It’s Cyber Monday!
I’m a bargain hunter. For me, shopping is a competitive sport and if I have to pay the full suggested retail price I’ve lost. I’m not convinced you get the best deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Instead, in the interest of frugality, I comparison shop, hunt for sites that allow me to stack promo codes, use rebate sites, and most importantly, only buy what’s on my list. But it is fun to shop from the office when you should be working! If you are looking for discounts on the web today here are a couple of links that might help.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/best-cyber-monday-deals
Describe your shopping style Deadsplinters. Do you enjoy it or dread it, value time spent over money saved? Are you looking for one big-ticket item or several smaller gifts to place beneath the tree? Are you an early or last-minute shopper? The countdown has begun.
Don’t forget to support local businesses when you can. Many of them will ship or do curbside pick up.
I made a pumpkin roll this weekend, which goes very well with coffee!
It looks like crap, so it’s not FYCE worthy, but it tastes fine.
https://www.landolakes.com/recipe/18824/libby-s-pumpkin-roll/
My food is never pretty. I do like a good pumpkin roll.
My food is never pretty, either. It just tastes good!
In the end that’s what matters most.
Just do what I do! My food often looks like it fell on the floor and I just scraped it back onto plates, one of the reasons why my FYCE posts just have leader images to give you the kind of “Platonic ideal” of what you should come up with. That, and the fact that my phone is crap and The Better Half would be wondering why I was taking photos of stuff I make every so often. Neither of us has any social media presence (that he knows of) so why commemorate something that, again, looks like I scraped it off the floor. He’d be horrified by how much info I’ve been posting here, benign and flattering to him as it is.
LOL, I suspect it looks better than you’re letting on.
Trust me, your suspicion is unfounded. I make a lot of “sloppy” food. If you read the Beef Stroganoff recipe, for example, it’s simple and delicious, but the way I serve it it looks like it was ladled out from a huge vat in a worker’s canteen in Soviet Russia in the 1950s.
It’s partly because so much of what I make involves noodles of some sort, and then a sauce, and maybe something else. I have no time nor patience for plating. Let the noodles slide to one side. Let them overhang the plate. Let the bowl overflow a little, who cares?
I have been reading about the (blessedly behind us, the toast) avocado toast craze-like obsession with how to create a perfect charcuterie board. I’ve been doing something like this (I didn’t call it a “charcuterie board”) for 30 years. This bewilders me. You put out different things, distribute them so everyone gets a shot at whatever they might want while they’re standing around the table making small talk with a drink in one hand…
ladled out from a huge vat in a worker’s canteen in Soviet Russia in the 1950s
LMAO!
I’m going to reply to myself for once, because “avocado toast” set my right eye a-twitching.
A long time ago I emerged from the shower to find The Better Half hacking into an avocado. “What are you doing? Are you trying to make guacamole? I’ll do it if you want some but it’s a little early.”
“No. Remember I told you I went with X yesterday to [incredibly trendy restaurant.] They had avocado toast, and I thought I’d make some for myself.”
“Oh God.”
“Problem is I can’t get this thing out of the middle.”
“That’s the stone. That’s how they–give it here. This is your problem. This avocado isn’t ripe. No worries. This can be repaired.”
With a small steak knife I removed the stone and then carved out the meat as best I could and put it in a bowl. “Now, we’re going to microwave this a little bit. The avocado is going to be very bland. Do you know if they did anything to it? Salt? Lemon juice maybe?”
“I don’t think so…”
“How many dips do I make using avocado? How much guacamole–”
Ding! “Now, the avocado is softened and I’m going to mash it with a fork so it’s spreadable.”
“So you’ve had avocado toast before?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not in my 20s. Toast some bread.”
His avocado toast phase lasted about three months, luckily.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, about six months after our initial attempt this incredibly annoying try-hard waltzed into an office I was freelancing at. It was a Monday morning and people were recapping their weekend. “You guys, I went to [a “diner”/hipster hangout in Brooklyn near her apartment in a neighborhood she wouldn’t have survived a weekend in in the 20th century] and I had their avocado toast. I’m like totally addicted. Like, I wanna have it every day.” “Awesome!” “Here, they have a website, it’s [an incredibly twee name] and I took a couple-a pix–there it is!” She brought up the website and her colleagues ooh-ed and ahh-ed over it. As a freelancer, and not a 20-something, I said nothing.
