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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October 29, 2007
What a weekend! I’m working from home today because I had a doctor’s appointment, and I’m sure my desk will be a delight to return to.
Saturday should have been much more productive than it really was: I just picked up BoyDucky from the airport, had breakfast, ran a couple errands and got my hair cut. Speaking of, I should have known I was in trouble when the student and stylist instructor both asked “You mean, like Victoria Beckham?” Uhrm, no. So my hair’s pretty well lopped off, and I feel like I look like a boy. It’s ok, (insert *gag* here) BoyDucky says he still loves me. 🙂
Total Spend: $14
My run to Michael’s for a package of blank card stock/envelopes for bridal shower invitations was postponed until Sunday because I needed a coupon, yay for 40% off coupons, and then we spent the day at the hospital with BoyDucky’s dad. Lunch (Chipotle burrito) and dinner (Thai food) were his treat.
Total Spend: Original, $15. After coupon, $10.
Monday: I’m going to try to go through Physical Therapy to get a chiropractic referral. This neck problem has been around far too long, so I hope that a chiro will do the trick. Other than that, I just had to pick up a refill on medications, get stuck with needles for more labwork, and stop at Victoria’s Secret to combine a merch credit with my gift card.
Total Spend: $25
+ $10.76 credit.
Also, had it out with my brother about how he needs to get his act together, and not return cars running on empty. He swears that he’s through making empty promises, so he’s going to try to make it back to me with funds in two and four weeks. We’ll see. Things aren’t as dire as I make them out to be, but they will be, and I shouldn’t have to make more sacrifices of my own to fix his shortcomings.
My puppydog is being dramatic, stretched out by my foot in hopes that I’ll pet her, panting and verrrry quietly whining. She’s desperate for my attention so I’ll let her stay here while I try to work. It’d be easier without a dog’s snout under my foot, nudging every few seconds that I forgot to “pet” her, though!
October 26, 2007
the more circumstances force me to wish I COULD.
We were already sharing two cars between three of us: Pa&Ma, me, while my brother was gallivanting off in his own car that he hasn’t paid for in the last 4 months. Then, my idiotic brother comes home with totally thrashed brakes and finds out that it’ll cost $600 to fix them. Never mind the fact that, according to our agreement, he no longer has the right to be making any auto-related demands, he wants Pa to call up our mechanic family friend on a Tuesday to make him fix the car.
Right. Because we are all here to serve his needs when and if he decides to exercise his privileges. As if our friend doesn’t have a job and a family and other responsibilities. Idiot. So now, we’ve got one car between the three of us because the sedan can’t be driven until the brakes are fixed, and my idiot brother is taking the truck for unknown periods of time, without considering the needs of the THREE people at home who only have one car between them.
This normally wouldn’t annoy me so very much. Weekends I just try to stay home and not need a car, or I take the train during the week, but this weekend, I need a car to go pick up BoyDucky, finally spend a little time together over breakfast and get a haircut. And Monday I need a car to go to my doctor’s appointment. But I can’t assume my own car will be available all because of one enormously entitled, poorly trained, selfish family member. Just one. That’s all it takes.
I know we’ll make do. We always find a way. It’s just aggravating that we always have to.
For those of you who don’t already know this, I hate speaking in front of crowds. (And three is definitely a crowd.) I avoid it even more assiduously than I would the plague or getting my sandal caught in the back wheel of a racing motorcycle. In fact, if you gave me the choice between speaking in front of a lot of people, or hanging out in an enclosed area with a possibly rabid critter, the odds are great that I’d choose the rabid critter. Unless it was a snake. But they can’t have rabies, so that’s beside the point. I’m rambling because even the thought of public speaking makes me nervous.
The point is, I hate hate hate public speaking. And that brings me to what I’ve agreed to do two Saturdays hence. CoworkerFriend called to tell me that he was offered a position as a proctor for the SATs and knew of another slot open, if I were interested. Ever since I lost the overtime privilege at work, paychecks have been about a quarter of their usual value. An extra hundred bucks, give or take, didn’t sound so bad, until I realized that it entails speaking. Speaking in front of adolescents. A lot of them.
Yes, I’m just to read instructions, check a timer and write on the board, but it still requires being at the front of a classroom and “orating” to a bunch of kids. Like back in high school. You know, where I really LOVED that kind of attention being paid me.
Argh! There so many other things, anonymous computery things, that I’d much rather do using much more effort and much less talking out loud to people I don’t know.
