So DH and I, in our Saturday morning wanderings, went to Denny's this morning. It took me several minutes of reading and flipping through the glossy pictures of cutesy named dishes before I found what I really wanted--

The Original Grand Slam - 4.49$

It was in tiny print, no picture, an after thought. I remember many moons ago when two of everything (a Grand Slam) was a serious plate of food, even for a college student, and it got a picture and good billing. It was enough for anyone, and it was a feast. Now? You're a cheapo and on a diet.

No wonder why we are all fat and in debt.

DH went even further - he ordered a senior omelette. It's a big step; he's at that sensitive age. Pretty soon the pride will drop even further and he'll be asking for the senior discount. Pride ebbeth before frugality.

Denny's was very close to the grocery where I got the tuna rain check, so I cashed in the tuna rain check, carefully checking with a free cashier that this was the right tuna. You can't be too lax with the details.

6 cans of tuna - 3$.

Bought another long sleeved knit top at the thrift store - 2$.

Today was the day my 6 month CD matured, so as a noon-time errand, I stopped over to my brick and mortar bank to release it into my checking account. A teller did the deed, but then came the questions:

"Can I interest you in taking out another CD?"
-a quick check at the current 6 mo CD rate was 3.4%; 12 mo was at 4.6% with a bump rate. Umm, no.

"Don't quote me on it but there might be a change in a few days at the first of the month."
I told her that if its advertised on the website, I'll see it.

"May I see a second form of ID? You are transferring a lot."
I showed her my butt-ugly drivers license.

"Perhaps I can interest you in a credit card?"
I slowed her down by asking for a brochure.

She tried - I have to hand it to her. The bank got the use of 30K for 6 months...who wouldn't want another hit on that pipe? But right now, 6K to the bed & the personal trainer, the 665$ in interest to ING and probably to the chiropractor, and the 24K to Vanguard.

Anyway, I came home and told DH that he was now sleeping with a woman with over 32K in her checking account.

Another crazy thing I did was go to work, shoveling emails, and the craziest was that I actually worked out. The trainer took pity on me; we went slow and just did the machines.

Only because the cold deepened and I spent another day at home mostly asleep. The new bed is baptized in cooties now. When the cooties get big enough to adjust my sleep number I'll be seriously upset.

T-bill matured - sent $7.07 in my ING account. T-bill auctions are held every Tuesday, and the bills themselves are bought and sold on Thursday. Actually, the bucks aren't coming from the matured T-bill; they come from the fact that I'm buying $2000 for (this week) $1992.93 - they're the leftovers from buying the next 4 week T-bill.

Caught the cold that was going around in a moderate way. The symptoms of this one are congestion and being very, very tired. Stayed home and made a pot of minestone soup for the fluids. The produce in the refrigerator looked pretty unhealthy (I want minestrone, not cream of pencillin) so I conserved my energy and hoofed it three blocks to the Safeway (sigh). - 4.95$

Many Italians would laugh out loud at my soup, but it works. My big trick is to slice hot sausage into discs, then saute them in a bit of olive oil so they turn into little meatballs. Then you add lots of bay leaves, onion, lots of garlic, carrot, stalk of celery, zucchini, any other Italian-esque vegetables, chicken stock, chopped tomatoes, soaked chickpeas, parsely, oregano.

Cough, cough. . Bye.

Nicer than the first reckoning...

Lost 4 lbs, (I'm 194 with the shoes on), I lost another inch in various places. Now I'm officially below 30 BMI. And with the chiropractic - I'm 5'8" and no one questions it.

Since December, I've lost 18 lbs of straight fat and gained 7 lbs of muscle.

Time to keep going - it took years to get to 200, it'll take years to drop it.

Chirashi sushi for lunch today - $15.

Moved 300$ to my ING account.
Bought a 100$ I-bond. I can hardly wait until November 1...I'm pretty sick of 2.41%, and it looks like the next 6 months will have a much better rate.
Banked 47$ from the tip box.

