Three Things that Made My Birthday Great!

My birthday was yesterday and I had the day off courtesy of my employer. I knew I was going out in the evening so I wanted to take it pretty easy during the day and get a few things done.  Here are only a few highlights of a pretty good day!

1) I cleaned my house.  On your birthday you say?? YES!  Lately I feel my house is never clean and being able to walk around a clean house was a definite present to myself.  My one tiny cat creates such mess that I feel I'm never on top of it.  There are little cat litter pieces everywhere.  He picks up his wet food and carries it around the house to eat so there are little dried pieces everywhere and my floors are always smeared with delightful grime.  And since lately he hasn't been eating that much most of that food ends up in the trash where it rots and festers.  I don't cook or eat meat at all so you can image my delight in having rotten meat-even the cat food kind-sitting around.  I don't know how people who have kids do it.  The mess must just be so much more multiplied.  Unless, wait a minute...are the kids cheap labor to clean up the mess from the pets?  Hmmm...

2) So once my house was clean I could move onto grocery shopping.  Again I hear you thinking "grocery shopping on your birthday??".  But LOVE to grocery shop!  When I shopped at Whole Foods I would literally spend hours making my way through the aisles checking out all of the beautiful foods.  Now that my wallet has cut me off from those shopping trips I get my rush with saving a ton of money on groceries by shopping sales and using coupons.  I love Shaw's because they have a very liberal coupon policy and they double coupons.  I've been saving around 40-47% each week.  That is from my regular grocery shopping.  It doesn't mean I buy a few greatly priced items and then have to go out and buy a bunch more stuff at about 5% savings.  I was completely excited when Shaw's announced that they are doing a trial through the end of the month where they will accept competitor coupons.  I didn't have much time to do a ton of research but I was able to use a Whole Foods store coupon, a few Target coupons and even a $5 off a $25 purchase Staples coupon.  My savings this week was 62%.  Yes please!  I really hope they continue the program after the month ends!

3) Ok, now onto the really fun part of the day. I prepared to headed down to Hampton Beach for a concert.  Here's a gratuitous selfie but really if this is what 41 looks like than I'm okay with being 41!

 I headed down to Hampton Beach and met up with friends and we found ourselves (as usual) front and center at the Stryper and Mike Tramp (of White Lion) show.  It was a crazy summer night party concert with a ton of energy and some really crazy characters in the crowd.  I have adored Stryper since 1986 but was actually more excited to see Mike Tramp who has a new acoustic album out and his voice is amazing plus he is very, very easy to look at.  Here is a snippet of him singing the White Lion song Tell Me.

I waited around after the show hoping to meet Tramp.  I gave up and headed down to a local bar with some people to hear another band.  When I came back to my car a crowd was gathered waiting to see Stryper come out to their bus.  I walked around to the other side of the parking lot behind the tour bus and there was Mike Tramp getting into his rental car!  There was no one around him other than a security guard and a couple techies.  I got to meet him and got this picture:

So yes, it was a pretty fine day :)