During my class yesterday, my professor (not the most technological person ever…but a nice lady) was complaining about filling up her flash drive too quickly. She’s been putting her PowerPoint slides for each weeks lecture on her flash drive and bringing it to school with her so she can pop it onto the computer in class and display the slides on the projector. Her daughter told her to invest in an external hard drive, and I think that’s the way to go. The computer memory on the new external hard drives is a really versatile option for someone like my professor. Instead of putting a single lecture on a flash drive, she can pop all of her lectures for the entire course onto an external hard drive and have all of her course content at her fingertips – tests, quizzes, slides, and even handouts.

Computer memory options like the external hard drives I linked to above have gotten amazingly cheap over the past few years. I remember being amazed seeing computers with a 6GB hard drive in the late 90’s, and now it’s not uncommon to buy a PC with a 160GB hard drive. You can buy more memory online as well as video cards, optical drives and laptop batteries.

Come to think of it, I should probably take my own advice and get an external hard drive to store all of my digital pictures on…or I’m going to need some more memory myself!

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So in my new 2009 quest to save more and spend less, I’m holding off on buying a Wii Fit. We bought a Wii weeks ago at Wal-Mart for a mere $250 for Christmas. The kids were so surprised on Christmas morning – I really set the stage before the holidays by telling them repeatedly that one gaming system in the house was enough! A friend at work let me borrow her Jillian Michaels game for the Wii even though I don’t have the Wii Fit balance board – just so I could try it out. I was hooked, and I can only imagine how much more fun it would be WITH the balance board. Problem is, the Wii Fit and all of the toys that go with a Wii aren’t exactly on clearance right now, nor are they on sale. I’m going to hold off until I can find a deal or the Wii Fit comes down just a bit in price…OR until I have gift cards to fund my purchase.

I’m being frugal ’til it hurts.

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I wasn’t going to make a second post tonight, but how can I resist? I checked my stats and noticed a HUGE traffic surge from The Consumerist, which let me to this piece on the 15 Grossest Stories of 2008, and I’m #4 on the list!

4: Why You Should Wash Your Old Navy Pants Before You Wear Them: Colleen is going to wash her clothes before she wears them from now on. Why? Well, she bought a pair of pants from Old Navy that were, well, soiled. You know. In the crotch region. By a female. The words “snail trail” were used.

I’m honored. Deeply. For the curious, I have resumed shopping at Old Navy. It’s hard to find jeans that fit me in other stores, and ON is both affordable and close to my home. That said, I was EVERYTHING now and it’s a running gag in our house to check your new clothing purchases BEFORE you leave the store!

For those of you new to the tale, you can read it for yourself here in my post entitled Old Navy Snail Trail Pants. Quite easily the most popular post ever featured on this blog, and I got huge traffic from my writeup thanks to sites like TheConsumerist.com and Fark.com!

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I started my Christmas shopping today.

I got the chance to zip out of the office a bit early and found myself in the parking lot of a Kohl’s. It’s almost as if my car was on auto pilot! I didn’t find a thing for myself (the original goal of the trip into the store) but I found a little sumtin sumtin for Jim on the clearance rack that I couldn’t pass up. I already grabbed a few things for his birthday at the mall last month, so it looks like I just bought the first Christmas present of 2008.

I SWEAR I’m making a list this year of everything I buy so I don’t overspend as I’ve done in years past! When I get done with my shopping early in the season, I just CAN’T stop shopping. The end result is a ton of gifts under the tree for Jim and the kids that could last for 2 or 3 Christmases.

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I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 9. Tried contacts, ended up with an eye infection and an ulcer on my cornea, so here I am…destined to be a 4-eyes for life. Between my lenses (super thin with a Crizal coating) and my frames (pricey, thin wire frames) I drop around $400 on glasses every year or so. FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS! It’s worth it when you consider that money is so that I can SEE and function, but seriously…four hundred dollars? That’s a lot of moolah. I’m all for trying something new to save cash.

