Leggo my Ego...

So, from time to time, it has been suggested by people I know that I am a big fan of.....ME! I admit it, I'm a bit of an attention hog and have a healthy ego. I'm sure if any of you have ever read the comments posted by my mother, you have a pretty good idea of how this may have happened. Some may even say that I think the world revolves around me. Well, I have news for you. It does. Yup, it does. I had a feeling that many of you wouldn't believe me (with the exception of my mother of course). So, I have included video proof. Unfortunately, the recording was done on a phone and there is no easy way to rotate the video, so you're just gonna have to turn your head to the left. Deal with it.

Exhibit A: Watch closely and you will clearly see the entire world revolving...







Exhibit B: Just in case you think this was in any way altered or edited, I have a second video that proves without any doubt that it is in fact me and the world is revolving around me. It happens quickly...so watch closely. And no, it's not one of those things that is gonna scream at you or try to scare you.







Note: No trampolines were injured in the making of this post.

So? What did "Jew" do?

So, I'm sure you're all wondering how the furniture decision turned out. Here's what I did...

I called the first buyer and told him there was a lot of interest in the furniture and that I had several offers for more money than the price we agreed to. I told him that I would still honor the agreement we made, but I would not be at all flexible on price or pick up date/time. He understood and appreciated that I would honor our verbal agreement. He showed up right on time with his older brother and they removed and carried all the furniture to the U-Haul...without scratching or denting any walls or floors. He was no older than about 20 and was moving into his first place....hence the need for the furniture. He thanked me very much and said that he really appreciated that I honored the $200 price. He said he wanted to pay me the extra $100, but didn't get paid till the following Friday, but could bring it to me then. I was very impressed with the gesture, but told him not to worry about it. I said I was happy that I could help out a young guy that was just starting out and he'd get more out of that $100 than I would. All in all, I felt pretty good about it. In addition to that...I'd also like to say that I'm impressed with my circle of friends and readers. Pretty much everyone I talked to said to honor the verbal agreement and not back out on it just for the extra $100.

They say people are judged by the company they keep...so I'm thankful that I have friends like that to keep me looking good. :-)


Who would have ever thought I'd write a sappy feel good post on this blog....Ewwww. I'm gonna go wash my hands. Stay tuned for some new bloggings...we'll be back to the funny stuff soon.

What Should "Jew" Do?

I know it's been a while since I've posted....and I promise that I will begin posting again. But, right now, I need your help. You, my loyal readers need to help me with a very difficult decision.

Here's the situation:

We are selling some bedroom furniture. I put an ad on Craigslist for the furniture for $200. That evening I received a call from an interested buyer. He promised to purchase the furniture and pick it up this Saturday. He has already reserved a U-Haul and confirmed the pick up. I agreed to wait until Saturday to sell it to him. I edited the ad on Craigslist to say "SALE PENDING" Should be easy right? Nope.

Today I received the following email:

Hey there,

I know this ad says "Pending Sale" but it's sooooo exactly what I'm looking for! I would be willing to pay $300 cash and pick this up at your earliest convenience. I live in Shakopee and it doesn't take me long to get to uptown from here.

If you can respond and let me know if this is still available and if we can work something out, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Carlos


So I am torn between the following decisions...

1. Do I honor my verbal agreement with the first buyer for $200 and be an ethical person?

2. Do I revert to my heritage and take advantage of the better deal and the extra $100?

3. Do I make it interesting and offer the furniture to the first buyer for $250, but include the name and email address of the buyer that is willing to pay $300? Win-Win for the both of us... I make an extra $50 from the original deal and don't feel so torn about my morals and honor....and, he gets to decide which he wants more-the furniture, or the nearly guaranteed $50 profit for flipping the furniture....maybe he could even ask for more...he does already have a U-Haul and could deliver it....that's added value.

To you, my loyal followers, I need your help!! Please comment with your thoughts and ideas. ASAP!

"Checkout" The Savings...

And I'm back. I know, I know, it's been a long time...and for that I apologize. I've been pretty busy but will try to get back into it. One post a week is the current goal. So here we go, this one's packed with valuable info so read carefully....


So now that all of you are fluent in Jewbonics, it's time for your next lesson. Shopping...and the way of the Jew. Some of you may be familiar with a common stereotype about Jews being cheap. Well, that's not entirely true. It's not that we're cheap, we buy plenty of nice stuff. Drive by a temple on a saturday morning, there's no shortage of luxury cars. (American, Japanese, and Italian luxury cars of course, on account of the fact that the "Nazi bastards" make the rest of them) It's clear that we're not cheap, we're just better at shopping. Whether it's hunting down a good sale, maybe doing a little "negotiating" or of course, using the occasional coupon, (or as a few of my less culturally sensitive friends call them, "Jewpons") we usually end up getting a good deal.

