Since around the start of the year, I’ve been doing my best to really reduce the amount of $$ I’ve been spending at lunch, as well as the intake of crap I’ve been eating during it. My solution so far, soup. Now I’m not going to tell you that I’ve mastered the art of the Amazing Soup Diet, even though it does sound good. I don’t have much time for it. I bring leftovers as often as I can, and since I’m trying to clear out my pantry again, I’ve been cooking more. As far as days when I don’t have leftovers, it’s off ot the selection of soups in a box under my desk. Variety is key, including low fat as well as tasty fatty versions for days when I am hitting the gym or just need a bit more of a comfort food style.
Some tips that seem to make this easier:
I have found that that it actually hinders my efforts if I buy from big box clubs such as BJ’s or Sams. Reason being, variety. If you have only two or three flavors of soup, you are going to get really tired of them really quickly. Every week a different brand of soup is on sale, go grab a nice varied selection.
Soup isn’t always healthy, read the labels. I keep really healthy options on hand for weeks when I’ve been bad at night, and more flavorful ones for when I’ve been good or going to gym.
If trying to lose weight, watch out for not only the fat content on the soup, but the crackers. I try to limit myself to 4 Club crackers per lunch, but that is more of a guideline and sometimes I need to increase it.
Keep a little TVP (textured vegetable protein) in your magic lunch box too, just a few tablespoons will not only add protein to anything, it will add some texture, which helps cut down on the need for fatty crackers.
Give yourself a reward day during the week. Let’s face it, some days you just don’t want soup or leftovers.
So I’m upset with Starbucks, to the point where I’m done with them until at least, 2012. Considering my office is in the same parking lot as a Starbucks, where I love the people, that says a lot. The short version of the long story goes something like this. For the past 4 years that our office was in this location, since the owner’s of the company I work for also goto SBUX daily, I’ve been purchasing them gift cards for Christmas. This year, I decide to spice it up a bit more than the standard plain off the shelf card, what a mistake that was.
On December 10th, 2010 I placed my order, which included an extra $8.00 charge, which I was able to accept as I thought my gift would stand out more to them.
On December 12th it shipped, under the auspice of taking “6-8 business days” from the Starbucks website and my order email, which has since been changed on the website, not sure about the order emails.
On December 22nd, I email them and explain that it’s now been over 8 business days and the order has not arrived, and inquired if it had been returned or lost. There is no response for a few days
On December 23rd, I call support, and I’m rudely told that it’s 7-12 business days, and there is nothing they can do since it’s USPS. Also, it’s “unreasonable to question” why it takes an envelope over week to travel anywhere in this country. Worse case scenario, Seattle to NJ, will only take a few days at best. I explain my displeasure with the entire situation to the service rep, who acts like he doesn’t care, but claims he will let his supervisor know of my displeasure with the entire process, per my request. The CSR did not offer me any type of ticket number.
On December 24th, get a response to my email sent on the 22nd, they say wait until the 12th business day then contact them again. This time, I get a ticket number.
On December 28th, I respond to the email explaining how I have now been embarrassed in front of my employers, and quite upset with the Starbucks brand. I request in the same email that the cards be reprinted.
On January 4th, I respond to the same email asking if there is any status change or if anything has happened. All the while keeping the subject line intact with the order info, as well as all ticket numbers.
On January 5th, I get a response saying to call, with yet another ticket number, so I do. On the phone, all of my existing ticket numbers don’t help her find any real information, so I give her the order string. She tries to find me in their system, to see if I have a Starbucks card, then gets snippy with me for trying to explain that they are shipping to my office. After about 30 minutes she’s able to tell me that the cards were “signed for, then redeemed”. I ask her how they could be signed for if they are just plain USPS, and she’s unsure, then ask her when they were used or redeemed. Again, she’s unsure. I’m now told that this will have to be escalated, however I can’t speak to anyone about the issue, but she’s got a ticket full of the info, and of course a new ticket number, and someone will contact me with the resolution.
On January 19th, since I have not heard a word back from any supervisors I call back, and a very nice woman tells me there is an update to my last ticket I’m to be refunded because they are unable to reprint custom cards. I explain to her that so far this has been going on for well over a month, and I’ve now spent about two hours of my life on the phone trying to resolve this, she is very apologetic and agrees that the entire thing is a mess.
On January 27th, a week and a day later, I contact my credit card company do charge back the initial charge.
On February 1st, someone calls me back and says “we see you disputed the charges, but we are going to send you coupons for a free coffee”..
