Prime scam?

Around noon yesterday we drove into town to go to the lumber store and the grocery store. I got just a few things: milk, bread, onion, tomato and a loaf of bread. I also noticed they also carry the circles of canadian bacon I use on dh's breakfast egg sandwich. The package was like $4.29 and for some reason I was thinking that's pretty close to the Walmart price I pay, so I grabbed one. Well, turns out I was wrong, Walmart's price for the package is only $2.86 LOL. I also got dh a maple bar, but the other few donuts left I don't like any of those kind, so I didn't get one. Oh, I also got some apples.

Dh continued to work on his 2 smaller drawers, the rest of the afternoon and for a bit after dinner. I think he's now at the painting stage, today. I just ordered the 2 slide mechanisms for those drawers, so that should be the last of the money going out for this project. And I think he's pretty well done spending on his auto maintenance projects he's been doing. Welp, I take that sentence back. He just now added some gauges to order...sigh.....

AND what the hell is the deal with Amazon Prime prices on items being higher priced than the same item on a non-Prime account? This is happening quite often now. I just had 2 items (out of 4) today. One was a $6 difference and the other was about $2 and, the prime delivery date was a week LONGER than the non-Prime! And it's not like I'm comparing items with different sellers. The seller is the same on each item. DH will message me a link to what he wants to buy. I click on it and it opens up to the item page in my non prime amazon account, which I am already logged into. Then staying on the page with the item, I click on Account/switch account and switch over to the Prime account I share with DD because if it's a Prime item it usually ships faster, but ...same item, same seller, and higher priced under Prime. We're already paying to have Prime and then we are supposed to pay higher prices on top of that?! 

Last day of March

I'm hating how fast the dang weekends are going lately. I think I need to review my vacation days again for work and throw a few more in there, LOL. I know I have a couple days coming up the first weekend in May, but that's still 4 1/2 weeks away. 

I got started on sis's tax returns yesterday morning. Then I had a question for her, then she called me and then we ended up chatting on the phone for a long time, so I didn't end up getting much more done with it.

Neither dh or I was very hungry for dinner last night, so we just had sandwiches. For some reason every time I go into the pantry and see the boxes of cornbread mix, it sounds good. I usually only make that with my taco soup or chili, but I haven't made that in a long time due to dh's stomach issues. So, I just made a pan of cornbread to have, just because. 

We ended up being stocked up on enough groceries (first time ever) that we've made it past our normal 3 weeks of needing to get more. Last Thurs was 3 weeks. We were kind of thinking of going in this afternoon or maybe Tues or Wed, but when I asked dh yesterday if he wanted to go in Monday (so I could get the order placed) he said not really....I said me either, LOL. He does want to run into town today to get those couple of boards he needs from the lumber store. I said if I just go with you, we can stop at the grocery store (a block away) and I can get a few things and we'd be good for another week of not having to go to the city ;) So, it sounds like that is what we will do. I just need a gallon of milk, some apples, tomato, onion, and might as well get an extra loaf or two of bread (I still have 3 in the freezer). 

DD and SIL did a fun thing yesterday with one of their cars (her Explorer ST) by doing an autocross thing where a small course was set up with cones and they'd get to drive it and get timed. I think they each got to do it several times. They have a gopro camera, so SIL set it up to show her driving the course and one time set it up inside to watch her while driving and sent us the videos. OMG! Her face in that helmet brought back memories! It was just like I was seeing her 9 year old face all over again. It was so cute! I was smiling the whole time I was watching the video and even got teary eyed. She did well (even beating SIL times) but that's not a surprise. She always was a very smooth racer.

The cute chipmunks are back. When we had our dogs, one of the dogs was just obsessed with watching them and we always called them "chippermonkees", so the name has stuck.

 

 

 

Weekend chores

I managed to get in a normal Saturday of chores and whatnot, without my back bothering me, so that was a relief. Did some laundry, vacuumed downstairs, took a walk to get the mail, paid my bills, etc. Off and on I watched a podcast interview - it was 4 hours long! Holy cow - who has 4 hours to watch one podcast? LOL. I looked at the other interviews and they are all like 3 hours, so not likely I will watch more of those anytime soon.

