Leaving on a jet plane

Flying somewhere is not cheap, that's for sure. I am looking at going to my sister-in-law's graduation from Basic training at Fort Jackson, SC at the beginning of August. So far, it looks like the cheapest I'm going to get is $400 round-trip from Minneapolis to Columbia, SC for flight and rental car. It isn't actually too bad compared to the $800 ticket I found from Aberdeen! I can handle driving to Minneapolis to save $400! I haven't actually booked the trip yet, so hopefully the prices don't go up!

Weekdays off

Sometimes I don't mind having days off during the week. It is nice to be able to just run to the mall to look for something. Today, I went to the mall looking for an anniversary gift. I didn't find anything, but I did find some great deals at Herbergers!

Like this Kabob Rack and Skewers on sale for $8.00. Now only if I can make kabobs that are as yummy-looking as these!

And this purse on clearance for $12.00! It's not really like I need another purse, but it's cute AND it was on clearance! :0)

Now, if I could just find an anniversary gift....

Unplanned purchases

The other day I went to use my laptop and when I turned it on, it basically told me that it could not find the operating system. After some diagnostics and attempting system recovery, I figured out that the hard drive was bad. By now, I'm cursing at myself because I haven't backed up my files recently. So, I call HP to find out how much it will be for a new hard drive. They give me a price of $104.50 plus tax and shipping. Holy cow! I could almost buy a new laptop for this price. Not only that, I need a recovery CD to install all of the programs, drivers, etc that came with the computer. The recovery CD is free, but it costs $16.00 to ship it. How can it cost that much to ship one little CD? So anyways, I ordered the CD for $16.00 but I searched online and found a hard drive for $68.00 (with shipping). Now I just have to wait for it to get here and hope that it fixes the problem. Wish me luck!

(I know now that I need to back up my files more frequently!)

Rapid City weekend (again)

This past weekend I went to Rapid City for the last of this year's graduations. I also got to see and visit with my uncle, who was home for the weekend from Denver where he has been doing radiation and chemo treatments for the brain cancer. We did spend about an hour at the mall where I found a great bargain! I found a pair of jeans on the clearance rack at Herberger's that were originally $85.00. By the time all of the discounts were taken off and the coupon that my mom let me use, they ended up being $35.00! Those are the kind of bargains I love!