Aren't you supposed to rush out and buy a lottery ticket?

Ha! I keep getting checks for $1.65 for some thing. Quarterly. Checks are getting harder to cash. My brick and morter bank left town some years ago. As did other banks. I hope you dont spend all your booty on an expensive splurge.

A parking frenzy! LOL! Finish it up parking at the convenience store and buy a lottery ticket!

I would so much rather carry a few quarters and dimes around. I was just visiting a town with a cousin and a rental car, and yep, yet another parking app. The app started with a QR code which took two phones before we could get it to work, then we had to keep going back to read off the license plate from the rental, then we screwed up the return date of the rental and the app couldn’t backtrack so we had to have the attendant help us delete the app and start over. I was ready to just hand the guy a few bills and be done with it.

Ah yes, the Park Mobile settlement. I used Park Mobile a fair bit for a specific location for a while. My share of the settlement was (drum roll please!)....

$4.84. Insert eye roll here.

I was able to request an e-debit card instead. I'm planning on going crazy the next time I'm buying something online. :-0

" I would so much rather carry a few quarters and dimes around. "

Yeah? A few dimes?

Parking in areas I go normally starts at around $2 per hour and goes up from there. San Francisco has a clever variable system that changes the hourly rate with demand (which I think is a GREAT idea).

In these places, using an app is really the only practical approach. At the higher levels, either the meters accept credit cards or there are kiosks nearby where you pay with a card and put the receipt on your dashboard.

Ally de, you must do more parking than I do. With a $4.84 debit card, I could really go wild.

The app is annoying. I seem to recall that each time I've tried to use it, it asks for a password which, since used only once every few years, I seem to forget. It must be that the interval takes me from one smartphone to another with no carryover of a saved password. So while anxiously wanting to get on my way, I need to go through a "change password" routine, confirm an email, etc. By the time I'm done, I've already racked up a few bucks of parking charges.

Don’t spend it all in one pl…… parking lot!

Quarters and dimes? How quaint, parking meters here have gone the way of the pay phone.

Actually I just remembered street parking in town accepts coins. But that’s all I can think of, mostly you need a phone to park.

Foas, I was in a theater in a resort/conference center when I realized that it was a longer show than usual, so at intermission I needed to call my dad to pick up my son from school. My cell battery had died. Ran to the lobby, past the conference rooms and ballroom, to the hotel lobby. No pay phones! The front desk clerk said to use the house courtesy phone and ask the operator for an outside line. When i finally got the operator, he said he can't give an outside line to a house phone. Finally the desk clerk let me use the front desk phone. Whew. Raced back to my seat in time for Act II.

We have all kinds of meters in the city. No coin, of course. I think there are still some by the spaces where you pay with credit card and get a little receipt for your dashboard. I think most are a box at the end of a block of street parking or in a small lot, to provide your card and plate. Perhaps there are more that use apps now, especially the private lots. Fortunately, our kids live in neighborhoods where parking is not metered, just restricted to neighborhood stickers at certain times of day, and street cleaning day. And of course, snow plow days in winter!

Congratulations, Elmer!

We still have coin parking meters here in the suburbs, although you can also use an app. The first 10 minutes are free, and then it's 25 cents for 30 minutes: a bargain!

DH's father was in WWI. He took out government life insurance naming his DM. He named DH beneficiary as an infant.

After his father's death, DH started receiving monthly checks for $1.89. He also started being called to the principal's office in grammar school, where an official verified his well-being.

In the seventies we tried to cancel these payments. No Can Do. Eventually Washington agreed to a single annual payment.

I'd like to know how many such checks are issued at an expense that exceeds the value of the payment.

That's an interesting situation. I can't imagine there are many beneficiaries around of insurance policies taken out over 100 years ago. But I get what you're saying, there were decades of payments to probably many, many people.

I can still use coins most of the places I go nearby. its easy enough to keep a stash of change in the car. I really dont like the apps as the transaction costs an extra fifty cents to use it.

What I dislike the most is the pricess where you have to remember the number of your psrking soace, go to a kiosk and enter your info, then go back and put a slip of paper on the dashboard. Those seem to be dying out, for good reason.

As far as windfalls go, I got a check for 37 cents this week.

Don't spend it all in one place!

😃

Elmer, you must have said, ”rabbit, rabbit” to yourself on the first of the month! 🐇

(just kidding)

I received a check for $6.83 this week for a class action settlement. I've moved since I used that particular application so I don't know how they even found me.

My best class action settlement was from the electronic book price fixing suit against Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et. al. I think I received about $200 all-in from that one. I was an early adopter of e-readers and e-books.

rhizo, I would gladly say "coyote, coyote" or "fox, fox", if that would keep the rabbits away in reality and the silly outcomes their superstitions bring.

A few rabbits seem to have moved into my back yard. I'm rooting for the "law of the jungle" to keep the population down..

Street parking in Santa Monica, CA is so expensive that meters take credit cards — a much better option than lugging around pounds of quarters.

