I’ve realized that Value Village is a bit of a rip-off and I’m a bit wary of the Salvation Army’s prices so now I mostly shop at a bunch of smaller thrift stores.  Not only do I shop at them, but I do it on the days items are 50% off.

Today I got two pairs of sandals and a purse for $8.50.  Now that’s more like it.  At The Village one might get a single item for that price.  However I have to hand it to them for good house wares, as I got a Braun coffee grinder there for $5.

I now have ten pairs of black sandals, and then it goes on from there.  You know, five each of brown and navy, a white, some multi-coloured, etc.  I need to move my summer foot gear into another closet and bring out the fall and winter stuff.

But honestly, when a pair of leather shoes in pristine condition is $3, it seems crazy not to get them.  Perhaps a good side line for me might be to sell some of this excess on E Bay.

I finally broke down and got out my fruitcake boxes, started to count them and the labels, took inventory of what I have on hand, purchased some pecans and generally made stabs at getting started for Season #11.

It’s incredibly freeing not to have to worry about providing high volumes to stores any longer, because as you know all of my sales are now going to be from my website.  I feel kind of bad for the stores’ staff as I know what I’m like when I get used to an item and it’s suddenly not there.  Perhaps they’ll kindly direct customers to my site.

I spent quite a bit of last week trying to help Luke with his and Jan’s immigration situation.  I was able to speak to our MP and he said he would look into our case, which is very nice.  Jan had to sign a consent, get it notarized, then courier it here.  All very costly for what I’d think is a straight-forward immigration matter.

But we found out that it can take up to 30 months IE 2.5 years for Jan’s application to get processed through Singapore.  Luke was just notified last month he’s been accepted as a sponsor, so that means sometime around February 2017 we may see Jan in Canada!

I was all excited to be going to my good friends the Lynchs’ daughter’s wedding on Saturday, but woke up at 3:00 AM and then developed a migraine.  I spent the entire day feeling really sick, and on top of that, very disappointed.

Migraines and kidney stones appear to be the scourge of my elderly existence. And when you think of how little I drink due to intense hangovers, and how much I exercise, sleep and my passable eating habits, you really have to wonder.  It’s got to be some dreck karma leftover from a previous life.

Catfishing is the term for being scammed by people who pretend to be someone they’re not on social media.  You’ll recall my two instances of it on that dating site, but I did find one good use for the catfishers’ e mail addresses.  I use them on those sites that ask if you want to subscribe to a newsletter.  So I figure that helps even out my karma a bit.