November 7, 2006
I always lose rock-paper-scissors. Always. And raffles? Forget it! But my coworkers and I just played the finger game: like rock-paper-scissors game, except you put out one or two fingers. Odd finger(s) out wins. And I won two tickets to the USC-Cal game for next weekend from my boss!
Free tickets to my first college football game, how cool!
I know I’m not.
I’d forgotten about the contactless smart card rollout until I read Liz Pulliam West’s article about them. Obviously they advocate an even higher convenience level of card usage, and she points out some security concerns that I thought were pretty obvious, but glosses over the concern that I thought was far more relevant: how many of us need help spending money faster?
She says that jokingly, but seriously, forget for a moment about the possibilities of identity theft and think about the true culprit in many of our financial lives: *hey, stop looking over your shoulder, I’m talkin’ to you!* I’m not one to blame technology for the actions of its users, but it seems like the probability of overspending with this handy dandy new form of payment is just not worth the novelty.
How many people really need a credit card transaction made so easy that they don’t even have to look at a receipt OR sign it?
November 6, 2006
As I shake out my swollen fingers yet again, I have to wonder: what earthly use will I be, if I physically fall apart from doing nothing more than a desk job? If all I’m doing is a lot of administrative and managerial work that’s hardly physically taxing at the beginning of my career and my hands can’t take the abuse of clicking on the mouse all day, what does that mean for my future? I know that BoyDucky could support me through grad school, if I let him, but what’s the point if I am incapable of holding up that diploma with my own hands?
I’m spending all this time worrying about and planning my financial future and my parents’ retirement and security and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to work or function normally ten years from now. It could be argued that no one can KNOW that, but in my case I know that it’s just about a given that I’ll be gradually deteriorating if I simply lived a “normal” life without any sudden truck appearances or suchlike.
And how could I want to have children? I don’t even know if I can fully take care of myself by that time! What kind of mother would I be, who couldn’t even hold her child in her arms, much less provide for all his or her needs? How could I make that choice fully knowing my deficiencies are only going to get worse?
And how fair is it to ask someone to face that bleak prospect with me?
And to support me when I’m basically useless?
November 5, 2006
My high-speed internet/cable pricing wars are nearing conclusion for the next twelve and six(?) months, respectively, as of November 3rd.
The Verizon switch has cut the internet bill from $44.95 to $14.95 per month [with a one time shipping/handling fee that I couldn’t avoid of $23]. Savings: [$7 the first month, $30 thereafter.] Oh, actually, we should also have a 1st month’s credit due to the problems we had getting the internet to work at all. I will definitely have to double check the bill to make sure that was properly applied.
The cable part of the bill is a little more complicated. Time Warner doesn’t consider the old Adelphia customers their “new” customers, so we’re not eligible for their six-month introductory promotion pricing of $29.99. I figured I’d just call them up, let them know that I’m planning to cancel unless they’re prepared to do something for me and hope for the best. Not the best strategy I’ve ever hatched, no. BUT, I spoke with a sales rep who, literally, spoke my language and offered me something I hadn’t even considered asking for: knowing that I had already set up a new internet service, he suggested that I switch my two services to their bundled package offering at $67.32 and then just call to cancel the internet service at a later date, while retaining the lower rate for cable. When PaDucky called to cancel the internet service, the new balance was reduced to $32.96 “from now on” as the CSR stated. Now, because they bill a month in advance, I just need to make sure that I’m getting an updated bill and that the pricing package I opted for doesn’t expire since it -technically – wasn’t called a promotion. And I just realized that we missed our scheduled installation because of a death in the family. So I guess I’m going to have to spend some more time on the phone — as if I wasn’t looking for a reason NOT to do my work. Lazy!
So our internet and cable bill should be going from: 96.64 per month to (32.96+$15) = 47.96!
Hi, it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon…welcome to my rock hovel! Yes, I live in&under a rock because I have never heard of the myFaves package that T-mobile is offering. Apparently they’re out to bust Verizon’s IN network calling monopoly with an even more radical offering: you can pick the top five people you log the most phone time with, and regardless of their network, you get unlimited calling with those numbers. I don’t believe there’s any restriction on whether it’s a home, office or cell phone number.
