Hello, and welcome to another rousing round of Saturday Steals, where what you get is what you see and what you see is cheap or free!
To participate, simply:
1) Steal a steal.
2) Write a post about it on your blog (or the AoOL Facebook page), mentioning that you’re participating in Saturday Steals (you can steal the above image if you so desire), and
3) Add the link to said post to the list at the bottom of this post.
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Today I subsisted on food that was completely free to me. Here’s how:
BREAKFAST:
After a largely sleepless night last night (Poor Kyle was sick and couldn’t sleep, and in this house if Poor Kyle can’t sleep ain’t nobody sleepin’), I overslept this morning and had to leave without my normal bowl of cereal or bagel + butter.
Knowing I had a big day at work, a big day that would certainly not go well if I started it on an empty stomach, I swung into McDonald’s for a breakfast burrito and large Diet Coke (it would’ve been DDP if they had it on tap, trust me). I don’t make a habit of eating McDonald’s for breakfast (or lunch or dinner for that matter), but on occasion I do give them my patronage. Usually it’s because I feel I deserve, either as solace for a crappy day or celebration of a great one, a meal I don’t have to cook myself.
My burrito didn’t look anything like this, but it was still tasty. Image from here.
But, Camille, what about your budget? How is breakfast at McDonald’s conducive to a money saving lifestyle?
Well, friends, my breakfast was free.
When dearest Chelsie visited me at the beginning of the month, she got a stash of Canadian money to get her through the weekend. I guess she hadn’t spent it all by the time she left, because yesterday I went to the Mayberry watering hole and discovered a fat birthday card from Chelsie with 60 Canadian dollars in it, ripe for the birthday spending.
I thanked Chelsie profusely and proceeded to blow it immediately on junk food. Whether she’ll be proud or disgusted remains to be seen, but there you have it. (Thanks, Gus!)
LUNCH:
After heartily enjoying my b. burrito and diet cola I drove into work (the work that’s now full-time) and got busy doing…well, what I do at my job. I worked all morning, working working working, and before I knew it the time had come for lunch.
As fate would have it, the company I work for just so happened to be hosting a barbecue today, so lunch was on them, too! There was quite a spread, but my favourite part was this burger, grilled to perfection from Costco patties—the fresh kind, not frozen:
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and even today’s barbecue wasn’t completely free because I donate $10 from every paycheque to the company’s social club fund which partly sponsored this event, so technically I paid for this, but…you know. It felt free.
DINNER:
After helping clean up from the ‘cue at work and logging a few more hours on the job, it was time to head off to my piano lesson with my teacher, John-Paul (yes, he has two first names hyphenated, and yes, he seems to go by both of them, in that order). My time with John Hyphen Paul was efficient, which was good considering the fee he charges, but I digress. I finished my piano lesson, hit up the music store, and headed home. I was home just long enough to start writing this post before it was time to head back to the city for dinner with Poor Kyle’s family.
The occasion: Poor Kyle’s Great Auntie Teeny is visiting from one of the Carolinas and we had to show her the best Chinese cuisine Southern Alberta has to offer.
We started with deep fried wontons:
And proceeded with a spread of epic proportions. My father-in-law ordered, which meant there was enough food to go around…times three or four. The servers just kept bringing entree after entree, and threatened to bring out a second table to stash the rest of the food on if we didn’t eat fast enough to make room for it all. The photo below was only 1/3 of the way through their delivery of food:
It was absurd. But also delicious.
And also free. To me.
And with that, not a single morsel of food that entered my body today cost me a red cent.
That means I lived this entire day—I survived 24 whole hours—on steals.
A day of life on this glorious steal-filled earth, and for what? For free. I know every day is a gift but today I really felt it.
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Now it’s your turn! What have you stolen lately?
Add your steal to the link list below to share it with the world. The list will be open from now till Sunday at 11:59 p.m. For reals this time.
5 Responses to Saturday Steals: One Day’s Sustenance