So I have my Sunday's free again

so I join my brother in his frequent Sunday activity which is rebate shopping. 
I am not very good at this, I pretty much have to fill out of the forms and everything right after we shop or I forget.  Usually its just sport unless there is something you really want, then its deadly serious.

I really wanted a new hard drive for backup since I am getting my life organized. Jack showed me what he was doing in Quicken when I was down there visiting and it seemed like a good idea esp as I am unemployed now. I am also going to organize a bunch of stuff and want to use my current back up drive for that.

So we get to the store at 9:40 and there are 4 guys sitting in 4 cars, 1 guy standing in front of the store.  We get out and wait with him.  I try various things to see if I can get my pedometer going while we wait, the only things that works is pacing and I could have lost my space in line if I did that. More guys show up, store employees slide themselves into the store and carefully close and lock all sets of doors afterwards.

My brother and I discuss strategy.  He will go for the drives and I will go for the free after rebate things. This was Office Depot and they have been changing a bunch of stuff. he tells me where he thinks they are.  We are not sure about the drives so he will find and ask the manager. 

In times past sometimes he would go early, load up a couple carts and then call me and friends to come help check out.  These things are usually 1 per address.  I am a bit out of practice, I have forgotten my office max coupon so they can match it and we are not working like the well oiled machine we were in the past when we got ourselves every freebie (including a car tv) plus the rebate items.

I can't find the free after rebates things, so I find him at the drives, there are 3 of them, we grab the two best looking ones.  They are listed at $199, marked down to $89, we have $40 rebate. Its a 250g seagate external UBS2 drive, a bit slower than firewire but not bad for $60. We found the freebies too. There were also a hardware and an auto parts store with stuff.

I just finished filling out the rebate forms. We got each a drive, 3m glue stick, two side repositionable roller 3m tape, 3 pk of energel pens, box of 4x6 inkjet photo paper, 2 gallons of antifreeze, 2 gal of prem bug wash window washing fluid, a microfiber towel, elmers polyurethane glue, 2 pks ge softwhite 4pk light bulbs, a utility lighter, an assortment of 3 plastic funnels, 16oz murphy oil soap, tech stain remover, and black tire wet protectant.

Cost for the above after rebates- $68.53 including tax and stamps to mail in the rebates.  Not bad, not bad at all.. 

Oh except for a kid who was some nerd's daughter, I was the only female doing rebate shopping this morning, another place to pick up guys for your list Laurie!  One could just find the best thing on sale & rebate and hold it ransom until a cute nerd wants it. Today everyone was going for the drives and some inkjet printer that was too infer by our standards so we left it.

Anyway if anyone wants to play this game, just email me and I will try and forward any decent deals I hear about and you too can do it.