What the Junk?!

I got the box of pods for my 'new' Dolce Gusto on Friday. I decided to try it on Saturday.  It heated up and made noise, but no water would go through the machine. I did some troubleshooting online. It took an hour, but I was able to get it working. I got it working!  Yay! It brewed just fine, too! It was a struggle, but I'm glad I didn't give up.  The pods I got aren't the best tasting ever, but they aren't bad. I'll definitely try some other types. I'm sure I'll find the perfect ones for me. I meant to post this on Saturday and then again yesterday.  I really mean to post more often. I'm going to try to do better. Tomorrow is Tuesday, so my friend may want to go thrift. If so, I'll post about that. 

One thing did happen today. My power went out.  I woke up around 9:20 and realized it was out.  It didn't come back until a little before noon.  Then, it went out again briefly in the afternoon.  Luckily, it didn't get too hot either time.  

We went to Reidsville today and went to Salvation Army and Goodwill. I got a Coca-Cola Christmas ornament (still in the box) at Salvation Army. I collect Coca-Cola stuff. At Goodwill, they have had a Dolce Gusto coffee maker.  I look at it every time I go in. They had $8.00 on it but today, it had a new sticker. $4. I bought it!  It powers up so I'm sure it will work. I ordered some pods to try it out.  I can't wait to try it. I couldn't find a manual online for it, but I watched a few YouTube videos from when it was new and learned how to use it so that won't be an issue. It's going to be fun to try!  The retail on this when new was $129.99 and I paid $4.00. Score! :D I love great thrift finds! I'm also glad I waited to buy it. :p

Here you go, here is the picture of all my goodies. I'll do a list under it, too.  It was a successful trip with lots of goodies. The only thing in the picture that I didn't buy is the Saucony shoes, my friend got those for me since they were my size and in such great shape.

I'm on the balcony with the MacBook Pro and I am typing up this blog post to share with you.  I took a few more pictures to share with you at the end of this post.  We are in the room for the night.  Well, I am going to hit the beach with my feet, but we are in.  No going out in the car.  We ordered pizza for dinner from Hungry Howie's and it was excellent as always!  I tried their stuffed crust pizza and it was delicious! Yummy yum yum! lol

Tomorrow we'll get some groceries for the room. For now we have leftover pizza.  We got a few drinks each from the drink machines and we ordered a 2 liter each for us.  We will be okay for the time being.  The coffee maker is in my half of the room and ready to brew in the morning. :p I brought coffee with me because I remembered that this particular hotel gives you a coffee pot, but no coffee!  Crazy.  I almost brought my little Keurig knock off but I didn't want to bring more things. I had enough to carry as it is!  

I will post again tomorrow morning. It's 9:08 now so there will be no more posts tonight.  I have done my daily French lesson, but I haven't written today.  I am extremely tired, so I am going to write, but I may just write a small portion.  I'm really tired and want to do my writing justice so I'll just write a few lines tonight to say that I did write!  Here are a few pictures from this evening.

I am at home, I haven't left for the beach yet.  I woke up a bit ago and I got up to use the bathroom and grabbed a few last-minute things. I thought I would make my coffee and have it ready to drink when I planned to get up (7:20) because it will still be hot in my tumbler for several hours.  Then, I realized a few things I didn't pack.  After that, I knew it was useless to try to sleep anymore so I grabbed my 13" MBP, and here I am! I thought I could start the day with a quick blog post.  See you later on from Myrtle Beach. If I thought my friend was up and ready, I'd dress and go! :p

I totally forgot to post last night. I thought of it after the fact.  Oh well, yesterday was all out of whack for me anyway! I usually get up with my Fitbit alarm at 10:30 every day. Yesterday, I woke up and looked at the clock to see how much time I had left to sleep and it was afternoon. I said, oh, I have time and then it hit me, NOON.  I was so tired because I had been having a stressful dream right before I woke up.  I was all out of sorts and my day was totally off after that.  I usually relax from 10:30 - 12 and get myself together and ready for the day. That didn't happen yesterday. The day just seemed so off-kilter.  Luckily, today, I woke up at the right time!