Something new just might be eyeglasses from ZenniOptical, which offers prescription glasses online starting at just $8. ($400-$8 = lots more fun things for me!) Being the skeptic and cynic that I am, I thought for $8, what do I get? Ugly thick frames, or Sally Jesse Raphael glasses? How good can they look for $8? Or even $20 or $50?
Well, I have to tell you that the frames pictured here are the ZenniOptical.com $8 variety, and they look almost exactly like the pricey frames I buy from my eye doctor. The clip on sunglasses are available for the frames for only FOUR dollars. My eye doctor wanted to charge me $50 when I asked for an extra pair!

Note to self: Huge markup at eye doctor. Probably making his BMW payment when I visit. Switch to ZenniOptical.

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It’s too late too save money for most of you today, but RUN, do not walk, to your local Old Navy tomorrow. I happened to head there today to kill some time before dinner and found myself in the midst of a huge clearance sale. On top of that, there are huge extra savings to be had:

• Spend $50 and get 20% off
• Spend $75 and get 30% off
• Spend $100 and get 40% off

Guess which one I opted for? I spent more but I ended up paying less! The discount applies to your subtotal before tax, INCLUDING sale and clearance items!

Note: Just wash all your Old Navy purchases before wearing them. Consider yourself warned.

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Now that Gracie’s birthday is over, she’s got a LOT of thank you cards to write. Not only did both grandmother’s, both aunts, etc get her gifts, but we had a passel of youngins here on Saturday for the party and they all spoiled her! I was trying to think of a really cute and fun way for her to say thank you when I saw a site called PS Print Printing tonight. They’ll turn any photograph or image into a postcard or a greeting card, which means I could take the darling picture of Grace and her friends on the slide and have it made into a postcard…she can then write her thank you on the back and we can mail it for half the price of a traditional thank you note. I’m thinking that most of the 6th grade girls who came to the party would rather have a picture of the group to keep than a plain old thank you note – wouldn’t you?

Postcard printing isn’t just for thank you notes either…I can think of 100 ways you can use them:

• Open house advertisements for a realtor
• Non-traditional Christmas cards
• Engagement announcements
• Moving announcements (use a picture of your new house!)

Just upload a picture and decide on a few print options and you’re well on your way towards amazing people with your craftiness. They’ll wish they had thought of it first!

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Remember this post about my label maker…the one I don’t use nearly enough?

I brought new fancy schmancy Sonicare toothbrushes for Jim and I this week. Toothbrushes that look exactly alike. I love my husband, and we frequently swap spit and all that, but we don’t want to share a toothbrush. After Jim asking me several times, “Which one is mine?” I whipped out the label maker and put our names on each!

(I feel like I’m in kindergarten again.)

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I like to watch people. Not through their windows late at night or anything crazy like that…I’m just an observant type, and I enjoy people watching in places like the mall. Women, men, kids – it doesn’t matter, I just enjoy seeing how people dress and interact with each other. I was killing time at a restaurant this past week, waiting for a friend to meet me for lunch, when I noticed a group of men enter the restaurant. Two of the men had a common trait – male pattern baldness. One had accepted it and started shaving his head, while the other was rocking the Dick Van Patton comb over. That combined with his short stature and beer gut made him what a coworker would call the “trifecta” – bald, short, and fat. I don’t get why men think the comb-over fools anyone. Either shave your head and accept that bald is beautiful, or start rocking the toupee.

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You’ve only got 2 months to prepare for Halloween!

I’m jumping the gun a bit, right? I can’t help it – a coworker and I were looking at pictures of Halloween parties she’s attended in years last week, and it inspired me. Some of the people she parties with really got into their Halloween costumes. I saw everything from Playboy bunnies to Oompa-Loompas. My son decided several months ago (when we saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) that he was going to be Indiana Jones. Huge sigh of relief for me, since the clothes for Indy are pretty basic, and we’d only need a hat, whip, and a 5 o’clock shadow. However, having just seen The Dark Knight this weekend, I except my son to show a huge interest in Batman and other superhero costumes any day now!

I need to dress up too…and I need a costume that’s “safe” for work. Yeah, most of my previous costumes need not apply for the position.

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