Friday, my retirement check appeared in my little checking account. No doubt, delivered my invisible elves during the wee hours of the morning.

After the customary and usual household chores, which are absolute necessity to keep up with kitties, I rambled off to lunch. I've debated with myself about saving money by having some type of lunch here. BUT my lunch trip may be my one excursion for the day, so I feel on a social and psychological level it is an imperative. Plus I have no idea what I'd prepare. My din din consists of a turkey and cheese sandwich, so something along that line would become tiresome at lunch. Besides the lunch buffet gives me a variety of options.

Post lunch, I pointed the car in the direction of WalMart and off I went. My big bargain finds of the day were baseball caps for $3 apiece. Ones without athletic logos on them. In fact the two I picked out were for rock groups: Green Day and Pink Floyd.

I'd never paid attention to the Pink Floyd logo before, so I didn't realize it had a ray of light broken up by a triangular prism into rainbow bands. Talk about something with a double meaning. And Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day is bisexual. I wonder if WalMart realizes that it's part of the hidden homosexual agenda.

Of course there were lots of things for the kitties - a huge bag of dry food, litter, and about a dozen 4-packs of canned food. (I was trying to remember just what did I buy, so I was looking at the receipt, and I noticed I somehow ran the litter through twice. Eeeeeekkkk! I don't like doing something like that! And there's no way I could go back and explain what happened.

The self-serve machines have two parts: the scanner and the bagging area. The scanner has two parts; one on the side and one on the horizontal. As an item is run through the scanner, the bagging area expects the weight of the item to match what's in the system. Notice that the sets of bags sit on top of a white platform which in turn rests on a stainless steel shelf. Essentially this is a very sophisticated weighing scale.

If an item is run through but not bagged, it will give you an audible alert. Except in the case of items weighing more than a certain amount, because it's impossible to bag them. A 28-pound bag of cat litter certainly falls into that category.

And it certainly will sound an alert if an item is placed in the bagging area that has not been run through the scanner.I placed my sunglasses on the steel shelf one day, and I thought the fucking system was going to zap me with laser beams. But that's because it picked up the weight of something that had not gone through the scanner.

One other wee note in this saga. Items above a certain price, I would guess $20 and up, are marked with an anti-theft device. Usually inside the package. I think that most machines now have a red star indicating that some items need to be scanned across the horizontal scanner. That will deactivate the anti-theft device. If not deactivated. an alarm will sound as you exit the store. But from what I've been told, items with an anti-theft device are in a separate database. Or should be in that system, but sometimes are not. That's why when you've done everything you supposed to do, the exit alarm still goes off. And if you notice, the clerk at the door will check the receipt to determine what triggered the alarm and then write the item in a notebook. To be entered later into the system.

One day as I exited the store, the exit alarm triggered, the clerk didn't even look at the receipt, she immediately grabbed one item and said that was the one. I asked how did she know, and she mentioned it had happened all day with the same item.

My little brain is fascinated by all this. And if your interested in finding out more, visit How Stuff Works - How Anti-shoplifting Devices Work.

Weird the weekend is a blank. I remember having lunch with a friend for Sunday lunch at which we talked about "Brokeback Mountain" - book and movie. And LonelyGirl15 and her ilk.from YouTube. A beautiful guy on MySpace with a wacked personality. Drag queens. Radiohead. Chanel No.5 film.

My little Toyota was in desperate need of cleaning and an oil change. Plus I'd noticed a leak, oil I think, that was beginning to bother me. So I arrived at the Red Arrow clean and lub shop at 10 am. I didn't really how windy and chilly it was going to be, so I really felt for the guys on duty.

The oil change seems to have eliminated the leak. Thanks the goddess. All I need is some kind of car problem.

I been thinking about making an application for a credit card. My problem now is not just the amount of money I have monthly; but the lack of flexibility of being able to use it when I need it. For example, I keep running into the problem of drug prescriptions running out at the end of the month, and I don't have the funds.

Since filing for bankruptcy, I've gotten dozens of applications. So Monday afternoon, I looked at the last two that had come in the mail. One had a higher yearly fee, but a lower monthly rate. The other had a lower yearly fee, but a higher monthly rate.

I went on line to the site for the one with the lower monthly rate, entered all the information. and waited for a response. The response was not very encouraging. Essentially, it said I was a financial pariah whose mere request was an affront to the integrity of the corporation. Geee! Then why send me the fucking shit in the mail saying I've been pre-approved.

Next stop was to look on the web for credit cards designed specifically for folks who have gone through bankruptcy. And I actually found a site that suggested a number of possibilities. After looking at a number of places and options, I felt I would stand a better chance of getting a card that was secured. This means you place a certain amount of money into a separate banking account that secures the card. So if you don't make a payment or whatever, the company takes it out of the account. I'm hopping that no impediment will pop up to scotch this deal.

Monday I visited Everything's A Dollar. A huge jumble of merchandise with tiny aisles and large overweight women in everyone of them. However, I did find some household cleaner and some candles. I'm always on the lookout for candles because the prices vary so.

Today I went to Dollar General which was almost identical to Everything's A Dollar, except that the aisles were wider. Then I rambled next door to the General Store with very large aisles and tons of holiday decorations, but nothing I really needed. From there it was on to Big Lots. If anything the aisles were the narrowest yet. But I came across a great buy on candles at about half the cost of what they are at WalMart. Next, Fred's. By now I was getting bored, so I didn't spent but a few minutes .

Next was my standard: WalMart. Most expensive item was an atomic clock, one of these that shows month, date, day of week, year, and temperature. And updates the time daily using the signal from the National Atomic Clock in Fort Collins, Colorado. Let's hope this does not go defunct after a few months.

WalMart has candles all over the place at all kinds of prices. But if you look carefully, you may find an out-of-the-way shelf that has the same candles as elsewhere for only $3. This is a puzzle to me, unless they are somehow defective. I bought two in glass cylinders and wrapped them carefully. Once home, I broke one before I got it out of the bag. May be the glass is flawed, hence the lower price.

When I got home, I toted everything in and placed it on the kitchen table. This, of course, was great fun for the cats. The looked into each bag, sniffed at each item, and then all wandered off in typical feline disinterest.

PAX!