Month: November 2011

Tricky Fuel Point Math

We shop at Krogers where each dollar you spend gets turned into “Fuel Points.” Every buck equals 1 point and each 100 points equals 10¢ off a gallon of gas. Simple, Right? Not so much. Each prescription, whether a $4 generic or a $50 non-preferred, gets you 50 points. Buy a gift card and you get double points, but right now for the holidays we are in the middle of a two week period where you get 4x the points.

Points not used during the month are not lost, but carried over for one month in their own bucket. When you redeem your points for money off a gallon a gas it will take from last months points first if it is greater than the current month’s total. This is handy, in case you forget to fill up before the last day of the month, you can use them up in the first week or two of the next month.

At first we didn’t really pay attention to all this and just let the fuel points fall where they may, but when we noticed that sometimes a substantial amount of points were wasted at the end of the month, we changed our attitude. Now, we have gone so far the other way, that it borders on a game.

Tonight we needed a few things at the store, we needed to pick up 4 prescriptions and we needed some gas. When we left the house we had 176 points, add the 200 points for prescriptions, we are now up to 376. Our few items didn’t look like the $24 we needed to bump us up to the 40¢ off level, so we added a $25 Panera Bread gift card. Our total came to thirty five bucks and change.

Now our total points no stood at 486!?! Oh yeah, 4 times the points for the gift card. So now we need to spend $15 to put us over the next level. Donna says buy a $15 DD gift card. “Brilliant,” I say, “We can always use one of those.”

So I go back through the self check out line that I just came from and buy the $15 gift card. When I’m done I look at my new point total, 546. How the heck…? Then we both come to the same conclusion simultaneously, idiots, you don’t get the 15 points for the $15 and the 4x points, you just get the 4x points.

Donna says, “Well, go back and buy another $15 DD gift card and that 60 points will put us just over 600 level.” At first I refuse, but finally relent, under one condition, I get to go through a different check out line.

The Purples Whale’s low fuel light was on, so the 17 gallons of gas we got for $40, would have cost us $50 without that 60¢ discount.

My head hurt from all that cipherin’.

Long Shoals Roadside Park

N 34° 56.950 W 082° 51.065

A very cool little roadside park along the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway in upstate South Carolina that we stopped at on Saturday. It is where we found one of the 15 geocaches we found during our three day trip to the SMH for Turkey Day.

Pearson Falls

N 35? 13.149, W 082? 19.929

From the Pearson Falls History page:

A military man, farmer, and an engineer, Captain Pearson bought the Glen as part of a large tract of land that he wanted for his family. For years he and his heirs allowed generations of young people to picnic on the great stone table-rock that you will see at the foot of the Falls. Botanists and bird-fanciers from all over the country have come to discover and catalogue the wonders of this Glen area.

In 1931, the Tryon Garden Club bought the property in order to preserve this unique mountain Glen. Through the generosity of an honorary member and careful planning, the club members purchased the several hundred acres of this wildlife preserve. Although open to the public, the property remains under the ownership and protection of the Tryon Garden Club.

Over 17,000 people visit Pearson’s Falls each year. It is also a wildlife preserve, and outdoor laboratory for the botany departments of the surrounding colleges and universities, and the site of frequent field trips for local science classes. Pearson’s Falls is designated as a North Carolina National Heritage Site of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, a North Carolina Birding Trail Site, and is placed in the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Gardens.

Big Black Worm

N 35? 14.246 W 082? 23.678

An excerpt from the page of one of the caches we hunted for:

All five of the caches are placed on two Duke Power service roads. Private vehicles other than employees and company suppliers are not allowed behind the yellow gate even though it will be open on week days. Do NOT climb on top of Carl?s Worm (large black water flume). At no time do you have to leave the service roads more than eight to ten feet to locate the caches.

Carl has been the keeper of the worm for the last 30 years. We met Carl on the road and he was gracious enough to answer many questions that we had about the big black water flume. Carl has maintained the new worm since it went in service in 1990 and previously maintained the old worm starting in 1974.

Water flume history as we remember it: The original water flume went in operation carrying water from Lake Summit to the Pot Shoals power plant in 1919 the same year that High Bridge was started. The original flume was made with Cyprus and the inside diameter is 7 feet and varies with expansion and contraction. The flume starts at the Lake Summit Dam in Tuxedo and is one mile long ending in a large water tank. The flume itself is always full of water.

The new Flume which went in operation in 1990 is made from Canadian Hemlock and has an expectancy of ten more years of service. The reason for the change from Cyprus to hemlock was cost. The Canadian Hemlock costs about 1/3 as much as the Cyprus.

The water in the tank is controlled by the hydro plant operators and is cut off when Lake Summit reaches a certain level. When the water leaves the tank it splits into two 5 inch lines and drops vertically for .25 miles to the Pot Shoals Electrical Plant. Each of the 5 inch flumes turn a turbine and can be shut off independently relative to the need for power or the level of lake Summit.

Danger Overhead

The weather has been warmer than average around here this week, so much so that we drove the Miata to work and had the top down both to and from. Today was on the windy side and this morning as we were driving down our street we got dripped on from the trees a couple of times with left over rain drops from last night. As we approached the first stop sign an acorn hit the road in front of us and promptly bounced off the windshield with a pop.

As we left ASCO’s parking lot to come home tonight a piece of pine straw zipped by Donna’s head before bouncing off the console. The rest of the way home we put the windows up to keep the blowing dead leaves from smacking us from the sides. And the Coup de Grâce was on our street again, where another acorn barely missed our heads and landed somewhere in the cockpit between us.

This prompted Donna to say, “We should have ridden our bicycles (we had contemplated this seeing as it is sort of Friday), we’d have been safer because we would have been wearing helmets.”

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1094

I Should Be Blogging Here

Santa Claus

But instead I’m avoiding it. I also should be filling in the survey from Hyundai about our recent Purple Whale service, but I’m avoiding that too. Instead I’m procrastinating.

Oh, and, happy birthday Jennifer Morrison. No, not the one that is on the show Once Upon A Time, but the daughter of Donna’s older brother. Coincidentally, she is an actress too, she just isn’t starring in her own TV show. Yet.