DH spent most of his day out in the shop - since had had purchased the rest of the lumber to do his second 2 (smaller) drawers, he got those built. It went a lot fast this time, since he know what he was doing. He does need to pick up a couple 2x2 boards from the lumber store now and they aren't open on Sunday's, so he'll have to wait until tomorrow.

My chicken has slowed down on her eggs, after 2 months of a pretty steady 2 days on, one day off. Now I'm only getting an egg every few days it seems. Darn, I was liking her schedule and it was keeping me fairly stocked in eggs. When I go out to give her a treat (either some bread or some scratch and a bit of meal worms) I have a few times found her sitting in the nest box, thinking oh good, she's laying an egg but when I check back later, there's nothing. I did get one on Friday.

I need to do my half-sis's U.S. tax returns for her. Ugh. LOL. She's supposed to file one every year, since she is a citizen. She used to have them done by a CPA in Canada, but it was so expensive for her and at the time she was working and living on her own and just didn't have the extra money. I mean here she was making like $40k a year and having to pay like $2k to an accountant to file her return. So, in 2020, I got her caught up with about 5 years worth......and then I told her it will be easy for me to do each year for you - just keep up on them...which of course she did not. And now that she has U.S. income and a 1099 for last year, she has to file, so now I have 4 years worth to do again. I told her to take a copy of the last one I did for her and write in those amounts for each year and then I'll get them input into current years tax forms for her to send it. She sent me those in an email yesterday, so I'll get started on them this morning. If it was only one year to do, I wouldn't mind, but I'm not looking forward to doing 4 years again. She's never had to pay any U.S. income tax, because she pays Canadian income tax on her CA earnings, but I'm not sure how it will work for 2024, where she now has income earned in the U.S. She may owe the U.S. some, but then I'm guessing she'll get to deduct that from her Canadian taxes owed.

Wasted work day

Friday was a complete waste of a work day. What little I got done, finally, will have to be re-done on Monday. The IT guy was working in my computer all morning and finally got done around 1pm. But pretty much the whole time he was trying to figure it out, I had to stay sitting at my desk, because every so often he was asking me questions in the chat box he set up. The accounting software seemed to be working, for me....but he apparently forgot he also had to get my boss set up on her computer. I sent him back a message that she was leaving for a meeting for a couple hours, but would leave her laptop on, so he could access it. She returned a couple hours later and was able to get in the accounting software now, but she caught that our bank account balances did not look right. Our 2 checking accounts were showing as negative balances! What the hell?! By this time, a completely different guy had taken over. At 4pm she called me and told me to just be done for the day, have a great weekend, LOL. She did message me about a half hour or so later that the guy fixed it (he had to reinstall our last backup copy as of 4:30 the prior day), so the entries I made yesterday afternoon will have to be redone. Thank goodness I didn't do too much. I had recorded a few bills and posted a large deposit. Apparently, the IT guy we had assigned to us for the past several years is no longer with the IT company. That stinks.

I'm just happy it's Saturday and knock on wood, so far so good with my back issues. It's payday as well. Well, technically payday is Monday, but when it falls on a Monday it is always in my bank account on Saturday.

Our new phones have been working fine, so in a couple days I'll get the old phones cleared of data and boxed up to be returned. I even still have the boxes the old phones came in, so I will put them in those (inside the bigger box) so they help to stay secure in the box. They go back UPS, so hopefully we'll have a delivery next week, that we can just give our driver the package to take. If not, we can drop it off somewhere in the city, when we go get groceries. I think Walgreens is a drop off place.

I think dh doesn't have much to do this weekend. All the misc car maintenance parts he's still waiting on, won't be here until Monday or Tuesday. It's been nice that he's been keeping busy with something most every day. It's a cloudy gray day and was barely above freezing when I got up at 7am. With my back feeling ok, my plan today is to vacuum downstairs. That really doesn't bother my back much, as the only carpeted area is our bedroom and vacuuming over the hard floors is easy.

