I Suck At Shaw's

last night, karen and i had an interesting time.

whenever i work in marblehead, i generally leave the office with enough time to account for rush hour traffic. i had dreaded the commute home yesterday because i had a meeting scheduled for the late afternoon, which would consequently make my ride home take place during rush hour traffic. to my surprise, there was not much traffic on my commute home and i was able to pick up karen at the jfk train station.

anyway, from there we made a little pitstop at my favorite sister-in-law's (janine) to pick up a box of items pilfered from karen and janine's grandmother. i'm just kidding about the pilfering. the box contained christmas ornaments that were at nana's house. and luckily for me, karen received the snowman jar with the styrofoam head. for anyone curious, karen loves that snowman jar because of the childhood memories it brings. for lack of a better word, i think the snowman jar is "ghetto".

while at janine's, janine told us a story about my father-in-law. apparently, my father-in-law randomly decided to buy a scratch ticket for my son (braden). lo and behold, he won $200 on the scratch ticket. needless to say, the thought about my little b, braden, being such a good luck charm brought a smile to my face... and a possible tear to my eye as i type this now.

shortly thereafter, karen and i decided to go out for dinner. our choice for dinner: none other than not your average joe's located in norwell. needless to say, the food was delicious as usual. adding to the already interesting day, i ordered something that i generally don't order... ever... the yankee pot roast. (cue rachael ray's "yum-o" sound.) the meal was very good.

following dinner, we decided to get some groceries for the upcoming scavenger hunt that i am organizing for this saturday. we decided to go to shaw's because karen received a random coupon there. now, i suck at shaw's... but i generally like shaw's better than stop and shop even though stop and shop is right up from my house. where i live, i generally find that the employees at shaw's are much friendlier and happier than at stop and shop. i don't know why that is the case.

while at shaw's, we got our necessary ingredients for the potluck dinner following the scavenger hunt. as well, we received $30 for free! shaw's was offering a promotion where if you got a gift card for $300, you would get an extra $30 added to your gift card. granted, the promotion sounds steep because $300 is a lot of money to put up front. but the way karen and i were looking at it, we would eventually spend that amount on groceries during the year, so why not get the free $30. we would actually come out on top in the long run.

naturally, you would think that the traffic-free commute home, braden's good luck with scratch tickets, the not your average joe's dinner, and the free $30 would be enough excitement for the night. interestingly enough, there was one more surprise for the night that had karen and i giggling.

located at the front desk of shaw's to where we purchased our gift card was a shaw's coupon booklet. apparently, the month of march was frozen food month. contained within the booklet were coupons for some free items of food like bagels, frozen lemonade, etc. the coupons, however, were only good for a few more days. so naturally, we decided to see if those items where at the store while we were there.

as it turned out, a good chunk of those products were in the store. (there was also a good chunk of products already sold out too.) anyway, we picked up what we could and went through the checkout aisle. including the groceries that we purposely went to shaw's for, the total came to about $12. after all the coupons... the final total came to $0.45. karen and i just cracked up. karen thought about using the new gift card, but thought that would simply be too silly.

anyway, it was quite the interesting night.