Actually I’ve given up driving to Santa Monica and instead take the bus — no parking fees, especially helpful for movies when the lower short-term rate expires and you go to the top tier pricing. Parking can cost as much as the movie, or more.

I don't remember the last time I saw a meter that takes coins.

I scored $38.89 in a Facebook class action settlement just last week :)

I buy most of my groceries online, and they guesstimate the weight of meats and vegetables then refund the difference if the weight is less than you paid for. Last week they refunded me $0.26. Woo hoo! Now I can afford...can't think of anything :-D

Oh, don't gloat colleen. That's not so much money, you're perhaps (unintentionally) overstating the value for most readers here. Presuming you're citing a dollar from Oz, the US$ equivalent with the current exchange rate at 2/3rds, would be around 17 cents.

Elmer -- You need Deer Off to deter those rabbits. Another 'find' from the KT. It's working in my yard.

I'll keep that in mind chisue.

They've already moved in (been around several months) and seem to live behind some large, broad bushes. We have an airy redwood grape stake fence (vertical pieces are separated by air gaps about half the width of the stakes) that I wouldn't suspect they could crawl through but maybe there's a bigger gap somewhere?

Unless the repellant effect of that stuff would cause them to pack up and move out, rather than to just go to another part of the yard, I'm not sure it would work.

For now, I've seen maybe two at the most, always in the same part of the yard. Yeah, I know two can become ten quickly, that hasn't happened yet.

We have a lot of predatory birds soaring around in the neighborhood. The rabbits are small and when I see them, they're out in the open. I'll see what happens before taking action.

I appreciate the advice. It's been so many years since either of us has done any active gardening or garden work, I would never have known about what you mentioned. Thanks.

Somehow, I have coyote, fox, hawks, and owls and still have bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, and songbirds!

@hobbitmom, have you ever used your online bank services to deposit checks? I do it lots of times and have never had a problem with small checks, even if $1-something, that I sometimes get as payment in a lawsuit.

I wonder what the Am-zon payout will be? Probably lots of pennies! Although somewhere I think I read it could be around $50.

@outside, Thank you. No I haven't. I do use online banking, but not for that. I didn't know that was possible. All my other incoming $ is direct deposited. I will investigate that. Thanks again.

@hobbitmom, great! I’m sure your bank can help guide you on how to do it if you can’t figure it out on your own. ‘Deposit Checks’ is usually part of your online access system and just requires you to endorse the check as usual, then take a photo when prompted of the front and then back of the check and which account you want it deposited to (if you have more than one account with the bank). That’s pretty much it. it’s usually processed within a day or two but they tell you to hang onto the check for about 7-10 days before destroying.

I hardly ever actually visit our bank anymore. A check for a very large amount would be a different matter but I don’t expect anyone to write either of us a huge check anytime soon!

" Somehow, I have coyote, fox, hawks, and owls and still have bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, and songbirds! "

I am at the opposite end of the spectrum from those who like rhizo (whose name says everything) are knowledgeable and experienced with gardening and such things.

My plan to try to let nature take its course is the default, it's what happens by doing nothing. I have to wonder if by virtue of the fence, they wandered in and can't get out. It doesn't matter. If I see the numbers grow, I'll task my pest control company to trap them. I know, because I've talked with them about it, that other than pests of the vermin varities (mice and rats), they always trap humanely and relocate the animals to suitable places where they can live, away from areas with human activity. Rabbits, raccoons, skunks, possums and the like.

Trapping and relocating rodents is illegal in many places. Rats easily adapt to living near humans and will quickly find a way back to them.

There was a spot on Vancouver Island where they had to put signs prohibiting rabbit dropoffs. People on their way to work would see happy little rabbits frolicking on a stretch of land just off the highway. People started to drop rabbits off there. It was not a good thing.

Did I mention trapping and relocating rodents?

Rats are disease carrying vermin. In these parts, the accepted humane means of dealing with them is strong snap traps. I have a few dozen (in protective plastic boxes to reduce danger to unintended targets) scattered around the perimeter of my foundation and underneath my house. They're checked, emptied and rebaited regularly by a service company.

Did I say you mentioned rodents? I believe there are others here not just you.

I was giving my input for others. I hear a lot of people who say that they trap and relocate pests.

In that your comment immediately followed mine, it was easily assumed to be a comment on what I said. As seems to be the case with any series of comments in a thread, they refer to what preceded them. There's no other mention of rodents or trapping in this thread other than mine.

No "thank you" for your comment, I think you're amusing yourself with a weak attempt at being obstinate. And of course, there are others here, not just me. That's the audience you usually try hard to play to.

Elmer, this comment is for you. You are rude. I don’t appreciate being insulted.

I can't express any better my reaction to much of what you say to me.

George Burns made a joke in the 1950s in which he said that Beverly Hills was so ritzy that the parking meters took credit cards. Of course by the time I heard this joke, the parking meters did take credit cards, and so it wasn't funny.

There was another joke made by his neighbor, Harry Morton, who had said that he had come up with a new invention: Frozen Yogurt! That wasn't funny either.