Why am I so nervous? Heckling? Kids not listening? Tripping over my own words? I do that sometimes, on the phone. I’ll get some mangled version of my name out and hope the other person doesn’t notice. It’s still pretty embarrassing, though. I suppose I wouldn’t care about any heckling, I could theoretically just kick the kid out. Honestly, with some of my friends, heckling should be par for the course. I just get the shivers thinking about all those eyes, staring at me. Yuck yuck yuck! And no, I can’t just imagine they’re all in their underwear, they’re underage so that’s even more wrong than usual. *igh*
Well, I’ve been all wrought up about how I’m still awful at toasts, and that’s just in front of a small group of people I see everyday. I obviously need to break this phobia somehow, what better way than to do it in front of a group of kids I’ll never see again? And it’s not like I’ve got to do anything original, I just have to read off a booklet. *breathe* I can do this. Really. I can. Maybe this will be the beginning of the end of my phobia? Wish me luck!
October 25, 2007
SavingDiva reminded me that I’ve been hoarding points, and so I thought I’d check on a few of my points pots like the 5100 AMEX Membership Rewards points, and the Hilton HHonors points.
My Hilton HHonors card has been giving me 5 points per dollar spent on cell phone bills and restaurants for about 3 or 4 years now, and I’ve accumulated nearly 50,000 points. Hilton phased out their airline ticket redemption and points-to-miles transfer programs sometime last year, so the only options that I’d consider are hotel stays, and possibly gift cards.
With Christmas coming up and a history of never actually staying at a Hilton Hotel for leisure, it seemed like a good idea to check out the gift card options.
Would you believe that they offer $100 gift cards for 50,000 points?? That’s ridiculous! If I just save those points up for a couple-few days’ hotel stays, I’m pretty sure it’ll be worth more than a single $100 gift card. So much for that.
As for the AMEX points, I don’t plan to use the AMEX card much … or at all, really, so I’m going to cash out those points. I was on the fence about what to get, but the conversation over at Gilded Butterfly’s motivated me to think of a gift card that would do double duty as funding for stuff I need and as funding for Christmas gifts. Too bad I can’t redeem it for Amazon.com or Target!
I can do Linens ‘n’ Things, Barnes & Noble (completely not a necessity), or Banana Republic. Everything else is too frivolously high-end, like Bloomingdale’s, Talbots, L’Occitane, and Brooks Brothers.
October 24, 2007
I’m not feeling so hot tonight, which might be due to the terrible air quality, so I’m going to:
1. Not think about BroDucky. Fussing about him last night gave me nightmares, literally, about fighting with him. Nope. Not gonna think about it.
2. Not worry about scheduling doctor’s appointments.
3. Or dentist appointments.
4. Not think about the wedding.
5. Not worry about BoyDucky’s dad, and how MaDucky seriously needs better health insurance.
6. Not worry about how I’m going to come up with 40K for my half of the house investing venture in the next 8 months. I can crunch numbers on the train tomorrow.
7. Take a shower, get into bed by 8 pm. Read a book, if I feel like it, or just go to sleep if my head still hurts.
That’s it.
1. Living la college lifestyle: I spent from 8am Friday until 4 pm Monday en route or in lovely New York. I came in UNDER budget!!
2. We stayed at a friend’s apartment. He has a little tiny loft which never sees the light of day furnished with a lamp, a fan, a little nightstand looking thing, and a full size mattress. Lodgings: free. Exercise up and down 4 flights of stairs to the apt: free. Exercise up and down the loft’s ladder-stairs: free. Finding out that my big manly friend is scared of mice, seeing him run around in high-tops to avoid stepping on an inch-long mouse: absolutely priceless. You just can’t get that entertainment in any high-class hotel.
3. Dogs. There were dogs everywhere. I have a particular fondness for this fella ….
4. Moma. Target sponsors free admission from 4pm-8pm on Friday nights. Definitely a plus.
5. Central Park. Outdoor ice skating rink, piles of boulders to climb, long meandering paths bordered by green lawns and trees; I just can’t get over the feeling of actually being in nature right in the middle of the city.
6. Food. Lunch at Moonstruck Cafe…..
7. Food. New York Pizza ….
8. Food. Cheese balls and arepas ….
9. Food. Rice to Riches rice pudding ….
10. Food. Grilled corn from Cafe Habana ….
11. Food. Green Bo Restaurant in Chinatown ….
Yep. ALL about the food. Oh, of course, there’s a dessert shop within five minutes’ walking distance, open until midnight and a comic shop open until 1 am every night five minutes in the other direction. Bonus!
The trip was FANtastic. We ate, walked, ate, walked, and ate. Rinse and repeat. We discovered the 3:40 am last call, and the fun of walking past a gazillion bars until we found one our motley crew was happy with.
Sunday was a dedicated (Eating and) Shopping Day. Best friend shopped out of Friend E’s closet and netted about 20 items including a pair of shoes and a really cute bag for FREE. It didn’t make a visible dent in E’s closet, either. And then they took me shopping which was much less fun, but ultimately successful. I’ll save that for tomorrow’s post, though.
*sigh* I love New York.
October 23, 2007
My file maintenance leaves much to be desired. There are no regularly scheduled purges or reviews, I don’t have an actual plan for when papers are to be destroyed. I just go by the “I can’t fit any more in this old desk drawer” method.