My side part of my desk is getting really messy again, so I'm going to work on that right now, while I wait for it to be time for breakfast :)

Friday and pictures

I wish I knew what is going on with my back. The lower back pain is mostly gone, but I was standing at the kitchen counter at lunch yesterday, slicing and apple, and suddenly pain in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades. It's not hurting this morning, thankfully, but geez....I'm getting tired of this.

I got dh's phone all set up. Surprisingly no complaints or questions. I think it's because for the most part this phone really has no changes from his previous model. I took a couple of pictures last night while I was making dinner and sent them to DD. She replied "nice picture quality!" I said it does look better, doesn't it? 

I tried the new to me ready to drink instant breakfast. Tastes fine but the small 8oz carton just doesn't seem like enough to fill me up for breakfast. I know the powdered kind also says to only use 8oz of milk, but I've always put in more, haha. So, I added a little bit of milk to it and liked it better. Not quite so chocolatey. Drinking these should cut way down on how much milk I need to have on hand all the time. Plus I can store most of the cartons in the pantry, since it is shelf stable.

Day 4 and our accounting software is still not working and now (last night) the IT guy deleted our previous version as an option to use, so now we can't get in to work on anything at all.  This is ridiculous - this is like an easy process - happens like every year and should have been taken care of by now. Now I'm kind of sitting here with nothing much I can do, since just about everything I do needs this program.

As an "answer" to our state's property tax problem, the apparent solution (and we knew this was going to be their solution, even though the governor has been denying it for 3 years now) is to implement a state sales tax (which has been voted down by the voters like 4x in the past). We already have a state income tax. So now we are supposed to be taxed on our earnings by the state and then taxed again when we spend it. At least when we lived in our previous state, while yes we had high sales tax rates, we did not have a state income tax on top of that. Or like the bordering state - they have an income tax, but no sales tax (like we do now). The legislators want to put it to a vote of the people again...promising this money collected from sales tax will only be used to lower property taxes......unless.....they decide they want to put it in the general fund with a 75% vote of the legislators. Of course. You know eventually that's where the money will end up. How is lowering my property tax, but making me pay a sales tax going to save me any money whatsoever? Are people really this stupid?

I'm glad it's Friday and am hoping I can have a pain free weekend. We need to figure out which day we want to go in and get groceries. It's now been a bit over 3 weeks, but we are still good with food until like next Tues or Wed. I'm kind of thinking maybe just go in tomorrow afternoon and get it done with.

 

 

Bumps in the road

Yesterday every delivery service brought something 🙄.  The mail brought some spark plugs dh ordered. The Amazon driver brought dh more car parts and my ready to drink Carnation Instant Breakfast to try and see if I like it. Fed Ex brought him some gasket seal, and UPS brought some oil lubricant. Good grief, LOL. 

Since I got payroll done before lunch, I took a lunch break and took a short nap. I didn't get enough sleep Tuesday night. I drank some green tea with honey before bed and then, for some reason, felt nauseous for the first 90 minutes or so, after I went to bed. It was around 11pm when I finally went to sleep. Then I got up at 4:30 to go to the bathroom. Annoyingly, when I got back in bed, dh turned over and leaned up right against my back. I hate that, but what's worse is his hand is twitching/moving about every 15 to 20 seconds, either bumping up against my back or my pillow. Finally, after 20 minutes of it, I woke him up and told him to move over. That woke the cat up and he spent the next 15 minutes wandering around the house meowing, so I had to get up and shut our bedroom door. I think I finally got back to sleep at 5:30, only to have to get up at 7. Last night was normal, good sleep, so I'm back to regular energy levels.  