I didn't leave the house today. It was raining off and on all day.  We had a small thunderstorm here, too.  It wasn't bad, though.  No power outages or anything.  The power didn't even blink.  I sat in my window and watched the rain.  It was coming down fast and hard at one point.  I stayed inside and stayed dry! :p

I tried something new today.  I few grocery visits ago, I bought two of the Coca-Cola with coffee cans.  One was dark and one was caramel. I tried the caramel today and it was surprisingly good. I was all set to hate it, but it was pretty tasty. It had the bite of Coca-Cola, the taste of coffee, and there was the subtle hint of caramel.  Pretty good.  I would buy it again.  This is what the can looks like:

I will try the dark one later. I found out that there is a vanilla one too. I'd like to try it, also.  I just looked at my can for the caffeine content. It's only 69 mg. That is less than a 16.9 oz Moutain Dew!  I just looked at an old empty Coke can in my room and a regular 12ox Coke only has 36 mg.  So this is lmost twice as much as a normal Coke.  

What a thrifting trip that was! We started in Reidsville and went to the Salvation Army store and Goodwill. I found an Apple-branded cover for my iPad mini in there. It's light blue and I love it.  At Salvation Army, I got some cards, a snowman pin, a wallet, a CD, a cheese grater, and two packs of those cute little animal cable protectors.  We went from there to Wentworth NC and ate at a place called Mom's Kitchen.  We were looking forward to it. It was not great.  It was just.... I don't want to be mean, but it wasn't good. We won't be going back there.  We went from there to the Mayodan Goodwill that we recently discovered and I found a few things there.  A small Keurig k-cup holder (It fits under the little brewer in my room! LOL), a case (that will fit an external HD), a set of Tetris magnets, and a cute little Halloween ceramic thingee with a ghost, a tree, and little jack o lanterns.  We went on to a 'new' Goodwill in Walkertown NC.  I found a Sak bag exactly like the one I wanted at Myrtle that I bought on eBay. This one is the same bag but instead of being black, it's teal. I absolutely LOVE it.  I got that, a bit metal jack o lantern, a S'well bottle with donut design, a purple zipper pouch, a box of Ticonderoga pencils, and a Homer Simpson shirt! I can't wear it, it's way too small, but I had to have it! Lol

We left there and were heading to the Goodwill in Eden but we ended up going right past the one in Mayodan. They are constantly putting stuff out there so we stopped back in. I found some stampers and a cute crab plush.  I love crabs! He is red is so cute!  We then went to the Goodwill in Eden and I found a DS game! They had quite a few, but there was one that I was pretty sure I'd love. It was Crafting Mama!  I always adored the Cooking Mama games so I got this. It was still in the original case, too. That was $4. I was so happy to finally see some DS games and one I actually wanted! I'll try it later as I haven't been home long and I've been working on my writing.  I'm too tired to do it justice tonight so I've just been editing.

After Eden, we headed to our last stop, Martinsville, VA, and to the Goodwill there.  We ate again in Eden at a drive-up place.  That was much better than our lunch!  At the Martinsville Goodwill, I didn't find anything!  That was okay because I had already spent plenty.  I love all my finds. I'm so happy that I found that purse! I adore the black one so much and this is the same purse only in a cooler color. This once still has the Sak dangle thingee on it, too!

The CD I found in the Salvation Army in Reidsville is from the Vince Guaraldi Trio. It's all the music from the 1965 A Charlie Brown Christmas special  I just happened to see it while I was in line and snatched it up!  I've already ripped it to my MacBook Pro so I can enjoy it on here and on my iPod. I love the music from it.  

I just looked up the cover I got for the iPad Mini. It sells new on the Apple store for $39.99! @_@; I got it for $4.99. SCORE!!!! lol  I am pretty sure this will also fit any iPad Mini so if I get a newer one, I should be able to use it with those too. :) It was a good thrifting trip. I'll try to remember to take pictures tomorrow.  I need to move everything off my bed so I can actually sleep in it tonight. Plus, I want to try Crafting Mama!

