Newspaper Pricing Gone Wild

I subscribe to the local paper for daily and weekend delivery. Sometimes I read every issue. I know my brother reads the Sports page. I also use old newspaper to wrap items up. If I ever need to start a fire, the old newspaper is also a good fire started.

The paper has started an annoying tactic. They will label certain days as special editions. Then they charge me extra money for that day's paper. Once in a while this is warranted, like when they do some massive election coverage and research. Most of the times it is a money grab. Okay.

Just now they also increased the price of the subscription. That on top of the special editions is just too much. I would cancel. But my brother loves the Sports page. I decided to maybe cut out weekends and save 25%. I called them up today.

The guy on the line said that while the daily only costs less, they have no specials for daily subscription. Okay. He did not want me to drop weekends. He said if I kept daily plus weekend, he could offer me a 30% discount. Sounded great. Then he tried to get me to do automatic credit card billing for a 50% discount. No thank you. I will take that 30% discount. Price hike averted.

Moving my Study

Last time I moved my study, I went from the basement to Little Kat's old room. His room was small. I had to significantly downsize. Went from three bookshelves to one. In the end, it all fit.

Now that Kit Kat moved out, I renovated her room. Painted the walls and trim with HGTV colors of the year. Got new carpet too. So today I moved the remainder of my study from Little Kat's old room to Kit Kat's old room.

My brother and I took off the top of my heavy desk. We tried moving the bottom. It was too heavy. Therefore I disassembled it too. Found out that one of the bolts broke. We made due. Now I am in my new study with artwork hanging on all the walls. Plus my degrees are also framed and hanging on the wall.

I think it might be time to get more bookshelves in here.

Hand Rail Hell Redux

I had thought I had a good work around for our basement hand rail problems. I had inserted a piece of wood behind the drywall. Then I screwed the brackets into that piece of wood. The top of the hand rail was secure. It was good times until the middle bracket broke. This made the middle of the rail wobbly. Then the top brackets started coming undone.

I went to the store and purchased a replacement bracket. Problem was that I could not get the old broken bracket out of the wall. The screws had weird heads. They did not seem to be Philips head or flat head screws. There were some sort of star pattern. I had one tiny star screw driver. But it could not remove the screws.

I ended up just trying to re-tape the broken bracket with duct tape. It is holding for now. I really need my busy handyman to come and provide a permanent solution. Not sure if we need more brackets that tie into the studs behind the drywall, or something more extreme. I am just tired of this rail getting broken. The whole family relies on it.