Day one hundred and thirty three: boom goes the dynamite

I finally have food in my refrigerator. I finished work early tonight so I went grocery shopping. 


I feel like I've accomplished more for myself in an hour of Friday night grocery shopping than I have in two weeks. 


The thing I like about grocery shopping is that self-checkout machines are popping up everywhere making every shopping adventure a do-it-yourself shopping adventure. I'm really good at it too and I think this is directly related to the hours I spent as a child playing pretend grocery store. No my parents never bought me a toy cash register but the cash register in my mind prepared me for any sort of grocery emergency life could throw my way. 


I love self-checkouts. 


Self-checkouts let you get away with things that cashier operated checkouts don't -- things I would otherwise never be brave enough to do. For instance: write a the code for a cheaper bulk food item on the tag of my bag of Olympic Trail Mix (peanuts, raisins, cashews and Smarties). It’s not the best trail mix out there – the best is the Kirkland Trail Mix from Costco. It’s got M&M’s instead of Smarties. If M&M's were in a battle to the death with Smarties I think we all know which candy coated chocolate treat would come out victorious. Kirkland Trail Mix is the kind of trail mix that actually makes me want to be on a trail. If that’s what hiking tastes like, sign me up!


What was I talking about? Ah yes, self-checkout price adjustments. This money saving technique isn't limited to bulk food goodies. You can do this with produce too. Gala apples running on the expensive side? Guess what? MacIntosh apples are $.04 cheaper. Punch in that less delicious apple code and you're laughing. 


Seedless grapes? Too rich for my blood until I punched in the code for grapes with seeds or poor people grapes as I like to refer to them as. 


I saved roughly $1.15 tonight and that's all thanks to the self-checkout. And boom goes the dynamite!