I actually know it's Thursday this week!  I got the hard drive returned today with my data.  They said they would put it on a drive the size of my data recovered.  I figured they would send a 1 GB drive as the stuff on it was a little less than that.  They send me a 4 GB drive with my files!  That was more than generous and I was extremely happy!  I finally cloned the drive my friend lent me and erased it to return it to him tomorrow.

As for tomorrow, we are doing a thrifting trip.  He sometimes gets off at noon on Friday and we are hoping he will tomorrow so we can do a few different places.  I'd love to make it to the Salvation Army since they were closed yesterday.  I'm also hoping to find some DS games and other goodies!  I wrote tonight and it was an emotional scene, so I only wrote a little over 1000 words. I'll probably edit it tomorrow and then write more. It was pretty good! 

I remembered that today I had an offer from Starbucks that if you did order ahead, you would get a free drink loaded onto your card for a future purchase. It was for a Grande or Venti.  Guess what my dumb ass bought? Tall. ~_~; I realized my mistake when I got home.  Oh well.  I tried another new drink.  This was the Oatmilk honey latte.  I don't think I like it.  It wasn't horrible by any means, it just isn't something I would enjoy.  It's weird though, the more I drank it, the better it got? It was weird.  I don't know. I am desperately trying to find something to fill the void left by my cascara syrup being discontinued!

I hope to do a post tomorrow night about thrifting, but I might be too tired if we go to a bunch of places. I'll try to check in any way even if I have to do a write up of all the goodies I get on Saturday.  I am planning on staying home the entire weekend, so I can get writing, chores, and other things done!

The coffee maker works well! It is a bit slow to heat up the water, but I'm not complaining.  It's so neat to have a coffee maker in my room. I've had two cups from it today. :p Look at how cool this set up is:

I like that it's tall enough for my 12oz Starbucks tumbler I purchased this year at the beach. I'm loving having it literally at my fingertips as I'm at my desk!  What fun I can have.  Now, if we'd get a nice snowy day, I could just sit here and watch the snow all day and have fresh coffee in minutes.  No need to leave my room. Ahhh!

I wrote some today, but I didn't write a lot. I have more to write and I plan on doing that after posting this.  I have a bit coming up and I'm trying to figure out how to go about it.  I am not sure if I'm going to do it immediately and lead up to it more.  It will all depend on how I'm feeling when I get to writing. This tumler of coffee I just made will definitely help! :p

I bet you know what I did today! LOL!  I found two amazing finds.  We went to Reidsville and at the Salvation Army store, I found a few little things but my friend walked over and showed me a little thermal printer.  It was brand new in the box. It makes little pictures on thermal paper. You can also buy sticker paper for it. It's nifty!  It was $3!  It retails for $37. on Amazon. Whee!  After Reidsville, we went to Mayodan NC to try a new Goodwill we haven't been to before. I found a candle and a box of cards there.  The next great deal was in Martinsville.  We went there after Mayodan and I found a single cup coffee maker new in box for $4.00!!  I found it online for $69.  It takes K-cups or you can use the reusable filter that comes with it. It's so cute!  My friend even suggested it would be good for me to carry to the beach in case there were no coffee makers. Neat!

I've played with the little printer and it's fun! It has settings in the app where you can create a little to-do list and print it out.  It's so nifty! I love finds like that. The other things I got were a three-wick candle, (it smells sooooooo good), a Christmas light tester, a mug, an old Yahtzee game, a pack of vintage cups, a kindle cover (sadly it's too big!), and a snowman doorstopper.  It was a pretty good trip.  The coffee maker and the little printer being phenomenal deals!   

Here is the little printer:

I love it and I put a set of printer rolls on my wish list at Amazon. :p The prints I've done so far are very cute. It's definitely going to be used in journaling.  All I had to do was search for the app on Android, download it and pair it via Bluetooth to the printer and I was able to start using it asap!

