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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August 22, 2008
This quote from Michael Phelps in the Festival of Frugality over at Four Pence Worth really resonated with me:
“Back in the winter, at 5.30am, when I didn’t want to get up and train on some cold and dark morning I’d still make myself snap on the light and look inside my swimming cap. ‘Athens’ is stitched on the inside. I’d get up then. I’d grab my bag and head for the pool. I’ve been doing that 365 days – year after year. I can’t remember the last day I didn’t train. Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day. I haven’t missed one of ‘em for years. And every single day I got that word, Athens, running right round my head.”
It’s not that I have training to do, and I’m certainly not headed for anything so incredible as competing in the Olympics, but I definitely suffer from I-hate-mornings-itis. And you know what? A visual reminder to combat my hatred of getting up could be just the ticket to get my cranky, sleep-deprived self out of bed. And, eventually, to better utilize those early hours in pursuit of career development. It’s such a small, simple thing to do, for such great dividends. And more, though I am intrinsically motivated and driven 98% of the time, even I can get disheartened and lose focus over time.
I need to program a message to myself on my phone to accompany my morning alarms.
Not wholly unexpected, I’ll admit, but somehow one of the DMV registration bills slipped through the cracks and wasn’t entered into my planner. While filing an already paid registration bill, I realized that the one at the top of the file was one coming due today. That’s another $145 deduction from the auto maintenance fund. Rats. I cannot wait until I’m only paying registration and insurance for one or two cars, not three.
August 21, 2008
No, no, not from MY wedding, from the wedding we attended this past weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous. The winery was way up at the top of a mountainside, and overlooked the vineyard. It was really cold and breezy at first, but warmed up to the perfect temperature within minutes of the ceremony.
The view from ceremony area:
The reception area:
The view from the balcony:
The spiky plants that look like lychee to me:
The program fan: each page had a little proverb or quote at that bottom.
What $6000 worth of flowers looks like: the family encouraged everyone take them all home at the end of the night
A salad roll! It was lovely to look at, but it would have been tastier if it had consisted of more than just spinach.
We had at least a dozen wine servers during dinner. It seemed like they had an army: three drink servers would descend upon each table every drink rotation. I suppose that’s the most important thing to the winery, their other servers were a little off their beat because they tried to serve half a table’s dinners before bringing out salads. Oops!
It was a short and sweet ceremony, which I always appreciate because my attention tends to wander, and there were hors d’oerves galore: a spring roll station, a sushi station, a wine tasting station, an open bar (open the ENTIRE TIME), an assorted candies station with little Chinese takeout boxes designed for the guests to fill up on their own favors, and servers walking around with rectangular serving plates with six little servings of each food. I can’t imagine how many times those poor folks had to go back to refill on the banana topped, brie-filled brioches, the cheese stuffed figs, or several other items that I can’t even remember. Oh, and we can’t forget the coffee and tea station because BF promptly spilled coffee on his shoes. Honestly, I’m just glad I didn’t pratfall on my way out to bring him napkins, we’d be the klutziest pair there.
There was a string quartet playing before the ceremony and a DJ for the rest of the evening, and the older folks had an absolute blast because they played mostly oldies.
The pf blogger in me was quietly more than a little amazed at how people could afford the kind of money this wedding cost. I’m just now toting up the prices in my head, thinking, the amount of effort that went into this is far more than I’d be willing to commit to a wedding for myself, much less the resources. The venue alone must have been $8000 because it’s still summer and wedding season, it was on a Saturday and lasted the entire day. As early as everything started, complete with several limo buses to ferry people up the mountain, they had to have booked the winery for the entire day. Oh yes! They had luxury limos to bring their guests to and from the wedding site to the selected hotel. Amazing. I’m pretty sure the limos were reserved for the full day as well because the invitation stated that the limos would be available to return people to the hotel for a four hour block before the festivities ended for those who wanted to leave early. We already know the flowers were $6000, from the groom’s mother, and that’s a cool $15,000 just for a place, before all the catering, drinks and service, music, or any other wedding party accoutrements.
