Wisdom Teeth Wisdom

Where is the wisdom of wisdom teeth?

It’s when you wait to have them pulled for a time when you can pay for it! Today was payday, once again, and it was also the day my wonderful wife, Lisa, chose to have one of her wisdom teeth pulled. It cost $85 for the dentist to do the job but she is figuring that we are pretty good on groceries since she just went out last week. The previous shopping trip did us fairly well for three weeks, so we should be OK spending only $115 instead of $200 for the next couple of weeks. Plus we are in good shape in the gas department since I’m off work for the next week and won’t be driving much.

I did fill up the van today; all 28 gallons! I have gotten 30 gallons in it before so we still had about 25 miles we could have driven without running out of gas! One interesting thing is that the van can only go 330 miles on its tank of gas, which is the same distance my car can go! The difference is that the van’s tank is twice as big as the car’s tank! And so, the van gets exactly half the miles per gallon that the car gets. To check, I always divide the miles driven by the gallons used. This time the van has gotten 11.8 miles per gallon. Sometimes it has been a bit lower. Usually around 11 mpg with the car usually getting around 22 mpg.

Now for the good news at this gas fill-up: The price at the pump was $2.11/gallon. Since we were spending $85 on the dentist I decided it was a good time to cash in some of my “Speedy Rewards” points. I had plenty to get the coupon for 50 cents off per gallon. Since I got 28 gallons, I saved $14! So instead of paying $2.11/gal. , I only paid $1.61/gallon! This is the third time I’ve been able to cash in points for cheaper gas since they started doing that last year. The other times I waited until I had enough points to get $1.00 off per gallon, but they have changed that now and 50 cents is the highest amount they do. I won’t need to make too many purchases before I will again be over the amount for the 50 cents off coupon!

I know it is a gimmick, but Speedway has the cheapest price in town and is where I usually get gas anyway and the savings are very real, if not very often. (The station that is usually cheaper by 2 cents is not on the way to work.) The card really came in handy last summer when we went out to Oklahoma. Speedway was usually the cheapest station at most stops and that was back when we were usually paying around $2.90/ gallon. The RV was only getting 10 miles per gallon so we purchased a lot of gas and therefore racked up a lot of points!

We are looking forward to staying home next week and hopefully getting some things done that we have been wanting to. The children will still keep up their studies but it is always a bit different when I am home. Lisa and I will be able to take turns a bit with the schooling and working times but we also like to work together as much as possible! I hope we will have good weather next week!

ADDED ON 10-16
(As it turned out we spent pretty much the whole time on painting the kitchen, which was a school project for the children in itself.)