Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

Well, today was the day I took DH to the airport. I had to take $40 out of the CU to give him for his travel money. He spends $15 on the way up, about $10 for little things at the commissary during his work hitch, then $15 on the way home. He has gotten this down quite a bit from when he was just using the credit card and buying a lot more junk along the way.

Since we made the decision not to use the card for anything but airfare and hotel it is making a difference. We are able to pay off each month's charges on that card, plus a little extra so that card is slowly going down each month. For so long we were so close to the limit on it, it is so nice to have breathing room.

We ate out again tonight and spent $40 plus $8 tip. I hate that. We were so strapped for time it just was the easiest thing to do. Well, from today on for at least two weeks, I don't care how easy it is, no more eating out! I've got plenty of good food in the house and I will cook and that is that.

DH is gone for 3 weeks this time, so I will have to make sure I don't fall back on eating out out of boredom or loneliness. This really is my bugabear. Not that I am really ever lonely with the kids but its not the same thing as having your spouse home every night.

Tomorrow is the last day of school until Monday so I will take full advantage of having the house to myself. I still need to call my mother and make plans on what days she wants the kids. And hope she hasn't changed her mind. I am still sick, kind of holding my own, not getting better or worse, not really, though some days I think I am getting better only to turn around the next day and feel yucky again. I probably ought to get in to see the doc soon, but he is so hard to get into during the holidays.

Hey, does anyone know if its possible to set the all entries page to ignore a blog so it doesn't show up? I've got one that keeps bogging down my computer with its huge number of graphs and charts. My poor 56K can't handle it. It'd be one thing if it was once or twice a day but when he dumps ten in a row on a page, my computer just about grinds to a halt.

I helped DH hang twinkle icicle lights on the house today. We put the new LED ones on the front peak that faces the road. Then we put the non LED ones along the length of the house that is technically the front of the house, though it sits sideways on the property, around the porch and then we still have to do one more string to finish the last length, but we ran out of light. We won't have them on this soon but DH leaves for Alaska tomorrow night and won't be back until the 12th or 13th. I can do everything else myself, but not the gutters. Well, I could, but I really don't want to.

We also got all the Christmas stuff down from the 2nd floor of the shed so I can set everything up easily at my leisure.

We did go to town again today and get some more gutter clips and some cable, 2 50 foot lengths and 2 25 foot lengths and we will run these through our standing displays and lock them around the huge cedar trees. We were robbed last Christmas, someone took $90 worth of our lights right off our apple tree. We caught them in the act, but they took off and had already gotten most of the stuff off the tree. We managed to save two. They were those big ball lights they had at Lowe's a few years ago that had fifty lights each and were in really unique jewel tone colors and they don't carry them anymore. I was really mad I couldn't replace them, but in retrospect they were huge energy hogs no matter how pretty they were.

We also ate dinner out, an unplanned spend. Hopefully that is the last of those for awhile.

We've been Christmas shopping the last couple of days and have paid for everything with cash this year. I think this is the first year in ages that we haven't used a credit card at all.

The kids are all taken care of, they were easy though. They only wanted two things each and those things happened to cost the limit of what they will get. So they each got a Nintendo Gameboy DS, one black and one white, the game Dogs--Dalmation version for Rose, and the game Mario Vs Donkey Kong 2 for Tobias. They will get stockings and nothing else this year. I did get the game systems on sale so I was really happy about that. They may go on a better sale the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I don't shop then, and its done and out of the way now.

We found the weight bench DH wants and its within the budgeted amount so I'm happy there, too. We haven't bought it yet.

I also found the gifts for MIL and FIL, but not bought, and the neice I haven't bought for yet. I am making up 2 batches of lasagna and freezing them for our gift to SIL and BIL. That just leaves my parents and 3 nephews. My sisters and I don't exchange, we just do the kids under 18. I am making my dad some knitted hats. I am not sure what I will do for my mother yet. Maybe a blanket if I have time. Or some knitted slippers or socks. I found directions for making them with the knitting looms online, so I think I will at least try that.

Oh, we also went to Lady Foot Locker and bought basketball shoes for Rose and a new jacket. It's down and very warm. She finally outgrew the jacket we bought for her four years ago (we bought it big). We got the jacket for 1/2 price and a free bag of athletic socks ($9.99), since they had a buy one get one half price on anything at the store.

I just have to rave about how wonderful the service was that we got at that store. The girl worked with us for probably 30 minutes, making sure everything fit right and finding what we needed. I told her how much I appreciated her taking the time and that I was really impressed with the service. You just don't get that in shoe stores anymore. I mean the men's Foot Locker was, "Here's the shoe, try it on and I'll get back to you." I think it is very important to say thank you for good customer service.

We bought 5 packages of LED Christmas Lights at Target to start replacing some of our other ones. The energy savings should be pretty good. I am going to replace them all over the next few years, I think. They are a little more pricey than the other kind but they are supposed to last longer, too. We also bought a swag light, a green one with a red bow in the middle. I have been wanting one for a few years.

Anyway, so a lot of money spent these last two days but everything on or under budget so I am happy.

Okay, here's mine.

1. I have a penguin collection that includes 60 unique items.
2. I love science fiction, particularly military science fiction ala Elizabeth Moon, or sciency science fiction ala Greg Bear, but my favorite author is fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey. Aside from Anne I don’t care much for fantasy.
3. I write teenage romance novels as a hobby.
4. I wrote my first “book” in 3rd grade.
5. I have never won a contest, but every contest I have entered my daughter in, she has won.
6. I hate professional sports, but love watching K-12 soccer, basketball, volleyball, and football. I will watch the Olympic sports of ice skating, gymnastics, swimming, diving, snowcross and stunt skiing.
7. My favorite television show ever was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
8. I cannot follow a recipe as written unless I’m baking cookies.
9. I have every movie Arnold Shwarzenegger has ever made except Predator. My favorite movie of all time is The Terminator. I was sad to see him become a politician as I figured it would mean his acting days were over. His real acting days, I mean.
10. I have kept a diary in one form or another since the 3rd grade and I still have them all.
11. I am madly, deeply, passionately in love with my husband, who is the only man I have ever slept with. We did not live together before we got married and we had a 4 and 1/2 year engagement, even though we knew we wanted to get married within one week of starting to date. We have been together for 16 years, married for 11.
12. Before I had children I had an IQ of 158. After I had children, I had an IQ of 144.
13. I like to make up words and break the rules of English.
14. I lost my winter trimester of my freshman year of high school due to illness, except for my English class, in which I got the highest A of the class despite only attending class 25 days that term.
15. I made up my lost credits by taking junior achievement after school as a sophomore and attending the vocational school for one summer between sophomore and junior years, so I could graduate with my class.
16. I did not understand algebra until college. I didn’t have a good math teacher until college.
17. As a child I had a photographic memory just like my dad and my son. A head injury sustained at 13 caused me to lose this ability. I can still memorize relatively easily but can’t glance at a page and remember it like before.
18. My husband is a Republican, my parents are Democrats, and I am an Independent. Holidays can be quite interesting.
19. I have 2 older sisters. I don’t like one of them.
20. I love science, especially geology. Glacial geology was my favorite of all the geology classes I took in college. Political Science was my favorite class period.
21. I love watching forensic crime solving shows on TV. Real ones, not fictionalized ones, well, except for Bones. Can’t do this any more as we no longer get cable. It is probably the only thing I miss.
22. I want Sami and Lucas to live happily ever after even though I haven’t watched Days of Our Lives in years. I still keep up in one of the digest mags.
23. I taught my husband how to cook when we were dating. He cooks almost as well as I do now.
24. I was 20 years old before I had any kind of real ethnic food for the first time. Taco Time doesn’t count.
25. I worked my way through college flipping burgers.
26. My first job was picking strawberries at age 4, before they changed the labor laws. I also picked raspberries and blueberries every summer. The first thing I bought with my berry money was a Snoopy wristwatch. It was powder blue. The last year I picked berries was 15. I paid for a trip to a week long Christian youth conference in Colorado, including airfare, with my earnings that year. I did go back and sort raspberries the summer I was 19.
27. My parents do not call me by the name they gave me. They use a nickname of my middle name.
28. I freaked out when I saw a movie with a character that had the same last name as my very rare maiden name. Fortunately I was watching it on DVD at home.
29. I am addicted to books on tape and listen to them every night at bedtime.
30. I still call music CD’s albums, even though I haven’t bought an actual record album since 1988. I still call recording something on DVD taping it. I still call typing a number into a touchtone phone dialing.
31. My cell phone only makes phone calls. It does not take pictures, email, play games, text message, or play MPG files. My cell phone company cannot believe that I like it that way.
32. I still have a few boxes that I haven’t unpacked since we moved into our house over 8 years ago.
33. Instruments I have played in my lifetime are violin, organ, flute, viola, and piano. I taught myself piano 2 years ago, though I am still learning. We own a violin, viola, 2 guitars, electronic keyboard, recorder, song flute, bagpipe practice horn (can’t remember the name, but it doesn’t have the bags or anything, it is DH’s) and a piano (that I got for free, it’s a 1917 Cable-Nelson Upright Grand piano).
34. I participated in an orchestra for 8 years and Concert Choir for 3 years.
35. I had P.E. waived from the 8th grade on so I could take more music classes.
36. I think people should have to take an intelligence test to have children, own a pet, or drive a car. If you don’t have common sense then you shouldn’t be allowed to do any of them.
37. I love puns and make them all the time without intending to.
38. My kids think I am hilarious. This is not quite the same thing as thinking I am funny.
39. I was not allowed to talk on the phone with boys until I was 16. Or to date until I was 16. I did both anyway.
40. In middle school I spent every Friday night at a roller skating rink that had been converted from an old armory for the army. To this day I cannot hear Tainted Love, Angel’s on the Centerfold, Somebody’s Watching Me, I Love Rock and Roll or Jack and Diane without flashing back to the skating rink.
41. When I am particularly unsettled I go to the water. Either to a waterfall, my first choice, a stream or river, or a lake. It always calms me down.
42. My favorite fruit is nectarine, with bing cherry running a close second. My favorite vegetable is kohlrabi.
43. All of my K-12 teachers were afraid of my mother.
44. I prefer cheap milk chocolate over the expensive “good” stuff.
45. I have a different tablecloth for each season of the year.
46. My computer desktop currently has a picture of yellow tulips against a blue sky.
47. My best friend growing up turned out to be a jerk. It was really too bad as she had tons of talent and unlimited potential.
48. I have not had a pet since my cat died 10 years ago. She was the most beautiful Calico Tabby cross I have ever seen and her name was Honi, pronounced like honey.
49. I painted my house dark forest green with brown trim.
50. My favorite color flowers to plant are the blues and the oranges, but not together.

...or what happens when the power goes out and you can't see where you are walking.

48 hours without power is about 40 hours more than I can handle. 40 hours without a phone line really drove me nuts. Not being able to access this site or the internet? 3 hours of that was about enough. 2 days with the school closed due to a power failure, no ability to watch movies, use the computer, use the game cube, and reading by candlelight in the evenings made for 2 stir-crazy children and 2 just plain crazy parents.

But thank heavens it is back on now. Phone came back first, then power. We ended up spending an unbudgeted $100 on food, some eating out and some to restock the fridge. We had to throw away much of what was in the fridge, managed to save some apples and oranges and some veggies, but tossed out all the meats and salad dressings, cream cheese, sour cream, yogurt, the pre-chopped veggies had turned brown, and some of the condiments.

I had moved some stuff to a cooler, milk, eggs, butter, turkey and ham (the organic nitrate/nitrite free stuff for sandwiches), mayonnaise, jelly and peanutbutter. And it was still cold and good, so we didn't lose it all. Just some.

We had quite an adventure yesterday morning with the kids getting trapped at the school, a tree down across the road halfway between the school and our house, a tree down further down the road in the other direction, a tree down across the exit, but not the entrance driveway to our development. We called the school, they were keeping the kids at school until the roads were cleared even though there was no power.

So we decided to walk down to the school, which is 1.2 miles one way. We told the school we were coming and to tell our kids. It was raining pretty hard and the wind was whipping pretty good, but we wanted our kids home with us and the fireman said it could be several hours before they cleared the road in either direction. So we walked and the one tree was really big and had brought down the messanger cable as well as the power line, and the cable line. When they did end up cutting the tree up, they accidently brought down the phone line as well.

There was a safe place to get around the downed line on a side road that came out again further down the highway. So we finally made it to the school after about twenty minutes of fast walking. So we go to find our kids. "Oh, that bus decided to go on a reverse route and try to deliver as many kids as they could. But they'll bring back the ones who they can't deliver." They couldn't tell us that on the phone? So now we are at the school with the possibility that our kids could be at home, or they could be brought back to the school. You could say I was one p.o.'d parent.

We couldn't get ahold of the bus driver on his radio as he had turned it off, due to too much chatter on it. Argh! So we told the school that if they kids did come back to hold them there and we would come back when the road was clear. Then we walked back home. Just as we were passing the tree, they finally got it cleared (several hours, my eye!), so we got to walk the highway with a ton of cars zipping by to make up for having to wait in a really long line for so long. Fun.

Got home to a note on the door that the kids had gone to the neighbor's house, like we figured they would, so it all turned out okay, but the kids told me that the bus was driven over some downed wires and he had squeezed it through under some wires that were angled down across the road and went around a tree. That I am not happy about. The kids safety should come first, so I am calling the bus garage tomorrow to complain now that we have phones again and school and buses should be running tomorrow.

School conferences were supposed to be this week but obviously they were cancelled. I hope we can reschedule for tomorrow as DH flies out on Monday and he really wanted to go. He almost always misses them and this one just coincided with his being home for a change. Also basketball practice was cancelled, too.

So anyway that has been my last two days in a nutshell. A very large, very full nutshell.

Oh, and today was the automatic deposit to savings of $10 so I will send that off to ING tomorrow. I'm not sure where my total is at right now and I'm too tired to look it up.

I couldn't get into this site all morning and just about had a conniption. I like reading the blogs in the morning, its a habit now, so to not be able to get in drove me right up the wall.

At least its working again, so yay. I am feeling a bit better today. I took a 2 hour nap and I really think the extra sleep is helping. I hope. So far, every time I've thought I was getting over this cold, I'd backslide.

The kids got out of school early today as conferences have started. I got their report cards yesterday and they are both doing really well. Rose is still having problems with spelling but that is to be expected. I still think there's something more to it, she has an aunt and an uncle who are dyslexic and her paternal grandmother and father have difficulty spelling. But so far, the school says no, she's not dyslexic.

My conferences are tomorrow and I will ask about having her tested again.

I am trying to make this a no spend day, there is no reason to go anywhere except to basketball practice tonight. Rose says Miss Bullypants has started being nice to her, so the session with the counselor seems to have worked for now.

Not too much coming up on the financial horizon. DH comes home tomorrow and we always spend more money when he is here than when he is up on the slope. Not necessarily his fault though, it just seems to happen.

Oh, wait this can't be a no spend day as I wrote a check this morning to fund Tobias' lunch account at school. And tomorrow won't be either because Rose needs one, too. Sigh. Oh, well.

I am close to cashing out at ReadRevenue, so that will be $3, and I am still waiting on TinklyCash, as the owner went on a business trip to somewhere in Asia so things are processed a lot slower when that happens. I've moved up from 8th on the waiting list to be paid to 2nd, so hopefully that $5 will come through soon. CashOrigin has finally started sending emails out again, so hopefully that one will be soon, too, I was pretty close before, I think.

I felt so crummy this morning that after I got the kids on the bus I went back to bed and slept until 1:00. I feel kind of guilty for not getting stuff done but if you can't rest when you are sick, when can you? So just had to let it go.

DH told me that we will be getting an extra $142 for working this extra weeklong shift, to cover the cost of changing his ticket. Normally we have to eat that, but not this time. I am glad. I can add it to the credit card paydown account when it comes.

I have the turkey stock simmering on the stove and it is filling the house with a wonderful aroma. I also have turkey legs roasting in the oven and we will be having mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans with it for dinner tonight. I am making enough so that I don't have to cook tomorrow for dinner. I still feel yucky.

We went out for lunch today. I honestly could not face the idea of cooking earlier so I took the kids through drive-thru and spent $9.39 to feed the 3 of us. Had to drive 20 miles to get to the nearest drive-thru also. Not great. It did however give me the quarter I needed to roll a roll of quarters up, so that with the roll of pennies will be $10.50 deposited tomorrow into the savings account for the extra credit card payment.

Tomorrow I have to try to remember to call the phone company and drop our long distance service. It is only $3.33 a month, which is $39.96 a year, but we don't use it so it is wasted money. I always use my Costco calling card when I do call long distance, so there is really no point at all in having it. I wonder if that'll reduce the taxes and surcharges any at all? Probably just a few cents if it does.

Laundry room still isn't done. I am studiously ignoring it right now. Maybe tomorrow.

Entry 4.

I think I have been spending way too much time on the blogs and boards today. I did get some stuff accomplished in the laundry room today but it didn't get finished. I don't think it really even got halfway done.

I keep thinking I've shaken off this cold, I start to feel better and then the next day or two, bleah. I started coughing about 4 hours ago and its definitely in the bronchials now. Tobias is still not better either. He is almost never sick and this has just dragged on and on with him. He spent most of the day just laying on the couch watching his sister play video games, which is very unlike him. And his cheeks are bright red and he is running a fever again.

I did manage to get a load of dishes done, and do three loads of laundry. Two loads of towels are on the drying racks and one load of clothes is hanging (on hangers) from the shower rod to dry. I took 6 surveys, or tried to, only qualified for 2 of them, and did some PTR's. But mostly I just got lazy and didn't do much of anything that I had planned. Didn't even start the turkey stock going like I planned, so hopefully tomorrow I will get to that.

At least there was no temptation to go out and spend money. Even if we didn't feel yucky, it is pouring rain again. We may have flooding again soon. I am just so grateful the flood plain is 3 miles away from where I live. Not that I'd have bought property by a river in the first place.

Entry 3 for today.

I have decided that each month I will take all of the money that was previously going to savings, except the $10 a week and put it into savings account at CU #3. Then when I go to write the regular check to MBNA MC1 ech month, I can also transfer the saved money into the CU #3 checking account and write a check off that account and tuck it in with the first check.

That will be the easiest way for me to do this, plus it will help me keep track of how much extra I pay each month, because it will be a seperate check. I'd like to keep a running total of the extra used the same way I was keeping a running total of how much I was saving. Well, I'll still be keeping a running total on the savings, but it won't be going up as fast as before. That will start next month.

This next payday there will be $1000 extra to send off to that card so I will do that online out of regular checking. Since I've already mailed that off yesterday (due on 17th), I don't want to wait a whole month to add it to the next check.

I think we should be able to pay this card off by April and then I plan to cancel it. I really do not need two MBNA Master Cards and since Bank of America bought them out, I now have 3 cards with them and I don't like that. I also don't like the changes that have been made since then with this one MC so I'll be glad to see it gone. Then I'll transfer as much as possible onto my empty Chase Visa when the lower rate on MC #2 runs out, they are always sending me balance transfer checks at lower rates. Then I will pay off what is left of the 2nd MC and hopefully that will be gone by the end of 2007. Next we will tackle the B of A Visa and then last the Chase.

Entry 2 today.

I took a $3 survey today and that gave me enough in my account to cash out for a $5 check. I like this company a lot, Your2Cents. I have now earned $21 with them in about six months time. They always say 6 to 8 weeks for a check to come but it has so far shown up about 3 weeks after a cash out, each time. The surveys are not hard, they don't take a long time to load each page, and it doesn't glitch out on the last page the way Lightspeed does sometimes.

I successfully completed my closet the other night, it took until 1 a.m. but I did it. Just for the record I ended up with 2 paper grocery bags full of shredded paper, one milk crate full of other recylable paper such as magazines, envelopes, junk mail, etc. I had seven plastic grocery bags full of garbage (nothing gross, just a lot of plastic, packaging, those blow up plastic pouches they use for shipping. 3 empty Pepsi cans (not me, must have been DH), several water bottles, and a box full of cardboard. Oh, there are a couple of boxes DH needs to go through, but I'm not worried about those. It looks neat and tidy, so I'm happy. Plus I have a side of the bed to walk on again, the overflow was pretty bad.

Today the task will be to get the laundry room in order. It is not as bad as my closet was and is a bigger space. I need to make it accessible through the kitchen and not just through the master bathroom. I want to get the repairman out to look at the dryer but I don't want him traipsing through my bedroom and bathroom to get there. Mostly it is unsorted dirty clothes that need to go into hampers, childrens' toys that need to migrate back to the other end of the house, and a lot of cardboard that needs to be broken down for recycling.

It will be a no-spend day. We aren't going anywhere. I made really delicious cheeseburgers for lunch today. My trick is to add an ounce of plain tomato sauce to a pound of hamburger. Makes the burgers stay moist and yummy. Can't add more than that or the burgers will lose cohesion and you won't be able to flip them without them falling apart. Had them on 100% whole wheat buns (delicious)with slices of Tillamook cheddar cheese instead of the old Kraft singles. So good and completely natural.

I'm going to make turkey stock today. I have a bunch of neck bones, so I will throw those in my stock pot with water, onion, carrots, celery, parsley and salt and let it boil away today. Tomorrow I will make turkey noodle soup with whole wheat spaghetti noodles. Looking forward to that.

Entry 2 for today.

DH and I had a long talk on the phone last night and we have decided that because gas prices have gone back down and because both vehicles are still running okay that we will put off buying a new car.

So the new plan is now this:

Keep $500 in my ING account
Open a second ING account in DH's name and keep $500 in it
Keep $500 in local CU
Continue to add $10 a week to savings
Take the $65 we were putting in savings from the cable bill and put it on debt
Take anything I make from surveys, product trials and PTR's and put it on debt
Try to sell the Blazer
Put entire income tax return to debt
Put entire bonus to debt
Use rolled coin we save for debt
Use recycling money for debt

This was a hard decision to make because we both wanted to get a newer car. But we each weighed it and both came to the conclusion that yes, we want a newer car, but no we don't currently need a newer car. We do NEED to get the debt gone.

We struggled with this for awhile, the same way we struggled with cancelling cable. It was hard, but after the decision was made, it was clear it was the correct decision because we immediately felt better afterwards.

Debt reduction will be covered in Bringing Down the Evil Empire because the credit card companies behave just as badly as any other business that gets on my nerves.

Today is payday. Bills paid today are:

Bank of America Visa--$800
Water Delivery--$23.79
MBNA MC #1--$150
Comast (phone)--$41.64
Dentist--$22.60
Docor--$15.00
MBNA MC #2--$500

I have to go grocery shopping and get gas, too. I will put $100 on the Costco cash card for gas. I will try to keep groceries at $75.

3rd Entry for today.

While I was cleaning my closet I found a check that has been missing since February. It is a refund check from the orthodontist for $55.60 and it was nowhere near the portion of my bedroom that I thought I'd lost it in, either!

I thought it had fallen between the baseboard of the bed and the mattress/boxsprings and rather insistently continued to search in that area because that was where I remember it last being. I found it in a laundry basket in the closet that DH had shoved a bunch of stuff in one night so we could change the sheets on the bed, since I'd had everything spread out on it. Back in February. I told you the closet needed going through!

The check doesn't say anything about being void if not cashed in a certain amount of time so I will try to deposit it into savings tomorrow. I am so happy to have found this, it has been an irritant for 8 months.

The closet is only half done. It is taking longer than I expected but the good news is that there is a lot I can get rid of either by giving it away or recycling. Also have found 3 grocery bags of garbage so far. I don't know why I had so much plastic packaging in the closet when it should have been thrown away when whatever it contained was unpackaged. I don't remember putting it in the closet so it must have been DH and one of his bad habits, instead of one of mine.

2nd Entry for today.

I'm just taking a break from the closet to read some blogs. Is it possible it looks worse than when I started? LOL It will be nice when it is done, just sometimes it seems like you need to make a bigger mess than you start with to end up organized, doesn't it?

I think I have too many clothes. I really need to develop some system of paring down what I have. I think I only really wear a dozen tops and five pants, and in the summer 8 tops and five shorts. But I've probably got triple what I need and I know some of it is either too big or too small or out of date. Fortunately, none of it is what was I thinking? I am happy with my taste in clothes. I have noticed that I have at least six sweaters that I don't wear anymore, too, so I should probably root them out.

I should probably go take some time to eat, too. I just really want to get done today!

Today was the day of the $10 auto deposit to savings, bringing the total there to $1583.21. $1600 here I come. I went to count coins last night and I am one quarter short of a roll. Argh. I hate that! I'm going to scrouge around the kids' rooms and see if they have one and give them five nickles in exchange if the do. Then I can deposit it tomorrow when I do the payday stuff.

Okay, I just reread that and one quarter short of a roll is NOT the same thing as one horse short on the merry-go-round, or one taco short of a combination platter, LOL. Just $9.75, TYVM. My screws are fully tightend. At the moment.

3rd Entry for today.

No, these are not my deepest, darkest secrets, I'm just planning my day tomorrow. I am going to tackle, oh, horror or horrors, my bedroom closet. It has grown to quite fearful proportions and is threatening to take over that entire side of the room. So I am going to take everything out of it tomorrow, except the clothes that are hanging up and put it all in the living room and then tackle one box at a time. My goal is to get through the whole thing.

I've got bags of outgrown children's clothes that need to be sorted and readied for freecycle, old maternity clothes (youngest will be seven come March) yarn, craft supplies, pillow stuffing, batting, and several miscellaneous boxes of stuff. Papers that need to be shredded, magazines that need to be recycled, papers that need to be filed, newspapers that need to go in the box by the fireplace, wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, gift bags, and junk. I swear, it is all breeding. I hope I can get it sorted, trashed, organized, recycled, given away or whatever all in one day. It sure would be nice.

What has this to do with finances? Well, getting the old statements and bills filed or shredded will help in organizing the finances. And spending the day at home cleaning means I won't be out spending money. Other than that, not much. LOL

Today was a lazy day because tomorrow will not be. I sat on my butt and watched Batman Begins and worked on knitting a scarf. Movie was really good, I liked it. I haven't seen Christian Bale since he was a boy in the musical Newsies, he sure did grow up the right way. LOL

I'm reading an anthology of SF short stories right now. Today I finished Combat Shopping by Elizabeth Moon. Very different from a lot of her stuff, but interesting. Also read Incarnation Day by Walter Jon Williams. Made me think. But in a good way.

I drove the kids to my mother, they will spend the first two days of their vacation with her. I went to Target and purchased a few things, I bought a blue velvet stocking with a rhinestone L on it. Now everyone has a personalized stocking in my house. I also bought a box of 2 peacock Christmas ornaments for our tree. Very pretty and unique looking. I found a ladybug ornament and a ladybug CD case for my niece who collects ladybugs to give to for Christmas. I'm still looking for something for the other neice who collects elephants. I may have to go back to the Asian store to find elephants this year. Spent $33.65.

Gave into cravings and bought a Big Grab bag of Cheetos for $1.07. I've been wanting them for a week, so I decided it wasn't going to go away and it was just better to get them. So I got them. And I haven't even eaten them yet 3 hours later. Because I finally forgot I wanted them!

Suncoast has not responded to my email, not even with a computer generated "we have received your email and someone will get to it soon," email. I have little faith I will hear from them at all. Really bad customer service.

I stepped on Thomas the Tank Engine and split my heel this morning. It is to one side so I can walk without limping but I can't put full pressure to the outside of my foot. Each step stings and I went through three band-aids before the bleeding stopped. One little boy just about found himself out of a train collection.

I forgot to do this after making the mortgage payment so I'll do it now.

Ending Balance is now at $35,724.84. I have 10 years, 5 months + $21.05 worth of payments left to make. Obviously this will be paid off faster than that as I always pay extra on the principal, even if it is only $24.14 extra each month consistently, sometimes anywhere from $50 to $100 extra, depending on finances at the time.

That puts us on a path to have our mortgage paid of by 2017 if I were to never make another extra payment. I would like to see it paid off by 2012, as Rose starts college in 2014 and Tobias in 2018. If DH gets the promised raise in January, we ought to be able to abolish our credit card debt by 2010 or 2011. If he gets the promised promtion in 18 months with even bigger raise, I have no doubt we will reach all of our goals by those dates. But life is funny and a promise is not money in the bank.

Basketball practice started for Rose tonight and there are two other girls from our block who practice with her, so we are going to carpool. It seems a little silly to carpool to go 1.2 miles down the road and back, but seems even sillier for 3 moms to drive 3 cars 1.2 miles down the road and back. Since there will be 3 practices a week, it works out great. So I will save just a little bit on gas.

Unfortunately, Rose was assigned to the team with the girl that likes to bully her. Fortunately when I talked to the coach about it, he said that girl bully's everyone and he will clamp down on her if she starts and for Rose to come tell him if he doesn't see stuff when it goes on. I feel so much better about that.

I wish she had gotten assigned to the other team because she has 4 friends on it. She has one friend on this team but she wasn't there tonight because she's stuck on the other side of the flood waters and hasn't even made it to school this week because of that. Not sure where her other friend will be assigned as she did not make it to practice. Hopefully with Rose. If she has two good friends on the team that will help her really stand her ground against Miss Bullypants. Then one of the other girls who lives in our development is not really her friend, she's a grade up, but they used to play together when they were little and just drifted apart because of being in different grades. They are friendly, though, so maybe I just won't have to worry about it.

3rd Entry for today, do make sure you read #2 as it has goals met that are pretty cool if I do say so myself, and this entry gets its own new category, that will go for badly behaved companies.

Here's a copy of the email I sent off to Suncoast (the video and dvd store) today after an incident in their store, also today.

On November 7, 2006 I went into a Suncoast store located at Bellis Fair Mall, 1 Bellis Fair Parkwway, Bellingham, WA 98266-5563 to use my $20 Replay Reward Certificate from my Replay membership. My membership number is 094797404. The replay reward certificate expired 11/7/06. The employee rudely informed me that he could not accept the certificate because it expired 10/31/06, even though it clearly stated on it that it expired 11/07/06. He even acknowledged that the certificate said it expired on 11/07/06, but that didn't matter because it really expired on 10/31/06 and said there was nothing he could do to honor it. He would not explain why, that was just the way it is. To me this is false advertising and failure to uphold club membership rules.

When I called the membership line to cancel my membership because they failed to honor it, they refused to refund the money I paid just a few months ago for a two year membership, as apparently there are no refunds. I understand there being no refunds if a person cancels just to cancel, but if a person cancels because the company lied to them about being able to use their certificates in their stores or to honor a valid expiration date, than I believe a refund is justified. When I asked to speak to a supervisor I was rudely informed that it would not matter because there were no refunds period. I was rudely brushed off. I believe this was because it was five minutes before the system shut down for the day.

I believe because your company failed to uphold its part of the membership agreement, that you owe me a refund. If this incident is not resolved to my satisfaction, I will be emailing a copy of this complaint to the Better Business Bureau. I want you to understand that you are losing a customer that you have had since July of 2002, one who has spent several hundred dollars at Suncoast each year, for your failure to honor membership terms. I will be reporting on this incident in my blog. I will also tell as many people as I can on my various email groups and in person. The behavior of your company is unaccpetable. And your employees need to learn better customer service skills, as I was perfectly polite, but they were far from it.

******

Plus my contact info, of course. Now of course, I really don't care all that much if you choose to shop at their overpriced stores or not, what I care about is their bad behavior. If they had just been polite or explained things properly or at all, instead of me having to figure out through their website what the deal was (which is that they switched to a different type of membership and don't have reward certificates anymore just points in the computer and 10% discount, which 10% of overpriced dvd is still overpriced there, the certificates and sales would make it somewhat worthwhile before, they did not offer to change it in the store or on the phone, by the way).

But I do want the store to know I mean business, so the letter and the posting in my blog.

2nd entry for today.

After I did my stint as a Looky Lou at the river I went ahead and drove to town to deposit those two checks into savings. I only had one way to go to town as the other two SR's are partially underwater. But the way I went is the way I normally go, so no big deal. If I could have I just would have gone to Everson, but of course main street is under water, well, not under water, but full of standing water so that branch didn't open. It's only a fifteen minute drive there. No, I went to Bellingham and deposited the $119 into savings.

So that brings the total in all my savings accounts to $1573.21. So I have achieved my two month goal of depositing $500 into savings by November's end, and my $1500 goal saved. This month will see an additional $1105 deposited for sure and I'm hoping to scrape up another $100 as well at the very least. So for sure $2678.21 by this month's end, hopefully $2778.21. I would like to reach $3000 saved by the end of December. Not bad for a girl who had $105 in savings in April and didn't know where she was even going to find $10 a week to save!

I decided to be a Looky Lou today after first checking the Public Works webpage and the WA DOT webpage for road closures. Just four miles up the highway its closed for the foreseeable future. But I didn't go that way. The river is still high but after it flooded last night it is back down to reasonable levels. There is a lot of standing water. It is amusing, in a sad sort of way, to see ducks floating in a vineyard or a hay field.

The shoreline is back on the river though I don't imagine we'll be seeing any sandbars or island for a good long while. A lot of trees are washed up on the shore line, I imagine there's going to be a lot of wood for the taking next summer. Got to check into getting a permit for that.

We could still see more flooding when the next storm moves in tonight, but I hope the worst of it is over. I am perfectly safe at my house, at least I don't have to worry on that score. There was actually a small break in the light rain today and I saw this strange bright yellow object up in the sky. I'm not sure what it was and it went away again after about 30 minutes.

Fortunately we didn't lose power last night, didn't even need to light a candle, that's always good.

Well, I wasn't kidding about the weather making up for the fact that it hadn't rained all summer. The formerly 6 foot wide, 3 inch deep river is currently at 11 feet deep and at least 60 feet wide. It's about 3 feet below the road, or was at 4:00. There are no sand bars, no shorelines visible, the water is brown and full of trees and branches and will flood the road by morning. This is just the portion 3 miles from my house, and is only the North Fork of the river.

It has already shut down SR9 at Acme. The kids from Glacier couldn't come to school today because the buses couldn't get through the water. I had to pick my kids up at school as one of the buses broke down so they took the kids from that route and used our bus to take them home and then were taking ours home late.

We had to go to town, went into the chiropractor, stopped at the store to stock up on milk and ice for the next storm coming in tonight. When we crossed the bridge at Nugent's corner, which is after the North and South Forks have joined together it was only 4 feet below the top of the levy, which is still several feet below the bridge, but they were evacuating houses along the river. It was so fast, the rapids were huge, again swirling masses of muddy water, tree wreckage, no shoreline, no sand bars, just devastating to see it.

I got back home just as soon as I could. I was so nervous but everyone was on their best driving behavior, no one was tailgating, probably because their wiper speed did not go that fast. I was afraid the road would go before I got home or a tree would come down, the wind was so bad today. I lost several branches on the big cedar tree and lots on the giant firs and pines this morning. Nothing came down on wires, thank the good Lord. Stuff came close. We did have a brief power failure this morning, lots of folks did have trees across their driveways and there was so much tree wreckage that had been cleared from the roads.

I bought enough perishable groceries to be able to stay put all week if I need to, even though the worst of the storm should pass by tomorrow night. It's been 3 years, I think since the last flood and its right around the same time that floods occur here, so things are back on target with the weather, anyway.

I hope it all calms down because my mother is going to take the kids Wednesday after school, and then I will pick them up on Friday, that will give me some time to not be locked up with cabin fever with my youngsters. They so need a change of scenery. I so need for them to have a change of scenery. LOL

Received $15 check from ACOP in the mail today for the product trial I did for them last month. Received a $104 insurance refund check in the mail for DH's vision appointment. He had the appointment last summer, didn't send the stuff in, didn't send the stuff in, didn't send the stuff in even though it was all ready to go, finally I took it, put it in an envelope, addressed it and mailed it two weeks ago, and what do you know, here it is. So that will be a total of $119 added to savings when I can get to the bank.

The Schwan's guy just stopped by with my order and he's afraid he can't get home. They've evacuated a large part of Everson, closed Hannegan and Hamilton, they've closed HWY 542, the part 3 miles from my house that was at 3 feet below the road at 4:00, they've closed South Pass so you can't get through Nooksack, down to Sumas, but he might be able to cut around the other pass to get to Sumas that way. Man, I hope this clears up by Wednesday. Yuck. And I'm really glad I got milk and got home when I did.

Now to just cross my fingers that the power does not go out, though I've located all lanterns, flashlights, batteries, candles, lighter, the radio and have a supply of wood in the house. We have 3 5 gallon bottles of water. I've got the cooler and the bag of ice in the freezer just in case, so we are set. We should not flood here, we are well above the creek and well above the river, but we could easily get cut off.

I didn't spend anything yesterday. I stayed home with 2 sick kids and the weather made up for not raining all summer. The river is actually starting to rise from linked puddles to trickle. I had never seen it so low in my life as it had gotten to. Had a huge storm with lots of thunder.

I forgot to mention on Friday when I went Christmas Looking, I also stopped at JoAnn's and got some yarn, and splurged a bit and got a set of the oval/rectangular hand looms from the Knifty Knitter product line. I already had the round ones from last year. This makes knitttng so much easier.

Yesterday I knit myself a new scarf that comes close to matching my new jacket. And today I started on a matching hat. I've been watching the second season of 24 on loan from a guy DH works with, so knitting justifies all the time staring at the tube, otherwise doing nothing. supposedly I can make mittens with these things, too but I have my doubts. I can see socks, but not how I'd make a thumb for mittens.

When I'm done with this, I will make DH a scarf. He wants one that is extra long. About the length of the one the fourth Dr. Who had if anyone knows what I'm talking about. That's not going to happen, but I will make him one that is longer than standard as he is very tall. I also want to make a blanket for my dad for Christmas. The largest of the looms is for making blankets and I think it will work well enough. We'll see. It'll be an adventure.

Today will be a no spend day, also. It stopped raining so I had some time to bring wood in without getting drenched. It is not near as cold as it had been, its in the 50's, so I may not even need to use the stove, but I'll have it ready the next time the weather drops again. I cleaned the stove out today, so its ready to go, too. The ashes had piled up quite high.

The kids are almost completely better, well enough to go to school tomorrow. There are only 3 days this week. Friday is veteran's day and the school has Thursday off, as well. It's going to be a long 4 day weekend. DH was originally supposed to be home during this time, but then he had to work the extra week, so its just me and Monstro and Destructo Girl, er...I mean, my lovely, sweet children, locked in a house for four days straight...I mean, enjoying each other's company without outside interference. Then two weeks later, repeat, only with a five day weekend. I may come out of this quite, quite insane. LOL But sanity is over-rated, or so I've heard.

Basketball practice starts on Tuesday for Rose, so she'll be active again, and that is always good. She tends to chub out a bit between sports seasons, then gets all "I'm so fat" about it. She's ten. I don't know where this is coming from. I don't say anything. Her dad doesn't. Probably some brat at school. I've tried to encourage her to run on the treadmill or use the gazelle between seasons, but I'm not going to push it. There's only a few weeks between seasons, and it goes away again with a week or two of hard practice. But she will always be like her dad and me, if she doesn't exercise 3 or 4 times a week, she'll put the weight on. That's just how our genetics work.

Well, I best get dinner started, oven-baked chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn and green something, either beans, or salad, or kohlrabi, or cucumbers. Not sure, on that, I'll have to see what the kids want. That and start on load 3 of dirty dishes, I kind of let that slide when we got sick, yuck. It was either cook meals or wash dishes and cooking meals was the better option, LOL. But then I ran out of stuff to cook in, so...off I go now.

I went Christmas Looking today. This is a lot like Christmas Shopping, only without the actual bying of anything. I did a fair bit of Christmas Looking at Barnes and Noble and have a very good list of items that I think will do very nicely as presents. There was a series of drawing books that I would really like to get for my daughter. She's very artsy crafty, loves to draw and paint, and has some good instincts that I think these books would help channel along.