As lovely as it was, as gorgeous as the entire ceremony and all the trappings were, I felt absolutely certain that the older I get, the less I want this kind of wedding. I’m not sure what I’d want, I can’t quite picture it other than not to be the center of attention, but the fuzzy edges of the image of what I’d enjoy certainly looks much less grandiose.
August 20, 2008
I’ve gotta say, my insurance company has been crap at following up with the arbitration decision on my car accident back in April of last year.
After today’s call, the twentieth follow-up call since arbitration dates were set, I’m walking on a little cushion of forgiveness-air: the guy who hit my car was deemed 100% at fault and I get all my money back!!
(That’s right, jerk, that’s what you get for driving recklessly, speeding, cutting off at least 4 cars and then lying about it.)
I can’t even remember if I had to take that $1000 for the deductible out of my car fund or from my expenses fund anymore, but I need to decide where it goes. I’m told that I can expect the check by the end of this week. Squeeeee!
August 19, 2008
right out of my wallet!
I have a couple $20 reimbursements from my dad that I needed to take to the bank. Instead …
– $10, to reimburse my coworker who covered me for an unexpected office farewell lunch last week (yes, we get to pay for our own now. Joy.)
– $3.79, yesterday’s tuna salad sandwich because I haven’t gone grocery shopping for 2.5 weeks.
– $3.79, today’s sandwich … didn’t go grocery shopping yesterday either.
Total: 17.98
I have GOT to get that cash into the bank before I spend it all on lunches!
We hiked Multnomah Falls ….
visited the second VooDoo donut location ….
And even tried out the bacon maple bar! I thought it’d be the grossest thing EVER but … it wasn’t. The idea still creeps me out, though.
Speaking of creepy …. this is the world’s creepiest bathroom at Rimsky-Korsakoffee House:
This is what you see when you walk in the door and turn right. AUGH!
In all fairness, the House itself was quaint, cute, quirky as all get out, and all that stuff, but I will never EVER use that bathroom.
August 18, 2008
I was on the hunt for a copy of a book that was recently recommended: Carrie Black’s Basic Black.
I checked Paperbackswap.com first, since I’ve got some credits on that site, but no dice. I checked retailmenot.com for Borders.com coupons in case they still have that dandy 40% off coupon, no go there either.
I went to Amazon, and found that my preference, the paperback, isn’t out until September 9th, and Amazon’s currently offering a pre-order option with a Price Guarantee. If you haven’t heard of it before, the details are as follows:
Pre-order Price Guarantee
Amazon.com’s price for not-yet-released items sometimes changes between the time the item is listed for sale and the time it is released and shipped. Whenever you pre-order a book, CD, video, DVD, software, or video game, the price we charge when we ship it to you will be the lowest price offered by Amazon.com between the time you placed your order and the end of the day of the release date. A pre-order price guarantee message will appear on your Order Summary during the checkout process. If you use 1-Click ordering, pre-order price protection will be automatically applied. The order summary in Your Account will reflect the lowest price within 24 hours of the price change.
Terms and Conditions:
- Pre-order Price Guarantee applies only to items sold by Amazon.com, and not to items (or prices) offered by other sellers on our site. Does not apply to any products purchased at Amazon.com’s other sites, including Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.ca, or any other web site operated by Amazon.com or its affiliates.
- Pre-order Price Guarantee applies only to not-yet-released books, CDs, videos, DVDs, software, and video games sold by Amazon.com. It does not apply to other product lines or to items that have already been released.
- Pre-order Price Guarantee applies only to qualifying items displaying the offer message on their product detail pages. Items that do not display the offer message do not qualify, regardless of the nature of the items.
- If your order enters the shipping process before the release date and the price is lowered before the end of the day of the release date, we will automatically refund your credit card for the difference between the price you were charged and the release-date price. If you did not use a credit card to pay for your order, please contact Customer Service.
The price ranges from $15 (after shipping) for a used copy of the hardcover, to $17 for a new copy from Amazon and it qualifies for Super Saver Shipping.
Because it was published in 2007 (so, recently) and I don’t have a whole lot of faith in our library, I checked our local library catalogue online without getting my hopes up and voila! They have it! I should really check there first. Unfortunately, my work schedule just changed today and I’m going to be stuck at work late every night for the rest of this month. Gar. Maybe my cousin will be able to make a stop for me.
