Saving On Your Next Road Trip

Are you planning a road trip? With demand for gas up and price up along with it, you may be thinking it's not entirely affordable. Well, we traveled well on our road trip and though gas prices varied widely across 3 states (it was still between $3.79 and $4.69/gallon) we didn't feel like we were paying more. I also found a great gem of an app to save on gas through cash back. 

If you've been following me for a while, you know how much I love cash back apps. Get Upside is no different. I was able to find participating stations much of the time when we needed to stop for gas and I'm building my balance to cash out without a penalty (the threshold only $15), though you can cash out at any time you like.

Here's how it works:

• Sign up for free (but if you use my link or promo code: SHEREEN2633 you can get a bonus of 15 extra cents per gallon on your first gas purchase).
• When you need gas, open the app and see participating stations near you. You'll be able to see how much gas is and how much you'll save per gallon. 
• Choose the station by clicking on the claim button.
• You'll have 3-4 hours to get gas to redeem your offer (each participating station only has a limited amount of claims to be made).
• Once you arrive at your station - the app can also give you directions - you will need to check in. Sometimes this is just clicking the check-in button in the app and sometimes you have to put in partial credit card information for them to verify your purchase.
• That's it. Your cash back will be added within a day or two.

I received between 7 cents and 23 cents off per gallon while road tripping, which doesn't sound like much, but it can really add up. If you find yourself on a route that may have iffy cell service, remember that you will have, on average, 3 hours to complete your offer, so before you head into a dead zone, search for deals, claim one that seems doable, and then you're set for when you get there.

I'm sure you're thinking "70 cents is all good, but it's not really going to save me enough to make a difference on my trip." You might be right, though if you're filling up 10 times on a trip, that's several free gallons of gas. Also, Get Upside has now added hundreds of restaurants to their app that average 7% cash back. And soon, there will be grocery stores and convenience stores added as well, saving you on those snacks, cooler staples, and meal items for your destinations.

I know it'll take a little extra effort to get a bit of a deal on much of your trip, but it can be worth it. The person not driving can have the job of finding the stations and calling out directions for your trip. 

What are some of your favorite travel apps? 

Disclaimer: when you sign up with my link, I get a bonus just like you get a bonus. Thanks in advance for helping us both. 

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloweekend everyone! This has been a long celebration for us, since our anniversary is also on the 28th. Normally, we go out for our day, but this year has thrown a lot at us and we just weren't in the mood for other people. We lost our dog last week, and even though it's been coming for a while, it was still one of the hardest things we've had to endure. As such, we decided to do a low-key meal at home. 

We had a full Halloween wedding, where everyone dressed up and we danced to spooky music and had a blast, so I brought some of that to our day by having a Halloween food board, backdrops, and we watched a few horror movies. Keep scrolling for some of my favorite Halloween movies and the list of movies we've watched over the last month that I may or may not recommend.

Favorite movies:

• Cabin In the Woods
• American Werewolf in London
• Pet Semetary (the original)
• A Ghost Story (this is slow and quiet, but in the BEST way)
• Trick R Treat
• Monster Squad
• Train to Busan
• The Hunt
• Jennifer's Body
• Happy Death Day
• Shaun of the Dead
• Scream
• Final Destination
• Idle Hands
• Poltergeist
• The Others
• Hellraiser
• Get Out
• House of 1,000 Corpses
• Practical Magic
• Ready Or Not
• Drag Me To Hell

Movies that I loved, and recommend if you like being scared:

• The Ring
• The Conjuring
• Midsommar
• Silent Hill
• Resident Evil (the first one)
• Cabin Fever
• Hostel
• Us
• Teeth - TW: sexual abuse
• Hereditary
• The Woman In Black - the one from 2012 with Dan Radcliffe. Skip the sequel.
• Green Inferno - another Eli Roth movie, but this one's about cannibals, so it might be a hard watch for some. I learned beforehand that all the cannibals were actually a tribe of natives that had never acted or seen a movie before and thought blood was hilarious, so that made it easier for me to consume.

Movies I've watched lately: So, I specifically got Shudder to watch movies I've either not heard of or missed when they were new. I have been watching History of Horror and listening to the accompanying podcast by Eli Roth and was tired of not being able to find the movies they talked about. I can't find all of them, in the 5 streaming services we have, but I have found quite a few.

• Old - an M. Night Shyamalan movie that was so much better than I expected
• Night Teeth - a twist on your normal vampire story
• A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night - a Persian subtitled vampire movie filmed in black and white that I really enjoyed.
• Hell House, LLC - 2 & 3 are on Shudder, but you can watch the first one on YouTube or Tubi. It's a shaky cam movie a la Blair Witch, but it's properly scary. I've actually been too scared to watch the others yet.
• Mayhem - with Steven Yuen and Samara Weaving about a virus that makes people violent. It's not scary, but it is über gory. I really felt like it didn't have much of a point, though I liked seeing Steven Yuen play a badass.
• Haunt - an Eli Roth movie about a group of friends who go to an extreme haunted/escape house and get more than they bargain for. I liked this, because it had some interesting twists.
• Escape Room: Tournament of Champions - we liked the original and we also liked this one. It's not phenomenal, but I like trying to figure out the "games" too.
• Creature From The Black Lagoon - I had never seen this before, and it was a typical monster movie, though I think it would have been scarier if they had not shown the creature until further into the movie.
• Friday the 13th - I'm not sure if it's just because I waited so long to watch the original, but I found this really slow and boring. I didn't care at all about any of the characters, so I didn't care if they died, including young Kevin Bacon.
• Friday the 13th Part 2 - because I had to know the whole story behind Jason being able to come back and kill people. Spoiler: you still don't really know.
• Halloween Kills - I don't know what they were going for in this sequel, but it kind of sucked from beginning to end, except for the gay couple - Big John and Little John - that I found charmingly weird.
• They Remain - I'm still not sure what the point of this movie was. It was about two scientists looking into a cult that lived in the woods years ago. It was very bad and I don't recommend it. I figured out the twist halfway through when I wasn't even paying that much attention to it.