Most sons and daughters have games that they play with their fathers. It could be playing catch, chess, basketball, whatever. My father and I had a bit of a different game. We would have receipt battles. Essentially, the competition was based on who could save the most money on a shopping trip to the grocery store. Now you may be thinking, "JewBoy, that's not fair, you worked at Wegmans (Greatest grocery store ever) and clearly had an advantage with your superior grocery store knowledge." While that is true, my father is a Certified Public Account and therefore, a very worthy adversary.

A typical phone call would go like this:

RING RING...

JewBoy: "Hello.."

Dad: "OK, are you ready?"

JewBoy: "I'm ready, let's hear it..."

Dad: "Grand total- Fifty six dollars and forty eight cents"

JewBoy: "Ok...and?"

Dad: "After coupons and Shoppers Club (or whatever the in store sale program was)....wait for it... Thirty one dollars and twenty two cents. A total savings of twenty five dollars and twenty six cents."

JewBoy: "Well done!"


I would then read off my recent shopping trip and we would see who had saved the most. Naturally, we converted the savings to a percentage to keep the competition fair.


So by now I know you are all thinking "JewBoy, that's incredible! How can I too, learn the way of the Jew when it comes to shopping?"

Well today is your lucky day, I'm going to let you in on a couple of secrets.



All you have to do is follow these four rules...

1. Read the price tags carefully, especially on the endcaps of the aisles. Large signs that say "WOW" don't mean the product is on sale. They're usually just the original price on a big fancy sign...no savings there. Skip those and go to the regular part of the aisle where the product is. There is almost always a different size or brand that is on sale.

2. Now that you've found an item with an actual sale tag, look to see what the sale is. Sure, 2/$3.00 may seem like a great deal, but not if the product is usually priced at $1.59. Wow, a whopping $.18 savings if you buy two...don't waste your time.

3. Spend the $1.00 for the Sunday paper...but only after you've checked it to make sure that there are at least two coupon sections. Every once in a while they don't put them in, so essentialy you'd be starting off at a $1.00 loss. Cut out the coupons for the stuff you normally buy, but may not necessarily need right now. Cereal, paper products and toiletries are best. Next time you go to the store, see if any of the items are on sale. If they are on sale, buy them. If not, hang on to the coupon till next time, sales typically rotate every week or so. There's a chance it will be on sale next time. I call this the "double dip". Not only are you getting the good sale price, but you get the coupon savings too. This is a killer strategy for receipt battles.

4. This one is the "Ancient Chinese Secret" of "the way of the shopping Jew"...and probably the most valuable. Grocery stores will often run "Buy One Get One Free" sales, or BOGO as they call it in the grocery world. While this is a good deal on its own, there is an even better strategy. Use a coupon in conjunction with the BOGO. But here is the super secret. Most people think they are buying one and getting one free. True, but...technically you are buying two and getting a discount equal to the value of the second product. So, you can use TWO coupons! AHA! Here's an example. Cereal is Buy one box for $3.59 and get one free. A good deal. But, you clipped the coupons for "Save $1.00 on any box of cereal". You have purchased two boxes, so you can use two coupons. That's $1.59 for two boxes of cereal! (And more importantly, a savings of $5.59, which will help ensure a receipt battle victory.)



For those that doubt my abilities, here's a copy of my receipt from a picnic we had last weekend. Click on the image to see all the glorious details of my savings....and I didn't even use any coupons!

I only paid $24.39 for an order worth $51.88. That's right, a grand total savings of $27.49. That's 53% off! Just think, if everyone could "save" like that, Jesus might get a day off.

Check You Later...

This is one of my all time favorite stories. My father is an accountant, a CPA technically. I know, imagine that, a Jewish accountant. Anyway, earlier in his career he had one client that owed him payment for his services...approximately $1000. He sent a check to my dad, which my dad then deposited in the bank. The account had insufficient funds and my dad did not receive the payment and was charged a fee. Needless to say, he was pissed. He contacted the client who agreed to send him another check. He received the check, deposited it and guess what, it bounced again and he was charged the fee. He was now very super pissed. He called the guy again about the problem. The guy told him some story about having switched accounts and it was a mistake, blah blah blah...he'd send another check.

The check arrived, but this time my dad had a plan. It just so happened that the check was from the same bank where my dad did his banking. He went to the bank and explained that he had been burned by this guy on checks twice now. Knowing the cashier could not tell him the balance of the account, he asked the if there was sufficient funds to cash the check. A perfectly allowable question. She said no.....but it was "close". So my dad smiled and said, "Ok, I'd like to deposit $50 into the account number on the check"...knowing that cash posts instantly and can't be traced. He then asked the cashier "Is there sufficient funds in the account to cash this check?" The cashier replied "No, but it's really, really close". "Ok" Said my dad, "I'd like to deposit $50 into the account number on the check" The cashier deposited the cash. My dad said, "I'd like to cash this check, are there sufficient funds in the account? The cashier said "Yes there are." and gave him the $1000. So, for $100 cash and about $50 in service fees, a net gain of $850, he got to clean out the guy's account. Victory!

