Best Layaway Deal

I was speaking with a friend of mine today who's currently in the market for a new HDTV (let's call her/him Jimbo).  The problem is, Jimbo doesn't have the cash readily available, and he doesn't want to put the TV on a credit card since it's almost never a good idea to flash the plastic if you can't pay for the item outright...right?

He was shopping at Sears because Sears has some pretty good prices on the latest brands of TVs and they have the option to put items on layaway. Unfortunately every time Jimbo found a TV he was satisfied with, it seemed that particular TV was not layaway eligible.  Jimbo was sad, thinking he'd just have to save money the old fashioned way which works for some people, but not for others.

So I came up with an idea for Jimbo.  "Jimbo," I said, "why don't you just take a chunk of money every month, the same amout you would put towards your layaway payments, and email yourself an Amazon Gift Card with that money?  If you buy a $250 gift card per month, in 4 months you'll have a nice $1000 to spend, and could probably get a TV 46" or bigger!"

"Huh, I never thought about it that way," said Jimbo.  Jimbo was back to being happy.  He knew that if he just socked away $250 cash each month that he'd probably dig into the cash on days he wanted to get a nice lunch, buy a video game, or order the latest hamburger earmuffs instead of using it towards his ultimate goal - the HDTV.  This way it made the money a little less "liquid" and easier to forget about, which would allow him to reach his goal as quickly as possible -- all while not having to pay any fees or worry about losing his hard-earned money.

A happy Jimbo is my kind of Jimbo.  Best of luck to you buddy!

How I Ate Baby Puke

When my wife and I are hard up and looking for a meal to feed our 15-month-old Cameron, we usually turn to a nice and light frozen dinner. They're cheap, usually nutritious, and sometimes even tasty!

Well today we've been cleaning the house all day and didn't have the time or energy to make a nice meal so we heated up Michelina's Five Cheese Lasagna for the little guy. He loves pasta and we figured this would be right up his alley.

Tastes better without baby bile.

At first Cameron didn't take to it very well because he just had his 15 month vaccine shots, and his last 2 baby teeth are cutting through (yeah, the last 2 at 15 months old...jeepers) so he's a little crabby, has a slight fever, and a little cough...all expected. To get him to taste it I put some lasagna on his spoon and let him feed it to himself since he enjoys having control (I wonder who he got that from?)

He did well with feeding himself for his standard amount of time, about 5 minutes...after that I had to think of something else to make the food interesting, so I decided to pick up the lasagna with my bare hands and feed it to him like a wrap/sandwich. This 2nd feeding phase went very well, he had 3, 4, maybe 5 bites and loved it.

As a new parent, one of the best parts about having a new human in our lives (besides the love, compassion, teaching, blah blah blah) is eating whatever leftovers Cameron leaves on his plate, or even eating his food along with him. Sure, I'm probably the heaviest I've ever been, but for now I'm blaming it on the holidays and just enjoying the extra 300+ calories I'm eating since Cam never eats all his food. Sorry to digress...

So I was wrapping the lasagna, feeding it to Cam, taking a tiny bite for myself here and there, feeding it to Cam, etc. Cam was coughing regularly while he was eating, and here's where it gets gross. As I was about to give him another bite of his lasagna sandwich, he ended up vomiting up a few tablespoons of digested lasagna on his shirt. "Aww poor guy" we thought, "maybe it's time to stop feeding him." Then I had the bright idea of having one more bite of the wrapped up lasagna in my marina-stained hands...chew-chew-swallow. Uh oh...I say to Allison, "umm, I think I just ate some of Cam's puke." "How did that happen and how do you know it's puke?" she asked. To which I replied "apparently Cam got some puke on the lasagna, I took a bite, and now I can taste the bile I usually taste after vomiting. Awesome."

Allison was pretty disgusted and said she would have vomited on the spot if the same had happened to her, but not this guy...I'm not going to waste a nice bite of lasagna. Sure it had a bitter aftertaste from the bile/acid in Cam's stomach, but overall I'd say it was pretty tasty.

This is what happens when you have kids, beware youngsters!