All right, my dears, the time has finally come. I started out strong (it's easy to find the time when you're unemployed), and ended up teetering on the line between being an abandonment blogger and a neglectful blogger. I like doing this, I really do. But I'm not superhuman and I can't do everything.

As of this month, I am both a permanent Hutch employee and starting grad school, albeit a long timeline. I also want to have some time to relax and spend time with the people that are important to me, so I must forego some other commitments, especially the ones I wasn't so committed to in the first place.

Adieu.

Go ahead, you can start calling me tacky right now. I'm not afraid.

So, as some of my unfortunate life circumstances have had longstanding repercussions, I have discovered Coupons. Before I go on, in defense of this story, I was once Too Good for Coupons. If you were to have handed me a coupon for the restaurant I was going to later that night with my friends, I would have said, "No, it's ok, I always forget those," or I would have thanked you and purposefully left it at home while I was out. I thought it was... tacky. To spend the time thinking about how to save a few dollars - of course I have better things to do than that!

Now I have reached the point where I can either spend the extra time to save a few dollars and get to go out like a normal person, or continue to check out too many books at the library. Here I am, experiencing the take-what-you-can-get life of using coupons. But! There is a diamond in the rough here. I have found a number of amazing places that I would never have gone to if I had not had a screaming deal to take me there. Zoka Coffee (and tea, I think) is exquisite. Every pour of espresso is a dream come true. And the Zoka bar, oh wow, I hope you save your daily calorie allotment for this one. I went to Mission in West Seattle with my mom, a true Mexican aficionado. I thought she had died and gone to heaven after the enchilada. Then she had the flan and I could have sworn it was armageddon. Swell tequila list, too. St. Thomas Bistro in Capitol Hill is this tiny, 16-seat restaurant with live music. Just go ahead and imagine the acoustics. I could go on and on, but it might be more efficient if you checked out my Yelp profile instead. Save ourselves a few cyberwaves, or whatever the term for internet space is.

The point is, if I were still too proud to use coupons, I would still be at Palomino on a regular basis for that all day, every day happy hour (which makes no logical sense, isn't that regular pricing then?) instead of trying all these new (to me) and incredible! places. I have not had a single bad time checking out a coupon locale, and I can't wait for what the future holds. I would go back to all of these places and pay full price, so all in all, everyone goes home happy.