More Wit and Wisdumb...

Today is going to be a bit of a blog buffet. There's going to be a Word Of The Day, some Wisdumb and a little more of "The Way I Am".


As you can see in the picture I just took, my trusty outdoor thermometer (found at your local Target store) says it is -12.3 degrees outside. That is just the ambient temperature, if you include wind chill, it's around -30 or so. How nice. There are a couple of things that happen when it's this cold outside. First, people don't really go anywhere, it's just too damn cold. Second, since people aren't going out anywhere, they stay home and try to keep warm. Finally, there is a rise in the number of births the following October and November. A rise in births you might ask? Yes. This is due to our word of the day.

Sexual Wintercourse: Any sexual act that occurs when people stay home to avoid the cold and try to keep warm. This typically happens in the coldest winter months of January and February, accounting for many of the births in October and November.


A bit of Wisdumb:

Brush your teeth before you get dressed in the morning. No matter how much you scrub the part of your clothing that the toothpaste landed on (and it will land on something) the white stain will reappear later and you run the risk of looking like Monica Lewinsky.



Finally, a little more on the way I am. So last night I ran a few "words of the day" by my dad. We were trying to pick the ones that were blog worthy. (Don't worry, they'll be in an upcoming post) This morning I received the following email:

(Click image for larger view)



Just a note, the second one is pronounced Sniff-full-liss.

       Again, 
                Tree-->     @ @ @  @ @ @
                           @  @\/@ @ /__@
                           @@@ @\ / @/  @ @
                          @\  \/@| @ | @
                         @__\@ \ |/ \| / @
                            __\|@|  ||/__/@
                           /  \ \\  / /__
                          @    \  \/ /   @
                                |" '|
                                |"  |
                                |"  |
                               ~|"  |~  @  <--Apple
                      ~~~~~~~~~       ~~~~~~~~~~
                                       

The Way I Am....Part 2...

So let's start with a little housekeeping. First of all, you'll notice there's a new layout. I tried the black background but it bugged me when I read it, so as you can see, it's gone. This one should work for now.

Let me also take a minute to comment on "The Way I Am" blogs. These are not intended to pick on anyone except me. The point is to explain how I became the way I am. My sense of humor, my lack of a verbal filter, my immense knowledge of useless trivia, it all came from somewhere. I mean honestly, how many of you could have the conversation with your mother like the one I had last night? I have pretty much no verbal filter because we've always been able to talk about anything. She can ask me why I didn't want to go out with Shayna Bagelstein from hebrew school in 7th grade and I can tell her it's cause she had a fat ass and pit stains on all her shirts. Perfectly normal conversation for us, no one gets bent out of shape and it's all good. My vast knowledge of useless trivia?...That's from all the books she read to and bought for me. Uncle John's big bathroom reader was one of my favorites and I highly recommend it to everyone. I can say with almost 100% certainty that I am the best adult male gymnast in just about every business meeting I have because she schlepped me to gymnastics 3 days a week for 8 years. You get the idea.

Now on to my wacked sense of humor. I think my dad is to thank for this. I think the best way to describe it is mildly offensive leaning heavily towards inappropriate.

Here's a few examples:

Exhibit A: I went to visit him in Palm Springs, CA during college. It just happened that several of my female friends were there the same week. We all went out to dinner and one of the girls made the mistake of asking my dad his absolute least favorite question....
"Don't you miss the change of seasons?" (Now just as a note, my dad spent most of his adult life in Rochester, NY. It gets about 60 days of sunshine a year and several feet of snow. Palm Springs on the other hand gets about 340 days of sunshine and Zero snow. So needless to say, there's not much to miss.)
So on to his response. He looked at her and without missing a beat asked her- "If you only had 4 periods a year instead of 12, would you miss the other 8?" As you can imagine, her jaw dropped, but she somehow managed to respond with..."Wow, ok...I get it." Pretty much the last thing you'd expect to hear from a middle aged jewish accountant the first time you met him, but a perfect example.

Exhibit B: My dad and I are walking around the Wal-Mart in Palm Springs, CA. (this was prior to Schnoozle working for Target, so it was ok...sort of) It was a saturday afternoon, so it was fairly busy. We got up to the registers and of course there were only a few open and all had long lines. My dad looks around and then blurts out "Jesus Christ, isn't there a 5 Mexicans or less aisle somewhere?"

