Squeaker convention, chapter 3 (unedited)

So what happens at a squeaker convention? Considering I had never been to an organized gathering of squeakers, and Keri had never held a social gathering for squeakers, your guess might have been as good as mine.

The convention was held at a sprawling church in the north metro. It's our local version of the PTL Club, evidently. It's a well funded ministry that has yet to build a theme park, but that's probably next. I have no idea who plays the role of Tammy Faye Baker/Messner, but the figurehead of the ministry sure fills his pews, and the coffers. The church is a sprawling campus with all sorts of amenities. And although I didn't see the "church," I've seen it, on local television. This church has a Sunday program broadcast locally, which I think is live. And the production is slick, from what little I've seen of it on TV. This is no community access cable operation. The king of the castle has been scrutinized for the lavishness, of both his church and his lifestyle, and if I recall correctly, he hasn't shied away from the fact he lives extravagantly. It's a fascinating story, for another day, perhaps. I've read about the church, and I'd like to know more about it.

Keri is a member of this church, so she was able to secure a large conference room with tables to seat 250 of us. We all checked in upon arrival, receiving a swag bag with coupons that were of little value to me, unfortunately. If you brought donations for a local food shelf, they were collected at the door, and you received up to 15 raffle tickets for the prize drawing. My girlfriend and I donated about 40 items, including several cans of fruits and vegetables, several bottles of hot sauce, several cans of dog food, several peanut butter cups, four tubes of toothpaste, a box of girl scout cookies and a pack of disposable razors.

I'm sure many of us squeakers donated things we got free, or nearly free, at the grocery store. Toothpaste is easy to get free, or next to free, and it's easy to get lots of it. I bet there were hundreds of tubes of toothpaste in those bags.

I donated a bunch of hot sauce because I got them all free with a coupon from the Sunday paper. It's not the most logical thing to donate to a food shelf, but if people need help buying groceries, there's a good chance they'd like a condiment for their food, be it ketchup, mustard or hot sauce.

The dog food might seem like another illogical choice, but some food shelves take pet food. Just because you can't afford groceries and rent doesn't mean you don't have a pet. If people with pets lost their job and started getting behind on their bills, should they immediately get rid of the family dog? Pets are part of the family for many, and when I had a chance to get eight cans of dog food free, I did, knowing I'd donate them to a food shelf.

I stock up on cheap razors and deodorant whenever I can. I've recently amassed a good number of nice razors, some of which are disposable. I paid a buck for each pack of the disposables, and I included one in the bag. Did I need to in order to reach the 30 items necessary for us to obtain the maximum number of raffle tickets? No, but I didn't want to simply donate free stuff I had no use for. I wanted to include a few things that were of value to me.

I would have gladly eaten the eight packages of peanut butter cups I donated. If they weren't free, I paid 10 cents or less for each package. Without Keri's website, I never would have figured out how to get them for little or nothing using coupons, so instead of keeping them, I donated them. Just because you're broke doesn't mean you have no interest in a candy treat once in a while. And I'll bet it's harder to justify spending 89 cents on candy at Walgreens when your income is zero. I hope those peanut butter cups brighten up the day for eight people.

The girl scout cookies cost me $3.50. There was no coupon for them. I buy them and eat them each year. I didn't have to donate a box, but again, just because you're broke, does that mean you shouldn't enjoy a girl scout cookie? It wasn't exactly a grand gesture on my part, but I wanted to do more than donate 30 items that were obtained for next to nothing. It may not matter to the people who receive groceries from their local food shelf, but it mattered to me.

Squeaker convention, chapter 2 (unedited)

So as noted, Keri is a local celebrity, and it's quite impressive.

She started her website barely a year ago. As she tells the story, she started it as a way to help others, not to create her own Internet company. In that time she has become a media darling, appearing regularly on Twin Cities television stations, and getting mentions in the Star Tribune. She has also been featured by several national media outlets, all in less than a year.

Her website was the latest step in her family's personal journey. The website is a result of her family's attempt to get out of debt. The story is a bit involved, but basically Keri and her husband have two young daughters, and they had a ton of debt. They stopped living beyond their means, started finding ways to cut costs and within three years got out of debt. It's an inspirational story.

Keri's website provides information on how to maximize savings at the grocery story by taking advantage of coupons, rebates and other incentives, links to freebies on the Internet and tips about deals and benefit available through the Internet. She isn't doing anything other sites aren't doing in some way, shape or form. There are national forums where people share advice about how to save money at Walgreens or how to get stuff free from online retailers through discount codes and rebates. Keri isn't ripping off this information and passing it off as her own research, but there's a certain amount of plagiarism that goes on in squeaker circles. She is probably best described as an aggregator, a term that is all the rage in online media circles these days. She gathers info from multiple sources and adds her own two cents.

Her website, however, is easy to follow and use, and it's targeted for the Twin Cities audience. She didn't invent the squeaker site, she simply created one that has a lot of appeal in the Twin Cities. And she does have a national following for some of her content, without question. Sales at Walgreens vary by region, but they're relatively similar, so a reader from Nevada could benefit from her website.

Keri explained at the convention how her rise to media stardom happened. Part of it was luck, part of it was self promotion. She is a TV person, meaning she plays well on TV. That helps.

Bottom line: she put a local spin on websites that have served a national audience at a time when everybody and their mother was trying to save an extra buck or two. What better time to launch her website than during the greatest recession of my lifetime.

One of her regular gigs is a local chat fest called Twin Cities Live. She appears weekly. The show, on our ABC affiliate, is patterned after a show that was popular in 1980s called Good Company. The shows are very similar, and that's by design. And back in the '80s Good Company had a "bargain hunter." The Internet hadn't been invented, but the bargain hunter reported on deals around the Twin Cities. Keri is the 21st century version of the bargain hunter.

How did I find Keri's site? She had started promoting it here and there, and I stumbled across her through a plug for the site. I was instantly hooked. I had already been clipping coupons, scouring the Sunday ads and taking advantage of the Walgreens deals. Keri's site took my bargain hunting to the next level.

There are other sites locally doing the same or similar things Keri does. I don't have enough time to track all of them. Keri's site keeps me busy. And it keeps her busy, too. Even though she has recruited help, she is quite busy running a website, a website that uses Facebook and Twitter to promote itself. A website she promotes regularly through her media appearances, as well as through community education classes she is now teaching about how to save money, with and without coupons.

It's quite an empire she's building, an empire she has managed to build in less than a year.

Pocket those dollars, baby!

I'm too tired to chronicle every last detail tonight, so perhaps this will become the first of a new series I will subtitle "squeakers convention."

I've written about how I have a mild obsession with coupons and retail deals, and how I inherited that from my mother. Since last summer I have been using a Twin Cities based deal finders website. The woman, Keri, started her website as a way to share the things she was learning about how to get great deals on retail purchases. She didn't intend to turn it into a full-time business, but that is what it has become.

I have taken advantage of Walgreens deals for a long time. And I tend to jump through too many hoops to get free shampoo, toothpaste, pet food or candy bars when the opportunity presents itself. So when I found a site that details how you can get a wide array of things at Walgreens and the grocery store free, or at a fantastic price, I was hooked.

Less than a year into her venture, Keri has become a local media darling. She appears on several local news/chat programs every month, talking about the deals available in any given week, be it an online deal, a grocery store deal or something else. She is good at selling her website, and herself, so it's not a surprise that she has become a local celebrity. She's not the first such local deal guru, and thanks to the internet, we have more than ever surfacing on local gab fests, but Keri's ascension to local stardom is pretty impressive...more about that another day.

Tonight she hosted her first squeakers convention. A squeaker, according to my girlfriend, is a coupon maniac. She didn't coin the term, it came from a clerk at her local Rainblow grocery store. I'm not sure how reducing your out-of-pocket costs is squeaking, but I like the term nonetheless, so I go with it.

Keri's site is not an online forum, it's an information source that allows users to comment at the end of her articles, much like a newspaper website. I don't pay attention to the names of the users who respond on her articles, but there are plenty of people who do so. Some of those folks wanted an opportunity to gather together and/or meet Keri, who they've all seen on TV, but otherwise have never met personally. So Keri decided to hold a "meet and greet."

She considered posting a first-come, first-register invite, but many people freaked at the thought they'd miss the opening of the event registration, which was limited to 100 people. So Keri opted to draw names from online entries to determine who would get an invitation. She had planned to limit her event to 100 people, but interest exceeded her wildest dreams. She had more than 1,000 entries for tickets, and was able to increase her event size to 250 people to meet the demand.

I entered the drawing and was picked, so my girlfriend and I attended the squeaker convention earlier tonight. On another night I'll detail more about what we saw, heard and received, and what my ulterior motive was for attending the convention.

What I learned from attending the convention: I'm quite the anomoly. I didn't expect every married woman to drag her husband along to the convention, but I didn't realize that coupon shopping was still predominantly a woman thing. There were at least 250 people in the room, and although I didn't attempt a head count, I don't think there were more than 10 men attending. One of those men was Keri's husband, another appeared to be the husband of a woman who assists Keri with the website. I didn't expect half the audience to be male, but I expected more than 4 percent of the audience to be male.

I'm not sure what that says about me, but perhaps now I know why cashiers are occasionally impressed by my coupon acumen. I'm not one in a million, but I'm not far off, either.

"Telephone tiger!" (unedited)

Perhaps someday I'll explain why the phrase "telephone tiger" brings back such fond memories. The short version of the story: it's the result of stupid collegiate prank phone calling.

Thanks to caller ID, the old prank phone calls of the past are all but gone. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I use to enjoy the occasional prank phone call. I never got into serious trouble because of it, fortunately, but I was one of those annoying punks who use to make prank phone calls now and again. Yes, I've long outgrown the joy of the prank phone call -- even before caller ID -- but there's still a part of me that enjoys a harmless prank, especially if it involves the telephone.

Chip has a wacky habit of screening his phone calls. Unfortunately his telephone technology is stuck largely in the 1980s. He has a mobile phone, but it's not his primary phone, as he still maintains an old-fashioned home phone. Not only does he have a cordless phone wired to the wall of his condo, he has an answering machine attached to it. So when his phone rings, he sits there and waits for the answering machine to answer, his greeting to play and the caller to leave a message before determining if it's a call he wants to answer. I'm not sure who he's hiding from, but he has been doing this for years. I know he gets telemarketing type calls periodically, but most of those are when he is at work. And for the life of me I can't get him to tell me who it is he doesn't want to speak to unexpectedly, or admit to me there's no reason he should be screening his calls.

So years ago when I was visiting Stinktown for a weekend Chip screened one of his phone calls while I was there. I don't recall the details, but as I recall, he was having a minor problem with his phone. Or perhaps he was simply perplexed that his phone rang, the answering machine kicked in and the caller opted not to leave a message. Whatever the circumstances, the light bulb over my head illuminated. As we sat there watching football one afternoon, I had my mobile phone discreetly at my side, out of his view. Yep, I dialed his home phone number and we sat there as it rang. And sure enough, once the answering machine kicked in, I disconnected the call. I did this several times, all while keeping a straight face, even as Chip got increasingly frustrated. I think he was convinced there was a problem with his phone line rather than somebody calling and hanging up.

He became so perplexed that he decided he had to answer the phone before his answering machine kicked in. And of course I managed to hang up before he did. I'm sure the stress of it raised his blood pressure even higher than usual.

Of course the punchline should have been speaking to him through my phone when he answered his, but he was in one of those pissy moods. Sometimes he can appreciate a good laugh or practical joke, other times he acts like you've spit on his grandfather's grave. I wasn't in the mood to deal with the latter Chip, so it's one of those jokes I had to appreciate silently...until now.

There was a similar game I started playing recently. My bingo hall has a pay phone, which has a quieter-than-standard ring. A while ago it started ringing on a nightly basis, usually at the same time of the night. I think it was doing it at two set times, as if the phone number was on an automated dialing list. Whenever anybody answered the call, there was no sign of anyone on the other end.

It didn't take long before I realized that I could have fun with this. Yep, I added the pay phone number into my contact list, and would occasionally dial it discreetly while at work, usually when I was nowhere near it. Sometimes I'd do it once, sometimes I'd do it a few times in a row. It was amazing how frustrating it was to a few of my co-workers.

When I'd dial the number, I immediately put the call on mute, so that there would be silence on the line if somebody answered it and listened for a response. (More often the person answering the phone would quickly hang it up.)

I didn't expect anybody to notice the phone was only ringing when I was working, but I quickly deduced I needed to call it on nights when I wasn't working, too, just to change it up. Yep, that's right, I'm too easily amused by the stupidest things.

Unfortunately for me the fun and games are over. At work tonight I noticed the phone was missing from the wall. I asked the manager where it went. She explained that she called the service provider to report the periodic ringing. The service provider looked at our account and determined the phone wasn't generating enough income to justify it being there at no cost to the bingo hall. That's not a shock, but it did get used occasionally.

It's amazing how the pay phone has nearly become obsolete. There are still plenty of them around, but you don't see them everywhere any more. You're just as likely to see an empty wall or stand where there use to be a pay phone as you are to find one that is working.

The bingo hall had two choices, pay to keep it on the wall or have it removed. The bingo hall wasn't interested in paying to keep it, naturally.

So thanks to my tomfoolery there's one less pay phone in this country. And this makes me sad. How am I supposed to amuse myself at the bingo hall now?

And the Oscar for worst party goes to:

I haven't seen one Oscar-nominated film from 2009, not one. I might be wrong, but I don't recall watching even one flick that had a chance of winning anything on Sunday night. Plenty of mainstream movies get nominated for the sound categories and costuming, but I've missed every one of them. It's not that I boycott those flicks, I just don't get out to the movies much.

But being a sucker for an event, I entered to win tickets to an Oscar party at Theatres at Mall of America. Yep, the movie theater at that bastion of retail gluttony was hosting an Oscar party. I e-mailed an entry, thinking it would be a nice evening out for my girlfriend. I'm not sure how many people were intrigued by the idea of watching the Oscars on a movie screen, but I won two tickets.

I went to an Oscar party several years ago, the big party in Minneapolis. I won tickets to that party, too, and took the girlfriend of the time. That party is an annual fundraising event that draws a good crowd. We had a good time at that party.

Flash forward to 2010, I'm going to a party at a movie theater. I didn't expect it to measure up to the big gala, but I figured it would be fun. I was wrong.

The MOA theaters opened, with the mall, more than 17 years ago. At the time it was impressive: 14 screens in an over-sized mall. Within a few years we had 16- and 20-screen theaters opening around the Twin Cities, many with stadium seating. The mall theaters looked lame in comparison, yet mall ticket prices were among the highest in the Twin Cities.

The theaters had been part of a chain, but a few years ago they went independent. Under the new, independent ownership the theaters have been revamped a bit. There's now a VIP theater. It has nice, wide seats, cocktail tables and a waitstaff. You have to be 21 to view a movie in the VIP theater, as they serve beer and wine. It has been years since I went to a movie at that theater, and the idea of paying a premium for VIP tickets, just for the privilege of buying a beer during a movie, has little appeal to me.

But Sunday night I sat in that precious theater, watching free TV. I'm not sure if they've held an Oscar party in the theater previously, but the idea makes sense. People go to the movies during Oscar night, but given it's a Sunday, chances are attendance in the VIP theater would be less than capacity. On Oscar night, why not open it up and cater to those who love Hollywood?

Since it was a free party, I wasn't expecting free cocktails. But I would have thought they'd offer complimentary hors d'œuvres. I was wrong.

There are some nice restaurants in the mall, and others that are a step above the food court. You'd think they would have lined up one of those restaurants to provide complimentary munchies for the party. On a Sunday night, during the Oscars, how busy could one mall restaurant be? Why not give away some product and promote your restaurant? It might not have done the restaurant much good, but it would have benefited the theater to do so.

Without complimentary hors d'œuvres, we ordered a couple of munchies off the theater menu. It may be a VIP theater, but the food is definitely coach class. Choices included hot dogs, pizza, chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, popcorn, jumbo pretzels and French fries. We ordered overpriced French fries and mozzarella sticks. The French fries were adequate, at best, and the sticks were subpar. I thought all mozzarella sticks were created equal, but the MOA theater proved that you can sell crappy sticks.

We also ordered drinks, although not the champagne or champagne coolie drink they were selling. They had some sort of bar set up at the front of the theater, although I didn't see anyone buying a drink up there. It looked like there were a lot of bottles of champagne chilling up there, and plenty of them left at the end of the night. As you'd expect, being served alcohol in a movie theater is a privilege you pay for. We spent about $40 on food/drink, and I didn't exactly over-tip.

The party was sponsored by Metromix, a website that has all sorts of restaurant and entertainment information for numerous cities around the country. The site is owned by the parent company of our local NBC affiliate. We arrived shortly before the ceremony started, although the theater opened its doors to Oscar VIPs at 6 p.m.

The weathercaster of all trades at NBC-11 was the host of the party early on. During commercials he would get up and ask Oscar trivia for prizes. I'm not very good at Oscar trivia, so I had little chance of winning a prize. We also received a raffle ticket, as there were prizes given away randomly.

At some point after the ceremony started the weathercaster slipped out, leaving some Metromix woman to conduct the prize giveaways during the commercials, which inexplicably featured Michael Jackson as the background music all night long. The weathercaster was less than charismatic as the emcee, but Ms. Metromix nearly sucked the life out of the party. She wasn't terrible, but she was far from a natural, and she insisted on plugging her damn website throughout the night.

Everybody in attendance received a gift bag, which contained a few product samples, a soundtrack CD from one of the flicks, two tickets to the mall's comedy club and a couple of other random items. Nothing special, but not terrible, either. My girlfriend and I both won a raffle prize. We received a DVD of a recent 2-star movie, a promotional T-shirt too small for just about any adult male in the United States and a Metromix notebook. It was nice to win something, but we didn't win much.

At the end of the night they drew tickets for VIP theater tickets, as well as gift cards for the mall, but I assume we were out of the running since we had already won a prize. Thanks Metromix, we were able to leave 60 seconds before everyone still in the running. Way to buzzkill the big prize drawing at the end.

What should have been a showcase for the mall and the theater was a rather dull Oscar party that has given me no incentive to return to the mall for a VIP experience any time soon. When it comes to hosting an Oscar party, Theatres at Mall of America earned a Razzie.

Breaking up is hard to do (unedited)

It wasn't that many years ago I attended Holly's wedding. It was barely four years ago, and I remember it fondly. It was that rare occasion where I enjoyed a wedding reception.

Holly use to sell advertising at the newspaper. Yes, THE newspaper, the one I've now been working at for 12 years. For a year or two she sold ads in the same area I covered. We chatted about the coverage area now and again, which is how we got to be friends.

It was during those years that she had a long-time relationship with Frank. I don't know a lot about Frank's background, but he's one of those colorful characters who had many exotic tales to tell. He was also some sort of real estate mogul. Perhaps that's overstating it, but Frank developed lavish lake homes for the wealthy, it seemed. His life, not surprisingly, mirrored that lavish lifestyle.

I have no idea how Holly met Frank, or what exactly they had in common, but they were a couple. Holly didn't come from a wealthy family, as far as I know, and I couldn't help but wonder if some of the attraction to Frank was the lavish lifestyle he enjoyed.

I'm not sure what happened, but eventually their ongoing relationship came to an end, and Holly had a hard time dealing with it, this I know firsthand. She made peace with the end of their relationship and moved on. So did Frank. He married some woman, younger than Holly it sounds like, relatively quickly.

Holly, meanwhile, moved on, too. I don't know where or when she met Phil, but she did. I only met him once, at their wedding, but from what I knew of him, he was far more blue collar than Frank. He struck me as the type of guy who remained friends with those he grew up with, never fell into the trap that bigger is better and enjoyed a decent living, but believed in working hard for it. He wasn't the type of guy who was going to fall into a boatload of cash by dumb luck, nor was he looking to. Maybe I have him pegged all wrong, but that's the impression I had.

I went to Holly and Phil's wedding in 2005 and assumed it was happily ever after from there. I think both were in their 40s at this point. I assume when you reach that age you know what you want out of life, what you can compromise on and what you will not accept in a relationship or marriage.

Whatever the reason, Holly and Phil got divorced last fall.

This was news to me, as Holly and I had lunch last August and she gave no indication that she was headed down that road. I'm not one of her closest friends, so I didn't expect her to tip me off. I found out last month when I e-mailed her, asking if she wanted to meet for lunch. She replied with the divorce bombshell and noting she now lives in Los Angeles.

Since she was no longer married, she decided it was time to move somewhere fresh, new and exciting. She was selling advertising for a direct-mail publication and was able to transfer to the L.A. area and continue working for her company. So on Christmas day she arrived in Los Angeles, intent on starting her life anew.