Here is a sample of the print.  The first is a sample to-do list that I made and the second is an artistic rendering of a picture of a Starbucks cup I took some time ago.

Pretty nifty, eh?  It was a great thrifting trip.
  

My friend texted me today. He was trying to buy a house and made an offer but his offer didn't get accepted, so he was a bit bummed. He texted me and asked if I'd like to 'go somewhere, anywhere.'  I said, yes even though it was cold and overcast and we had rain/freezing rain. Luckily it didn't start up again until we were almost done with our adventure.  We went to Yanceyville, NC to the Goodwill there.  We then went to Roxboro NC and on to South Boston Virginia.  We went to the Goodwill there, too.  I didn't get anything major, but I did find some fun things.  Our favorite place to eat in South Boston was closed.  I looked on Google and it said it was 'temporarily closed' I hope it's not permanent.  We went looking for something else and found a place called Italian Delight.  It was right near the Goodwill we'd gone to so we had to backtrack.  We gave them a go and they were great. It was an order at the counter and fill your own drink type place.  He got spaghetti and I got a small pepperoni pizza.  It was delicious! Definitely a place we'll go to again.  

It was very cold out there today.  My car had ice on it when I got in it!  I noticed a lot of ice-covered trees in one area where we were. When we got home, he noticed that something was falling but it was very light.  We are under a winter weather advisory for the weekend, but sadly it's ice and freezing rain and no snow. Boo! I have no plans to go out this weekend and be in this mess!  I hope to get some writing done. I did write some earlier but I have a feeling tomorrow I'm going to want to edit it.  I have the entire weekend to just chill, write, and drink coffee! :p

That is basically what this is!  I wanted to protect my desk to keep it from any issues so I looked up desk mats.  I found one that would fit my desk.  The writing surface isn't huge, so I had to measure it to get the right size.  The only thing is, the smallest one height-wise is also the smallest one lengthwise! I wish I could get one that covered the majority of my desk. For now this will do.

It's nice, it's pink on one side and blue on the other.  When I was looking these up and had ordered this one, I remembered I had an old Yoga mat that I didn't use anymore. It wasn't a real thick one and it was blue on one side and green on the other. I was thinking, I could cut this and make my own custom mat for my desk.  There is only one problem. I can't find the Yoga mat!  I moved it from the container I keep my other mats in.  It only holds four and I took this one out to fit those in.  Now, I can't remember what I did with the other mat. D'oh!  I was thinking it would look pretty good on my desk and it would get used, but I can't find it. It's around here somewhere! :p

So, that came yesterday.  Today I got another two packages from Amazon. I ordered a set of washi that has been on my wish list forever and I also ordered some coffee stickers!  They had a set of 40 some (45 I think?) for $4 and some change.  I looked and they had the same display box but it had twice as many stickers for $5 and change.  I ordered that and I'm glad I did. It was two of the first one.  So, an extra set of stickers for just a few dollars more. Good deal! Here are the stickers and the washi:

The stickers are neat. There are two of each design in the box so I have four of each with the two boxes.  The washi is pretty and it's one of my favorite brands I've found on Amazon, it's Moleshine brand.  Always nice quality and very pretty! As you can see on the bottom left of the washi box, they added a skinny roll, too!  

Yesterday, my friend and I went to Reidsville and ate at Pete's and then went thrifting.  At the Goodwill, he found a TomTom GPS and bought it and said it was for me! Yay!  It's an older one, but it works well and it's got a nice size screen.  He had bought me a tiny TomTom at the Goodwill in Longs SC on the way home from the last beach trip and I liked it, but it was hard to push the screen as it was so small.  He saw this one and bought it.  We set it up and it works fine. The maps may be a bit out of date, but they should be okay.  It will still get us where we need to go, just maybe not to a specific restaurant or whatnot if we don't have the address. It will be nice to have a GPS in my car so I don't have to use my phone and Google Maps.  I love my Google, but I don't want to run down my phone battery!

