The Land of Ozz

The Post and Courier advertises on the front page of the Sunday edition of their newspaper that you could save up to thousands of dollars by using the coupons and value savings in their paper, but the numbers don’t always add up.  This week’s edition of the Sunday paper claimed up to $4,531 in savings.  Our family began using coupons from the Sunday edition of The Post and Courier a little over a month ago.  My wife and I have been clipping coupons every Sunday and redeeming between $50 and $100 in coupons per week.  My wife joined TheGroceryGame about a month ago to help her maximize the value of the coupons by catching items when they are on sale and applying the coupon at that time.

The value we have been getting for our dollars by using coupons has brought me back around to being a newspaper subscriber.  The problem is that one copy of the coupons does not maximize the savings for a larger family.  To solve this problem we have been picking up a second copy of the Sunday paper.  The extra $1.50 was well worth it today alone with the additional $96 in coupons that I clipped this morning out of the extra copy.  The coupons will not all be redeemed this week because we follow the recommendation of TheGroceryGame which tells you when to use the coupons to maximize their value.  This week we have redeemed $65.25 worth of coupons already and we have not finished all of our grocery shopping yet.  MrsOzz came home with well over $200 worth of groceries for barely over $150 today. She is already getting comments from the cashiers who are amazed at the amount of money she is saving.

Now that I have given a very long explanation for why we bought two copies of the local newspaper today, I will explain something that caught my attention in the Parade insert paper.  One thing that we learned very quickly about coupons is that they are not always in the most obvious places.  While I will admit that I do not read the paper, I am only in it for the money (savings), I do make my way through things like the Parade paper.  Today’s edition of the Parade inserted into The Post and Courier delivered to my driveway was not the same as the version in the newspaper machine at Dunkin Donuts in Goose Creek, SC.  One version of the Parade was $24 short on coupons while the article content was the same. The two copies are shown above.

The first half of the Parade appeared to be exactly the same.  It was on page 21 that I found the first difference.  Both papers contained an advertisement for Delmonte Fruit Naturals, but only one copy came with a $1 off manufacturers’ coupon.  The other copy of the Parade had the ad on a different page and the coupon was not there.  This was the only coupon of interest to me, but finding this one missing peeked my curiosity.  I went on to find that there were an additional $23 worth of video and toy coupons missing from page 19 (see below) of the same paper that was missing the Delmonte coupon.  That is a total of $24 difference in possible savings in the Parade paper alone depending on where you got your copy of The Post and Courier this week.

So which copy of my newspaper was correct?  Both copies said on the front cover, “Inside You could save up to $4,531 in coupons and value savings”.  One of them is incorrect unless The Post and Courier placed those coupons somewhere else in the copy of the paper that was delivered to my house today.  Want your missing coupons?  Contact The Post and Courier at Charleston.net.

I have not said much yet about Palin, but I did write a comment on a liberal blog that was bashing Governor Palin.  Here is what I wrote:

“Palin is a the political picture of the “change” that Obama has yet to prove he can deliver.

Obama talks a good game about changing, but his record is filled with pandering to the suspect Chicago heavyweights like Mayor Daley.

Clinging to my Bible and my guns,
TheOzz”

Most private pilots in this country, or at least the AOPA members are familiar with Mayor Daley of Chicago.  He is the guy who ordered that holes be dug in the middle of the runway of the Meigs Field in the middle of the night.  The controversy section of his wikipedia page tells that story pretty well.

I am very pleased that Senator McCain did not choose a running mate in favor of abortion that might better appeal to Hilary hold outs or swing voters.  I believe that many hard line conservatives might have stayed home on election day if he did.

Palin seems to have presidential potential.  She has got to her position as governor using hard work and action based on solid values.  In my opinion that is what it will take to launch a woman or black person into the White House for the first time in this country.  I think the first woman and/or black president will also have to come out of the republican or at least a conservative party.  Conservatives are not shadowed by the sense of entitlement that breads in liberal organizations that traditionally support democrats like the ACLU and NAACP.

Personally I can relate to Palin in many ways.  She has a child that was diagnosed with a gentic defect before birth.  I am sure that she was given the “you have choices” speach by her local doctors when the diagnosis was made.  We faced this “choice” talk when my wife was pregnant with our second son Caden.

Our little munchkin is one year old today.  Oh how time flies.

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!!!

You can read more about what’s happening in the Ozz camp over at Caden’s Page.

Today is my birthday.  This is the second year in a row that I have spent my birthday away from Mrs. Ozz and my boys.  Last year I attended the GFI National Conference in Chicago on my 40th.  The flight home was canceled and I spent a night in a very nice full service Marriott compliments of AirTran Airlines.  I was able to share that evening with the Youngs since they were booked on the same flight home from Chicago last year.

This year I am in Washington D.C. due to work and I am fortunate enough to land a couple of nights in the J.W. Marriott at 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Yes that is just a couple of blocks from the White House and it is a great hotel.  The front desk left a bucket of beer in my room today with a bowl of nuts and a Birthday card.  That was a nice gesture, but I just wish they had left a bucket of Coke Classic.

