GLOCERY GAMES - NOW HIGH-TECH

I have an on-again/off-again relationship with couponing. I save the coupon inserts that come in my Sunday paper, but clipping and sorting them is a task that keeps acquiring bumped to the bottom of my to-do list. Expiration dates come and go, and I wind up paying entire cost for items I had coupons for.
Now and again, I've been inspired by someone's testimony to step it up a notch. By strategically matching promotional sales with manufacturer and store coupons, many savvy shoppers say they save enormously. I do not altercate it, but if I've assayed to do the equivalent, it took me so much time to get all my couponing ducks in a row, the hourly rate was barely worth it.
Enter the Grocery Game, an net subscription service that is guessed to do all the believing for you. For $4.95, I signed up for a four-week trial subscription, which gives Maine access to a each week couponing plan of attack. The service equals local sales to locally circulated coupons. Lists change from state to state. As an Arkansas subscriber, I can choose from one or both of the major supermarket and chemist chains. I chose both.
According to the "game rules," it will take almost XII weeks of saving coupon encloses earlier your coupon file and the list are fully in synchronise, but even newbies should actualize a few savings at once. For once, procrastination proved to be my friend: I had more than twelve week's worth of Sunday inserts already stashed in a pile. I was able to collide with the ground running. In the 1st week, I was able to score boastful with profoundly discounted staple items and even some freebees. The "rules" commend carrying to take advantage of cyclical promotions: having a 12-week supply of staple items bought at reduced prices is considered the sweet spot. Grocery gamers don't want to run out of something in between coupons and sales, and be forced to pay full price.
After the test period, the subscription rate is 15.00 quarterly. Savings about my 1st shopping trip more than paid for the trial, plus a year's subscription. I define savings as discounts I wouldn't otherwise get on items I would normally buy. Some tractableness here aids. For example, with three children in school and pre-school, cereals and cereal bars are staple items. By only choosing brands from the list, I was able to stock up on $1 boxes of cereals, and snack bars for $1 and $2 a box. And while none of them were organic or sugar-free, they were nutritionally acceptable by this mom's middle-of-the-road standards.
Which brings me to a common charge all but couponing: most coupons are for processed, pre-packaged food. It's true. And how far I've fallen from my original nutritional ideals (my firstborn's first birthday cake was whole wheat, organic and fruit-juice sweetened; the third child's was made of dyed and sweetened chemicals) is a post for a different day. But not all coupons are for cosmonaut food, and the lists also notice specials for whole foods, too. True, you can glean this from glancing through your grocery store sales flyer, but the list tells you whether it's worth it to buy just what you need at present, or if it's time to stock up, because the deal won't come around again for a while.
And maybe you don't eat brand-name O's made from oats for breakfast, but you might wash your hair with brand-name shampoo. Last Sunday, I stocked up on seven bottles of shampoo that were the brands we normally use, regularly priced at around $3.50 a bottle, and two multipacks of bath soap, normally around $2.50. The total at non-sale prices would have been around $30.00. By combining the sales and coupons, I forked over 17.86 (I was ambushed by a $1 pack of candy at the checkout). Pretty good, but here's the clincher: I got four register-generated $4.00 credits toward my next shopping trip at the drugstore. Provided I use them towards things I would otherwise buy, it means I paid .86 for seven bottles of brand-name shampoo and seven bars of soap, that would normally cost me $35.00.
The drawbacks: coupon rules are more convoluted than tax law, and while the Grocery Game simplifies it a lot, it doesn't take all the reckoning out of it. I still spend much too much time lining up my strategy. For example, my $4 credits from above can only be used one per dealings. Will I really make four apart trips back to the drugstore before they expire in two weeks? Perhaps. Some of my favorite cosmetics are on the list this week, and by combining the register credits and manufacturer coupons with sales, I can stock up on deeply discounted mascara and tinted moisturizer that I know I will have to buy anyway when I run out, because honey, I have tried them all and these are my brands. That might be worth the four-mile round trip.
Not every deal is. I am hoping I will become more efficient at deciding how to adapt the game list to my needs and priorities. From reading the site's message boards, it's obvious that couponing is a vocation and a passion for some. It's not for me. There's a movement to return to a paradigm where a majority of a person's time and energy were spent foraging for food. They can go back without me. I'd rather use my talents elsewhere. I'm better at writing than I am at hunting and gathering.
But will someone bring me lunch?