I have dh's old and new phones sitting in front of me this morning, going through the transfer process. Already his is going to take longer, LOL. His new phone popped up that an ios update needed to be done and says estimated time 23 minutes. My new phone did not do that. I've been using my new phone about a day and half and don't really notice much difference at all. Our new cases got delivered, so once I got that one my phone I felt better. I did realize that the charging cable on this new phone is different than my old phone. I guess they had to change something to make it worth it? LOL. The new phone uses a USB-C cable instead of the lightning cable. I realized that last evening, when I was going to charge it. Oh crap - I don't have a charging block for USB-C. Then I remember I had ordered a set of 2 charging blocks awhile back (I think it was for my ipad) and accidentally ordered the wrong kind. I went and got them out of the drawer and they are the USB-C that I need, so I was happy about that. DH usually charges his phone from his computer and I think his new computer has a USB-C port in the front of it. 

It was such a nice day yesterday with the temp getting up to 74. Now we are back to clouds and rain. Nothing new going on with the lots next to us yet. I've been very surprised no one has showed up with equipment to start moving dirt. Maybe I'll get one more spring (later spring) with the pretty yellow wildflowers that cover the lot next to us.

OMG - why does dh's new phone (same exact old and new phone as mine) have to have issues?? It finally finished the software update. I thought it was now moving forward with the transfer but now seems to be stuck on "Quick Start - looking for nearby devices". The old phone is right next to it! It wouldn't let me go back to a previous screen, so I had to turn the phone off and restart it. Now it says it's transferring the data from the old phone to the new phone. I'm not holding my breath that it will work. I can't figure out why everything related to dh has to be 10x harder! It's the same damn phones as mine. Wish me luck!

Now I'm logged into work and still dealing (day 3 is it now?) with the accounting software update with the new IT guy.... 

Starting out to be a good day

Yesterday dh ran back into the city to pick up the radiator he dropped off last Friday. I think it was just so they could flush/clean it out (?). He didn't want to leave the vehicle with them, so he pulled the radiator out and just took that in. What he got back looked like someone found it in a junk yard. He said he even asked the guy this is my radiator? When he got home with it, he was a bit upset at the condition of it. He knew he'd have to repaint it, but I guess wasn't expecting how it looked. Then he talked on the phone with his buddy in TX and he told him that's how they end up looking after going through the cleaning machine (or however they do it), and told him what to do and dh told him he is also going to repaint it black and friend said don't use regular black spray paint, they make a paint specifically for radiators, so he ordered that from Amazon.

Poor sis - the meeting that her responsible and reasonable step brother called to get the 2 fighting brothers to knock the BS off, apparently has not done any good with the step brother who is co-executor with her. He texted her yesterday he found some paperwork to something their dad owned (that has been kept someplace else). He literally texted to her - lets just keep this to ourselves and sell it! OMG. She replied back no, she is NOT doing that. It belongs to the estate, etc....then he replies back with some wierd/vague reply like he's agreeing with her and blaming the brother he keeps fighting with. So bizarre. She's got a long road ahead of her probating all this.

Our new phones arrived just at dinner time. After dinner I went back up to my desk to set my new phone up. It went smoothly, just took time for all the apps to update/load. Almost everything stayed signed in, other than a couple of apps. I think dh might be able to handle a new phone without too much fussing LOL. Other than an added button on the right side for quick camera access (which seems nice) and the button on the left side to silence the phone (which he never uses anyway) changed from a slide type button to a push button, everything else seems the same. It does take better pictures, though. Zooms in way farther than my iphone 11 does, so he'll appreciate that change. I am still going to use my new phone, at least for today, before I set his up. Just in case I come across anything different that he may throw a fit about, I'll have it figured out, haha.

I got online last night and ordered 2 new phone cases, that surprisingly are supposed to be delivered today via an Amazon driver. I don't think I've ever had anything delivered next day, living here! I'm excited if something manages to get here in 2 days. DD lives near an Amazon distribution warehouse and she can get some things same day.

Payroll went super smooth and quick this morning. That doesn't happen very often, so I am happy when it does. "Payroll day" (2x a month) is also the day dh knows to leave me alone and not bug me with all his usual stuff. Do you think I am going to tell him I'm already done? Hell no! LOL. I'll take the quiet when I can, for as long as I can ;)

It's sunny and going to be almost 70 today 🌞