I was on my way to D.C. last night when I ran into an old co-worker and friend.  He is working for a three letter agency in D.C. like me and is staying a few blocks away in a different hotel.  He asked me what I was doing for dinner tonight and asked if I would be interested in joining him a some others for dinner. I love food and had no idea they would actually choose a a Tex-Mex restaurant.  One of the men that I met during dinner was named Reuben.  He and I started taking about our families and really hit it off.  We soon realized how great of priority we both put on serving Jesus Christ.  I shared some stories and he shared some.  Then he shared a story about his daughter.  If you are a fan of the TV show called “America’s Got Talent” then you probably know about Reuben’s daughter Kaitlyn.  Kaitlyn Maher is one of the youngest contestants to advance to Las Vegas on America’s Got Talent.

My birthday ended great.  I had a good dinner and made a new friend.  I hope you enjoy the video.

From left to right: Sherry (aka Mrs. Ozz or Mommy), Josiah, Caden, Hank (aka TheOzz or Daddy) and Riley

I am introducing the family because you will be seeing more of them on The Land of Ozz in the near future. The Land of Ozz will begin some slow changes over the next few weeks. Mrs. Ozz has expressed a desire to begin blogging. We talked and decided that having her join me here on The Land of Ozz is the better solution than creating and maintaining a whole new blog. My posting has been light anyway and the readership has declined as a result. Mrs. Ozz will be blogging on some of the same general topics plus much more. As a result of the “more”, I plan to add sort of a His and Hers blog roll as well as a His and Hers category list. I also hope to offer feed subscriptions by author.

So the “Ozz” in “The Land of Ozz” will begin to take on a new meaning. The blog title moving forward will represent the Ozz family instead of just one Ozz (myself). The blog design will be reflecting some changes too. I more than welcome the feminine touch to the look and feel of this blog. Mrs. Ozz has been reviewing WordPress themes and I expect to make a change to this blog’s design in the next week or two.

I meant to post this a couple of hours ago, but could not get to it until now. I guess some sailors in the mid Atlantic will be turning the calendar over to 2008 in a few minutes.

For all you non-military types, Zulu is the equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time.  We are in Romeo Time also known as EST which is Zulu minus five hours.  So the New Year celebration would have happened at 7pm if I had been on my game.

All joking aside. I do wish all of my readers a very happy and safe New Year and many blessings.

Below are the comments I left over at BigDaddyGib on this subject. I felt it was worth blogging about after finding other bloggers with similar concerns.

“I got an email on this at work last week. It is a great campaign, BUT it has raised some concern in the deaf and speech impaired community.

We use ASL (American Sign Language) in our home. Our three year old son Caden hears fine, but has serious problems with speech that are linked to a genetic defect. Due to my exposure to ASL over the past three years, I was puzzled when I saw the way “Thank You from the bottom of my heart” was signed in this campaign. Come to find out, the creator of the campaign did not do his homework. Due to some questions of those in the ASL community, the creator of the campaign has placed a message on “The Sign” link within his web site.

Don’t get me wrong. I think this campaign is great. I just wish the guy had done his homework BEFORE getting so well publicized.”

It appears that my gut feeling about this gesture seeming odd was right on the money. Some members of the deaf and speech impaired community have been all over Scott Truitt “The Gratitude Campaign” site owner like white on rice. There were some strong criticisms misleading verbiage on his web site that could make people believe that this gesture was linked to ASL (American Sign language). One of the more polite critics of how this gesture was presented is from Raychelle over at Rays of Raychelle. Raychelle has posted some detailed email exchanges with Scott Truitt.

Scott admitted in his responses to Raychelle that not everyone had been as nice on this subject:

“That is very helpful, Raychelle. I have been getting a lot of e-mails on this, and they are negative. I appreciate you telling me about the blog – I’m hoping that I can log on and clarify this a bit. The last thing we want to do is be disrespectful of the Deaf community – and I absolutely understand your concerns.” Source

Raychelle is not the only blogger following this story with concern over the impact it may have on the signing community. You can read more from lolypup, Kokonut Pundit.

The change made to his web site as a result of the concerns go like this:

“Please note that there has been some debate as to whether this sign is a recognized sign from American Sign Language. With the utmost respect to those who know and use ASL, we are currently consulting several authorities on ASL to come to a resolution on that issue. We will update this page with our findings. In the mean time we would suggest that you use this sign only to thank those who serve, and do not assume that who use ASL will recognize this sign.”

The campaign is certainly getting some press from the big fish bloggers and many others. Michelle Malkin, Black Five, WizBang, and Ace of Spades.

Deborah Feldman reported back in September from over at King5.com that Truitt “got the Seattle Seahawks to play it [The Gratitude Campaign video] on their jumbotron before the Seahawks-Bengals game. His hope is for the gesture to become so common, no one even remembers it took a “campaign” to get it started. Do you think it’ll catch on?”

Well Deborah, it looks like it did catch on. Now there are a few big questions:

Will this campaign prove to be damaging to the ASL community?

and

How do you tell difference between a troop returning from war and one that just left high school 12 weeks ago and has just graduated basic training?

and most importantly

Who is going to train the returning troops on what this gesture actually means?

Given the bad press on the war effort by main stream media and some bleeding heart liberal congress members, the troops could easily mistake this gesture as getting flipped off or something equivalent if it does not come with a smile or some other form of positive gesture.

Why don’t people just go up and say “thank you” with the God given communication skills they normally use everyday? It is the least we can do for a person who voluntarily signed their name to a contract with the US government to die for our freedom if necessary.

A tip for you die hard shopping fans as we approach Black Friday.

Planned Cost - Sale Price = Savings

No plan to buy - Sale Price = Impulse Buy

A sale price on any item is only a sale price if you were planning to buy the item anyway.