Lunch with the usual foursome - me, lawyer friend, his partner, and perhaps soon-to-be screenwriter friend. Lawyer friend figures that sister is going to ask me to help hold the farmmette (house, barn, sheds, 7 acres). And really, he said, its all right. Its an asset that we got as a freebie. We can hold to sell during better times. (I'm still not thrilled.)

Talked with the DJ Myng, my DJ friend/co worker. Not only did he totally love what I had written for his soon to be internet radio station, he used bits and pieces of my stuff for his myspace site. He's in my Sites I Frequent list, so if you want to take a look, feel free. Just remember that my original had paragraphs. I asked him and he is going to throw me some more business.

Got word from the DJ friend - totally loved the write-up. Whew!

Got an email from sister. She figured that she'll be on vacation (10/2 - 10/16) when the offer comes in on the second property. I assured her that it was unlikely - it feels like it'll be November to me - but that if it did, I'll contact her and stall, stall, stall. And heck, both the heirs have to agree to a decision.

A branded piece of heavy equipment I saw downtown on the street Friday as the bus pulled away from the stop. It made me laugh out loud. Even funnier, check out the worldwide entities too.

Went to Uwajimaya - here's my favorite frugal purchase. Black sesame seeds, dried & finely ground orange peel, chili powder. So much addictive goodness all for $1.65. I put it on popcorn, myself.

Friday - not much happened. Thursday night I was restless, but it wasn't the coffee particularly that kept me up. See a few paragraphs below.

Finished DJ friend-co/worker write-up for his website Friday night. I had a lot of fun with it and turned out well - he had a lot of material, had lots of sentences. It was just a job to polish the sentences (keeping his style), get rid of the "well duh" phrases and connect them into coherent paragraphs. It took maybe 4 hrs. I've got to think about doing more of this - its a blast and I might just as well get paid for it. I'll put the link on when I get it.

Friday night DH and I went out to get burgers. Had a cheeseburger for the first time in 10 months. $5.95

Put 40$ in a DRP.

Saturday DH taught me a frugal trick of his own. Instead of parking meters, Seattle has parking stations - a whole block is marked off, and at the center of the block is a little pay station where you pay for a ticket with the expiration time and a sticker to stick the ticket to the sidewalk-side of the window. The ticket has a sentence that I've never noticed before - the ticket is transferable. DH and I had several errands around town. DH added a little extra time and we just drove with the same sticker and parked in our spots. Very clever - once you came back to the old parking meter, you couldn't get your change back.

Now for what made me restless. I have a crush on a man. It feels like the classic - a bolt of lightening, although I should have known it was coming - I've been bubbly and receptive for weeks. Flirty jeans are good, but come on... I don't know whether its requited, and since I'm married, its moot. In a weird, weird way though, I'm laughing as I write this: crushes are very frugal if you don't act on them - no dates, no diseases, no come-downs. (if you do act on them - the cost of divorce will kill ya!) At least its not a workplace one - you have to grit your teeth about those and ride them out.

5$ in the tip box.
T-bill interest that made it to my ING account this week - 7.22$

A quickie favor to write up my DJ friend's bio for his website. I figure to take a whack at it and see what I come up with.

Spent 7.75 on lunch, which kept it from being no-spend day. My boss treated me to a coffee close to my caffeine sensitive cutoff time of 10am. Usually if I have coffee after 10am, its worthless and I have trouble getting to sleep. Today I had a second cup at 10:15am. It wasn't worthless - I was buzzed for the day and went at gym with a passion. LOL, bedtime'll be a good little experiment.

About a week ago I got a letter from my brick and mortar bank - my 30K CD is maturing at the end of September. Since I've decided what to do with it doesn't involve re-upping for another 6 month stint, I went to tell 'em to put the 30K in my checking account.

I was too early. The grace period is 10 days and its 10 days from the day it matures, not 10 days before it matures. I get to come back nine days later. Oh well, at least I made the mistake in a way that's correctable.

Bought my cheap coffee ($1.37), but also bought a pint of non-fat milk to put in the refeer. A little more expensive than the free cream ($.65), but I'll shave a few calories off.

no tip box doings today

So let the waiting begin.

