About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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June 12, 2008
Do yourself a favor and save yourself a really uncomfortable visit to the dentist. I don’t mean skip it entirely! Even though I didn’t have a copay, I was levied a toll of the worst dental pain ever on Monday. As a rule, I like the dentist. Admittedly, this is because I’ve been fairly lucky and have had very few cavities. Also, the dentist pales in comparison to the torture of the orthodontist under whose heel I suffered for years.
So, coming from someone who doesn’t fear the dentist and enjoys dental visits: please, please floss right or you will quickly learn why people rate fear of the dentist second only to public speaking.
Turns out that there is a wrong way to floss: my way.
I’ve been using a Reach flosser because I always complain that my hands are too big to fit inside my mouth. It’s been so long that I’ve given away all my free regular floss from all those Walgreens FAR deals. I might have an old dusty box hiding in a supplies box somewhere, and I’ll have to break it out now.
This is how you floss correctly:
1. Take a long string of floss, wrap it around your fingers.
2. Wrap a section of the floss around your tooth in a C shaped, and scrape it so that you’re hitting the front and back of your tooth. (Ugh, I don’t like the thought of scraping. But it’s better to floss that way than have the dentist doing it later!) Do the same for the other side.
3. Use a new section for every tooth. This prevents you from just moving bacteria from one tooth to the next one.
It’s pretty simple, but I sure wish my dental school friend had told me this earlier!
June 11, 2008
Wow. I was suddenly overwhelmed by fluttery feelings of anxiety, stress, fear? Deep (yoga) breathing and playing my Italian podcast for a soothing background helped a little. I thought taking work with me would be helpful too.
I’m definitely stressed about the mountains of work on my desk, not getting done, because there was a miscommunication about my cousin’s graduation that is not tomorrow. It’s today! I can’t believe how close I came to missing it. Thank goodness I checked the ticket this morning, otherwise I’d have been fielding a phone call after the ceremony to explain what an idiot I am.
Anyway, this work on my lap isn’t precisely occupying me, nor is anything quite distractionary enough.
I need a nap!
LB interviewed a high schooler for an internship today. But his dad not only brought him here, he’s sitting in on the interview.
Huh?
I remember a handful of interviews from high school, and a parent may have driven me to each one, but they certainly never accompanied me to the door, walked me in, or interviewed with me. Then again, I was a latchkey kid, and pretty independent early on.
Is it just me, or is that weird?
While exploring my points hoards further, I made the discovery that, by golly, Starpoints are actually quite nice! I wish there were a faster way to earn points than the standard 1 point per dollar on regular purchases, and 2 points per dollar for stays and SPG-related purchases.
The key (not the standard free hotel stays) awards that caught my fancy:
1. Nordstrom GC: 14,000 points for $150/9,500 points for $100/5,000 for $50
2. Banana Republic GC: 9,500 points for $100/5,000 points for $50/2,800 points for $50
3. For BD, Starbucks: 9,500 points for $100/5,000 points for $50/2,800 points for $50
4. Westin at home (if you want a Heavenly Bed): 14,000 points for $150/9,500 points for $100/5,000 for $50
5. 50% off rack rates (if you can’t get a deal at your popular destination): 1,000 points for 50% off rack rates for up to five nights. Good for up to Category 6 (read: most luxurious) hotels.
6. Nights and flights: 60,000 Starpoints for 50,000 airline miles and five free nights at a Category 3
7. Amtrak Guest Rewards: convert your points into train miles.
This makes me want to re-evaluate my credit cards portfolio and figure out where I can shoehorn in the Starwood card again. I’m content with my current mix, but I may want the flexibility of such rewards in the future.
June 10, 2008
It’s not all selfishly motivated: one of my 20 chores is to walk the dog which I’ll be too tired to do after hauling my heavy bag for 25 minutes. She’ll be so disappointed because we missed yesterday’s walk too.
It’s a beautiful day out. The sun’s shining, sky’s blue, it’s warm, I remembered to use my new sunscreen this morning. But I don’t want to walk home from the train station. I usually enjoy a nice quiet walk, it’s good exercise, it saves gas, but I just don’t want to. I’m tired and have twenty things to do when I get home and just want to be picked up. If my awareness of how bratty I’m being were less acute, I’d call my uncle and ask for a ride.
But no. I oughtn’t even be grumbling. I’m lucky to live a mile away so that it’s perfectly walkable. Just being a bad pf blogger today. Guess I’ll walk off the grumpiness!
This might be considered cheating because I’m not spending any less. But, if the end result is saving some cash by being creative about the spending, then it still counts.
My budget for Con is $300 from my travel fund, of which $92 is earmarked for reimbursing my friend via comics. That leaves me $208.
If I recall semi-accurately, I usually fill up once before I head out to San Diego, and once more when I come back. That includes the 100+ mile drive down there, 5 round trips between my housing and the convention center, and a trip back home. This year, I’m required to cut the trip short by a day because of a business trip, so I only have to account for 4 days of driving. But, I’ve factored in an extra trip to the airport to pick up BD who will be joining me for a day. Total, I’d say that’s just a shade under 400 miles. My car can, on a good day, make about 400-450 miles per tank, but I may be ferrying passengers on some days, I might be stuck in traffic for five hours coming or going, who knows?
I’m going to estimate the trip to require about 20 gallons of gas to be on the safe side.
By the end of July, $5.50/gal gas is probably not unthinkable, considering the Shell is at $4.45 right now. Conservatively, I now expect to spend more than half my budget on gas alone. That’s before I’ve factored in parking, food, or even a bit of shopping for gifts. Oh, and my ticket for next year. Oy, I thought my budget was HUGE a few months ago.
My brilliant idea? Gift cards! Browsing the Thank You points rewards the other night, I discovered that they have Shell gift cards. Sadly, they only offer the $50 for 6000 points exchange rate which I despise, but it’s still gas money that won’t come out of pocket. My ideal solution would be to earn another 2000 MyPoints and redeem 7350 points for a $50 GC, and redeem 12,000 Thank You points for another $100. It’s not likely that I’ll be able to get another 2000 points via MyPoints between now and Con, though, so I might have to bite the bullet and burn 18,000 points.
If I use no more than $150 on gas (dear Heavens I hope I don’t!) then I will have saved my Con cash stash entirely! That would be wonderful. The use of that many Thank You points and the lost opportunity to redeem for shopping GCs is sad, but I can repurpose any leftover Con cash to later travel, I can’t do that by hoarding TY points. Besides, I can always earn more points.