Again - spent the $1.75 for the coffee and $3 for the tip jar and ate the sandwich from the work refrigerator; but best of all, for an after-lunch walk I went to Elliott Bay Book, perused the used section and found The Millionaire Next Door for $7. In the wedding gift pile it went. Of course, I had to check for condition, see that there was no notes in the margins, or at least see if the notes weren't of the "this sucks!" level. So I reread my favorite parts.

Of course, I'm still not a PAW (prodigious accumulator of wealth). Even with the saving and the current advances on the inheritance, I'm still about $50K from being an AAW (average accumulator of wealth). But I know I'm not a UAW (under accumulator of wealth). And I'll get to the million dollar stage eventually.

I bought my first T-bill today. A 4-week bond is 4.89%

Tomorrow will be the curry lunch and its payday.

Well the last wedding's gift was fun (the gift certificate to Hardwick's), but the guy who drew them wasn't working there anymore and the certificate took a couple of days to set up...and...and...and...

We got the hint. Gift certificates are now not Hardwick's thing.

The second couple are good friends of ours and the husband-to-be is my coworker. I thought I'd try something a little more pointed. So I went for the personal finance books and financial knowledge. I wanted to find The Millionaire Next Door, and I still might, used, but I went with: The Richest Man in Babylon, Stock Investing for Dummies, and Your Money and Your Man. Might just as well catch them right after that honeymoon glow.

I haven't been saving money these past few days - wedding gifts (100$), birthday gifts (30$), birthday lunches (30$), Costco membership ($45). Tomorrow is the chiropractor copay - one visit this week. ($20)

Today was the second time this year I used a foreign ATM - $2 transaction fee. Sigh.

And lately I've been eating more, due to the wedding reception and the family visit. I've been buying two lunches rather than the one lunch split in half.

I've got to stop all of it, or at least say no once in awhile. No news from sister on the second property - except that she's made a garden in dad's garden which is putting out beets and zucchini, and soon tomatoes and cucumbers.

The good news - I've put $8 in the tip box in the last three days, and I found a dime in the grocery store parking lot this evening.

Last entry was more Friday, this is more Saturday. The wedding was for the brother-in-law's son, so it meant that DH's family was in town.

Saturday we went to the Experience Music Project (EMP), or rather, we went to an exhibit inside EMP - some of Paul Allen's collection of art. For 8$, we ducked into a two room alcove and could come face to face with one each of a Cezanne, Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Turner, Seurat, 2 Monets, 2 Manets, etc. It was fantastic - the exhibit was quiet and the guards let stay as long as you wanted and you could get as close as you wanted - you put your face into the painting and look at brush strokes as long as you didn't touch it. Almost as satisfying as owning it! Much better than the usual at an art museum - practically being tasered along a rope line seven feet from the paintings.

Its just so jarring, though, when the exit door dumps you out into the gift shop. You saw the exhibit, now buy the crap.

Paul Allen and Bill Gates (2 founders of Microsoft) are a funny duo of philanthropy in my mind. Gates's giving strikes me as how you wish you could give if you had the bucks (a bit chilly and precise); Allen's giving is how you figure that you would actually give (your hobbies writ large and make a few more bucks off of it).

And a few hours afterward, a Brazilian restaurant where the waiters serve you all the meat you can eat cut from skewers. Saturday was another bad eating day. Sigh.

Back from Nashville on the job-related junket. I learned a lot and had a bit of fun....

One leg of the priceline.com flight had a fifteen minute connection in Dallas, but I managed--by running! I was lucky. I saw the attendant make the final boarding call, heard my last name and I screamed - that's me! I'm coming! It felt a bit religious. Maybe it was because I was heading smack into the strap of the bible belt.

Most of the trip I felt like I was deciding on when to turn on/turn off the frugal button. Most of us had to develop the frugal button in the first place to get out of trouble, so this is definitely advanced "deep frugal".

I avoided the really dumb purchases easily, like raiding the minibar or buying $10 internet access (which is why I wasn't blogging) or grabbing the $5 Fiji water bottles. It's the non-so-dumb purchases with the co-workers, the rough calculation of how much fun I'll have for the price of admission.

I'll blog more later, get my thoughts in place. Just letting you all know I'm safe with stories.

Ah... Before freecycle.org, before craigslist, before Overstock.com there was:

Hardwick's.

Hardwick's is another slice of old time, blue collar Seattle. How to describe? It used to be a used-hardware store, its four rooms stuffed to rafters with the concentrated squeezings of the hardware, tools, garden tools, kitchen ware, a bit of furniture coming from hundreds of yard sales. The stuff could be pretty good, but you had to paw through it. If you actually found exactly what you were looking for, you should have gotten an award or at least a deep discount on your next tetanus shot.

It was a mess. It was glorious.

Now Hardwick's is considerably cleaner, with a lot of new goods (items on consignment, things that didn't sell at Ace, etc) in amongst the old stuff. You can find things quickly now. The prices are still great, but the serendip is gone.

I just hope they still have the guy who hand draws the gift certificate on the bottom of the paper bag.

That was this weekend, and that's today. No economic news.

4$ in the tip jar. $35 in another Drp (dividend reinvestment program). Dropping stock prices excite me when I'm adding a bit of money to my stock position via drps; its not exciting me any looking at my 403B. Both of the two advances are in a 6-month CD or in ING, just patiently generating cash.

Inflation is going up a tiny bit, so I'm still happy with putting a *little* bit in I-bonds ($100/month), but it soon will be time to call it quits. I figure about 10K for that style of fixed income.

