A day of savings...with an expensive finale!

Being raised by a Jewish mother and having lived in Africa for 2 1/2 years, my frugality should come as no surprise! I get excited about sales at the grocery store and I have signed up as a member of both Groupon and Living Social (you should look into them, if you're not already signed up!).

When we checked in at the aforementioned helicopter ride, I noticed that my date handed over a folded sheet of paper. I sneakily peeked over his shoulder and realized that it was a groupon coupon. Nice! After the helicopter ride, he wanted to grab lunch--and had coupon for Red Robin. So, we went to the location on the water to grab some burgers. Ching-ching! A little more money saved!

Later that evening, I had agreed to meet up with a guy friend (though he called it a date...). Turns out, he had been given a $100 gift certificate to Boat Street Cafe, a yummy French restaurant! We ordered dinner and drinks--but the drinks never came. When we casually mentioned it, the server was so apologetic! She brought them immediately and assured us that they'd be taken off our bill. To try to spend more money, we ordered a second dessert--but the server took this as a sign that we didn't like the first, and took that off the bill too! No matter how we tried, we could not reach the $100 mark, and ended up leaving with credit for another time. Not so bad!

And then, driving home, all the money I had "saved" throughout the day was reversed. We were going through a funky intersection and another car plowed into my driver's side. And then left the scene. And they had a Prius! Who does that?! Needless to say, it was a pricey and distressing ending to a great day!

Death defying circus tricks and dating faux pas

Planning a date is not for the faint of heart. It is by far one of the most nerve-wracking activities of life - especially when the date involves death defying circus tricks.

I picked up SG#1 on Friday (only five minutes late!) dressed in work-out wear, heart pounding in anticipation of what we were about to do and hoping he would enjoy the date. We headed to SODO and SG#1 quickly spotted the bright yellow, "Emerald City Trapeze Arts" sign glowing under the black rain clouds. That's right, I took SG#1 on our second date to a flying trapeze class!

We learned how to jump off a teeny tiny platform and fly through the air on the trapeze. SG#1 totally rocked the backflip dismount and I got to swing into the arms of a tall, bald, circus-man wearing extremely tight black leggings (Yikes!). Although possibly a slightly inappropriate 2nd date activity, it was nice to see how adventurous SG#1 is, especially when he didn't even know what we were doing AND he was chosen to be the first person to climb the wobbling ladder to the teeny tiny platform and risk his life on the flying trapeze.

So, since this was the date I planned I must admit I committed a serious date faux pas: I forgot my wallet! So embarrassing!! The trapeze class was prepaid, so it wasn't really that big of a deal, but lesson learned for future date planning. We had to stop at my house before the much needed post-trapeze margarita.

All in all, I think the date went pretty well and SG#1 said he would be calling for a future date - yep, he said calling, not texting! We'll all be eagerly anticipating his official date report.

One more thing: a shout out to my friend TS for sponsoring the fantastic birthday Groupon Coupon for Emerald City Trapeze that made this date possible.