I’m not going to sit here and rant and rave any further, but those of you in my office, and anyone in my personal life knows all about how badly this one was botched. My recommendation is don’t’ bother wasting your time with Starbucks support staff, and especially don’t bother with custom gift cards. In short, thanks for screwing up my office Christmas and making me look like an ass Starbucks.
At least I’ll save a ton of $$ by either buying coffee elsewhere or making my own. Now enjoy this funny, and freshly updated video:
Being cooler than most smokers is a bold statement to make, but it is true my friends. Well, mostly just because I like to fill my own ego and to reassure myself that I’m better off not smoking.. Even though I do have a bit of a gum addiction still (two or three pieces daily), I do think I am doing the right thing. Just because I’m a person who likes numbers and results here are a few facts.
151 days, 11 hours, 3 minutes and 53 seconds smoke free.
4,544 cigarettes not smoked.
$1,368.00 and 1 month, 4 days, 17 hours of your life saved.
I have taken this a step further and found that I’ve not purchased 22.72 cartons, or 23 fewer trips over the Commodore Barry Bridge into Delaware saving me an additional $69 in tolls, leaving an additional 460 miles fewer on my car, used 15.6 fewer gallons of gas, saving me an additional $62.
I must admit, I am pretty proud of myself. Including cigarettes, gas and tolls, my total savings to date is about $1,498.33. Now I’m not too sure where I have spent that money, I’ll have to consult buxfer for a while. Besides the obvious health and fiscal savings, I have also done a little part towards not lining the pockets of the oil bastards. That alone is a nice step in being more green without even realizing it, or trying all that hard.
I have been doing a lot of analysis over the past few weeks on my life. Perhaps it is because I have quit smoking, or I’ve been trying to live a bit greener, or who knows. One of my life goals however, is to get my finances in order. I figured now is as good of a time to start as any. Most recently I’ve been really checking over all of my investments, and I started to think about forming a good budget plan. Not something that is set in stone, but something that I can adapt as needed. For instance, restaurant week is coming up here in South Jersey and I really want to play. Going out a few nights a week is something that would be out of my normal realm unless I’m doing reviews. So a workable budget plan needs to be formed. Since I’ve become pretty much addicted to twitter, and to “life on the web” in comes buxfer. What is buxfer? Well from their first tour page they claim to help you :
How much money (or debt!) you have in your accounts
The breakdown of your recent expenses
Who owes you money and who you owe money to
I’ve gone ahead and imported my credit cards, my bank account, and via twitter, I’m now keeping track of the amount of money in my pocket down to the penny. Why would I want to do this? I’m now accountable, for everything I spend. With the tagging feature (which I find is a lot easier to use than Quickbooks or Quicken) I can look back and wonder what possessed me to spend $150 at Starbucks instead of packing my lunch. So far, I have about 6 months of solid data. Unfortunately most of those six months were right smack in the middle of my bad habits and bad spending. So I’m going to really start to use this month as a reference point. Just doing a quick review though, I spent too much money on interest and late fees (sadly not Blockbuster), so I know where I need to improve.
I can also see this being useful for doing the household finances. This way household bills can be split in a variety of ways, and everyone in the house can pay their fair share. Wish me luck, here we go.
After messing around for nearly a week on my test site, I give up. I finally decided it would be easier to just give up and start with a new, fresh widget ready theme for wordpress. What are widgets? Well that allows me to be a bit more lazy, and allows me to be a bit more compliant with some web standards. In other words, the previous theme was bugging me and that’s about it.
So what’s new so far, as of right now I have added twitter to the right sidebar. I’m going to do my best to update it as often as possible. Why you ask? Well that’s a great question if I do say so myself. One of the things that I have been devoting a lot of thought to recently is how much time I’m putting into different projects and or tasks. For instance, I currently spend an entire work day a week in my car just commuting from work. That works out to be just over 21 days a year of my life wasted in my car. So what am I going to do? I’m not quite sure. Part of me has considered going back to audio books, perhaps it’s time to pick Spanish back up. That does seem to be a direction we are heading after all. But I digress, I breathe deep, and I don’t really want to go smoke.. No really, I don’t.
Speaking of cigarette smoking.
51 days, 41 minutes and 46 seconds smoke free.
1531 cigarettes not smoked.
$459.00 and 11 days, 16 hours of your life saved.
I’m not really sure where the $459 is hanging out at, my guess it took a dump along with GM this week.
My immediate plans for this site are to either update the categories, and add tags to the site, or ditch them both. Who knows, it could be some variation of the same, or totally different. This site has had so many changes since 2003, so many posts/changes and improvements. I do promise not to sound like a self help book though. I’m going to be adding openID to the login’s, as well as some other cool “web 2.0″ and buzzword friendly items. In other words, it’s about damn time I updated.
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