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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May 23, 2008
Inconveniently, I’m struck with the urge to start combing through my bookshelf and weeding out books and DVDs that I no longer read or never watch. My prior experience with listing on Half.com was disappointing, so I haven’t been at all inclined to use them again, but Saving Diva and Sense have got me enthused again. Unfortunately for my newfound spark, I may have plans tomorrow night to see a friend, and then I’ll be out of town for the weekend.
I tend to clean and declutter in spurts when I feel like it, so I hope this doesn’t wear off before I get a chance to really get a lot done!
May 22, 2008
As part of my All-About-Me day earlier this week, I took myself to see Iron Man! (Is that very strange sentence construction? I felt like I took myself on a date, so that’s how I’m phrasing it.) I’m usually very skeptical of comic movies because I’m convinced that they’re going to ruin the story, but I really enjoyed the movie. Robert Downey, Jr., surprised me, pleasantly, as did the dialogue. Yes, they did take some liberties with his history for the sake of building the storyline, but in the context of the movie, it worked.
Other than driving way too much, I spent very little all day. I ate a light breakfast at home, went to a different mall to find my bag but didn’t, and watched a movie using my cheap AMC pass from months ago.
I spent some time browsing stores at another mall while waiting for my Genius Bar appointment, browsing at Borders, and searching futilely for a Nine West so I could do something about my broken flats. No luck on the Nine West, but I did get my iPhone replaced.
Made another grocery run, picked up oh-so-healthy Jeno’s pizzas, and some fruit for my lunches this week. They also had sharp cheddar cheese and multi-grain bread on sale, plus with peel-off coupons, so I ended up spending $19 on groceries. The Jeno’s pizzas are a complete guilty pleasure, but at 69 cents a pop, I’m not feeling TOO guilty.
As my head hit the pillow late that night, I found myself thinking, “That was awfully nice … I really need to do that more often.”
May 21, 2008
My first payouts were received this weekend, and I’ve transferred $33.50 to my house fund. How exciting! I think I’m going to alternate payments between the travel and house fund, in increments of $100. It was only appropriate that the first payout go towards the house since the travel fund has been established and funded.
I just have to keep creating little bits of income to ‘flake into those accounts. I love the feeling of progress!
This is a bit more outrageous than the skyrocketing ticket prices, and the charge for an additional checked bag: American Airlines plans to start charging $15 for the first checked bag on June 15th. The free preview blurb on WSJ states that the fee applies to “some fliers” but as I can’t read the whole article, I don’t know which statement is more accurate. Now, I can understand limiting the additional checked bag: reducing that much extra weight, or receiving some compensation for it to offset the costs of gas makes sense. They’ve got to be able to do business, after all.
But, charging for the first checked bag? What’s next, carry-ons? They should understand that their cost-cutting measures will soon reach the point of diminishing returns. In an informal poll, more than half of the poll takers indicate they’d rather stop checking bags than pay the fee. And in a lot of cases, that’d be my reaction. But for long distance flights where not checking a bag isn’t an option? I just won’t even fly American. And if they start losing passengers, if they’re flying more seats than people because it’s not worth it to pay an extra $40 ($15 for the first, $25 for the second) for checking two bags, that rather defeats the purpose of cutting costs and increasing revenue, doesn’t it?
Perhaps my reaction is a little extreme. After all, if the ticket prices are low enough to stay competitive, even taking the checked bag fee into consideration, perhaps this isn’t a bad move on American’s part. It is in line with the trend towards a la carte services that most airlines have taken with food and other amenities.
What do you think? Will you continue to fly this airline, and if so, would you pay to check your bags or will you become a super-carry-on packer?
The insurance policy has been rewritten, and the remainder of the last policy’s premium has been refunded to my credit card already. Whoop! It’s offset the entire balance on that card, with just under $300 left over as a credit on the card. This billing period ends on the 27th, and I don’t have any other bills (expected ones, anyway) to put on it, so I should be able to recoup about $200 or more to put towards my gas/groceries credit card. Squee!
May 20, 2008
It’s been a long three months with the iPhone, and the last two haven’t been very rosy at all.
Apparently, the phone isn’t accepting (or registering) phone calls, randomly, and doesn’t necessarily deliver all of my sent or accept received text messages. It also pretends that calls aren’t coming in when I’m using other features like email or internet, or vice versa, pretends calls are coming in and kicks me out of the applications when calls aren’t actually coming in. >:(
I’ve spent a good three hours on the phone with AT&T and Apple, and spent another two hours at the Apple store troubleshooting the dang thing. The guy at the Apple store was nice enough to just replace the phone, but like a fool, I hadn’t backed up all of my contacts, songs, and photos to iTunes because iTunes doesn’t work on my home laptop. *feeeeeh* Since I hate keeping personal information on my work computer, I decided to go with Option Idiot: just don’t back it up. And then don’t plan ahead for phone replacement. Luckily, the guy was also nice enough to burn a CD of my photos for me.
Now I get to reenter over 200 contacts.
Naturally, this leads to great temptation to find the money to buy my own Mac laptop to replace the 5-year-old Vaio that always has to be plugged in and has a perma-dark screen because the brightening function doesn’t work anymore.
Or, I could just get my butt in gear and figure out how to make iTunes work on my computer at home. Yeah. That’s the sensible option.
May 19, 2008
My Vanguard contribution has been knocked down to the minimum allowed: $12.50/check. Awww man. Now I’m sad. But, this will improve cash flow, and actually, increase the total amount that is considered 5% of my check when payroll calculates my matched contributions, so this could increase my matched money by a little bit. That’s not bad. We’ll see if that’s how it works out.