Secret Shopping

There's good news and there's bad news (for us). Our neighbors moved. The bad news is we were just becoming good friends with them. They have two boys, ages 3 and 5, whom Westley loved playing with. And I loved talking with the mom, JoLynn. We will miss them. The good news is before they moved, they sold us their car (a 1995 Honda Civic) for only $300, and they gave us thier job as mystery shoppers at a local buffet (which shall remane unnamed). It was kind of funny, Tyler (the dad), pulled us aside to tell us about the job and the car one day when we were all outside. He told us that he could tell we were doing it on our own(as in going to school and trying to get ahead in life), and that he respected that and he wanted to help us out. I guess it's pretty obvious that we're "doing it on our own".

So, here's the deal. We are supposed to go to Unnamed Buffet once or twice a week. We pay for it, have a nice meal, and take mental notes. Then when we get home, we fill out a survey (only takes 10 minutes) and send it to our boss, along with the reciept, who then reimburses us for the bill. So basically we get to go out to eat twice a week for free! Which is great for us right now since there is no way we can afford to go out to eat. Ever. Right now we are barely making enough to pay the bills and put food on the table. Which is fine with me; it's the life we've chosen in order for Andy to follow his dreams as a pilot. He could go out and get a decent-paying job, like with the railroad (the reason I mention this is because we've seriously considered it) and I'm sure we'd have enough money to buy a house and live comfortably. But that would mean he would have to quit his job as a flight instructor, which means he wouldn't get any more flight hours, which means his flying career would pretty much be at a stand still. And it would be really hard to go back to being a poor flight instructor once he got into something else. So, suffice it to say, we are happy with selling our plasma to put food on the table (seriously... we both donate plasma twice a week, and that is our grocery money).

Anyway, this mystery shopping job is great because on nights when I am too burned out to cook, or the fridge is empty, we just head out to Unnamed Buffet, put it on the credit card, and we get reimbursed before we get the bill. How cool is that? Love it. So, though we will miss our neighbors, we are glad they chose us are their benefactors when they moved.