“Cool. So like the 12 bucks” [up went the eyebrow over my twitching right eye] you get–”
“Oh my God you guys, it’s like, you get two slices of their bread–”
“They make their own bread? That’s super cool.”
“No, like I don’t think so, but they get it and–”
The funny thing is that company had a pretty well-equipped common kitchen and I proposed to my boss, who had evolved into a friend, that I should conduct a tutorial on how to make your own avocado toast. These people were young, like I was once, and they were in entry-level jobs, so I thought I could show them how to save a lot of money and make them realize that food doesn’t have to come from Mom or takeout.
“Are you kidding? You want to be around any of those idiots when they have a knife and a heat source?”
Full disclosure I had avocado toast for breakfast last week. But in my kitchen. Because I was too lazy to make other breakfast last week.
Might not be entirely accurate, but I’ve heard that there has been an upsurge in hand injuries from people trying to use knives to deal with avocados…
Kinda reminded me of another rumor about “bagel hand” being an ER thing in the 90s(?), from people holding a bagel in one hand, cutting it with a knife held in the other hand, and often kept cutting once they were through the bagel…
…my shopping style is apparently to want things “the market” has decided nobody wants…like a phone with a hardware keyboard so it doesn’t take up half the screen when I want to type something…or clothes that are mainly just the one color at a time…will last…& don’t turn me into a de facto bill board…or…frankly the list seems endless
…so often that can translate to me stumbling on something that seems to check a few boxes but also to be priced well beyond what I feel I can justify paying & knowing there’s a decent chance I’ll either regret not getting it…or worse that I will get it & end up wishing I’d bought two so I’d have a spare when the first wears out?
You and my daughter *sigh*. I wasn’t going to shop today but she texted that she needs help finding something for her bestie. And she hates everything she’s already looked at and all my ideas. She’s giving him a blanket she knitted, the Winter Warmers cocktail book and wanted nice Irish Coffee mugs to go with it. Her complaint is they are all boring. Well yeah, its a glass pedestal mug. So now I’m looking at pottery sites for something special.
I miss my old phone with the slide-out keyboard So. Much.
I still have a Motorola ‘brick’ phone but no one calls me on that number (555.867.5309) anymore…and I also have a pager that I keep charged in the event I wander into a time machine along my way.
…I’ve heard people joke that some of the older nokia phones are the only things that will survive the apocalypse
…although I think I’m inclined to go with bill hicks & assume it’ll just be cockroaches…& keith richards
I do too. My favorite phone was an Ericsson with a slide-out keyboard.
I would kill someone (well, maybe not, but I would spend altogether too long considering it…) for a phone up to modern specs, not huge, and with a slide out qwerty keyboard.
I have been thinking about replacing my vacuum. I have a cordless Bissell Ion, but it doesn’t work very well on cat hair. And Boggs sheds like a motherfucker. Fine, cotton candy like, long hairs that embed into the carpet. Maybe I really do need to spend $600 on a Dyson or something. But it seems like all the models are the top heavy kind now with a wall mount and I really don’t want to drill, plus they say max vac time is pretty short. Bleh. I hate making decisions.
I have a Shark and it’s really good for dog fur. But Fanny has short coarse fur so I’m not sure it would work the same for Boggs’ fur. My daughter bought one too and she has a cat. But to be honest she’s not the best housekeeper so I don’t know that I’d take her recommendation.
We had a Dyson “pet” model, and it was sub-par with dog fur. Actually, I’m being too nice: it flat-out sucked.
We switched to a Shark that was on sale at Home Depot, and we are MUCH happier with it. Better on pet fur at about one-quarter the price of the Dyson.
I think Dyson vacuums are a scam. Maybe when they first came out they were superior but in the years since everyone seems to have caught up and surpassed them.
Like most folk, I enjoy a good bargain; however, I seriously dislike shopping, especially on those ‘peculiar’ days of the year…I never shop on ‘those’ days and happily leave any ‘possibilities’ to others.