Exhibit C: My dad, his wife and my grandma and I are all sitting in a deli ordering dinner, probably a nice pastrami sandwich and maybe some soup. I look up and see an older woman walk in with what had to be the biggest fupa I had ever seen. My dad looks up and notices too, he turns to me and says, "Holy shit, it looks like that lady's ass is on backwards"

So there they are, the roots of my useless trivia knowledge, my lack of a verbal filter, my superior gymnastics skills (I have videos to prove it), and of course my sense of humor. Put them all together and you get the lovely gentleman I've grown up to be...just like the lady in the deli, normal in most respects, but definitely a little ass backwards.

Why I'm the way I am...Part 1...

Here's an excerpt from an IM conversation I had with my mom tonight. My comments are highlighted in yellow.

The Big M: HI

JewBoy: hi

The Big M: HOW IS TONIGHT'S BLOGGS COMING {Backspace key must be broken, errors never fixed, tends to yell a lot}

JewBoy: haven't started yet

JewBoy: no ideas

JewBoy: did you read last nights

JewBoy: about the chicken

The Big M: YES i MADE A COMMENT DID YOU SEE IT? {Caps Lock on explains the small “i” and all the yelling}

JewBoy: oh ok, that was you

JewBoy: yup

The Big M: YES BIG M IS ME

The Big M: ANYTHING ABOUT AIRLINE TRAVEL? {an idea for a blog post}

JewBoy: hmmmm

JewBoy: I had some ideas

The Big M: OK

JewBoy: but nothing blog worthy

The Big M: WHAT ABAOUT WEATHER PROBLEMS {another idea}

The Big M: OR SPORTS NUTS {wtf is a sports nut, another idea I guess?}

JewBoy: is your caps lock stuck?

The Big M: opps sorry {I knew it}

The Big M: I loved lasat night's blog

The Big M: commercials n TV? {another idea perhaps?}

JewBoy: extreme skinners?

The Big M: all meds advertised have more and worse side effects than the disease they are treating. I liked the extrememe Skinners. sound good to me {another idea}

JewBoy: you should start a blog

The Big M: men taking Viagara seem to be very good dancers

The Big M: is the side effect you can dance even if yo never danced before?

The Big M: they are alwasy dancing {another idea and a good point, does the horizontal mambo count as a dance?}

JewBoy: blog it

The Big M: I will leave it to you. I don't think I would be a good bloggest {Bloggest is a synonym for blogger, also means “The most blog”}

JewBoy: maybe

The Big M: here is an idea. about sizes of things. ,em's {men’s maybe?} underwear rarley comes in small( probably condoms don'ts either. (a man's thing) or olives medium, large and colassal. coffees large granda etc {backspace key clearly still broken}

JewBoy: again, you should write a blog

JewBoy: you have lots of ideas

JewBoy: its very easy

The Big M: womens underwear, petite, small. can you see a man asking for a petite condom

JewBoy: not likely

The Big M: how about colored condoms. manly blue or soft pink? I don't really know about them, but I thnk they come in colors and flavors too. you could do a great blogg on that {gross}

JewBoy: maybe I'll write about all your great ideas

The Big M: that would be very flattering! {careful what you wish for, heh heh heh}

JewBoy: we''ll see

The Big M: so is there anything new ?

JewBoy: not really, had a business dinner tonight so I am stuffed

The Big M: what did you eat?

JewBoy: so no problem with me using your ideas on my blog? {thought I’d sneak this in there, so I have proof of consent}

JewBoy: wings, spicy green beans, soup, dumplings,

The Big M: not at all. I won't even charge you. {and there’s my consent and it's free too….score!}

JewBoy: ok, I"m gonna use it, I gave you fair warning

The Big M: I love spicey freen beans {I should really fix that backspace key for her}

The Big M: Ok but if it is rated "r" son't put me in any footnotes or quote me

JewBoy: no no, I"m saying it's you

JewBoy: that's the best part

The Big M: not about condonms ..please!!

JewBoy: too late, you mentioned it

JewBoy: it's fair game

The Big M: remember I have pictures of you dresses as strawberry shortcake...{ahh, blackmail…dirty}

JewBoy: I think it will be titled, "Why I'm the way I am...part 1"

JewBoy: A typical conversation with my mom

The Big M: oy vey!! {Jewish for Oh Crap!!}

The Big M: just be sure to state that I have only heard that cndoms come in colors and seen on tv the adds for viagara.

JewBoy: ok ok

JewBoy: I have enough

JewBoy: I"m gonna start writing

The Big M: O get first refusal right?

The Big M: I

JewBoy: nope

The Big M: why not?

JewBoy: I am the writer

The Big M: and I am THE MOTHER

JewBoy: we'll see

The Big M: ok

The Big M: I am here

JewBoy: ok it'll be a while

The Big M: I will be here

JewBoy: ok

The Big M: let me know when it is done

JewBoy: ok {ok}

Is it all starting to make sense now? Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow.