Pages

Monday, January 27, 2025

Free money

We finally redeemed the gift certificate Zoë for the spooky story contest. The last time I used this particular bookstore was when Benjamin won the spooky story contest a few years ago, so I was surprised to find that my gift card balance was $50 instead of the promised $25. 

I did a little digging into our account and found out that when Benjamin and I ordered his books—and I have a distinct memory of this—I had used my credit card to pay the little bit he went over. It's really hard to hit exactly $25 when spending a gift card and the total in his cart came to something like $28 when it came time to check out. So I was like, "That's fine. I can pay $3 to get him these books."

That's where they get you with these gift cards, isn't it?

They doubly got us, though, because when I went to check out I somehow overrode the gift card payment and payed the whole thing with my credit card. We've just had $25 sitting at the bookstore for the past couple of years!

So Zoë picked out her $25+ of books (remember—it's very difficult to hit that $25 precisely) and I thought, "That's fine. I can pay a couple of bucks to get her these books." 

But then I looked at my total and it told me that we still had a good $20 left to spend on books!

It really was like finding free money! 

So we stuck a couple more books in our cart...and still ended up paying a couple of dollars using my credit card. BUT this time I was sure to actually apply the gift cards as well. 

I think I'm most excited about Wild Robot. We haven't read it yet (or watched the movie) but I've heard excellent things about it. It is always, always, always checked out at the library and I haven't jumped into the hold line yet. I've been putting holds on so many other things lately—for both my class on Race, Class, and Gender in Children's Literature and for my job with the Georgi Children's Book Award—that I just...haven't bother putting this on hold, especially knowing that we'd only have it for three weeks with no hope of renewing...but also that so many different people in our house want to read it that we'd need more than three weeks with it to let everyone read it. 

So I think this was a wise purchase.


No comments:

Post a Comment