T-mobile only offers one individual and one family plan.
The individual package you get is:
myFaves 600
Whenever Minutes: 600
Weekend Minutes: Unlimited
Weeknight Minutes: Unlimited
myFaves Minutes: Unlimited
for $49.99.
I’d briefly considered switching from my plan of 1000 Whenever, Unlimited Nights&weekends but this costs $10 more. I shouldn’t be talking on the cell phone for more than 1000 minutes on the weekdays anyway, even if I DO have a lonely 1 hour+ commute home everyday. BUT, if you’re consistently calling the same group of people and going over that many minutes during the month, this might not be such a bad idea.
November 4, 2006
Right, so it’s not that they’re mentally impaired so much as INSANELY INTELLIGENT. My little cousin scored just about perfect on his SATs. Holy crap.
It’s Saturday. Finally finally finally Saturday!! A bit spendier than I had expected it to be, but since I didn’t complete all my errands, it’s goin to be spendier still, by tomorrow evening.
I was really looking forward to this weekend because it was to be a get-a-lot-of-work-done weekend. I was going to get the oil changed in my car [way overdue], a haircut [also way overdue], and get a LOT of work done [yep, also overdue]. Sunday was going to be laundry and lounge day. This is what really happened:
Being the hibernatory bear that I am, I slept right through my 7am alarm and did NOT get out the door in time to be the first person in line at my car dealership. I hate having to wait two hours for an oil change on a weekend so my battle plan was to hit the dealership before anyone else and then scoot two counties over for my haircut. But I didn’t get up until 9, so I thought I’d just have to try again early Sunday morning.
[$12] Sadly, it was my 8th cut, and you know what that means: Buy 7 cuts, get your bangs screwed up for free!! The overweening confidence of Jacob, my erstwhile, one-month’s experience on the floor stylist-to-be led him to judge that my Asian hair could be chopped with one snip o’ the scissors to get the bangs I’d asked for. Nope, nope, nope. My bangs promptly protruded in two thick tufts from my forehead, blending with my already ungroomed eyebrows to form a hideous Groucho Marx imitation. His quick solution was? A flatiron!! That actually made it worse. *sigh* And I had to keep HIM calm. How fair is that? Oh well, I [quietly, because I couldn’t hurt Jacob’s already fragile ego] pled with the instructor for quick release from 10-year-old-asian-girl-bangs-hell and she managed to cover up most of it and they waxed the rest.
[$0] I gave in on the way home from haircut hell and stopped at the car dealership: I didn’t want to wait two hours but I wanted to wake up at 8am and drive all the way back out again Sunday morning even less. So, I spent two hours sitting at the car dealership doing some work while I waited for my oil change. I’m not sure if he intended to sell me a car or hit on me, but in the last 20 minutes a salesman brought me a bottle of water and showed me to the Snack Shack where they give away free hot dogs, water, soda and chips. My car was ready just in time for me not to find out what he really wanted. 🙂 Then the service guy told me that I need new brakes, new rotors, a new fan belt cause I only had one [uh, I thought I only needed one? I don’t know, time for me learn car maintenance again….], and that the rotors alone would probably cost about $420. *bigger sigh*
[$11] Groucho time was fun and all, but it pretty much convinced me not to try to wait another two weeks to have my eyebrows taken care of.
[$11] The grocery store yielded chicken and apples today: Banquet has a TMF on their Honey BBQ chicken which I will happily try for free and Tyson sent me a Free Chick’n’Easy product coupon some time ago, so I picked up some chicken strips. I’m going to have chicken for lunch all week! And apples. And bananas. Yum!
And I managed to round up a couple of the girls for dinner plans tonight at Bombay Bistro [I’m never sure what $-$$ really equates, but it should be affordable, split between three gals].
And now that it’s five pm and my choices are to cram 2 hours of work in and give myself a bigger headache or just … rest. My automatic reaction is to push myself until I collapse and just can’t do anything else, but this may be a good time to evaluate the kinds of decisions I make that may promote financial health while neglecting my actual health. I still have all of tomorrow and I can’t look at it as not being able to afford to work less overtime so much as I can’t afford NOT to recharge my batteries and REST.
Oh, and? $23 was totally worth it not to look like THIS anymore:
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