Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

I've had writer's block since the end of April. I really hit a wall with it, but last night it finally ended and I wrote five pages. It probably would have been more but it was late and I needed to go to sleep. But I've got lots of ideas now and I'm sure I can get another ten pages at least today.

Of course, I have to do yard work and harvest some food from the garden and add some compost around the cucumber vines and the kohlrabi and take the kids to the pool for an hour at least, so I probably won't get to it until after supper or possibly after the kids go to bed tonight. But at least I feel like I'll finish this book before the end of the year. Which is my goal.

Today is a much more manageable 75 degrees. Still a little hotter than I like but soooooo much better than yesterday's temp. The house is nice and cool from the fan's running all night and early morning. And I don't have to use the oven, so it won't get hot from that.

We aren't going anywhere today so it will be a no spend day. I do need to schedule some electronic payments to be made for next week, but I count those as made on the day they go through.

Shoot, I know there was something else I wanted to blog about today. Phooey. Well, it'll come to me eventually.

Okay, so as I was complaining about earlier this evening, it is freakishly hot right now. So I've dusted of ye olde crockpots and borrowed one from Mom. That gives me three to work with. I have my three prong indoor/outdoor extension cord hooked into an outdoor outlet and I have the three crockpots lined up on my porch.

In crockpot number one we have potroast with potatoes, carrots, turnips, hubbard squash and parsnips. Out of this will come the regular potroast dinner, beef sandwiches, fajitas, and beef hash.

In crockpot number two we have two whole chickens with water, onions, garlic, carrots, parsley, and celery (including tops), salt and pepper, to make a nice stock that will be soup and the chicken will be used for quesadillas, sandwiches, enchiladas, tacos, a bit back into the soup, and added later in the week to a crockpot cacciatore.

And in crockpot number three we have beef ribs and barbecue sauce. No magic extra meals from this, but it will be a great melt in your mouth lunch tomorrow.

When the house is cool enough, at eleven or so tonight, I will cook up enough broccoli and cauliflower to use as sides for the week and roast some asparagus and some bell peppers. I'll also cook up some of my homemade sausage patties, so they will just have to be nuked in the mornings. I've done 3 pounds of salmon on the barbecue grill. Everything is going to be packages up into divided trays and meal-sized servings. Anything more than three days worth will be frozen and thawed as needed.

After tonight, I shall not have to cook again during this heat wave other than to nuke stuff, except breakfast time when I may do eggs, and a lot of breakfast is nuked anywho. So I will be a happy camper and will not have to heat the house up with the stove, a very important thing when you have no AC and only fans and the shade of trees to keep you cool.

Today was my weekly transfer of $10 to my ING savings account. That brings the new total in my Emergency Fund to $596.05. $1000 does not seem so far away anymore. My long-term goal for now is the have $5000 in that account. Although maybe I should call that my short-term long-term goal. Because my long-term long-term goal is to have six months of living expenses and that's oh, way off, and $30,000.

For now I just hope to hit $1500 by the end of the year. I think we can do that. $250 will come from the weekly ten, so that leaves just an additional $650 to come up with. We have another $150 rebate coming, so that will make it $500 to come up with. Which is about $84 a month to come up with. I usually make $30 a month at the least on surveys, so that leaves $54 a month to save.

Well, that puts things in perspective. I sure can save an additional $54 a month, no problem. I'm glad I took the time to figure this out.

Is anyone else melting? I cannot believe how hot it was today. It got up to 85. Now I know some of you from southern climes might scoff at 85, but 85 in western WA is like 115 in Nevada. Trust me, I've been there when it's 115, I know of which I speak. It's so humid today it feels like being slapped with a hot wet towel when you step outside.

I have a friend from Puerto Rico who came to visit a couple years ago. She thought I was kidding about our pesky little 85 degrees. By the time she was to go home she said she'd much rather deal with the heat in PR, than the heat in the Pacific North West.

So anyway, I've been uncomfortable most of the afternoon. It gets really cool at night, so last night I had a fan in every window and the house was actually cold in the morning, but not unpleasantly so. I kept all the blinds and curtains closed through the day. The house stayed pleasant until about two, which was when I headed in to pick up my kids in my nice, air-conditioned car.

I went to Costco first and bought protein, beef and fish and chicken, and also kosher all beef hotdogs, some Progresso chicken soup and shampoo, allergey pills, lens cleaners and a few other items I can't think of. Oh, and a fast and easy Chinese cookbook. I wanted to buy the other Chinese cookbook they had but it was coffee table sized. Not the size to put on a coffee table, but the size of a coffee table. I still might get it in the next pay cycle but it was awfully heavy and I'll have to think about it. It's not going to be an easy one to just whip out and use, but it had some lovely photographs. Spent exactly $127.00 at Costco. It always weirds me out when it comes out to a perfect whole number like that.

So, then I picked up the kids and we came home to a house that was now blazing hot. The outside temp was down to 70 by the time I got home around 6:30. They went down the road to play after helping me put away the groceries. I got the window fans going on the shady side of the house and opened the curtains, then turned the fans around on the sunny side of the house to pull the hot air out of the house and expel it outside, which also helps draw it in from the cool side.

The front road strips of grass were in shade so I went ahead and mowed them. It's been four or five weeks, I think since they've been done. I didn't feel too bad about it since no one else had been mowing their lawns either. Bet they will be now! Anywho, then I did the inside of the horseshoe flowerbed, which was in shade by then. I dumped the grass bag into the compost 3 times and it was stuffed full. To put this in perspective, a normal mow of those three areas will fill the bag once. I hacked down some burdock, too. Stupid stuff will take over if you let it.

I set the sprinklers in the garden to go for two hours. They'll go off at 9:20. It won't be dark until 10:20 and with this heat the plants will be dry by then.

Tomorrow I have to pick strawberries, harvest broccoli and check on the zucchini and squash plants. You should see my bush cherries. They are loaded. They won't be ready until they turn black though, probably another 3 to 4 weeks. They are bright red right now. The raspberries are just starting to turn slightly pink.

I also need to mow around the propane tank and maybe some of the back yard, and weed eat the parts in the front that are not accessible to the mower. I'm also going to cut back the clematis that has finished blooming. It's way overgrown but had too many pretty flowers on it to trim it sooner. It's supposed to be partly cloudy but still pretty hot tomorrow.

We'll probably spend an hour down at the pool as well. I want to set up our quick set pool but I have to mow the lawn in the back first though.

Last night when I dropped my DH off at the airport, I drove by the cheap gas station, an ARCO. I didn't need gas, but as usual I noted the price of gas there. It was at $2.75. Then after dropping off my kids, I saw a different gas station, a Chevron that was selling gas at $3.21 a gallon. Same grade. Same town. I expect to see a 20 cent gas difference between Arco and everyone else, as they have a local refinery here.

Now I know Chevron has the highest gas around, with Exxon and Shell running a close second, but a difference of 46 cents a gallon is ridiculous. Even the Valero out here in the county is only at $3.05, and county stations are often quite a bit higher than town ones.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that this Chevron is price gouging. It is right off the freeway, with a back route from the McDonald's parking lot into its lot as well, and easy to get in and out of from the street, but no way is the convenience factor worth 46 cents a gallon.

Even other Chevron's in town are in the mid to low teens. This one actually went up two cents from last weekend whilst everyone else's prices dropped. No excuse for this. It's on the corner of Iowa and King in Bellingham, in case there's anyone local reading this. They certainly won't get my business. I'm surprised they are getting anyone's.

My last mortgage payment was finally posted to my account and the new balance is $33,804.16. It is so nice to have gotten under $34,000! I like it when those numbers roll down.

DH recently went to Zillo and said they are listing our house as worth $137,000. To put this in perspective we bought the house in 1998 for $69,000. That's just $1000 short of having doubled in price. And this is just a country house. The city houses have tripled. It seems so crazy to me.

I know I've been on hyper post tonight, but just one more from me and then I'll shut up until tomorrow. I read this article online today.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/16FavoriteMoneyRulesOfThumb.aspx

It was very good and well worth the read and I did learn something new from her. I'm not sure I agree with it but I follow her reasoning.

She says to pay off the cards that are maxed out first, not the one with the highest interest or the one with the lowest amount on it. She says this because having cards maxed to the limit is worse for your credit report than the ones that have plenty of room left on them.

I suppose if you are trying to improve your credit report that might be the way to go, but if the object is getting out of debt period, I'd go another way, myself.

I am curious as to what others think on this.

Just came back inside after shooting off our fireworks. We definitely got our money's worth with what we spent. I'm just going to list here what I want to get again next year so I'll remember what was good.

Rustler (fountain)****
Purple Rain (fountain)****
Kahuna's Revenge (fountain)*****
Deep Purple (20 shooter)*****

I'm happy we did it. I got my taste of the 4th and now I can happily ignore it that night while Mom takes the kids to the big crowded show and I chill out on my own at home. I hate crowds. The only place I will put up with crowds is at Disneyland and even then it has to be the off season.

As most of you know I am a blog stats junkie, totally a silly thing but I love watching the stats. Yesterday I hit an all-time high of 1118 pages viewed. About 2 weeks ago I had my highest ever number of unique visitors in a day of 208, but the pages viewed that day was only half of what it was yesterday when I had 148 unique visitors. And for the month of June I had the highest number of hits ever with 18,713. It came closest to that back in March at 17,911. I had a bit of a drop off when I went on vacation at the end of April and then it slowly built back up again. I think I may have lost a few people when I didn't post that vacation week. Which may happen again the end of this month when we go to the island for eight days. Oh, well, I guess they come back eventually.

I deposited the money and sent it off to ING so the EF has officially met my goal of hitting $500 this month.

We stopped at the fireworks booth for Lion's Club charity and bought $80 worth of fireworks to let off tonight. Usually we spend closer to $150 to $200 so this is pretty good.

DH leaves for Alaska tomorrow, so this is the only way we have of doing fireworks as a family. He hasn't been home on the 4th in the last two years either, always leaves a day or two before it. Next year he should be home for it, I think and then will go to one of the big shows.

We have the sprinkler on soaking the area we will be letting them off on. We don't have much, mostly fountains and parachutes and sparklers. We have too many trees here for anything that goes airborn. I'm going to miss the artillary shells. Normally we would go out to my sister's house and combine our stuff, but since she moved at the end of last summer we can't do that this year.

Still we have Kahuna's Revenge and purple fountains that we get every year, and two other fountains, not quite as big as Kahuna but pretty close. And we all love the fountains anyway. Plus the climbing Panda that Tobias likes. And pop-its and those little bottles full of confetti. Way tamed down but it should still be fun.

I received my $150 rebate for my new laptop today from Office Depot. That money will be deposited today with the survey check and the rolled coin. I will send it off to ING as well. That will raise the total in my EF to $586.05. So I've met my July goal of hitting $500 in the EF. So I am going to make a new goal of hitting $650 by the end of July.

Of course, DH has a $150 rebate coming from Circuit City for his laptop. His rebate has been processed so that should be showing up soon, too. But I will adjust my goals accordingly. The real goal is to add $25 in addition to the normal $40 I put in each month. I want to reach that on top of what rebate money I put in.

Today I received a free Gillete Venus Breeze razor in the mail from Vocalpoint. It came with 6 $4 off coupons for the razor. I don't know if anyone else does Vocalpoint here, but the point of it is to use the product and talk about it to your friends and family and give away the coupons so other people can buy the product at a good discount. I had been wanting to get this razor at the store, but I held off thinking it was too expensive. Now I'm glad I did because free is always the best point.

I also got a "sample" side dish from Knorr in the mail today. It's actually a full-size package of chicken flavored rice and veggies. It says it makes 2 servings. This one I got through A Freebie Empire, which one of the newbies to the blogs wrote about last month. Can't remember which one, but thanks to whoever it was.

I swear I am the only person I know who has ever been called for Jury Duty more than once. And I only know 2 people besides me who have been called once. I've been summoned 8 times in the last 12 years and I am so sick of it. I've even thought of unregistering to vote just so they leave me alone, but I can't stomach that.

This time around I am going to try to get excused. I haven't always tried, but 4 times I have. Once when I had severe pneumonia, once when I was 8.5 months pregnant with my first child, and once when I was due to deliver my second child. In fact he was born on the day I would have had to report for my first day of JD. I had doctor's notes for all of those. The fourth time I was homeschooling my kids with my DH out of state and they let me out.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and plead financial hardship, because I can't afford to put my kids in some form of childcare, and I can't afford the gas to drive 55 miles a day, and my DH will be working in Alaska so there is no other parent to take care of the children. My relatives that might be able to help are in a different direction than the courthouse, so I'd be driving 110 miles a day to do this. Or else hoping my mother would take the kids for nearly two full weeks, rather unlikely.

You know, I really wouldn't mind serving again, because its is enjoyable, but it is just so hard to get everything in place to do it. And come on, I think I've done my duty four times!

I am hoping that since there has been a court case in my family since the last time I was called, I have been the victim of a crime, and I now have a close family friend who is a cop (came back from Iraq, went through the police academy and has been a cop a few months now), I'd be seen as far too biased as well.

Once my kids are grown, I think I'd love to do it again, though. Of course, they'll probably not send me a summons by then.

I received a survey check in the mail yesterday and I rolled up the coin in my coin jar today. I had:

$10.00 quarters
$10.00 dimes
$ 4.00 nickles
$ 1.50 pennies
-------
$25.50 total rolled coin
$10.00 check from NFO MySurvey
-------
$35.50 total to be deposited
$ 1.05 interest
-------
$36.55

So when that has all gone through my EF will then have a total of $436.05.

And there is the $700 from my vacation fund in there at the moment as well, all interest generated going to the EF. $500 here I come. I am hoping to hit that this month. There will be the four weekly deposits of $10.00, so I only have to come up with $23.95 to hit that goal.

If my other survey checks come this month or I get some Pinecone surveys to do I should hit that. If not, I'll try to squeeze it out of some other place in the budget.

Our new Comcast bill was due yesterday, 6/29. We paid it in person on 6/28 at the local Comcast office. In the mail today we got a late notice bill from them that was issued and mailed on 6/22. What kind of a business sends a late notice bill 7 days before the bill is actually due? Of course, it says if it has already been paid to disregard this notice. But hello? Don't send me somewhat "threatening letters" a whole week before the freaking bill is actually due. Stupid way of doing business, not to mention wasting paper and postage.

I deposited the check from the orthodontist. It was actually $286.80 and not $286.40. Then I sent it to ING. My little EF is starting to pick up some speed now. This brings the total to $399.50. After interet is deposited on the first I'll have hit the $400 mark. I'll be able to deposit all survey checks to the EF now that the vacation fund is topped off. I am waiting for a total of $65 to come, or it might be $70, I've lost track.

I am finally getting around to posting the bills I paid from last week's paycheck.

$910.37 Medical Mortgage
$400.00 House Mortgage
$282.22 Propane
$201.89 Comcast (installation charges on top of cable/phone/internet)
$ 44.58 Garbage (2 months)
$ 71.36 Cell phone
$ 84.00 Herald
$445.00 MBNA MC#1
$110.00 Power
$ 50.00 Physical Therapy
$185.50 Car insurance (3 months)

A fair chunk of change going out, there. Tomorrow is payday again, but not like this one. This is the big one for the month and has a full seven days of wages on it. Tomorrow's pay usually only has one and a half days on it. This time it will be two and a half days on it with the new schedule change, and it will be like that from now on. The first payday will have 4.5 days on it instead of 5.5 days, so the difference is at both ends of the cycle. Then we have one week where he doesn't get paid at all, out of every four.

I'm glad the vacation money is taken care of now. And the association dues, which I thought were due at the end of June are actually due at the end of July, so that makes me happy.

I forgot to list that I topped off the vacation fund on payday and it is now fully funded at $700.00. I put it all in ING so that it could earn interest between now and vacation. The interest will stay in the Emergency Fund.

I transferred my weekly $10.00 to ING today and that brings the money in the EF to $112.70.

I received a refund check from the orthodontist for $286.40 and once I deposit it I will add it to the EF. Which will bring it to $399.10. Oh, maybe I should throw in an extra 90 cents to make it $400. Though I may be close to that when the interest is added on the 1st. I've already earned 76 cents and there are still 3 days left in the month.

Three nights ago at 6:30 p.m. I got a phone call from my mother saying that her across the street neighbors had just taken down 3 enormous spruce trees. And they were giving it all away and did we want some. Yes, we did. So we bundled into the car and got there by 7:30 and worked until the sun went down around ten.

We came back yesterday and my mom had rented a gas-powered splitter, so yesterday and today that is what we did all day long. Split the rounds, split the splits, stacked it, loaded the pickup and brought it home, lather, rinse, repeat.

We got at least six cords, which when it is dry will get us through a year of heating. We cut a lot of it up fairly small so it would dry faster. I've got two cords of dry wood already so I can always burn some green with the dry so I'll be able to use it a little sooner.

We will fill up the indoor woodbox and wood cart so some will dry faster in the house as well.

We have transferred three truckloads home so far and have about four more. It's not a full size pickup so it takes a lot less at a time. We will hopefully borrow FIL's truck Friday or Saturday to move the rest in just two trips.

We are supposed to be in for another thunderstorm tomorrow and we both need a day off from such hard work anyhow.

Anyhow, this should in the long run save us about $1000 in propane usage. Not bad for what will end up being four days of work.

