You know those plastic jars or metal cans sitting on the counter at 7-11 where you can place your spare change towards donations for charity? They are usually only partly full with a few pennies and dollar bills.

Well, I have a friend whose husband owns three 7-11 stores in Northern Virginia... and she asked me if I knew where she could buy papers to roll her pennies, etc from the donation jars to take the bank. WHAT? Roll them? Is she kidding?

I told her about the modern technology that we have in 2012 where machines do all the work for us... but she said that the CoinStar machine at the grocery store charges 10% - and since the money is going to charity, she wanted to make sure every penny was sent to them. Makes sense.

Then I remembered the machines are free @ Capital One if you have an account there - and lucky for her,  I am a customer. Not knowing what I was getting into, I offered to take the coins over for her.

She had a man load the small box of coins into my SUV and I drove off to the Fairfax Corner branch. I parked a few spots away and hopped out to grab the coins and go in... but I couldn't even budge the box that they were in! Do you know how much 15,362 coins weigh? I seriously broke my back dragging the box into the storefront where I finally got some help.

In the name of charity, I stood in front of the coin machine for almost TWO HOURS while it counted all 15,362 coins. I was interrupted once while they had to come and empty out the machine so that it could handle my large job.

In the end, there was $867.16 in coins. In addition, there was $98 in dollar bills - someone even threw in a Jackson! I never thought those jars were legit, or that the money would actually go to charity, but I was proved wrong!