Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Taking care of business

Time is winding down here at Alligator River NWR, so I had to get busy today and take care of a few things that needed to be done before I move on.  About a month ago, my debit card was denied once again when I tried to purchase something, so I stopped in at the Manteo Wells Fargo Bank branch to get that taken care of.  Well, the result that day was that I would be issued a new card that would be delivered to that branch within a couple of weeks.  Since I had received no call, I decided to stop into the bank once more and see what was up.  My temporary card was close to expiring. 

To make a long story short, they had to order another card that will be delivered by Friday via Federal Express.  Not sure why they couldn’t have done that in the first place, but a talk today with the bank manager seemed to garner faster results.  We’ll see what happens when I go in on Friday.

After talking with my friend Diana last night, I decided to find a FoodSaver brand vacuum sealing machine in time for the arrival of my ten pounds of shrimp in a couple of days.

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Diana had packaged up several portions of shrimp for me while we both were volunteering at Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR, and I was impressed with how that has worked out for me.  Since K Mart was several miles closer than Wal Mart, I stopped there and found a pretty good price on this unit.

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For those of you like me that haven’t ever seen one of these units, here is what you get in the basic setup. 

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Little did I know that I had the unit upside down until I looked at the photos.  I’ll be testing it out Friday night after beheading my load of shrimp.  Confused smile  Some how I doubt that I’ll save $2700 per year on my food bill using this equipment since I don’t spend too much more than that each year for groceries.

On the way back from K Mart, I decided to stop in at the only Walgreens in the area and get my annual flu shot taken care of.  This is the first time in over 16 years that it didn’t cost me anything out of pocket to do so.  Medicare took care of it.  I have to say that the pharmacist that gave me the shot caused the least amount of pain I’ve ever had with an injection.  I thanked her for that.

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Now my final piece of business for the day might not impress many of you, but it gave me a good sense of accomplishment.  I finally installed the new Carbon Monoxide alarm myself, and I only had one screw fall down through the floor heating vent while I stood on a stool to reach up with my portable drill above the sliding bedroom door.  Open-mouthed smile The good thing about loosing the screw was that I figured out how to remove those floor vent covers so I can clean out all of Emma’s hair that seems to fall down through them.   I do so enjoy learning something new each day, and having these small mechanical victories!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy