Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I shop often enough at Walgreens that it's worthwhile to be part of their rewards program. The program give you 10 points per dollar spent (everyday points). As part of a promotion, they sent me a coupon that read "20x everyday points." Two days ago, Lisa and I went over and bought a lot of things; much more than we usually buy, amounting to stocking up on some stuff for the next several months. This came to $134 before sales tax. (You don't get points on the tax, which is fine.) They scanned the coupon, and both the clerk and the manager agreed that the system acknowledged the scan, but I only got the 1340 base points. The manager tried what he could but couldn't figure out why it didn't give me the points that I'd earned and said I'd have to call their customer service number. He was very apologetic about it.

Yesterday, I called their customer service line and after a very long wait got to talk to someone. At this point both she and I got confused. She interpreted "20x everyday points" as "20 bonus points per dollar spent" and credited me 2680 points. I didn't quite realize what she'd done until this morning when I checked my point balance. So once again this afternoon after work, I got in the 30-plus minute phone queue to talk to an agent. He could see the original purchase and the extra points I got yesterday, and agreed that I was actually due another 22,780 points (1340 base everyday points * 17, after the original 1x points and the 2x points I got yesterday) and credited my account.

That's about an hour waiting around on the phone, but the points redeem at 1000 points = $1, so in the end I get around $25 in store credit that I know that I will spend for spending that time on the phone. And it wasn't totally wasted time because I was able to work on the SFSFC meeting minutes while waiting.

With another storm heading this way and with me planning to be away for two weeks, we had to get larger-scale only-in-Reno shopping done tonight, and so we did. The larder is restocked, and we only got slightly rained on.

Because I'm going to Sacramento this weekend, we won't have a chance to do a shopping run to Reno this weekend. Therefore, today, as soon as we could, we headed to Reno to get some things done. We got most of them, even though it meant having to go way down to the south end of Reno to get Lisa a couple more pairs of Lucky Brand jeans. We skipped having dinner tonight because we were running late, and managed not to overspend at the grocery store. Lisa drove us home, for which I'm grateful because it was getting pretty late (by my time-shifted standards) by the time we finished the last stop.

This afternoon at lunch we ran over to Big R and got more RV anti-freeze. The RV plumbing now runs pink, so we think there must be enough of the fluid to keep the water pump and hot water heater from freezing.

After work, we went to Reno and did what we hope will be the last of our Thanksgiving grocery shopping and the first of our Christmas shopping as we bought a gift basket of fancy foods for my sister from Cost Plus World Market. Last year CPWM had baskets on two-for-one sale, so we bought two and put one them in a bag on a high shelf. We managed to not forget it and filled it up this evening.

As usual, we had dinner before shopping, especially Whole Foods, and it's a good thing, too because had we been hungry I bet we would have bought a whole bunch more than we did.

We're out much later than usual for a Monday night. Lisa drove us home. I'm heading to bed very soon because while I don't have to be up quite as early as when I'm in the Bay Area, I still have to keep a schedule that coordinates with people in our Aurora IL office.