Huey is doing his part to help with Haiti!

Huey is full and of ‘heart and soul.”

-Barry

Jenna, Don and myself checked out a new lunch spot recently. Jersey Mike’s on Virginia Beach Boulevard. Great subs, fresh and tasty. Here’s Jenna…

And the whole gang….

Jenna was telling us a very compelling story but it was soooo long, Don and I kinda checked out…

 Got a comment about Jersey Mikes? Let me know. COMMENT  Let’s meet up there sometime! Have a great week.

 Rifling through the Sunday paper with a pair of scissors is a lot of trouble. But these days there are more technologically advanced ways of coupon-gathering. Here are some places to look for neo-coupons.

1. Entertainment Books. Entertainment books look like desperation—last-ditch marketing by mediocre restaurants. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they’re not. As Chowhounds have written, occasionally you can get some good deals at good places. But Chowhounds report seeing signs in some restaurants stating that they no longer accept the coupons. You can buy the books online, and they’re often sold to raise money for schools or other charitable causes.

2. Grocery Store Websites. Most have coupons. Giant Eagle and Safeway let you add discounts directly to your loyalty card; Whole Foods has you download its Whole Deal brochure containing coupons.

3. SmartSource.com. Printable coupons for things like spinach, olive oil, and paper towels. Enter your zip code, and the site will also track weekly circular deals for your area and tell you when the sales will end.

4. Coupon Mom. A site with forums, for extremely dedicated couponers. Coupon Mom has free registration (warning: You’ll have to carefully skip some baits to sign you up for other crap) and is full of advice and strategies. After you register you can sort deals by state, see what’s on sale, select the items you’re interested in, and print out a list coded to alert you to coupons in the Sunday paper or online.

5. Dining Decks. Like city restaurant weeks, dining decks—literally decks of cards that cost $25 up-front but give you a discount (usually $10 to $15 off your meal) for 52 different restaurants and/or bars—are cropping up for more and more cities. New York has the Diner’s Deck, Los Angeles the Hungry? Deck (as discussed on Chowhound), and San Diego and San Francisco have CozmoDecks. Read the fine print though: You may need to make a minimum purchase to get the discount.

6. Cellfire. Digital coupons that can be accessed directly from your cell phone. Right now the discounts are for big brand products like Hamburger Helper and Lucky Charms, but the company is trying to get more, says Cellfire’s VP of consumer marketing, Dan Kihanya.

7. Mambo Sprouts. A website with coupons for “healthy, organic” products. There are printable versions for stuff like Method nontoxic kitchen cleaning products, MaraNatha organic nut butters, and Liberté yogurt. A Twitter feed helps you keep track of new offers.

8. Restaurant.com. The site sells you a $25 gift certificate for $10, which you print and then redeem when you dine. It sounds suspiciously easy, but Chowhounds have posted mainly positive reports about using Restaurant.com. Pay attention to the rules, though: There are day and time restrictions and minimum purchases; call a restaurant before you buy a certificate to be sure it is still honoring them. Chowhound pollymerase wrote an informative post about being smart when you shop online coupon sites.

9. The Yellow Pages. You may not have ever noticed, but there are coupons in the back of the Yellow Pages. Check them out, since there’s not much else to do with the phone books these days.

10. Manufacturers’ Websites. If you shop for specific brands, go directly to a manufacturer’s website. Some products such as Seventh Generation ecofriendly cleaners and R. W. Knudsen Just Juice (great for cocktails!) had printable coupons available at the time of writing.

Love this article I found about the biggest rip-off’s in America. I could add one about my cable company but I won’t ! Ha ha. I wouldn’t mind paying for theatre popcorn IF it was fresh…who has the freshest theatre popcorn? Can you add anything to this list? -Barry

AMERICA’S BIGGEST RIP-OFFS

From CNN.com, here are America’s Biggest Rip-offs:
1. Text messages – 6,500% markup. The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver. But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That’s a markup of as much as 6,500%.
2. Movie theater popcorn – 900% markup. A medium bag of popcorn costs just 60 cents to make but retails for $6. Theater owners mark up the snack so much because they don’t make a profit elsewhere. Out of your $10 movie ticket, only a tiny percentage goes to the theater’s profits.
3. ‘Free’ credit reports that’ll cost you. When you sign up at Freecreditreport.com, you’re asked for your credit card number. Then the site automatically enrolls you in its “Triple Advantage credit monitoring,” which pledges to continuously track your credit status for $14.99 per month. Technically, you have nine days to cancel the credit monitoring service before being charged, but many consumers have felt duped. Instead you can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, which is run by the Federal Trade Commission, and get a truly free report once a year from each of the credit agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
4. Name-brand painkillers – 60% markup. A 50-count bottle of 200 mg Advil tablets costs $8.49, versus just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen
5. Wine at restaurants – 500% markup. Restaurants mark up cheaper bottles by an average of three times the retail price, while the prices of higher end wines are typically doubled. Prices for wine sold by the glass are tripled or even quadrupled.
6. College textbooks – $900 a year (which is the average estimated cost of books and supplies). Greedy publishers drive up prices by issuing unnecessary new editions that render older texts worthless without adding much new information.
7. Super gasoline – 15% markup. Hi-test gas costs up to 20-40 cents more per gallon than regular gasoline, even though it doesn’t do anything to improve the performance of most cars.
8. Hotel mini-bars – 1,300% markup on candy, snacks and drinks.
9. Hotel in-room movies – 200% markup

