Well my soup was not the best soup I've ever had, but it was tasty and filling. I gave a big bowl to my parents for their dinner tonight and have enough left over for at least 2 more dinners for me.

I had tuna wraps for lunch and I made mandarin orange coleslaw to go with it. Really good. Coleslaw mix, with chopped up mandarin oranges and cashews. Mix mayo, some of the orange liquid from the can of mandarin oranges and salt and pepper and combine everything.

Over the last year of heavy couponing I've learned some tips that have really helped.

1. Seperate your printed coupons with insert coupons. This keeps them from sticking together and having the cashier miss one. If I have too many printed coupon vs insert coupons, I bend the corners of the printed ones so they seperate.

2. If you want to know if your coupons will double, look at the bar code on the coupon. If it starts with a 9, it won't double. If it starts with a 5, it will.

3. Most of the printed coupons are bricks coupons. To know this look at the address and if it says bricks.com it's from the bricks company. Usually you can print 2 coupons by pressing the back button until a second one prints. But before I print my coupons, I click on the Help link in the lower right corner. A seperate window opens and sometimes there is an option to have the coupon mailed to you, if you fill in your name and address. I do this twice and in about a week I will get 2 more coupons in the mail.

4. Walgreens has a special button on their cash registers that lets them print a rebate reciept for you. This is great when you are buying more than one item that you have rebates on, or just like to keep the original receipt in case of a return. I printed out the instructions and hand them to the cashiers, since they never seem to know how to work their registers The instructions are here:

http://deals.families.com/how-to-print-a-rebate-receipt,t110...

It's raining on and off today, but my mom said they are still getting lots of people at their garage sale. Dad is happy - he's made over a $1000. He sold a riding lawn mower for $880 and has more big ticket items to go. Well worth the effort - unfortunately he has a summer cold and is very sick. He catches colds very easy. He gave me his cold last September. First one I'd had in over 5 years so I'm trying not to get too close.

It's hard thinking of your parents as old. Both of mine are in pretty good health, but have general aches and pains. My mom is 70 and is in excellent health. She's probaby the healthiest in the whole family including all the aunts. My dad is losing his hearing and has bad hips and is generally worn down. But he's pretty healthy overall.

I finished reading the library book Devlin's Honor by Patricia Bray. Sci/Fi - good. This last week I've been reading all library books and have one to go. For some reason I had a bunch due on the same date and none of them were renewable, so I've been scrambling to get them all read by Monday.