I’ve been thinking that for the past several months as I winced pulling out the hefty 4 inch files, and again when I crammed them back in, hoping that the drawer rollers wouldn’t fail me each time. Finally the thought occurred to me that I still need to order my annual credit reports and that when I received them, it’d be a good time to go through the drawers and make some decisions about which credit cards to consolidate and kill. Also, which records to pull and shred.
That highly logical thought was followed by an OCD-like reaction: no, let’s just go through it now. Just a file or two. Just the ones you have to pull out anyway. An hour later, surrounded by piles of papers to shred, cards to shred, paper clips to reuse, and a few more files to go, I’m struck by reminiscences of my first forays into finance.
They’re all right here.
“DO NOT USE UNTIL PAID OFF.” Printed in large block letters on the paper that new credit cards come in, my first balance transfer was in 2004. I used a Citi Dividend Select Platinum card to pay off two Capital One balances for my mom. Back then, I only had a $5000 credit limit on that card, and it was only the first $5000 of many thousands of dollars worth of debt that I would ultimately pay off for them. I remember being nervous and excited, chock full of my discoveries on Fatwallet Finance, and so full of optimism and youth. Maybe I couldn’t save the world, but I was going to rescue my parents, dangit.
Careful records of credit card statements, with every single associated receipt clipped to each statement. Color coordinated highlighting to distinguish between household charges and personal charges.
An application to enroll in the Citi Driver’s Edge Drive Rebates program. One of my many failures to take advantage of a program that could have netted me a LOT of rebate cash. *sigh* I still feel stupid about letting that slide, month after month. It looks like I still have $78.94 worth of Driver’s Edge rebates to use. That’s good to know.
IngDirect, 2004. My first online savings account. Oh, how I loved it. The stack of orange statements eventually become intermingled with the white statements of Emigrant Direct, slowly, gradually. Now it’s mostly Emigrant Direct, even though I don’t think I’ve gotten a paper statement from them since 06/30/07. I can see when I started getting careless, too. May 31, 2006 was when I stopped hole punching and filing the pages. Just slipping them in atop the previous statements was good enough for this gov’ment’s work.
A Notice of Action or Payment from the dentist. ARGH! I still haven’t gone to the dentist this year! *ashamed* I have dental insurance, I’m payin’ for it, and haven’t used it once this year. Shame on me!
Cell Phone: I’ve had my 1000 minutes/month plan for at least 2.5 years. I’m spoiled, even though I haven’t paid more than $50/month at any point.
There’s also a page ripped out from an Entertainment Weekly 2000 Year-End Special featuring a 21-year-old Kate Hudson on one side, and 32-year-old Hugh Jackman as Wolverine on the other side. I love them both, so that’s staying in the drawer. ’til we meet again!
Trends: Credits to my accounts. I’ve flipped through about 4 files containing at least 8 credit cards’ worth of statements. Sure as the sky’s full of ash tonight, I’ve made some dumb mistakes but it appears that I’ve not really hesitated to ask for a credit on my account, deserved or not. The credit card companies, Citi, Chase, American Express, have all obliged.
I’m really selectively organized. I’ll update all these files from years and years ago without missing a single one, but keep small piles of things to file on my desktop for weeks. It annoys me, but there they stay, gathering dust, until I’m good and ready to put them away. And then there are times like now, when I can’t find my darned paperclip box to put away the pile of reclaimed paperclips.
It’s hard to believe that I started this crusade 3 years ago and many a harsh and bitter lesson has been learned. Some of the lessons are quantifiable: I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars in rent. I’ve paid for just as much debt, not my own, but still, debt. I’ve finally learned to pull back and stop throwing money at the problems, especially since I never made that much, and started throwing it at my savings. At investing, and at the future. That’s resulted in a healthy sum of retirement funds, and a humble pile of emergency savings. That’s progress. Other lessons aren’t so measurable: don’t trust BroDucky farther than you can throw him. Don’t don’t don’t! lend money you can’t afford to lose. Stop blindly trusting your parents, when they’re out to protect you and you just need the truth: you will clash.
I’ve been scaling this edifice of familial duty for 7 years, and I still haven’t learned that I can’t save my family. To be honest, I have to laugh at myself for thinking that I could. How naive! Things have changed, yes, but more for the worse than the better. But, maybe it’s not a lesson I’m meant to learn. After all, families are messy. They’re demanding, they’re character building. Most compelling of all, they’ve been my motivation. Without them, I bet I wouldn’t have felt the call to explore financing, to cut bills down to the bone, to really bear up under all the needs of a family and find a way through. These are all skills that have contributed to my growing up. Like Reba McEntire said, “How was I to know I’d be ok?”
It’s been 3 years. I’m still doing alright. I’ll be ok. I think I have what it takes.
Oh, but I still haven’t ordered the dang credit reports. I’ll get right on that.