Today DH drove me to work...just because. Because this is the first rain of the fall, the drivers were crazy and it took us 45 minutes to get into downtown Seattle. Hwy 99 was packed, the Fremont Bridge was packed. The only route that wasn't packed was 15th Ave NW, it was just slow.

And since it was cool and cloudy, everybody got the same idea for lunch: curry. Big line for the curry special. Found out from the curry place owner that he uses corn oil, so not so bad.

Talked with the trainer about the possiblity of splitting with my friend (yesterday's lunch partner). She told me that it was up to me and they have done it in the past. The "bad" news after the corn oil good news is that she told me my daily caloric intake was supposed to be 1400 calories, not the 1600-1700 that I was aiming for. Hmmm, it might be amazing that I've lost the few pounds that I did.

I'm still psyched about the size 14 jeans. I've been joking and laughing at work and I just seem ... brighter and a bit more extroverted. Best 18.99$ I've spent this year.

Talked with the lawyer friend about the possible sale of the second property with the WiDNR. He told me that usually the government price is market value + 10% or so, and thought that right now they would give us probably the best price. Here's hoping, but not hoping too hard.

Put 5$ in the tip box.

Wore my new jeans to work (I'm a department where we put the casual in business casual), got my compliments.

On the bus - the first one had some sort of issue so when its replacement parked behind us, I motioned to my seat mate that we want to make a break for it to get onto the bus behind us when the back door opens. We did and we managed to get decent seats. He laughed and said that he's so oblivious when he was reading.

Man, its just so nice when you just take up your side of the bus seat. You even feel confident enough to flirt. Kinda flirt.

Had a serendipitous lunch with a friend. She came to my office and told me we had to cancel the lunch to my "hideout" two weeks from now. I countered that I was going to go to the place for lunch today - would she like to come? So we went, and we had a nice gossip session. The food was great, cheap, light, and best of all, no one from work goes there.

Actually, she's one of people I sent to my trainer, so we had a nice conversation about that. She asked me whether she was willing to split a few sessions with me. I'm very interested, but she does tend to be flaky, and I'm pretty consistent. Oh well, maybe she'll will be useful for dropping that expense by a few bucks.

Spending log - 1.37$ coffee + 10$ lunch

Saving log - 5$ in the tip box. I should be depositing this month's scrapings at the end of this week.

That's what I bought today - $1.75 coffee + $4.90 2 grey L tops + $21.75 tweezers. A few footnotes.

Coffee - at the weekend place, where I have a punch card and have saved up for a couple of free-bee coffees.

2 grey L tops - at the thrift store. I always go for the best feeling stuff in solid colors. Nice to be able to buy Ls, as opposed to XLs, but when I try them on with the 14s, I get the "muffin top" effect. So I'm jazzed, but I shouldn't be too jazzed because I have plenty of work to do.

Tweezers - couldn't find my favorites and my eyebrows needed shaping. Anybody got a problem with that?

Got an update letter from the executor (US Bank, in case you forgot) regarding the second piece of land, the house, and barn. It's in a holding pattern. Sister and I are waiting for the formal appraisal from the Wisconsin DNR (WiDNR) which should happen in 4-6 weeks, and the formal offer a month later. I'm getting from the tone of the letter that everything from the WiDNR is happening too slowly for even the executors. But its hard to know - the WiDNR considerations are different, perhaps more scientific and observational. Flight of fancy here - how good is the water quality, how many chemicals are in the soil, how many and what type of bird uses the creek and wetland as a migratory stop... To the WiDNR, finding a rare bird or rare critter might be part of the assessment. The cynic in me is thinking that the WiDNR is simply waiting for land prices to drop to their price.

And the executors are asking whether we should winterize the house. Wonder how sister's garden on the place is coming along?

On a more shallow front, I hit Ross today and bought new clothes. 2 size 14s jeans, 1 size 16 (in case of a couple big meals and monthly bloat) jeans, and a black DKNY turtleneck - $70.86. Increase in self esteem - priceless. No thin spots in the crotch - also priceless.