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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April 17, 2008
Well well, Treasury Direct, we meet again. And this time, you have something up your sleeve. You’ve got some I-bonds that I’d like to take a look at. Not only can I purchase up to $5000 worth of online I-bonds at a total interest rate of 4.68%, I only have to hold them for a year to get nearly as much interest as my once vaunted Emigrant Direct and IngDirect savings accounts yielded not so long ago. If the interest rate holds, I could even hold them for longer than a year. Actually, as a commenter on Jonathon’s post pointed out, the latter six months of the year will have a higher interest rate than the first six months, so I would plan to hold the bond an extra three months so that my penalty of three months’ interest is taken from the tail end, at a presumably lower rate. I don’t mind the maximum cap of $5000, either, because that’s fully one third of my emergency fund and I wouldn’t feel comfortable losing any more liquidity from the emergency fund than that. (Jonathon of MyMoneyBlog explains Series I savings bonds much better than I can.)
But wait, Treasury Direct has yet another ace up its sleeve! I can also convert my paper bonds into electronic bonds! I have a single Series EE bond hidden away in my room, the prize for a scholarship back in my junior year of high school before the Kiwanis figured out that a Series EE bond is worthless to a high school grad paying for college expenses since it takes 30 years to fully mature. It’s already been ten years (mein Gott!) but I still have another 20 years to hope I don’t lose the dang thing. Now, however, I needn’t hope any longer. I can convert that baby into an electronic bond, and monitor it online! The paper bond can become a bit of scrapbook fodder.
I’ll be back, I have to open a Treasure Direct account right now. If for nothing else, converting my single solitary Series EE bond will be totally worth it.
For the last four hours of work, visions of a hotel room overlooking the beach, literally with a balcony right over the sand, sun, and waves were all I could think about. Running shoes, a stack of books, a beach chair, sunglasses and a hat. That’s all I need this weekend. Just get away from everyone and everything, all the crazy at home, the crazy at work; widen that space of time in between work and home into a whole day of just relaxing without anyone chattering at me, asking questions, or expecting attention. Ahhhh ….. that sounds vunderbar!
Friend A offered me a room at her place, Friend E wants me to come visit her out of state. Married Friend has a room for me. That’s all great, and I’ll take them all up on it one of these days. But probably not this weekend. I’m all prickly inside and can’t even muster the energy to imagine being a good guest.
BoyDucky offered me his other free SW ticket to come up and visit this weekend. Otherwise, the next opportunity he and I’ll have to visit isn’t until mid-May. He understands I may really need time to myself so I can make the decision when I’m ready. The beauty of the Green Pass Must Ride is that I can call to make the reservation and show up at the ticket counter with practically no notice and no extra fees to pay.
What to do … what to do …
Ar! The weather this weekend is not looking promising anywhere. I will definitely not be getting my beach day.
April 16, 2008
As usual, I didn’t watch the show, but some pictures caught my eye and I wanted to share them.
Carrie Underwood completely fascinates me these days. She’s this classically blonde beauty with rather age-appropriate, elegant and striking fashion sense. I’m sure not all her picks are home runs, but whenever I see photos of her, I can’t help but wonder how much of her beauty is from artfully applied make-up, and how much is glowing youth. The fact that I can’t tell impresses me to no end. (Or is a function of my own inability to apply makeup.) Either way, I LOVE her dress here. The color is so rich, and the cut looks wonderful on her. I’m not usually a fan of jewels on clothing because it’s easy for them to look tacky, but these compliment her dress.
Again, the blondes have it. I can’t decide if I like how the front of the dress flows outward in the front, but I think I dislike that style entirely. The color, however, is fabulous. I find Taylor Swift’s attractiveness is slightly more exotic than wholesome Carrie.
AUGH. Just … AUGH. Because it can’t all be beauty, we have cautionary tales as well. Or cautionary photos. Please never do something like that to yourself.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with coupled people lately: newlyweds, married-for-three-years, expecting, family planning, long-term relationships, the works. It’s a little intimidating, truth be told, because it constantly reminds me of where I am in my life and relationship, or where I’m not. Or maybe “intimidating” is not the word I’m looking for, perhaps what I mean is “unsettling.”
In any case, that leads to my pondering how other people juggle their personal needs versus couple needs. Considering how difficult it is to carve out time for friends when busy with work and home priorities, I often wonder if their together time is also adversely affected. Does the romance get prioritized above all, or does it get pushed below the surface because it’s been subsumed into a category of personal life that has to wait?
