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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December 18, 2008
It’s too late now, but it occurred to me that for all of my agonizing over finding the best price and fit in a new laptop, I neglected to fully maximize possible cashback options.
I did use ebates.com for a 1% cashback rebate. (If anyone wants a referral, we each get $5.)
That’s about $7 back, if they include cashback on tax.
I did use my Citi card that offers 2% back on all purchases in Thank You points.
That’s 1466 Thank You points.
However, I did not think to use my Chase Cash Plus card at the grocery store for 5% cashback rewards. [“Wait, what?” you ask. I know, I’m getting there.]
If I had gone to Vons/Safeway, using my Chase card to purchase a $700 Best Buy gift card, I would have earned 3500 points. That’s the equivalent of $35 because 5000 points can be redeemed for $50 cash, instead of a piddling 1466 Thank You points which cash out at an average rate of 6000/12000 points for $50/$100 gift cards.
Hmph. I could have stopped by the grocery store on my way home from work on Monday and more than doubled my cashback, in actual cash. Careless, I tell you. Miss M, you can still benefit from my mistake!
The weather caused the cancellation of dinner with my friends last night, and delayed the delivery of my new gadget by a day. Rats!
I was so looking forward to opening up that box tonight, but it’s probably for the best that it won’t be delivered until tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that there are more productive things I should be doing tonight that don’t include endlessly playing with a pretty new computer.
I’m glad the weather’s back to bright skies, though still frigidly-cold, because my friends up in the desert have been snowed in since yesterday. She scared me when she told me about their driving home from dinner. They were sliding all over the road, and had to help dig out three neighbors when they finally arrived at her sister’s house, as well as the ambulance and the fire truck that got stuck in a drift. They had to dig out a fire truck. That’s just wrong. And weird. And for all of you cold weather dwellers out there laughing at me, laugh away. A foot of snow + SoCal drivers who forget how to drive in rain = freaks me out.
December 17, 2008
- Getting drafts of apps together on Gmail during my breaks. I think it’s best to do that while I’m fresher during the day and send off at night. We’ll see what pans out.
- Trivia: Do you know who wrote and sang Same Auld Lang Syne? I do! But wouldn’t without Google. That song always used to make me tear up as an adolescent. Now it just reminds me of being a kid. And sticks in my head for hours after hearing it. Also, why are Greensleeves and Canon in D (Pachelbel’s Canon) in the radio station’s Christmas music rotation?
- While Ctrl+T is good for me, Ctrl+Q almost always screws me up. Thank goodness for Auto-Save because shutting down the whole program in the middle of a document drives me nuts.
- I know money doesn’t “buy happiness” but there are days I wish I had oodles to give away where it could really help.
It just occurred to me that it’s Wednesday. Payday!
December 16, 2008
after tax and shipping.
I just bought this lovely thing which should be delivered in about a week:
A few specs:
15.4 inch screen
3 GB with capacity to upgrade to 4 GB
250 GB hard drive
4 USB ports
If I’d been willing to spend twice as much, I could have gotten a smaller screen size – 14.1 inches was my ideal, and a much lighter machine, but now’s not the time to be splurging that much.
I was swooning over the Lenovo U series — starting at 2.47 pounds? Yes, gorgeous, come along with me …… But I don’t have two thousand to spend on it.
Budgetary Note: That’s pretty much cleared out almost my entire gift/travel fund.
December 15, 2008
Blame it on the cold – my synapses are frozen. No less than five times this morning I’ve remembered and forgotten what I needed to call and ask my best friend, what I was just going to do a minute ago, what I need to write on my to-do today list, what notes to add to my reminder post-it. That’d be five times, each, my friends. *tsk*
I’m about to forget my own head, and it’s still attached to my body!
Hm, also blame it on being so busy this weekend that I essentially took it off from the mile-long list of chores and wrapping-up activities associated with changing just about everything in your life. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but trying to start over, alone, in a new place, and not having a home base to come back to is a whole new experience for me. And the weather backed up the traffic and transportation all morning so that I started the day running pretty late. 😛 I like rain but the first few days are always tough on transportation.
