Just got this email in the mail – it’s a sad day but one that was expected given all the recent publicity from NPR, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal previously. Sad, sad, day.

Dear United States Mint Direct Ship Customer:

Thank you for your understanding and your continued support of the $1 Coin Program.
The United States Mint

Both Time magazine and NPR have recently done stories in regards to the nearly $1 billion in dollar coins sitting on the shelves of the Federal Reserve that according to them nobody wants. That number could quickly become $2 billion once the coins honoring the past presidents are done.

All of this is even more interesting considering that if you go to the US Mint’s online store, they currently only have 3 options available for order with two of them on backorder until July 5th?

I’ve been ordering from the US Mint for quite a while and actually try to put them into circulation – just ask my babysitters! The whole program however is decades too late to try and introduce coins into circulation as the majority of people have gone to a cashless society.

With $1 billion in storage, let’s all hope that the programs still runs for years and years to come.

In case you haven’t heard – there is a new travel site recently launched called Milepoint – and they’re giving away an Ipad each day in March. You can register here.

I first got into collecting miles and points by visiting and learning from the folks at Flyertalk several years ago. I I learned tips and tricks there that I never would have imagined. But over the past few years, I’ve started to post fewer and fewer times there. In my opinion, the tone of the message board became more and more condescending if you didn’t happen to know all the abbreviations or happened to make a mistake in stating something.

For that reason, I’m excited about a new community. Will this new community be more friendly? Will all the experts from the previous site come over to Milepoint? Or will it become like Fatwallet and Slickdeals where someone posts a deal on one of the sites and within minutes the exact deal is posted on the other site?

I honestly hope that having another community spring up will encourage even more people to join our hobby and to realize that with a little effort (okay sometimes a lot of effort) – cheap travel to exotic destinations is entirely possible.

As this year of 2010 draws to a close, there has been a flurry of activity in the last month.

Currently I’m doing the following activities:

I signed up for the first time for Twitter because United was going to give a prize to their first 10,000 followers on Twitter. It turned out to be 1,500 Mileage Plus miles.

I must admit I didn’t really see the point in using Twitter. It seemed like a way for companies to boast about how many “followers” they have similar to people that have hundreds of friends on Facebook.

I let my twitter account remain dormant for quite a while until I heard that American Express was going to give away something if you followed them. So I started using Twitter again and actually have some pretty useful people to follow.

Now I am looking at Twitter at least every couple of hours. It’s such a simple way to quickly review any deals or bargains out there.

Here are some of the people I would recommend following:

Sports: SpearsNBAYahoo, SklarBrothers, WojNBAYahoo

Travel: BoardingArea (of course!), Intercontinental Deals, Frequent Flyer Bonuses, Airfare Watchdog

Deal sites: Dan’s Deals, Slickdeals, FatWallet

If you haven’t yet jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, I would recommend downloading their app on your mobile phone and giving it a try.

To commemorate Stieg Larsson’s film “The girl who played with fire”, there is a contest to win a trip to Sweden.

Entries close on October 1, 2010. The Grand Prize includes airfare on Scandinavian Airlines, hotel stay at Sheraton Stockholm, and Stockholm passes.

Sweden is one of my favorite places as I have vacationed and worked in Stockholm. The majority of Swedes speak fantastic English. Stockholm is really gorgeous in the summer time.

One of the major exports from Sweden is music. If you think of all the bands that have hailed from Sweden: ABBA, Roxette, Ace of Base,The Cardigans, Peter Bjorn and John and perhaps some that you haven’t heard of like Dungen, Bob Hund, Popsicle, the Sounds, and the Radio Dept.

One of my favorite bands from Sweden is Bob Hund. Bob Hund hail from the south of Sweden, referred to as Skåne. Those from Skåne have a very different dialect, similar to the Texas drawl.

Here is one of my favorite songs from them called “Istället för musik, förvirring (Instead of music, confusion)”.

This was our travel day and unfortunately we were traveling on Malev Airlines where I have no status. We arrived at the airport extremely early and were greeted with a line that snaked around the airport.

Malev had self check in kiosks at the airport but alas – all of them were out of order. So we sat in line and waited and waited and waited. The line was so long that there was a second entrance to the airport closer and as people start arriving for this flight they naturally started to merge into this line. We decided to create a luggage Wall of China to encourage people to head to the back of the enormous line and it worked.

In Rome, we were going to be staying at the Intercontinental De La Ville. I had done some trolling on Flyertalk about the property and was able to private message a Flyertalk member who had contacted the hotel in advance of his stay and was able to secure a nice room. I have Ambassador status but was afraid that staying at a hugely discounted rate would not get me an upgrade.

I emailed this hotel employee a couple of weeks in advance asking to have an upgraded room. He responded saying that he would do his best.

When we arrived at checkin, they had our entire group’s rooms ready for checkin. I was a bit nervous. I was handed our room key and it said 2nd floor. I assumed the worst figuring that the nice rooms would be on the high floors. As I opened the door, I was pleasantly surprised that my groveling had actually worked and I was in a beautiful suite.

I threw my stuff down and headed out with some colleagues to see the sites of Rome. As it was Sunday, we headed down to the Vatican City to see if we could catch a glimpse of the Pope.

This proved to be a mistake as we arrived about 10 minutes too late and everyone was filing out. We turned around and headed to the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately, we arrived 10 minutes after they took their last visitors. A bit discouraged, we decided to get some lunch and found the most wonderful pizza place around the corner. Everything was fresh made.

After lunch for pizza, we headed down to the Coliseum. It turns out that today was a national holiday in Rome and all the museums had free entry today. The Coliseum was packed with people. It truly was a sight to see. It was an amazing piece of history to see up close.

I already knew that Bora Bora has been my absolute favorite vacation spot that I’ve ever been – but even Swedish royalty has discovered it as well.

The Swedish Princess Victoria and her new husband Daniel Westling recently were married. Victoria is the oldest daughter of the current king and queen of Sweden.

Or as Elaine said to George Costanza “You’re very careful with money.” My frugality does not only apply to traveling. It also applies to everyday purchasing as well.

Two months ago when Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2 came out on Blu Ray, Toys R Us was selling the combo pack for $15.00. The combo pack came with two coupons for free tickets ($8.50 a piece) to Toy Story 3.

On top of that, Kellogg’s was running a promotion where you could buy Frosted Flakes and receive points towards free concessions. We found Kellogg’s on sale for $1.70 a box and bought 5 boxes.

So – today we bought 4 matinee tickets at $5.50 a piece for $22.00. We used the two free ticket vouchers of $8.50 a piece which bought the price down to $6.

For concessions, we used our 2 – $5 concession coupons and ended up paying $.75 for a large popcorn and drink.

Total bill – $6.75.

I’m pretty proud of my stinginess!

The Wall Street Journal writes about a $35,000 hotel room at the Four Seasons Hotel New York.

For $35,000, you do receive butler service, almost free room service by from the hotel’s restaurants (including one by Joël Robuchon), and a waterfall.

I stayed at a Marriott in Moscow once that included butler service. It was one of the most awkward conversations ever. After greeting me and showing me to my room, he called a few minutes later to ask if I needed any help unpacking my bags. I wasn’t even sure what to say and therefore told him that I didn’t need any help. How much do you even tip a butler that unpacks your bag? What about drawing you a hot bubble bath?