Don’t you just love a bargain….

I seem to be on some kind of roll here…

I decided several weeks ago that I really wanted to add an aerobic component to my exercise regimen. I just passed menopause, or so it seems anyway, and despite my four-and-half hours per week resistance training, I’ve been gaining weight. (lourdesmont is losing a pound a week? I am sometimes gaining a pound per day! I have one of those expensive scales that electronically measures your body fat percentage, and it says it’s not fat weight, but I’m damned what it is.) After due thought, I decided an exercise bike would suit me, for a number of different reasons that I won’t tediously enumerate.

For several weeks I’ve looked into getting a used one cheap, but it didn’t seem to be happening. So, this week I started comparing prices online. It was a little discouraging. Even the simplest low-end models–and that’s all I want, just something to pedal away on and keep my heart rate at target for X-number of minutes–weren’t cheap. Finally, I got out a hammer and beat my principles to a quivering pulp and went up to Wal*Mart in Amherst, NH. There I found a perfectly serviceable exercise bike for $88.88. I figured I could manage that, with church service money and cash my dad is giving me for chauffuering him to the airport.

Then I got to the register. A little while ago I got completely fed up with purses, and I ditched my last one and went back to carrying a big knapsack around. I’m self-employed, I don’t have to worry about appearances! When I was moving everything from all the pockets of the purse into the pockets of the knapsack, I discovered I still had a Wal*Mart gift card. I had no idea how long I’d had it, where it came from or how much, if any, balance was on it. So, I pulled it out and asked the cashier to run it and see what it was worth, and apply it to the exercise bike.

It was a $50 gift card! And I’ve had it all this time and totally forgot about it!

So, I got a brand-new exercise bike for $38.88. Not bad, hey? (I start out on it today! 🙂 )

So, today, I ran out to mail some bills I want to go out tomorrow at the crack of dawn, and I stopped at Brooks. I’d been carrying around a 75 cent coupon for a new kind of candy bar I thought I’d try (and now I can work off the calories, *heh*). I hadn’t spotted the candy bar anywhere, but Brooks usually has that kind of thing. They did. On sale. For $1.00. So, when I used the coupon, I got this $1.89 candy bar for 25 cents.

Now if only money would start actually coming in…I’m sort of bummed because there hasn’t been one single sale from my online Amazon bookstore for the entire quarter to date. My bookstore used to do pretty well–until I redesigned it. *sigh* I can’t figure out what I did to kill business so thoroughly. (Feedback welcomed, if anyone has any ideas about that!)