In good news: we might have a buyer for the truck! Cross your fingers with me that this will go through. That’s another thing to take care of, actually. I need to get an ETA on the title, am considering paying it off right now to hurry up the process but I will call the financing company first to find out what the best procedure will be. The lump sum wouldn’t clean out my expense fund, and if the buyer is serious about this and paying cash, it’ll be “paid back” right quick.
Also in good news: I have a nibble on the applications front. Kind of scary, but good, too.
Oh, and Ctrl+T? Every time I think of yet another thing to do, call, work on, etc., I open up another browser window and type it in. That way I’m forced to deal with each item before I can close the window. That doesn’t work well when I spastically Ctrl+W too quickly, though.
December 12, 2008
The feeling of material satiety has worn off with a vengeance. This feels a bit like a rebound from my “Simplify, simplify” mode and I’m not fighting it as hard as I should. The e-fund is still fine, but I hit a plateau when I got sick for two weeks. That meant no overtime. In fact, I had to burn some sick time. That’s what it’s for and I’m grateful to have it, but with the ability to overearn has gone my spending/acquisitive restraint and determination to build up the money reserves while I still can.
1. The dental visit made me feel like I should check with my dentist friend about whether or not he’d recommend getting a new electric toothbrush. I don’t want a single additional cavity, and since the current dental care regimen is evidently not doing the job, something needs to change. New electric toothbrush: ~$100?
2. Flat iron for self, friend (X-mas gift): $150?
3. Laptop: $650?
4. Boots: My older pair are too worn and, most importantly, hurt my feet. Winter weather always makes me long for comfortable boots to keep me warm, and browsing online hasn’t helped the neediness: $50? $70? Meh.
5. New towels: I’ll use a gift card.
6. Interview suit: I keep thinking that I can just wear my old one but let’s not kid ourselves — I couldn’t, er, latch the hook in July and I won’t be able to now, either. There’s an odd feeling: $200?
7. New coat: The thought of moving to a place that has Real Winter scares the bejeebers out of me. That’s probably why I can’t stop dreaming of new puffy coats, gloves that actually fit, scarves, hats and vests. 40 degrees is COLD, people! Frigid! Unbearable!
Where do I think this money is coming from?? Nuts. I’ll pass on the boots, coat, and the flat iron for myself. The travel/gift fund can take care of the flat iron gift and part of the laptop, the rest will have to come out of my expenses. Er, the suit? Well, let’s see if I can cobble together a sharp enough outfit from my regular business clothing to get by. Otherwise, I might try the (new! local!) H&M for separates to be tailored. I don’t want to cheap out on an interview outfit but I shouldn’t bust into the savings, either. I need that for rent! (Then again, I need a new job to pay the rent, too.)
Oooh there’s that “I hate spending money” feeling back. Whew, I thought I’d lost my mind there.
Is anyone else self-gifting this season?
December 11, 2008
As it turns out, going to the dentist IS better than going to work. The experience, I mean, not the paying seven hundred dollars instead of getting paid a fraction of that price tag. (Not that I paid $700 — I paid $78, and thank goodness for the dental insurance that picked up the rest! Can you imagine a routine visit costing that much money?? Do they have COBRA for dental? Eeesh.)
What I mean to say is: I spent 2.5 hours at the dentist having 4 almost-cavities drilled and filled, and I was much less stressed than I would have been at a comparable time in the office. It was a very scientific study.
Other things I accomplished in one day:
Dropped off dry cleaning before their one-day cutoff time.
Lovelied up the eyebrows. ($15)
Lunched with newly employed friend and caught her up on sad news. ($7)
Met with two old friends I haven’t seen in months, played with baby.
Picked up dry cleaning. ($10)
Picked up doggy ashes, chatted with old friend.
Dropped off doggy ashes.
Ok, see, my day seemed a heck of a lot fuller than that list shows. Really! I drove all over three towns to accomplish as much as … that. Thank goodness for sick time. I feel like there were a thousand other things I should have gotten done today because I’ll be busy all weekend, but I won’t undo all the good relaxing by stressing about what-should-have-beens. Oh I remember! I wanted to see if I could get my eyes checked today too, but oops! Forgot. Oh well, I have a clean trenchcoat! And isn’t ten dollars ridiculous for dry cleaning a coat? I should have read the tag before buying. Unless it just didn’t matter because I have the hardest time finding clothes that fit.