Given her family is in Minnesota, I found the move to L.A. to be a bit odd. But she does have friends and/or acquaintances there, evidently, so she's not a complete stranger in that town.

In barely four years she went from married to divorced and living in California. All the money that was spent on the wedding and reception, from photos to dinners, and all those gifts that were given to the newlyweds seems all for naught.

People wait far less than four years to decide they made a mistake and throw in the towel on their marriage. But four years still seems like they pulled a rather quick trigger. Had you told me that their marriage was only going to last four years, perhaps I wouldn't have bothered to go to the wedding. Why go through the motions. Sure, I enjoyed a nice dinner and party, but why go through the motions of buying picture frames for the newlyweds in exchange for dinner? It all seems rather wasteful.

I've been to a few weddings where the happily wed husband and wife have thrown in the towel. Ironically it has been weddings of the last 5-7 years that have been negated. Most any friend whose wedding I attended 10 or more years ago remains married today. I was quite the lucky charm for many years, it seemed.

So now Holly is out in L.A., perhaps never to return again. (With her family in Minnesota, I know she'll be back once or twice a year, including a trip she already has booked this summer.) We'll always have e-mail, telephones and social networking, we will never lose touch. Yet somehow I'm a bit irritated by the recent turn of events. I can't quite put my finger on it or explain it, but I'm more ticked off about it than I should be.

What the? (unedited)

Every once in a while you see something that just stops you in your tracks.

The Superbowl provided one of those moments.

When I saw David Letterman's Superbowl commercial, I knew Oprah Winfrey would be making an appearance. I remember their 2007 commercial well, when they appeared together rooting for their favorite cities in the Superbowl. It was short, and brilliant.

Oprah, I saw that coming a mile away, but nobody in the free world expected to see Jay Leno.

I have long enjoyed Letterman's style and sense of humor. I first discovered him in the summer of 1985. Holy crap am I old.

Although I don't watch Letterman religiously every night, I've never taken to Leno or Conan O'Brien. I don't hate them, but I've never found them to be as sharp or as witty. Each host has his strengths, and I can understand why Leno beat Letterman for most of the 16 years they competed against each other, but for me it's always been Dave, despite his many flaws, as a host and as a person.

I'm no authority on the hosts, but I've read enough to have a pretty good idea that Letterman isn't particularly fond of Leno. I've come to believe they had a professional friendship. Letterman got his own show following The Tonight Show, Leno came along and joined the ranks of Tonight Show guest hosts. NBC wanted Leno to become a network talent, a la Bob Hope, so they did everything they could to keep him under contract with NBC. When it came time to push Carson out the door, NBC had to make a choice. It chose Leno. Letterman walked. (Did NBC doubt Letterman was going to walk when he lost out on the job?)

Letterman has always come off as bitter about the snub. Leno allegedly tried to maintain a professional friendship with Letterman, even after they became competitors on opposite networks. Leno, who has been accused of being rather self-serving -- if not downright devious -- at least said the right things about the rivalry when questioned about it. I remember seeing an interview he did, noting how the two shouldn't be enemies, as they both were doing nightly talk shows and making millions of dollars. (Easy to say when you win The Tonight Show, but still, he had a point.)

I've never known Letterman to be very gracious when the topic of Leno or The Tonight Show comes up. Maybe he doesn't dislike or disrespect Leno as much as it seems.

But it floored me to see Leno in the commercial. I assumed it was filmed in two parts. Imagine my surprise when I read how both Leno and Oprah went to Letterman's studio to film the promo. Amazing, absolutely amazing.

Leno could use the positive publicity, he's taken a beating, unfairly, for accepting the reigns of The Tonight Show, again. Had he been unwilling to participate in the commercial, would you blame him? (Of course you'd most likely never know Letterman had hatched the idea if Leno declined.) Bottom line: Leno easily could have said no, and he didn't.

What I'm more struck by is the fact Letterman proposed the idea. He looks brilliant for coming up with it, but I doubt it's going to gain as much good will for him as it does for Leno. Yet it marks an amazing turn in his professional relationship with Leno, even if he got to mock Leno in the commercial.

Longtime rivals, about to go back to battle after a short hiatus, and now Letterman offers an olive branch? What the hell has this world come to?