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 30, 2008
My Shell gas cards came in the mail! Yay! I also got more points deposited into the Thank You account, so I might be redeeming for another $50. I was going to try and squeeze one out of my MyPoints account, but I’m not earning points fast enough there: I’m short about 2000 points. That’s a lot of clicking!
So is my new Verizon bill. š I’m thinking of canceling call waiting and the inside wire maintenance. The inside wire maintenance is a monthly fee that’s meant to serve a phone maintenance insurance. With it, they won’t charge you a service fee if you have problems with the phone, and they have to send a technician out. Without it, I think the service fee is $25/visit, though I can’t find the link to verify that charge anymore. Labor would also be charged. Ok, I’m a little iffy on canceling this service right now, but I’m definitely canceling the call waiting.
In iPhone news, they replaced the phone AND the SIM card. That meant I had to reactivate service, reset everything again, and that also meant that officially, my 2-year contract with AT&T started anew. Argh! Even though I’m only 4 months in, I don’t want to be tied to AT&T any longer than I have to. On the bright side, the phone appears to be, mostly, working better than it was before. I’ll know better in about a week. For the record, my complaints were not unfounded: they ran an incident record retrieval on the phone, and there were 35 dropped calls in the last two weeks. That doesn’t count the number of times that the calls were dropped and the phone shut off completely.
Wish me luck!
June 29, 2008
’tis noon. ‘Tis noonish, and there’s a very light cool breeze gently sneaking through the window every so often to keep my room nice and comfortable, but not enough to do more than jiggle the leaves on the plants in the courtyard.
It’s just about perfect out there. So what am I doing inside??
I just can’t decide what I want to do, and in what order.
I’ve made my grocery shopping list for this week’s lunches: whole wheat bread, some tuna, cheese, salad kit, half pound of sliced roast beef. When I worked out the math, the deli meat is cheaper than the packaged sort, even when it’s on sale. Go figure. I think this week’s lunch list (and breakfast) will run about $15.
iPhone has a new bag of tricks: it claims it has at least 3 bars of reception and drops every single call I make from home. Every. Single. Call. The other day, it just shut off in the middle of a call, and I couldn’t turn it back on. Twice. Visual VM wouldn’t work, half a day. *sigh* I DID get all my contacts entered into Yahoo, so I’ve got to go to the Genius Bar and beg them to give me another one. Or something. ‘Tis a frustration.
Must check on friend. Poor thing has panic attacks, and I spent an hour giving her a massage last night to try to ward another one off. I think it worked! Well, unless she had one after I left, but I think she was ok. My muscles feel like man muscles now, though. At least, what I imagine man muscles would feel like after exertion: all sore and worked out. I shouldn’t mind looking a bit more muscley, I could use some meat on my bones. We watched the track and field Olympic trials last night, and those girls had some very impressive muscles. They weren’t scary and gross like bodybuilders, they just looked terribly terribly fit, with very lovely, toned muscles. I like athletic bodies, they look so healthy! Oh, and if anyone has suggestions for warding off anxiety/panic attacks, your advice would be MOST appreciated. I don’t mind giving massages in the least, but even my fingers and arms get a bit worn out after a few of them. And I don’t actually know enough about it to be really helpful, my approach is just to distract her, make her laugh, or make her relax. That’s sort of a limited repertoire.
Laundry and ironing. Um, I just don’t want to iron. That’s all, just don’t want to. Cause I’m laaaazy.
And I’m awfully tired. It’s so odd, I woke up at 3:15 this morning, convinced that someone had bitten my shoulder. Uh …. noooooo ….. I was so confused, and then confusedly amused, that I couldn’t get back to sleep for about 30 minutes.
I think I’ll take my usual approach: Worst things first. I’ll go iron and start a load of laundry. Go to the Apple store later this evening, take friend along if she’s up for it so she can get out of the house for a short jaunt, and stop at the grocery on the way home.
June 27, 2008
One tomato and cucumber, each sliced.
A handful of chicken breast, sliced.
A handful of pork with a smidgen of onions, sliced.
Orowheat whole wheat bread.
Mayo.
Combine all ingredients in layers on the bread, smush together, and it makes the best sandwich. EVER. I was quite sad when I finished eating because it was so delicious! I wished that I’d taken a picture, too, but that might have seemed a little weird.
And a coworker went on an ice cream run, and brought back a veritable smorgasbord of ice creams: Strawberry Shortcake bar, Raspberry sorbet bar, Drumstick, almond and chocolate covered vanilla ice cream bar, and Dibs! I, of course, went for the Dibs. They were tiny morsels of deliciousness.
Happy Friday everyone!
Seriously, in a day, these pants went on Final Sale for $19.98 which I could completely afford …… and all the khaki, not size 16 petite, pants are GONE.
I guess we weren’t meant to be.
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Ough, I’ve been eyeing these cropped pants from Ann Taylor for what seems like an age. It’s probably been about a month since I tried the 00P, and found that they fit a treat.
I’d been wanting to replace my old capris for a few years now, having gotten rid of them long before I ever found a substitute pair, because they were really stretchy, formfitting, and too casual for work. Heck, sometimes I felt like they were just too casual at all.
As usual, they fit, but the price didn’t. On sale, they were $50. Nuh-uh, that’s way too expensive! I do have a gift card (heh, of course) but only for $30 and I’m not willing to spend that much on a pair of pants.
Just checked on them again today, and they’re still $50. Looks like AT’s will is still stronger than mine. Or is that the other way ’round since I still refused to buy them? Actually, it’s a draw right now. Le sigh. Oh well. I’ll just keep checking back. If the price drops to a gift cardable level and they still have my size, we were meant for each other. If not, I’ll live.
It’s almost shameful that it’s taken me this long to try our local farmer’s market. It’s only a few step from my train stop, and it’s usually going strong from April through October, 5-8 pm, once a week. The biggest obstacle has always been that the closest booths to the train station are the food booths, with kettle corn, funnel cakes (mmmmmm), and bbq stands all in the way of my fresh produce. Fearing for my wallet, I’ve simply never deemed it a worthwhile endeavor to out-willpower the funnel cake.
Today, I marched myself all the way to the produce area and found my three tomatoes, three short and fat cucumbers, and a pound of green beans for all of $3.73!
The green beans look super fresh, and the tomatoes and cucumbers should hold me over until our harvest at home. I think we should be ripe and ready for picking in about a week or two?
Wonderful SoCal weather and soil that we have, our plants have blossomed and fruited in what seems like no time at all.
June 26, 2008
Boston Gal’s posting of this WSJ article about folks who are cutting back on their retirement savings made me feel guilty.
I know that I had a perfectly good reason for doing it, but it still stings that not only did I cut down, massively, on contributions, my account keeps dropping like a rock and doesn’t even reflect the amount of contributions I’ve been making since the beginning of the year. At this rate, I’ll never crack $25,000! [I’m not talking about overall, just between the 401(a) and 403(b).]
Ok, that’s not guilt I’m feeling, I’m just disheartened.
The important things to remember:
1. The reduction is temporary. It does not affect my match because I’m maxing out the 401(a) which is the only account that is matched.
2. Finances have to be flexible to accommodate when life happens. Obstacles are inevitable, and stubbornly stashing hefty amounts in my retirement fund while cash flow suffers does not make sense.
3. I’m simultaneously working on reducing all expenses so as to narrow the gap between expenses and income. This reinforces the temporariness of this solution. I’d like to see the gap closed in a matter of months, but it’ll take some more mathing, when I have time.
