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Sheila Buska Member National Society of Newspaper Columnists
CFO, Monarch School Project San Diego, CA
Other Pages:
and be sure to check out:.
a collection of favorite Smile-breaks Paperback edition
Newly published! by Brenda Elsagher with Sheila's "Coming of Age" and other fun stories
Other fun places to visit on the web
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Enjoy Sheila's
This week's Smile-breaks - Happy Valentine's Day!
Couple of things about gift cards...
Have you noticed all the Valentine displays in the stores? Christmas is hardly over, but red hearts fill the greeting card shelves. Got me to thinking… I have the perfect gift for your loved one – or whatever you call him/her. A gift card! Why go all the way down to the candy store when you can pick up a See’s gift card next time you go grocery shopping? Your valentine will be thrilled. He or she can choose whatever Valentine box he or she wants – within the limit of the gift card, of course. He/she will love you for it, even if they do have to pay extra for the five pound gold box with the big red bow. Gift cards were the hot item for the holidays. Easy to wrap. No big packages to lug around the mall. The perfect gift. You don’t even have to drive around to all the places you want the gift cards from. Last time I was at Ralph’s I was amazed. At the end of one aisle there was a floor to ceiling rack of gift cards. Must’ve been a hundred different kinds - everything from AutoZone to Regal Theaters. And the cards aren’t just for stores and restaurants any more - you can give someone a hundred minutes of tunes or a fine selection of ring tones for their cell phone. My granddaughter asked for a twelve-month Xbox card for Christmas. Twelve month Xbox card? Sounded weird to me, but I went over to Best Buy and asked a kid who looked to be about my granddaughter’s age where I would find the Xbox twelve-month cards, like I knew what I was talking about. He knew exactly where they were. It turns out I wasn’t buying months, I was buying online access to Xbox games for twelve months. And if I’d known, I could’ve skipped the trip to Best Buy and just gone to Ralph’s. On our anniversary last month the guy and I were given a gift card entertainment pack: one for the movies, one for dinner. Clever. Between our anniversary and the holidays, we have gift cards to last us at least ’til my birthday, which is in May, in case you were thinking of… No, that’s okay. One thing about gift cards – you gotta remember to take them with you. I never got around to buying a 2010 calendar and I remembered Borders had racks and racks of calendars last time I was there, so off I went to Borders with my Borders gift card firmly in hand. Usually I’m halfway to the store when I remember I forgot it. At Borders I hurried over to the calendar racks. But shoot! They were empty. Bare as a bikini model, except for Homer Simpson in twelve animated poses and down at the other end, twelve horned lizards leering at me. The July lizard wasn’t bad, but… Me and my gift card went home. Calendar-less. The other thing about gift cards – you gotta bring extra cash with you. The gift card never covers what you buy with it. Never. Except when there’s a dollar twenty-three cents left on it. Nothing in the store costs a dollar twenty-three so you have a choice: come back and spend twenty bucks so you can get your gift card’s total balance used up, or let the dollar twenty-three spend the rest of its life on an unspent card, dark and forgotten in the back of your closet. Or… you could go down to See’s Candies at the mall and buy that gold box with the big red ribbon on it and surprise your valentine with a real, honest-to-gosh gift!
Feedback - thanks!
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