The day before that, when I forgot to post again, I went and got my car washed, filled up with gas, and got my oil changed  They charged $10 more than last time and I wasn't very happy about that but I needed the oil change so I went ahead and got it.  I like keeping on top of any maintenance on my Goontz!

Today was the first day of February in this new year of 2021.  I did my usual thing. I went to Starbucks! The line was pretty crazy, but I got my drink  I think I could have gone in, but I wasn't sure so I just hit the drive-thru.  I got my drink (the blond almond milk honey flat white). It is pretty good. I think I really like it.  I got that and went to do some Zeeops in Munzee since I didn't leave the house yesterday.  I got my daily Zeeops and then headed home.  I stayed in the rest of the day.

I got a nice bit of writing done just before I came here to post.  I stayed up too late last night and did not want to get up today, so I'm going to try to go to bed at a reasonable hour. If I actually do is up in the air! :p I'd like to as I was so tired this morning.  I don't know if I mentioned this, but when I was setting up this year's bullet journal, I added a two-page spread to the end of the month for 'memories'.  This one had some things I downloaded and printed off the internet.   I had a Biden / Harris 'sticker' for the inauguration.  I also had the picture of Bernie and his mittens because that was so funny and it was such fun seeing all the places people put him after President Biden's inauguration.  I also cut out a few other things to paste in including some coffee things and I cut the little 'fry man' from a package of Pete's Burgers and More fries.  They don't have branding on their stuff, but the small fry bag has a little potato man surrounded by fries.  We ate FIVE times at Pete's in January so I added him! :p  I think I'm going to like the memories page. It will be fun to add things to it.

As for now, I'm going to post this, and then I'm going to relax for a bit before bed.  I want to re-read what I wrote and see all the things I need to change! LOL! 

I went to Starbucks today and tried another new drink.  The new one is an almond milk honey flat white. How is that for a mouthful! It wasn't bad at all.  I think I might like it better than the pistachio latte. The more I drank, the more I liked it.  At first, I wasn't sure, but it grew on me.  I would probably try this one again.  I went to Dan Daniel's park to sit for a bit since it was a little warmer today and I wanted to capture a few Munzees there. I took three pictures to share:

Nice, yes?  It was a good little respite in my day.  I finally heard from my hard drive support team! They are going to try to retrieve my data and they are going to replace the drive. That is wonderful!  I hope they can replace the data.  I am anxious to get the replacement drive so I can back up my current stuff.  I also want to be able to give the borrowed drive back to my friend!  Speaking of my friend, he had given me a nicer heater than the one I was using but it stopped working. He came a week or so ago and looked at it and it was working fine. It worked well for a few days and then did the same thing as before.  So I was back to the original heater that isn't very effective.  It heats, but it's not as powerful as I need for those really cold days considering it's the only heat in the house! (I keep my door closed at all times).  He brought me another little heater tonight.  It's about 1/4 of the size of the heater I usually use and it's warm!  I plugged it in and then rode with him on an errand.  I could tell a difference when I got back.  This is going to be good! I'm quite happy with it and hope it lasts.  I'm actually pretty toasty for a change.  That is nice!

So, my friend texted today and was going to head home early for work as he had a package coming to his house and there was the one coming to my house.  He was able to get the one that was coming to my house at the hub.  He wanted to know if I wanted to go eat, I did!  I am glad I did because if not, I would not have seen much snow.  We did our full thrift trip. Reidsville, Eden, and Martinsville.  I got a lot of stuff. I actually wrote a list. lol Here it is:

• Canon Selphy Printer
• French coffee press
• milk frother
• backpack
• stainless water bottle
• candle
• jack o lantern that is a lantern lol
• three coffee themed mugs
• stainless steel straws
• jack o lantern votive holder with candle
• iPad Mini case
• Relic wallet with a dime in it. :p
• Envelopes
• burger stack salt and pepper shakers
• 1 snowman shaker
• colorful jingle bell wreath with snowmen
• metal colorful decorative tree
• A book on aromatherapy
• phone case looks like Gameboy
• metal tape measure
• brass looking little tree with colorful bells as ornaments
• Halloween stickers