I also rewatched some movies, because it had been a long time since I've watched them.

• I Know What You Did Last Summer - though I had forgotten it had such an all-star cast, I still liked it and felt like it held up pretty well.
• Halloween (the original) - I was so disappointed in Halloween Kills that I felt I needed to go back to the beginning to cleanse my palette.

You can see more of my spooky Halloween spread on my Instagram, including a reel showing my table in depth. 

Cheers to your Halloweekend! Now, hit me with your favorite scary, spooky, atmospheric movies below that you watch over and over or just discovered or wish everyone would watch, too!

Welcome to Omega Mart

Welcome! You are now a trainee at Omega Mart and a part of the Dram Corp family. Once you walk into the doors of Meow Wolf's Omega Mart, you're handed your employee identification card, so you can start your training as soon as possible.

You might get so caught up in looking at everything in this grocery store (all available for purchase) that you forget you have a job to do here, but make time for both training - you have to learn the correct cone color for spills, after all - and exploring, because it's all amazing.

Take your employee ID card and use it on these Omega Mart "boop" stations where you will learn more about the store and your job and some will quiz you one what you've learned, like that aforementioned color-coded cone system for spills. 

You should never try to clean up a difficult spill on your own. Instead, just put out an ecru cone (or 4). Someone with appropriate training will come by in a hazmat suit to take care of that for you. 

If you've read my previous posts, then you know that Omega Mart is much more than a grocery store and place to learn about unreal color systems. It's an interactive museum from the minds of the Meow Wolf Company. This is their second of three museums like this that all have different themes, and an underlying mystery. 

Almost all of the mystery takes place behind the wall of the grocery store, and you can get there several ways, one of which is in the floral department and another is through the tent in the recreation center. In fact, Omega Mart, as a grocery store, is just a portion of this museum. At least 2/3 of it are in different rooms and on entirely different floors. 

Musical fruit is the best!

Before heading to the rest of the museum, we spent a lot of time in the produce department, just scoping out the incredible fruits and veggies, like these musical mangos and tomatoes. You'll also find the infinity melon, cucumber ducks, daikon friends, dioramas housing adorable root people, mitosis oranges, and cabbage slippers. You may have thought of some weird things, but the folks of Omega Mart may have out-creatived you.

Really wished loose happles were in stock when I visited

Ever wish apples were more interesting? Well, at Omega Mart they are travel mugs or happy. Apples are the coolest. I adored these happles. Aside from the angry bell peppers, they were my favorites. 

Taking my job in the deli department really seriously

There's almost no area that's off-limits in Omega Mart. In fact, I came from the back and ended up behind the deli counter, so I tried to help a few people out with finding what they were looking for (ha!).  

Can I interest you in some red, white, or blue steaks or monument meat?

In fact, the deli counter is a place you'll want to stop and take in for a while. Everything is amazing and unique and cool and morbid.

Omega Mart really has their branding down. The floral department has this great flower logo, and also has gorgeous - and interesting - flowers you can buy. When you duck behind this wall, an employee will remind you that the flowers are always watching, because the hallway is lined with all different kinds of flowers with eyes to look at you. If you're into weird stuff like I am, this is hilarious. It's unconventional and performance art all rolled into one. 

I also tried my hand at being a janitor

If you see a door that can be opened anywhere (that's not being guarded by an actual employee) then you should try opening it. The janitor's closet holds way more than you expect and you may not find your way back out. See how the door looks like the sign is glitched? That's on purpose. And when I emerged, looking for Eric to follow me, someone welcomed the new janitor to the store.

See that doorway to the right covered in plastic? That's how I ended up behind the deli counter. And see those things on the shelves on the left? Those are all bags you can buy. Who doesn't need a crossbody stomach satchel or a whole ham backpack?

Why is this employee frozen? Why is this always happening?!?

When you go behind the scenes at Omega Mart, you learn the true story of how it came to be, the dark secrets it holds, and how it became the #1 grocery store in the world. You'll spend some time in the employee offices and the break room, plus you'll figure out how to solve the mystery of the parent company and be asked to join the resistance. I'll share more pictures from that later, or you can check out my pics from my visit on my Instagram.

I told everyone that I had been waiting for 3 years for Omega Mart to open and planned a whole trip around it. I wasn't disappointed either. We spent probably 4 hours there and could have spent more, but I was starving. Despite being surrounded by food, there wasn't anything to actually eat in the store, nor were you allowed to due to Covid. 

I'm looking forward to visiting their other locations, including House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, NM and Convergence Station in Denver, CO. Until then, you can learn more about Meow Wolf and their installations on their website. I purposely didn't look at any walk-throughs on YouTube in order to be surprised by what the story of Omega Mart was. Even if you get their emails, you still have almost no idea what's happening. Their ads all say "Omega Mart. You have no idea what's in store for you." and they're absolutely right. 

Have you been to any great interactive museums?