Ms. Val's Bargain of the Week

This semester, one of the classes I'm taking finishes at 3:00. This means that it's a race for me to be home before Luke gets off the school bus (Kyle attends an after school program on those days). I usually get home first, but not when I have to stop for gas, pick up a gallon of milk, or navigate through road construction. Knowing this, I issued Lucas his own set of house keys.

For a 9-year old, Lucas is quite mature. He'll let himself in the house, fix a batch of microwave popcorn, and watch Cartoon Network for 15 minutes until I get home. For the most part, this arrangement works out alright. But we are talking about a 9 year old child here. Some days, Luke forgets his keys.

This is why we decided to buy a Genie wireless keypad for our garage door. It's a device that you mount on an area near the garage door, and access is gained through a PIN code entered into the keypad. Many of our neighbors have these devices on their homes, and I see their kids using them all the time. It's just something I never thought was necessary until recently.

My first stop on the keypad hunt was the Lowes website. There, they were priced at $37.64, plus tax. OK. If that's what they cost, that's what they cost. I was prepared to go down there and buy one...until Q started nosing around on eBay.

And I'm glad he did. He found an auction for the same item, new in package, with a Buy-it-Now price of $9.99, plus $5 shipping. Now that's more like it!