Found a doorstop..er, coffee table book, on castles that DH would drool over if he'd been there with me. He loves this sort of thing, it has pictures and architectural interest with both the insides and outsides and the art and interior design and the surrounding countryside. It is a real work of art.

Found a book on crocheting that I want so will give the name of that to Mom when she asks me what I want.

I looked at "stuff" at Costco while I was there to buy eggs, nuts, and cucumbers. There wasn't really much that caught me eye in the Christmas decorations. I have learned not to use exposed bulbs or holographic thingies with exposed bulbs in open areas or the rain just shorts them out within a day or two, so that cuts out a lot. I tend to stick with rope light structures mostly now.

I looked at "stuff" at Rite Aid, but they don't have more than half their display up yet, and none of their standee stuff at all. Rite Aid had the church I want the last two years, I am hoping they have it this year. I want to use it as a train station for our rope light train, as it looks like an old-fashioned train station as well as a church.

I looked at "stuff" at Fred Meyer, didn't like anything there, either. Sigh. Picked up organic nitrate/nitrite free lunch meat for the kids' lunches next week while I was there. Got myself some more Vick's Sinex nasal mist (a full $1.20 cheaper than anywhere else) and then signed over my first born at the pharmacy so I could get liquid Children's Motrin Cold medicine (in grape). It has sudafed in it so of course its behind the counter now, too.

Can I just say that I hate having to go to the pharmacy for over the counter cold medicine. It is so stupid. The meth heads are going to get their supply regardless, all they are doing is annoying the crap out of the rest of us with sickness. I mean the last thing I want to do is stand in another line after standing in the first line, to even find out if they have it in grape, because heaven forbid I come home with berry flavored, or bubble gum flavored, or horror of horrors, cherry. Then I have to fill out all my information in their little book, because they are too lazy to do it themselves (like at WalMart who enters it into the computer once so then all they have to do in future is put your license number into the computer and its all there), so that if I buy more than my allotted (sp?) amount of cold medicine they can hunt me down and search my cupboards for incriminating amounts of ibuprofen cold, sudafed, and dimetapp. Hmm, she has adult formula, junior strength formula, and children's formula! She's trying to buy them all at once. Over limit! Over limit! What does that mean? She must be a drug addict!

Or maybe she has a small child, a medium child, and an adult and they are all freaking sick right now. Geesh. Heaven forbid you try to stockpile medicine for the winter! Because it would be so much fun to run out in the middle of a cold and drag a whiney, feverish, germ-spewing youngster through the six inches of standing water and the torrential downpour to get another bottle. And after all that crap of being told they have Children's Motrin Cold, in grape, which is what I specifically ask for each time I ask, they hand me Children's Ibuprofen Cold, Kroger brand. "What the heck is this?" "Oh, its our generic store brand. And look, its in grape, just like you wanted." "No. I wanted Children's Motrin Cold." "Oh, we don't have that." ARGHHHHHH. Bought it anyway, but I tell you, as much as I normally love shopping at Fred Meyer, I will not be back for a loooooooong time.

I'm just glad the kids were with my mother. I had a hard enough time navigating today without them. Did buy a few more groceries as Haggen. Enough so I wouldn't have to buy any more this week.

Today was the day of the weekly automatic deposit of $10 to savings, plus the 20 cents from ING interest, bringing the total in savings up to $1454.21.

Tomorrow is payday but I am not sure if I will have any money left for savings this week. I have to pay the $1000 medical mortgage and the regular house mortgage of $400, which should leave me with about $50 for groceries. I filled the gas tank today ($36 almost at $2.389 per gallon) and still have $17 on my Costco cash card for gas there and a $25 Shell gas card, but I don't think I will even need them. I need to make a run to town tomorrow and ones on Monday and Thursday, and that's just 9 gallons and the tank has 17 in it now, so no problems there.

The following one I definitely will have $65 to add. And the one after that I'll have $1000 to add in. I'm really looking forward to being able to do that.

DH is wavering about buying a car next year, and so am I. With gas prices coming down, its not so bad dealing with a car that gets just 20 MPG. Although, I've got it up to 20.5 now that all the soccer chairs and gear are out of the trunk. I love having digital average mileage in the car. Makes it easy. Well, I'd rather throw the money at debt but he may change his mind. It's hard to decide sometimes. I know that we could pay down close to $8000 by the end of April if we choose to do that. More if we get the Blazer sold.

I'm going to discontinue my Simply Audio subscription. I don't use it enough and the selection just isn't that much better than the library. I've already changed Netflix yesterday down to 1 movie out, unlimited, from 3 out, unlimited. I want to cut out Gamefly but without cable, DH really wants to keep Gamefly, and so do the kids.

We're going to change our family plan at the chiropractor too, to one visit per week per person for a monthly total of $130 instead of $175. So between those 3 things we should save another $70 a month. Plus save on gas as it will be one less trip per week to town. I'm also going to call the phone company and see if there aren't other options for any of the things we have.

Paid $29.59 for 3000 mile service/oil change today and $10.37 for two big container of egg drop soup. Also spent $13.58 at the grocery store for organic milk, all natural sausages and an Archie digest comic for Rose.

Turns out ING was on the ball, my CU was just really, really slow to post it to my account. It posted this morning, but with a date of 10/25. I called them and they said they had some bugs in the online software last week, but its all working fine now. I feel better knowing it wasn't ING that fell down on the job.

I'm off to town for my oil change, one child in tow. Not the one I thought, though. Tobias bounced back pretty well, but Rose woke up with a fever. I will spend a bit to pick up a large container of egg flower soup at my favorite no-MSG all natural Chinese restaurant. I could make it myself, but I'm just starting to feel cruddy and mine is never quite as good as theirs.

Can I just say I dislike Halloween again? It always makes me sick going out in the cold like that.