Is your name on here? Let’s be honest, we’ve all faked it a little to get a day off, true?  Enjoy this list and please, no hate mail! Thanks so much for hanging out with during your work day!

According to a British survey, people with the names Andy and Sarah are most likely to call in sick and fake an illness to get a day off work. Top 10 list of those men most likely to call in sick:
1.Andy
2.Steve
3.Paul
4.John
5.Dave
6.Christopher
7.Adam
8.David
9.Mark
10.Richard

Names of women most likely to call in sick:
1.Sarah
2.Becky
3.Anne
4.Emma
5.Debbie
6.Katie
7.Amy
8.Catherine
9.Jane
10.Nicola

We have teamed together with the Virginia Beach SPCA to introduce you to some pets that are available for adoption! Check out this video with me and Mary Grace. For info, call them at 757-427-0070. You can also link over to their site.

This is me hanging with Hootie and Blowfish on a hot summer day in Hampton Roads. With all this cold weather I thought we could all use a picture of people standing around in shorts! I promise never to complain when the temp hits 95!   And I have the green light from my wife to persue a dream of owning a 1967 Mustang Convertible. Big engine, Cragars, loud! And a 3 or 4 speed. No automatic tranny (thats transmision, motorhead talk). Anyway, she gave me the greenlight but no budget to work with so I am going to attempt to work a little overtime, sell some things I own (like my old Jeep) and attempt at having a Hot red ’stang in my garage by the end of the year. I’ll keep you posted here on my success. I’m heaed to ebay right now to see if I can get in on any cheap ’shells’ for the car I am looking for. For now, this picture will need to suffice…

1.6.10

Checked out the Village Inn over the weekend. It’s right across from Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach. It is great! I had the Rio Grande Skillet. I took a few bites before I realized, ‘hey, I should blog this!’ So here it is, eggs sunny side up, red salsa, chicken, jalopenos, fried pototoes and yumm!

…and right now you can get a 50% off Hampton Roads Perks right here.

12.20.09 The clock is ticking. Won’t be long until the big day is here and all the hassle and bussle is over (for 364 days at least!) Check out this funny Christmas can-can..pass it along!

12.15.09

I celebrated my birthday yesterday and had great time. A steak dinner and a Chocolate Volcano dessert. My Mom and Dad sent me a dollar for every year I’ve been in existence! 

I know never send cash in the mail!…wow…but it made it to me. ALL of them.

Who is gonna help me eat all these cookies? No one? Oh, well, OK.  ; ) >>>>>

Beautiful decorations….Jilly and Alli…..↓

 And sitting next to birthday boy Sarah!  

11.30.09

Nothing tops a good Thanksgiving dinner like throwing a pie on the floor in the kitchen!

…actually what happened was the pie was in a foil pie pan and when Jill went to pull it from the oven….well…whooops!

Thanksgiving! Friends and family…..and a great Dallas Cowboy win!

I thought it would be fun for my daughters to put together a gingerbread house for dessert….until I saw All’s boyfriend using a glue gun to hold the walls together!

..clean up on aisle 4 please…..

I think after the kids unveiled the gingerbread house, that’s when the pie got dropped!

And happy 24th birthday to my wife Jilly ; )

11.19.09

 Are you in a healthy relationship? Check out the 10 habits of Happy Couples below….are they missing any? Let me know at barry@2wd.com

1. Go to bed at the same time.
2. Cultivate common interests. Find activities you can do together that you both enjoy.
3. Walk hand in hand or side by side.
4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode. If you have an argument, and can’t resolve it, just forgive the other person and get on with life.
5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong.
6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work.
7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning.
8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel.
9. Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. If your partner is having an awful day, you’ll be ready for it when you get home. Maybe you can do something to make their day better.
10. Be proud to be seen with your partner. Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact – hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

11.12.09

 Is this weather great or what? Driving down Indian River Road this morning was fun. I almost hit a fallen tree, drove into ditch because of high water and hyro-planed, all while eating an egg McMuffin! I thought I would post some safe driving tips while we sit out the next few days of extreme rain and wind. Stay dry!

  When the road is wet, the film of the water on the asphalt causes tires to lose traction. Less obvious is the fact that rain reduces driver perception — it’s harder to see through the rain — and also decreases visibility through its action on headlights, windshields and the road itself. While most people know to slow down in the rain, there are definitely other tips that will help keep you, and those who share the road with you, from becoming a statistic.