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DAVID - AN AMAERICAN IDOL

NEW YORK (AP) — A naughty backstory was not adequate to keep David Hernandez on "American Idol." The 24-year-old ex-stripper from Glendale, Ariz., was brushed off Wed, departing eleven aspiring singers to vie for the "Idol" entitle and a record contract.
"Honestly, things happen for a reason," Hernandez told earlier departing the stage. "I believe we all have a program. ... This isn't it for me."
Hernandez, who sang the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There," made newspaper headline* last calendar week later it was disclosed to The linked Press that he acted as a stripper at a Phoenix club with a "mostly male" clientele.
Kristy Lee Cook, a 24-year-old from Selma, Ore., and Syesha Mercado, a 21-year-old from Sarasota, Fla., Finished out the bottom 3 vote-getters.
Finalists had the chance to execute classics from the John Lennon-Paul McCartney songbook this week. The show's producers recently got permission to use songs belonging to Sony/ATV Music Publishing, a company conceived by Sony and Michael Jackson.
The standouts were Carly Smithson ("Come Together"), Brooke White ("Let It Be"), David Cook ("Eleanor Rigby") and Chikezie ("She's A Woman").
David Archuleta, whose cover of Lennon's "Imagine" drew heaps of praise two weeks ago, showed that he's merely mortal when he flubbed the lyrics to "We Can Work It Out." That didn't fly with Cowell, who called the 17-year-old's performance "a mess."
Wednesday's show also featured a performance by season-five finalist Katharine McPhee and musician David Foster (on the piano).

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A RARE PIC(OF 1888) OF HELEN KELLER

A rare pic of famous blind philanthropist Helen Keller has been brought
out in Boston. The photo depicts 8-year-old Helen with her instructor,
Anne Sullivan, on a family stay at Cape Cod.
Experts consider it to be the most former pic of the twin, who
contacted in 1887. In it, Keller is seen sitting outside holding
Sullivan's hand and cradling a doll. "Dolly" was the 1st word that
Keller spelled under Sullivan's tuteladge.
Keller and Sullivan formed an intense bond, with Sullivan sticking by
the deaf and blind humanitarian until her own death in the mid-1930s.
Keller expired in 1968.
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Now 1 Millionth Obama Campaign Donor- A kaimuki Man

Capital of Hawaii -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign told that while it is
on track to raise a record $fifty million this calendar month, it
received money by its millionth donor online from a Kaimuki resident.
Zachary Ellison acquired his wish and then some. The Kaimuki university
student desired to be among the 1st a million people to donate to
Obama's campaign. It turned out he was the millionth donor online.
"I believe it is actually significant to get involved. It is
significant to take an alive role in politics," Ellison said.
Ellison had been following the campaign for months and had planned on
donating, but just never got around to it.
"I am among those eldritch people who enjoys politics, and and so I
just arrange it away and then it was payday and I saw the ticker and I
told, 'You know, I am going to donate. I prefer to state I was part of
this,'" he told.
Ellison attended a political rally at Kapiolani green, wherever Obama's
sis addressed. He had been active agent in the antiauthoritarian
presidential election 4 yrs ago.
Although the 21-year-old history major owes $ninety, in college loans,
he sent in $25 to the Obama campaign.
"I saw how much so many other people were doing and I told, 'I better
do my little part as all individual human counts in this election.' It
has not all about big donors or people making 1000s and 1000s of
calls, just talking to your family and acquiring it to vote is a vast
matter," Ellison told. "Not plenty people vote in this nation and I
think it has to change."
Ellison came back to Hawaii, acquiring classes at Kapiolani Community
College this semester, working on clock time* Supermarket
He program to go back to finish at Reed College in Oregon. s'
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Troubles Leads Suzanne Pagella to Suicide

DETROIT (AP) - To class fellow* at Beaver Area High School in the hills of western Pennsylvania, Suzanne Pagella was a celebrity.
made it big in Detroit. She was abided as that," Tom Dowlin told. "That's just however we thought of her. She was the 1st to go away and do what she told she would act."
As a wedded Suzanne Wangler, she looked to have it all: a career as a hot TV news anchorperson, a husband who was a previous college field general, 4 kids.
But at a few point, Wangler's living came in free fall, with a disjoint, debt and numerous arrests, including matchless last calendar week about an misapplication charge. It finished on a crash last weekend when Wangler's mother found her hanging from a beam in the cellar of her Royal Oak home, just north of Detroit.
Wangler's defense attorney, Carl Marlinga, told he was concerned when they spoke at her arraignment.
"I said `Are you depressed? Are you suicidal?'" Marlinga told. "She just kind of laughed it off and told `do not be dizzy.'"
But Wangler's living was nothing to make light of. Courtroom and additional paperses reveal about $166,000 in financial judgments against her, multiple hits citations and driving license suspensions.
On February. 20, she was arraigned on charges that she defalcated more than $149,000 all over 4 months from a adult male she in brief dated. The 43-year-old also was accused with larceny by changeover.
The charges stemmed by checks cashed in 2006 at a check-cashing business concern. Whenever guilty, Wangler faced up decade yrs in prison house for each one charge.
Police told it was 32 degrees at bottom of her home when she was arrested. The house was in foreclosure.
"As I read about all of the badness, it's so sad because people do not acknowledge her. She had such a vast heart," previous class fellow Jenni Wilson told. "She was fantastic, perfectly the life of the party. She was so full of joy, funny and smart and so ambitious, one of those people who was going to make it in life."
Suzanne Pagella was a extremity of the cheer team and wrote for the high school newspaper. She graduated in 1982 and left the small community about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh for Ohio State University.
Wangler became a familiar face in the Detroit area in the 1990s at UPN 50 and WDIV-TV.
She married former University of Michigan quarterback John Wangler and compiled a cookbook, "A-Maize-Ing Tailgating: Wolverine Cuisine.

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