Oh, what a storm we had today. Gorgeous and loud and it even took the power out for a minute. Not long enough to be inconvenient, just long enough to have to reset the clocks on the stove and the microwave.

Spent $12 today on groceries. And generally spent the day totally vegging, reading stuff on line, watching The Sound of Drums. Completely taking the day off.

Tomorrow on the other hand is supposed to be beautiful and so that means yard work. A lot of yard work. Definitely will make up for the lazy day today.

DH and I had a great day by ourselves today. Spent more money, of course. We found the shoes for Mr. Bigfoot and there was a really good sock sale at Reeboks so we ended up buying socks for everyone. I've been wanting to do that for awhile, replace all the socks and have each person in the family have their own style, all matching, so I don't have to match socks in the laundry, and when one gets a hole in it all the other ones match up with it.

I think we got enough that I shouldn't have to buy them for two years, possibly two considering the quality of the socks. And they are big enough for the kids that even if they each go up three sizes they will still fit them. It's a really silly thing but it makes me inordinately happy to no longer have to match socks, just sort by size.

We didn't end up going to the movies, it was just so nice out neither of us wanted to be indoors for a couple hours in the middle of the day, so we just did a lot of walking around.

We had dinner at Outback and it was wonderful and I had enough leftovers for a whole other meal for tomorrow. We did not get super expensive things off the menu either, as it is possible to do Outback without spending an arm and a leg. Just have to avoid the appetizers, the drinks, and the seafood. Sigh. But it was still good even with all of that.

We filled up the nearly empty gas tank while we were down there as gas is always cheaper in that county than our own. And we got a dozen glazed from Krispy Kreme, totally unecessary spending. But we don't have one anywhere near us. So aside from that $7 for the doughnuts we didn't need, we dropped about $150 today. Pretty reasonable considering $45 was for gas at $2.93 a gallon and we filled the tank.

We spent a lot of money today. Well, for us its a lot of money. We bought a new desktop computer with flat panel monitor for $745. We'll get back a rebate of $150 on the computer and $50 on the monitor. So all told it will come out to $545.

There was no real fix to the old one. We could have replaced the power supply thingy that was fried and the motherboard that went with it for about half the cost we paid for the new one. We decided we'd just rather put that money into a new one instead. But the hard drive is okay and DH will be able to hook it up to the new one so we can retrieve all of our photos and the few documents and spreadsheets that were stored there.

I have been looking for awhile but was hoping to put it off longer, but then the PC went belly up and it really couldn't be postponed too much longer. And DH really wanted to just go ahead and get a new one and not try to fix or replace bits anymore on the old one.

So I decided not to stress about it and I'm happy with the result and so is DH and so will the kids be when we pick them up tomorrow night from my mother's house.

I got the final bill (at least I hope it is the final bill) from my surgery in May and I owe $1187.60 now that insurance has paid its portion. I'll call them on Monday and see if I can set up a payment plan of $200 a month. Or even $250. I wish it didn't have to be so darn expensive to have medically necessary services in this country. But that's another rant for a different day.

DH and I are going down to Burlington tomorrow to buy shoes for Mr. Bigfoot. He's a size 16 and it is hard to find them in our county, but there is an outlet mall that has a Van's store in Burlington that carries 16's.

We are also going to see a movie (Silver Surfer) and have a little date. We only see 2 to 3 movies a year in the theater, ususally some kind of sci-fi thing because they're always better on the big screen. Our other two movies this year will be Transformers and Harry Potter. DH really wants to see Transformers on the big screen. I wasn't that keen on it until I saw Josh Duhamel was in it, then I was okay. I did watch the cartoon as a child, but still...

But I really like Josh Duhamel. I was in the audience of a talk show when he visited the PNW a few years ago, back when he was still on All My Children, which I didn't watch, but I was really impressed with his manners and how respectful he was to the hosts and to the fans afterwards. So I followed his career after that and its nice to see him in a big movie. Plus, eye candy.

On the gardening front, I've got two heads of broccoli that are close to ready to harvest. I can't wait. There's nothing like going from garden to pot to table in less than an hour.

Today was payday, but I'm not going to get around to doing bills until Sunday I don't think. And that's about it from my little corner of the universe.

I did another survey with Your2Cents and cashed out today, so will have a $5.00 check coming. They say 6 to 8 weeks but they have never taken more than 3 to get here.

I took a 75 point survey with Lightspeed and a 50 point survey with GTM. I also caught up on my backlog of MyPoints. I'm close to getting a $20 gift card, though I'm thinking of saving my points up for longer and aiming for a $50 gift card that I can use at Christmas. I just need to cash out well before December so I don't face one of the card out of stock shortages like last year.