• Exercise extreme caution after a long dry spell. During a dry period, engine oil and grease build up on the road over time. When mixed with water from a new rainfall, the road becomes extremely slick. Continued rainfall will eventually wash away the oil, but the first few hours can be the most dangerous.
• Allow for more travel time. You should plan to drive at a slower pace than normal when the roads are wet. Keep in mind that traffic is likely to be moving slower as well. There’s also the possibility that your preplanned route may be flooded or jammed. Whatever the case, rushing equals higher risk.
• Brake earlier and with less force than you would normally. Not only does this increase the stopping distance between you and the car in front of you, it also lets the driver behind you know that you’re slowing down. Also, be more meticulous about using turn signals, so that other drivers know your intentions, and take turns and curves with less speed than you would in dry conditions.
• Most of America’s roads are crowned in the middle, which means that the water will run off to the sides. If possible, stay toward the middle of the road to avoid deep standing puddles.
• Don’t use cruise control. If you hydroplane, there’s the chance your car could actually accelerate. Cruise control also allows drivers to be less vigilant and to take their foot away from the pedals — not a great idea when reaction time is so important.
• If you see a large puddle up ahead, drive around it or choose a different route. It could be that it’s covering a huge gaping maw into the front door of hell. Well, maybe not, but water splashing up into your car’s engine compartment could damage its internal electrical systems. Also, a pothole may be hiding under the water, just waiting in ambush to damage a wheel or knock your suspension out of alignment. If you can’t gauge the depth, or if it’s covering up the side curb, try to avoid it.
• Don’t attempt to cross running water. This ain’t an SUV commercial, and you’ll probably get into a heckuva lot of trouble if the force of the water is greater than the weight of your vehicle. All-wheel drive isn’t going to be much help if your vehicle is being pushed sideways. Don’t end up like those folks on the nightly news who had to abandon their cars to Mother Nature.
• After you cross a puddle, tap on your brake pedal lightly to dry off some of the water on your rotors.
• Turn on your headlights, even when there’s a light sprinkle. It helps you see the road, and more importantly, it helps other motorists see you. However, don’t blast your high beams in the rain or fog — it’ll obscure your view further, as the light will reflect back at you off the water droplets in the air. If your car is equipped with foglights, you may find it helpful to turn these on, as they throw a little extra light on the road while making your car easier to see.
• Watch out for pedestrians. An ordinarily observant pedestrian may become distracted by fiddling with an umbrella or a rain slicker. Plus, raindrops deaden sound, so the usual audio clues for measuring car distances become obscured. Keep a sharp lookout for people in the road.
• If it’s raining so hard that you can’t see the road or the car in front of you, pull over and wait it out.
• Track the car ahead of you. Let the car ahead pave a clear path, so to speak, through the water.
• Give a truck or bus extra distance. Their extra-large tires can create enough spray to block your vision completely. Avoid passing one, but if you must pass, do it as quickly as safety allows.
• Defog your windows. Rain will quickly cause your windshield to fog up. Switch on both front and rear defrosters and make sure the air conditioning is turned on. Most cars’ climate control systems will automatically engage the A/C when the windshield defrost function is selected.
• If you start to hydroplane, don’t brake suddenly or turn the wheel, or you might spin into a skid. Release the gas pedal slowly and steer straight until the car regains traction. If you must brake, tap the brake pedal (unless you have antilock brakes, in which case you can put your foot down).

11.10.09

Season finale of Mad Men was off the hook! So many story lines they can go with next season. Are you into this show? Let me know. Send me a note, barry@2wd.com.  Take a minute and Mad Men yourself! Click here. Here I am in Mad Men!

11.5.09

 I did not know that it was one of the Doobie Brothers who provided the hot guitar solo in Donna Summers’ song, “HOT STUFF.” I love cool music info like that. I’m reading Gene Simmons from KISS’ new book right now. This guy is a master marketer. It’s a good read if you can get past his constant reminder to ‘never get married.’ Ha Ha.

 Is Jenna going to come back from Jamaica with a tan in the middle of November? I’m callin’ my pal Waverly at Copacabana tanning so I keep up with Jenna. And I better get some sort of souvenir! Wait till Jenna finds out I’ve been eating lunch at her desk while she’s gone …and I’m sloppy.

 So how you liking the new look of our website? Send me your feedback.

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10.23.09

So what has been your favorite Halloween costume that you have worn to a party or trick or treating? I’ve gone as a bag of garbage, Ken (Barbies man) and an elephant! Favorite candy? Fireballs baby! My dentist can tell you more…but hey, hit me back with your Halloween story. Have you ever been really scared? Email me-  HERE. 

10.15.09

this kids is beyond a time out! My Mom could handle this one….