This is pretty much how my mornings go

Got an email from Dad, saying that the site I found that had a picture of my grandpa with his dad and brothers was "neat." Also got an email from a relative I just found last night who invited me to be part of the family tree on geni.com. Yay! Then I got an email from Dad with some documents I have to print off and sign and got side-tracked from genealogy ...

Looked up suggestions on where the best place to use printing services would be and noticed that none of the stores list prices for individual prints. Found some other people complaining about this but no real suggestions except it usually starts at 10 cents a page for black and white. Then I decided I would just go to the library this afternoon and print what I needed for 10 cents a page. This is my default for printing from now on as long as it proves a good experience. I'll figure out what to do with color and other types of printing when it comes to that. Meanwhile, any of you have suggestions?

Following the "keeping cents of things" (just made that up for "saving money"), I checked to see what deals I could get on non-instant oatmeal which we need more of. Colin made an awesome multi-grain bread in the goodwill bread machine which uses oats this weekend and we definitely plan on making more. I found a coupon for 1 dollar off each 42 oz quaker oats I buy - and it's currently 1.39 each when I get five a jewel osco. So .39 cents each is really cool. Yippee!

coupon's here for one dollar off quaker, 42 oz oats or instant: http://www.quakeroats.com/DollarOffCouponBanner/default.aspx

I am not consistent in my coupon clipping, bargain hunting. I have noticed a strong correlation with how much else is going on in my life. But I only recently figured out some neat online "tricks." One is registering your Jewel Osco preferred card for ecoupons which are tailored to what you've bought in the past and if you buy that certain item you automatically get the savings at checkout. Didn't seem to work completely when I tried it last week - one item was deducted but another was not.

While doing a bit more searching for deals online, I found a neat list for deciding how to prioritize organic foods: http://www.foodnews.org/fulllist.php. This is determined by how much toxic stuff they can suck up while growing, from what I understand. For someone who is often torn between bargains and being nice to the earth, this is great.

Major annoyance: "Coupon printing is not supported on Linux ..." at coupons.com and so many other sites. This is NOT COOL. But since I don't have a printer at home, I'll just save the links and open them at the library to print them. This will also help me only print ones I think are really worth the hassle anyway.

Then I started browsing my neglected rss feeds and in the process found some fun things that I wanted to share (the things one learns from comics can be useful in such strange ways):

http://www.johnnywander.com/comics/140 spider plants are weird but cool

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123018405 - about the discovery of dino feathers and their colors! This is a link I found from another Johnny Wander comic.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon (If any of you don't already read The Oatmeal, now's a good time to start!)

Nasa on twitter: "Feb 1st is 7th anniversary of the Columbia accident."

Favorite postsecret: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwl7tUjQdDVwDttciNJ8RX9yq4bKrhw35qo6ACs1C1ssHKnIewb1itAQAPrFHaKKUl0GWVier9laI4ea4jyroG4FZwjhIGJytIYLHR6ltqSYe7PuBreMHLbb4qX1OqqLSwS-wxrCoxovf4/s400/spock2.jpg
In case you can't see it, the text reads: "After I shower and wrap a towel around my hair, and my eyebrows get pulled back, I like to pretend I'm a Vulcan." I honestly wonder if this is anyone I know ...

Bill Watterson on the 15th anniversary of the last Calvin and Hobbes strip:

Q: How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?
A: Immediately. I'm going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.
http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html

Even though we ate a big breakfast and I'm not feeling hungry, we need to go get lunch now that it's already 1:30 pm ... need to finish making sure I've got all the docs I need to print on the usb drive and go get Colin.