This resonates even more strongly when BoyDucky and I try to schedule time to see each other. Figuring out when we’ve time to see each other, much less romantic getaways, is no joke when every weekend is struck off the calendar because of a litany of other obligations. There’s also definitely a need for us to balance the costs of an LDR and seeing each other by keeping dates during our visits low-key. Communication, in the meantime, via calls, emails or I love you letters keeps the wheels turning.
At the other end of the spectrum, my friend lives with his girlfriend, and I keep hearing that she constantly feels as if he doesn’t spend enough time with her. They live together! He doesn’t go out without her, ever, and she drives him to and from the train station. I can’t fathom a couple being more together. It may be that her expectations are simply misunderstood, or just too high, but regardless of rightness or wrongness, they’ve got to balance each other’s needs just as much as anyone else in a relationship.
It’s a bit of food for thought. How does one get from *here* in a relationship to that point where you’re ready to be committed, to live with another person, for the rest of your life and make it work? The path’s different for everyone, so I’m sure there’s no one answer, but it’d be great if there were a few more signs along the way about whether to turn off, or go straight for another ten miles!
It’s always irked me a little that my retirement contributions don’t appear in my Vanguard accounts until two days after payday, but it’s at least been consistent since I opened my accounts a few years ago. What really gets my goat is that this last pay period’s contributions didn’t show up until this morning, a full week after we were paid.
What’s up with that? I’ve sent an email to our benefits people to get an explanation because I do NOT want to see that happen again. My money has places to be, folks, don’t hold it up!
Does anyone else have to wait a certain number of days before they see their contributions? And that does fluctuate for any reason?
Am I just extraordinarily neurotic about my every penny?
April 15, 2008
There’s nothing on the Linens’n’Things website yet, but I hear they’re about to declarebankruptcy. C3 had mentioned hearing about the possibility a few weeks, but since I couldn’t find any news on it, I didn’t think anything of it.
After waiting months, using our old yucky vacuum that spits up, to earn enough points to redeem for all the GC I want, the master plan to spend nothing out of pocket may not work out.
On Saturday, I spent part of the morning at LNT doing some hands-on research with their floor models, and had finally decided on the two models I liked best for lightweight maneuverability, and nice attachments. The next step was to order my $100 GC from Thank You points, and bring home my new vacuum baby!
Now I’m hesitant: I’ve already got a $50 GC on hand, but that’s not enough for either vacuum I want. If I get the $100 in time, I’ll have too much money left over since I’ll also be stacking the GC and sale with a 20% off coupon. That’s assuming they don’t stop accepting their own GCs like Sharper Image did! Yar. I hate being thwarted.
For whatever reason, I cannot seem to get my mind focused on anything but investing or travel tonight. The first is simple: I finally read my Rollover IRA prospectus last night, figured out that I have a little over a thousand dollars invested in an REIT mutual fund that’s made roughly $200 in the last four years, and I don’t want to pay another $15 annual maintenance fee because I’ve been too lazy to get my butt in gear and roll this over to my Vanguard accounts. Then, too, I’ve been talking stocks with a friend who is actually quite experienced in investing and I’ve been feeling completely out of my depth, so I want to start dipping my toe into the market. Kind of reminds me of Sistah Ant’s comment about being jealous of a teenager with her own stocks 🙂
The second? I’m desperate to get away. For a change of scenery, of pace. Just to get away from this life and my job and the bad management and frustrating workload and passive aggressive BS. I can’t move out until I have the money covered for first and last, start up costs, maintenance just in case money. Oh and a roommate. I need a roommate. So now I’m overwhelmed by this need to go somewhere exotic like Bali, the Bahamas, Mazatlan, Los Cabos.
This might be a need to shed my feathers for the summer, now that we’ve ridden through our first heat wave and an oppressive fog has rolled in to mock us, but whatever it is, I’m going stir crazy tonight. [Wait. Feathers? Shed my feathers? Look at that, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Shed my winter coat! That’s the analogy I meant.] I’m itching to grab someone and just take off for a weekend. Reminding myself that I don’t actually have cash to spare isn’t helping tonight, especially not when I know that I’ve got the e-fund covered and throwing a couple-few hundred dollars at this getaway wouldn’t break me. It wouldn’t be good for the budget, but it wouldn’t break me. *sigh* I should let this run its course, and hope that I don’t accidentally find a really good deal tonight 🙂 Like a three day cruise to Mexico for a couple hundred dollars. Hmmmm……
Ack! Quick! Snap out of it!!
