I had one of those "how come I didn't think of that before?" moments today. The Girls are off all week, so The Wife and I have been trying to keep the little darlings entertained. We needed to send out some boxes, and The Girls wanted soup, so we ended up heading over to Michigan Ave. to mail the stuff at the Hancock, and grab lunch at FoodLife (which has a "soup bar") over at the Watertower. Now, FoodLife is a Lettuce Entertain You place, and we eat, with some frequency, at various Lettuce places over the course of the year. During the Holidays, they have a deal where you get a $25 gift certificate for every $100 of gift cards you buy ... and it suddenly hit me that "Hey, if we bought, say, $1,000 worth of gift cards, we'd end up with $1,250 worth of dining!", which would be like knocking off 20% from every meal we had with them over the life of the gift certificates (the "bonus" ones do expire after a few months and have some restrictions, but the others are good for pretty much forever). Of course, the holiday special has gone away by now, but it's something that we'll have to think about for next year!
