clipping coupons

[pianistimo]

we have now successfully (sort of) limited our driving by losing the keys freqently enough.  thus saving gas.  although i hear in britain - the way they will solve the problem of gas emissions and pricing is to start charging for parking outside of tenements.  a days' worth of parking in front of your own house/apartment - should be a way to finance something.  they said they are focusing on suv owners.

back to the original post here - anyways, saving money has become a sort of obsession for me.  but, when i clip coupons (despite being what some consider a domestic goddess) i don't know what to do with them.  i mean, what order to put them in.  i just sort of mix them around and play games with them.  how shall i ever find them again?  being that they are such small scraps of paper and to fiddle with an envelope at the check out should make me look ridiciuloius.  perhaps hiding in the magazine isle for about 10 minutes whilst reading the small print (ie expiration date and matching up items to coupons).  i feel somewhat beleagured.  the only real way that i can figure out is to see them all at about the same time - which would mean taping them completely around my purse.  thereby allowing me to view what i should purchase and being able to rip them off with the tape possibly damaging the scanning potential.  as i see it - why don't they make them with sticky tape as 'post it notes.'  then - you just go around sticking them on the item that they match.

[wishful thinker]

Why should you attempt to save money or gas? They don't have souls.  You should find yourself a Viking (half a Viking would do) and try and save that 

[ahinton]

we have now successfully (sort of) limited our driving by losing the keys freqently enough.  thus saving gas.  although i hear in britain - the way they will solve the problem of gas emissions and pricing is to start charging for parking outside of tenements.  a days' worth of parking in front of your own house/apartment - should be a way to finance something.  they said they are focusing on suv owners.

You do pick up on the UK news quickly, I'll say that for you! No, this is yet another of that burgeoning plethora of increasingly absurd "ideas" wherewith Britain is swamped by its so-called governmental figures who cannot govern but are seriously mental. Electronic tagging of garbage bins is just one other recent example of many too many more. In London, for example, there is the notorious "congestion charge", yet vehicles designed to use less than a certain amount of the kind of feul that gives rise to the damnable emissions are exempt from paying it. How absurd! These vehicles "congest" central London's roads as much as any others do by reason of their presence alone, not by how they're powered - and when they are parked in central London, their drivers have to pay as much as do the drivers of the least environmentally-friendly vehicles in any case. Another fallacy that has signally been overlooked by our governmental betters is that all the duel-fuel vehicles that, while driven, are supposed to be more environmentally friendly actually contribute more to the greenhouse gas emissions problem than do the petrol and diesel fuelled ones on what's terms an "ashes to ashes" basis; this means that the manufacture and eventual disposal of them itself produces disproportionate emissions. The only way to overcome this is to ensure not only that motor vehicles are dependent only on low carbon emission or non carbon emission fuels when rinning but that the materials from which they are made and the manufacturing maintenance and disposal processes are equally low emission or emission free. Does our government care about any of that? No, of course not; it would rather just point its admonitory fingers at people and order them to pay more tax. On a more amusing note, it was recently suggested over here that there should be a new tax imposed on people who drive bicycles, in recognition of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide emissions from the bicylce drivers as they breathe out heavily while trying to get up the maximum speed of which their physical fitness allows them to be capable!..

Of course the whole business of fuel use (and not, of course, just by motor vehicles of all sizes but in buildings of all sizes) is a serious one for several reasons but, in a not dissimilar spirit to that in which GM in your country manufactured a solid gold coffin for the EV1 car, our present mental governors seem to be almost exclusively hung up on the idea that the only and best way to solve all these kinds of problems is to impose new taxes on the activities of so-called "culprits" (which in effect means everyone) rather than actually attempting to do, or encourage anyone else to do, something constructive about it for the future; put simply - stage 1 - blame people - stage 2 - tax them.

Wind and sea power look to be non-starters, geothermal energy may have possibilities for helping to provide power to buildings in some places (they're trying to develop this in France, I believe), but solar power seems to be the best possibility - or at least would be if only sufficient funding were to be invested in R&D with a view to enabling vast improvements in collection efficiency and storage. I believe that the various oil-producing nations have been guilty of at least a significant part of the suppression and discouragement of this kind of progress for years.

Best,

Alistair

[pianistimo]

agreed.  in lancaster, california (actually rosamund and higher) there were windmills everywhere.  it is constantly blowing in the high desert.  now, could one build a wind powered electric car.  you just put the antenna windmill atop the car all night - and have enough energy to get to work.  put the antenna atop again - and power yourself home.  sails might help if you run out of power.  i'm serous.  i would ride in one of these for the pure joy of being eccentric.  the antenna would have to fit in the car and sort of plug in atop  the car. 

now, what was that about vikings, wishfulthinker?  i have mused occasionally on the fact that were i to meet thal - he might as well convert me to laughing at abysmally funny things of which i would no longer carry the dignity and grace of which i try to keep in front of my children.  if i were to visit him - just standing at the gate would be enough.  this is how i imagined it one day:  i go to england, just happen to find gravesend (by luck, because i never get where i am going with a map) - just happen to find thal - and then, as luck would have it - he thinks i am a neighbor and asks why he has not seen me before.  i tell him it is because i was i was avoiding him.  he then asks why my garbage can is still outside and warns me of a possible fine.  i tell him to go back inside and i will take care of things.  we could have been neighbors in a past life...but never in england.  england is too cold.  very cold.  i now need warmth.  sunlight.  and of course, my husband - who would never agree to moving to england either.  we are forced, by the light of the moon, to occasionally have strange dreams of each other - me hearing thalberg's music coming out the front door and him of delerious mozart at the crack of dawn.  that is, if i had no children to get to school. 

[ahinton]

agreed.  in lancaster, california (actually rosamund and higher) there were windmills everywhere.  it is constantly blowing in the high desert.  now, could one build a wind powered electric car.  you just put the antenna windmill atop the car all night - and have enough energy to get to work.  put the antenna atop again - and power yourself home.  sails might help if you run out of power.  i'm serous.  i would ride in one of these for the pure joy of being eccentric.  the antenna would have to fit in the car and sort of plug in atop  the car.

Er - no; not "agreed", it would seem. I was suggesting that wind power was not much of a likely candidate in a successful change to global power; yes, there are areas of frequent high winds where it might just help towards producing electricity, but the sheer amount of land required for wind farms is - so far, at any rate - wholly disproportionate to the amount of electricity that they can be expected to generate. I had not even given a moment's thought to the idea of a car with a windmill on top and, apart from momentarily sharing in this comical notion of yours, am not about to give it any thought now, other than to say that I'd thought that you could manage to derive joy from your eccentricity without going to the expense of installing a windmill on the roof of your car...

i have mused occasionally on the fact that were i to meet thal - he might as well convert me to abysmally funny things of which i would no longer carry the dignity and grace of which i try to keep in front of my children.

THAL might convert YOU to something? Am I reading this right?

never in england.  england is too cold.  very cold.  i now need warmth.  sunlight.

Well, yes it is, most of the time (and what's even worse is that so much of it is so often damp, regardless ofthe temperature) - but then so is Philly at least some of the time, is it not?

and of course, my husband - who would never agree to moving to england either.  we are forced, by the light of the moon, to occasionally have strange dreams of each other

Far be it from me to question - still less intrude upon - your joint nocturnal dreams (and still less any nocturnal emissions), are you, as you put it,
"forced by the light of the moon"
to have them because you are saving money on your electricity and/or restricting its use on environmental grounds?

Best,

Alistair