Meet me in St. Louie, Louie...
Nov. 10th, 2006 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterTomorrow morning, I get up at 6 a.m., eat a meager breakfast, and then head up to the airport to rent a car. From there, I go to St. Louis, thence to see Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, something I've been looking forward to doing for quite some time; I've got plans to wear my Robotech T-shirt from GenCon and everything. I'll be meeting my friend Captain JTF of Roboblog III: The Odyssey, as well as my brothers Aaron and Alex. I'll be able to pick up the sword-canes I purchased at GenCon. Then afterward I'll turn around and drive back home. I got a pretty good deal on the rental car, too; $15 for the economy car, from Thrifty Rental via Travelocity, plus $10 for liability insurance (have to comply with state law) + $5 for an additional 250 miles, which I need to get me to Saint Louis and back. And I'm getting refunded the $5 from Travelocity afterward, because their site lists the mileage as unlimited instead of a 250 mile limit. And I have to pay for gas too—but even so, it'll still end up being cheaper than a round trip bus ticket, and more convenient too.
But that's not all.
For some time, I'd wanted to get my hands on a case or two of Fitz Root Beer. I had a bottle at the Moxie, our local arthouse theater, and it was damned good—some of the best root beer I've had in my life. The problem is, the Moxie is the only place that sells it around here, and they sell it for $2.50 a bottle. I could order it through Fitz's website, but they charge $21.99 a six pack, which isn't a whole lot better. Ow. I knew that Fitz is bottled in St. Louis, so I figured whenever I was up there I could look for a grocery store or something that sold it. But the funny thing is, it turns out that Fitz's main restaurant and bottling factory is right across the street from the movie theater where Shadow Chronicles is being sold. And they sell their root beer there for $14.99 a case—which works out to 15/24 of a dollar, or 63 cents a bottle. So I'll be able to grab a couple cases without putting myself out at all. Pretty darned not bad.
But even that's not all.
I play City of Heroes, and I'm always on the lookout for ways to play it cheaper. This typically includes discount gamecards, marked down from their $29.99 standard retail to something cheaper. In this case, a friend informed me that CompUSA was dumping its gamecards for Auto Assault, another MMORPG from the CoH publisher NCSoft that fizzled after launch, for $10 each. Now, the way NCSoft gamecards work, the card for any NCSoft game can be used in any other game that is NCSoft-published. So those Auto Assault gamecards represent a chance to save 2/3 of the monthly fees from City of Heroes. As I'm in CoH for the long haul, that ain't chicken feed. And it turns out that the CompUSA in the Sunset Hills shopping center, which is only a mile or so off of the freeway that takes me into town, is one of the only ones within 225 miles of me that had the cards in stock. I called the CompUSA to check, and they still had six left. I asked them to hold onto those cards for me until tomorrow morning when I can pick them up. I'm going to be saving $120 on those six cards, which is enough to pay for the rental plus the gas up there and back twice over. I love being able to accomplish not just one but three distinct goals with that one trip. Makes me feel like I'm really getting stuff done.
Edit: And even that may not be all. I've just discovered that the Schlafly microbrewery is also located in that area, and offers hourly tours on Saturday. So I may just stop in there before heading home. After all, I toured Anheuser-Busch last time I was in St. Louis...
So now I'm prepping for my trip. I've got Google Maps printouts out the wazoo to help me when I hit the St. Louis area. I've dug up the cigarette-lighter-to USB power adapter I got somewhere, for to run my iPod off of while in the car. Hopefully it will have a tape deck that I can buy a cheap cassette adapter to throw in. If not, I'll get by somehow. I am set. Depending on the weather tomorrow morning, I may try to bicycle the eight miles to the airport, lock my bike there, pick the car up, and drive it back down to my house to load my stuff into it before setting out for St. Louis. Then I will repeat the maneuver in reverse when I return tomorrow evening—drive the car home to unload my shopping purchases and stuff, then up to the airport to turn it in and retrieve my bike. If the weather is just too bad to pull it off, I may take a cab in both or one direction instead, but I'd rather save the money.
I just hope I'll be able to drive safely. It's been a few years since I was last behind the wheel for any length of time—though to be honest, that's part of why I'm looking forward to this trip. I love travelling...although I'm not a Catholic, I've always figured it was appropriate that St. Christopher is the patron saint of travel.
But that's not all.
For some time, I'd wanted to get my hands on a case or two of Fitz Root Beer. I had a bottle at the Moxie, our local arthouse theater, and it was damned good—some of the best root beer I've had in my life. The problem is, the Moxie is the only place that sells it around here, and they sell it for $2.50 a bottle. I could order it through Fitz's website, but they charge $21.99 a six pack, which isn't a whole lot better. Ow. I knew that Fitz is bottled in St. Louis, so I figured whenever I was up there I could look for a grocery store or something that sold it. But the funny thing is, it turns out that Fitz's main restaurant and bottling factory is right across the street from the movie theater where Shadow Chronicles is being sold. And they sell their root beer there for $14.99 a case—which works out to 15/24 of a dollar, or 63 cents a bottle. So I'll be able to grab a couple cases without putting myself out at all. Pretty darned not bad.
But even that's not all.
I play City of Heroes, and I'm always on the lookout for ways to play it cheaper. This typically includes discount gamecards, marked down from their $29.99 standard retail to something cheaper. In this case, a friend informed me that CompUSA was dumping its gamecards for Auto Assault, another MMORPG from the CoH publisher NCSoft that fizzled after launch, for $10 each. Now, the way NCSoft gamecards work, the card for any NCSoft game can be used in any other game that is NCSoft-published. So those Auto Assault gamecards represent a chance to save 2/3 of the monthly fees from City of Heroes. As I'm in CoH for the long haul, that ain't chicken feed. And it turns out that the CompUSA in the Sunset Hills shopping center, which is only a mile or so off of the freeway that takes me into town, is one of the only ones within 225 miles of me that had the cards in stock. I called the CompUSA to check, and they still had six left. I asked them to hold onto those cards for me until tomorrow morning when I can pick them up. I'm going to be saving $120 on those six cards, which is enough to pay for the rental plus the gas up there and back twice over. I love being able to accomplish not just one but three distinct goals with that one trip. Makes me feel like I'm really getting stuff done.
Edit: And even that may not be all. I've just discovered that the Schlafly microbrewery is also located in that area, and offers hourly tours on Saturday. So I may just stop in there before heading home. After all, I toured Anheuser-Busch last time I was in St. Louis...
So now I'm prepping for my trip. I've got Google Maps printouts out the wazoo to help me when I hit the St. Louis area. I've dug up the cigarette-lighter-to USB power adapter I got somewhere, for to run my iPod off of while in the car. Hopefully it will have a tape deck that I can buy a cheap cassette adapter to throw in. If not, I'll get by somehow. I am set. Depending on the weather tomorrow morning, I may try to bicycle the eight miles to the airport, lock my bike there, pick the car up, and drive it back down to my house to load my stuff into it before setting out for St. Louis. Then I will repeat the maneuver in reverse when I return tomorrow evening—drive the car home to unload my shopping purchases and stuff, then up to the airport to turn it in and retrieve my bike. If the weather is just too bad to pull it off, I may take a cab in both or one direction instead, but I'd rather save the money.
I just hope I'll be able to drive safely. It's been a few years since I was last behind the wheel for any length of time—though to be honest, that's part of why I'm looking forward to this trip. I love travelling...although I'm not a Catholic, I've always figured it was appropriate that St. Christopher is the patron saint of travel.