I went out on Black Friday once with a friend. NEVER AGAIN. It was horrible and I ended up buying nothing.
We have several November and December birthdays, so we have to start in October. We buy locally when we can, and then get the remainder online. (Boise is still like a small town in some ways, i.e. what’s in stock in local stores.)
Other than one local wine shipment that we are taking care of this week, we are done with the shopping until January birthdays.
I’m usually finished before Thanksgiving but I got a slow start this year. I like shopping locally too. I have some jewelry to order from an artist in town, they deliver free. I better get on that.
Every year, I promise myself that I will start Christmas shopping early, and every year, I wait til the last possible minute and hate it. I just don’t like shopping, most of the time. I prefer second hand stores where you find all kinds of weird shit! We went to Woodfield Mall back in… February (? I think) and that was the first time I’ve been to a mall in like, 2 years, and it was incredibly overwhelming. The only non-second hand place I usually shop at is Kohl’s, and even there, I go straight for the clearance racks. If it’s not on sale, I won’t buy it unless it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
I’m rambling…
Anyway. I dislike shopping, and put it off too long, and then have a minor freakout about the whole mess. I need to stop doing that.
I had to go to the Apple Store at the mall a few weeks ago for a repair. I hope I don’t need to go back for a long time. Since the pandemic it’s become the local hang out for teens, drug dealers and gangs. There are frequent shootings that make it even less appealing than usual.
I love buying gifts. Like many of you said above, I also shop local first, followed by small businesses, ending with places I can really work the coupons/deals/promo codes.
I have a spreadsheet of all the people I need to buy gifts for. During the year, as they mention something they want, or need more of, or I see them enjoying item X so they would probably enjoy item Y, I make note of it. Then, when a deal arises, I can jump on it.
I also buy things in January, like holiday cards at 75% off or holiday-themed token gifts for close neighbors, etc. I need the spreadsheet to remember what I’ve done already…who remembers from 12 months prior?
Anyway, the gifts for family and friends are purchased, wrapped, and under the tree, or are now in the hands of UPS.
I just need one more address update, and the holiday cards will be ready to send, too. I only started sending cards in the last few years, once I was no longer caring for children or elderly parents. I send to my coworkers and to some old folks who receive little mail, and to a few close friends.
While this year-round preparation may seem odd, but it avoids holiday pressure and financial pressure. And I get the pleasure of anticipating making people happy with a well-thought gift all year long.
Giving someone just the right gift says I listen to you, I know you. It can make someone feel valued. Nice work @Elliecoo.
i think i need to hunt the bargains for a decent wintercoat….getting caught out by freezing rain made me think maybe this time of year is not ideal for tooling about in a windbreaker
i forgot it was possible to get that cold
anyways…i typically dont much care for shopping and try to spend as little time as possible doing it
(on the other hand..lately ive found myself making trips to the supermarket just coz im bored and im sure theres something i need….)
(i’ll put that one down to wierd rona behaviour……*buys a carrot*)
A carrot a day keeps the rona away? Maybe?
maybe…i mean…ive not got it yet?
also i just find it hilarious to end up getting 20cents worth of shopping
ill pay by card thank you…contactless as im trying to not catch the rona on one of my twenty five shopping runs today :p
I recently discovered the joy of shopping at Goodwill online. It’s a bidding system and I might be addicted. The pros are that the proceeds go to a good cause (I know the CEO gets millions but they also do good right? Please don’t correct me if I’m wrong) and I’m never invested enough to be upset when I’ve lost. The last minute bidding war thrill is priceless.
I didn’t know you could shop at Goodwill online! I know they employ people who might not be considered hireable elsewhere so that’s a good thing.
Yep, shopgoodwill.com.
I feel dirty/tainted/corrupted/guilty…
I typically abhor black friday and other shopping crazes. But I ended up buying stuff this year. Mostly it was stuff I knew I would need in the near future, and was sorta keeping an eye out for, and there were discounts/coupons/sales/etc.
But it still feels wrong…
Everything about 2020 feels wrong. Sometimes ya gotta just go with it.