realized that if I bought 3 shirts I could get the third for only $8 more than buying two with the multiple shirt discount and the 20% off coupon. So I got a third. We also looked at jeans and track jackets, but I decided for my wallet's sake not to buy any more. Even with the 20% off and everything the 5 pieces of clothing cost me about $130. EEP! Luckily for me the mall closed so I didn't have the chance to be tempted to buy anything else.

Later that day I checked out ae.com to see if they had jeans my size online. They're much cheaper than Express so I felt safe going there. I also found a stackable 15% and 20% off coupon to apply to my purchase so I was happy to get a 32% discount. I decided to buy 2 pairs of jeans for only $56 after shipping and taxes. Now that's a bargain because I have to get 36' inseam pants and they rarely have those in stores and especially not for a discount!

All I have to do now is buy a track jacket and I'll look super fly. Well according to Kristin. I do agree that with her help, I was able to buy some pretty nice looking tops!

So I really got 7 articles of clothing for about $190 so each article cost on average $27. That's not too horrible especially considering Express's top-notch quality! I can feel the good construction in the seams and fabric texture :P The button up shirts even come with handy plastic inserts to keep the collar tips straight (yes they are supposed to stay in there, they give you spares with your purchase).

So here's the damage, minus the two styles I couldn't find on expressfashion.com

Express 1MX (dark brown instead)	Express 1MX	Express Graphic T (light brown)
AE Faded Indigo	AE Medium Stonewash

mmmhmm

On Thursday I made fried catfish for Kristin, her grandmother and her sister. They loved it. I cheated and used Zataran's cornmeal breading though instead of making it from scratch. Her grandmother also made some delicious traditional cornbread that contained only corn meal, oil, salt, and eggs. It reminded me of those corn cakes I tried to make once as a kid because I learned that George Washington loved em! I didn't like the corn cakes so much because they were very dense and had little flavor, but Kristin's grandmother's cornbread had plenty of flavor. I even put a little maple syrup on my piece.

Friday was a pretty awkward night. K's friend met a new girl about a month ago and they're already official. They call each other by nicknames regularly and cuddle more than any other couple I've seen. This made it kind of awkward because I find it annoying when people can't keep their hands off one another while in public. And they just met and they were cuddling like they knew one another for months. We played Apples to Apples entirely too long, and I suggested we stop playing that game and move to another once to everybody, but I was ignored. So I secretly begged K to intervene since it was her friend, but even that took awhile. The strawberry daiquiris were very good though. I only had a tiny bit because I was driving. Her friend is a good dude though so I hope he is happy with his new gf.

Saturday was a pretty laid back day. We made 49ers flapjack dough the night before and let it ferment over night. When Kristin came back over the next day, we cooked them up and they tasted more sour than we remember from Walker Brothers, but they were great with syrup. We decided that we'd try not to let them sit over night at room temperature next time and see if the taste was more similar. After that we did our youth volunteering thing at Kristin's church. They had a special speaker who told her story about how she tried to kill herself and how she found God afterwards. It's sad that she felt so desperate to kill herself though, but I'm glad she is happier now.

For dinner I had a Work Burger from Crave. It is one of the better burgers out here. It comes with bacon, onions, mushrooms and cheddar cheese. They even cook the beef to -order, so if you like yours a little more pink, you can ask for it! We then watched Apocalypto. It was a pretty good movie, but yes, Mel Gibson is still the king of gory snuff films. There was a lot of blood. He sure loves his blood.

On Sunday Kristin and I hung out at her parents' house and went shopping at random stores. Her parents fed me brownies with walnuts and I ate too many. But boy oh boy were they good. At least Kristin is keeping me working out over the weekends. That makes me feel a little better. We also ate dinner at her parents' house. I had Lou Malnati's pizza and herb crusted tilapia. After all that I watched Queen with Kristin and took an online "personality strengths" test. Apparently my strengths are: Competition, Achiever, Focus, Strategic, and Significance. So basically, I'm gonna kick your butt at whatever I do every time by focusing on my strategy and it'll be a significant butt kicking. yeah that's right. :P We tried making flapjacks again just to experiment and we only let the dough rise for an hour before cooking it. It was a lot more self-adherent and dough-like, but the flavor was better. We still have to experiment more to get the recipe right! Maybe leaving the flapjacks in the refrigerator over night instead of at room temperature, or adding more butter to the recipe will help.

On an impulse

In the past few days, I have almost bought the following things on impulse:

Skil 18V Cordless Combo Power Tool Kit
Polaroid 46" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV
Marlton Stone Sofa

I decided against all of these purchases for one main reason. I still haven't bought my house ;) Other reasons that were also subsets of the main reason include: Where would I store my old TV/Furniture?, Throwing away non-broken things is dumb, Will I ever use 3/4 of the tools in my apartment?

I do this a lot, but luckily I talk myself out of buying any of these things 90% of the time. My most recent impulse buys were my Emerilware cookware set, Bosch compact multi-function kitchen tool, and my Apple MacBook Pro. The one thing in common about all the things I end up buying vs the ones I don't is that I tend to use the things I buy a lot, and the ones I don't I probably wouldn't use that much. However, I'd use the HDTV a lot, but I would not use the 1080p HD functionality, so it is a waste until I upgrade my cable :) And the MacBook really was only purchased because my old laptop's battery would no longer charge and there was no power button on it anymore!