I added $10.00 to ING today bringing the total in the EF to $100.72. The vacation money is now in the account, so there is more than that in ING, but for accounting purposes I will continue to list them separately.

But it feels good to have hit the $100 mark again.

Just checked my stats page and sometime in the last day or two when I wasn't looking I hit 150,000 hits. Pretty cool.

Today is a no-spend day. I do like having those. I was very tempted to go down to the gas station and buy something earlier. Except there wasn't even anything I specifically wanted to buy. I just wanted to go look and "get something." How lame is that? Fortunately I recognized it for what it was, boredeom.

It was a very similar feeling to the one I get when I'm not really hungry but find myself peering into the fridge to see if anything "looks good." Again, boredom. I think I've been doing too much cleaning today so my mind is rebelling a bit.

I've got three loads of laundry hanging on the clothesline. The rain never showed up today, so hopefully its gone and I can get some more on tomorrow. Makes me feel frugal to hang it.

I need to finish cleaning up the kitchen. I made chicken soup in the crockpot this morning and I have a sink full of dishes that need to go in the dishwasher. But I'm in a real "I don't wanna" place. Dinner does need to started though and I don't want to have twice that many dishes in the sink when I finish with dinner so I suppose I'll have to.

It's 75 today. It's been quite a jump up the thermometer. I won't complain about it though or it might go away. I like 70 best. But 75 is preferrable to 60.

Tomorrow is the last day of school. It gets out early at one. And DH flies home in the morning. So its going to be a full family afternoon. Maybe we'll go for a bike ride.

I'm not looking forward to school being out. Well, Tobias is going to summer school until the end of July. His reading is behind. Both the teacher and I agree that it is because he is lazy and doesn't put forth the effort, there is no learning disability, but this program specializes in reading so I agreed to send him.

His sister was exactly the same way. It wasn't until the fourth grade when she really took off and left everyone else in her class in the dust. I'm not worried about him. And it will be nice to have him it four mornings a week from 9 to 12. He needs the structure or else he will run wild.

It is weird for me to have resistant readers because I was reading at 4 years old. But its not something I will stress about. T loves to be read to and I know it will click eventually, as it did with Rose.

Okay, I really better go tackle those dishes so I can get started on dinner.

I was able to confirm my CU this morning with ING, so I was able to transfer my vacation money over. It'll be nice to earn a little real interest on that money instead of 1%.

It finally stopped raining yesterday afternoon so I decided to bite the bullet and hung three loads of towels on the clothesline. It's sunny today and they should be dry by this evening. It just isn't very warm. It was 45 this morning. It is up to 70 now so possibly they are dry. Dunno. I'll check when the bus comes. Hopefully hanging laundry again might trim the power bill back down. Who knows?

It's supposed to rain again tomorrow. Hello, its June. Enough already.

...looking at cars online. Sigh. I saw something that looks just like what we need. It's a gorgeous well-maintained Ford mini-van with leather seats, 1995, 110K miles, in excellent repair, for $3200.

I am seriously thinking of scheduling a test drive on it. Of trading in the Blazer on it. We can definitely swing it. But do I want to exchange a 1996 for a 1995? Well, it's got 45,000 fewer miles on it than the Blazer does. And it is in working condition, whereas the Blazer needs the air conditioner and some other under the hood type thing fixed. We can do the payments no problem.

And the other thing is, its a Ford. We've had excellent luck with Fords. This Chevy has been nothing but a drain on us since the day we bought it. Not that I'm anti-chevy. My first car was a Chevy Nova (1976) that I got in 1988 and it is still out on the road today, I still see it going strong. But, it seems the old Chevy was a lot better than anything circa 1990's.

But, but, but, we think we can manage to wait another year before buying any replacement vehicles. So why do I go looking for these things when I know better?

The new rate increase came in the latest power bill. I am not very happy with it. Especially since my usage is so much lower than a year ago, when I was paying this rate. It's gone from $93 to $110. I guess I'll have to really buckle down again and see if I can't get it back below $100. We had gotten a little more casual in our energy usage, but its still been below what our budget amount has been.

Hopefully it will stop sprinkling long enough to start hanging laundry. All week long last week it has been either raining or spitting out and just when you think its done, it starts up again.

I know we can afford the rate increase, it is just the principle of the thing. Doggone Puget Sound Energy.