Fun spending right now is for work, if you can believe it. I'm in the prize procurement business for a little bowling event at work. I found a person at work even luckier than I am at a yard sale - she found a beaut of a bowling shirt. Best individual score prize, if you ask me.

Not so fun spending right now is for several weddings. Tis the season. I hate the wedding-industrial-complex, so I never look at the bridal registry. My imagination on where a gift like a silver fish fork will end up (eBay, the yard sale, husband's forehead, melted down for silver) will just depress me. Unless I come up with a more brilliant idea, I go to my fallback position and give a gift certificate to Hardwick's, a consignment hardware store.

I guess I'm the only person on the planet who would say "whew" in this situation, but...

Whew.

Turns out that DH did not mishear. Our French trip is going to be next year. Sister-in-law and her husband's trip is this year. Whew. Time to plan and dream a bit, time to learn some basic French, time to get the passport, time to get my figure sorted out , and best of all for the frugal - time for the dollar to strengthen against the euro.

Did manage to get more and more of my old PDA onto my new one, but it still is a bit of a frustrating experience getting my finances back on. I'm working on getting the numbers right, one account at a time.

Lost a couple of things Friday night - an envelope containing a wedding invitation and my USB hotsync cable for my new PDA. Figures that once the alcohol comes out, I lose things. At least I kept my clothes on, and that was a triumph. But losing things is definitely not frugal, because you have to replace 'em. So today was buying new hotsync cable - $24.99. Sigh.

When I got home I did the cooking storm. Three salads. I figured it would last for the week, but with DH kicking around the house all week, probably not...anyway, the first of three salad recipes.

Chopstick coleslaw

(Asian influence, thin long slices make it easy to eat with chopsticks)

1 cabbage, thinly sliced into strips
1 carrot, shredded
1/3 red onion, thinly sliced
kosher salt

dressing: 1 tbsp ginger, finely shredded; 1 tsp chili garlic paste; 2 tbsp peanut butter (yes, you read that right); 1 tbsp light mayonaisse; 1 tsp fish sauce; 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar.

Optional additions: chopped peanuts, cilantro, salad shrimp (or even hydrated dried shrimp)

Slice cabbage, shred carrot, slice onion, combine all with about 1/4 tsp salt in a large bowl to wilt cabbage shreds a bit. Let bowl of slaw sit for about an hour. In meantime, mix all dressing ingredients well - no lumps - then cover. After the hour, add dressing to cabbage, carrot, onion and toss. Cover, chill for 30 min. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve, if you like, with the chopped peanuts, shrimp and cilantro.

I ordered a "new" PDA from Overstock.com. I put new in quotes because it was listed as open box. Whether the previous owner just opened the box, breathed in it, then closed it again, or did something a bit more, is anyone's guess. The machine was wiped clean of data, came unblemished, it synced up, and its screen is in bright color...all for slightly over $100.

I went for broke and tried to load everything up from my old machine into my new one. Lost that bet - the screen froze up - so I wiped the new PDA clean again and loaded it up one program at a time. This weekend I redo a few months of my checkbook program. Not being able to figure out my accounts to the penny is making me feel naked. I really missed that.

We had dinner with some of DH's family, who noticed right away my changes. A bit of surprising news. DH's mom invited us to go to Paris, France. We thought it was for "next year" eg 2007...turns out that it's this fall, early October. Whee, but man now I've got to get that passport set up - as the French would say - tout suite.

(personal digital assistant, not public display of affection)
Well, my little Handspring Visor gave up the ghost last night. I have my price book on it, and a checkbook program and lost the data from them both. I also used it to sync up a program called Vindigo, which I gives me maps, restaurants, services, and movie times. I bought the subscription for 25$ and I'm going to use it. Anyway, my little Visor failed to hold a hot sync and it started to flash - all of which I had a response to. Not this time. I had to wipe my data clean and it still wouldn't sync.

I'm a little bummed - my little Visor stood with me through thick and thin for over 4 years. Getting the data on it was the first step on my way to prosperity, because before I wouldn't even balance my checkbook. It did, however, last longer with daily use than the Handspring company did (it merged with Palm in 03); and I learned a lot of tricks to keep it going after support disappeared. It got me into the habit of being frugal, it got me here, and all it asked for was a couple of AAA batteries every three weeks. Sigh.

(Note to self - I wiped the Visor clean. DH is using it now. How's that for recycling?)

It was a bad day for electronics all around. I wanted to update the brains of my MP3 player and wiped out my music. Backups are frugal, backups are frugal.

On the other hand, it was a fantastic weekend for groceries. Mangoes went on sale for .40/mango, and right next to the mangoes, the strawberries were on sale for $2.00/lb (we are talking Seattle here). It meant I could make my favorite fruit salad. All it is, is:

Ripe Strawberries, cleaned, hulled, quartered...
Ripe mango, peeled, cut into chunks. (6 months ago Saveur had a photograph on how to do it efficiently, avoiding the pit)
Mix.
Cover for 30 minutes.
Enjoy. Any proportion of strawberry and mango is good.

Not a lot happened in the last two days. Bought a footlong sub, cut in four pieces and ate it over two days. The trainer commented on the high fat meats of the Italian sub, and I had issues with the second-day sogginess of the tuna sub. I tried the vegetable sub with cheese. That worked out fairly well.

I saved a few bucks at lunch yesterday and today because we had the coworker going away party at happy hour. The big issue for me was to keep it to one drink, one happy hour bite and go, which I managed to do. Service was pretty slow; I didn't wait for the bill, just put 10$ and went. .

Took the brutal hill home Monday and today; yesterday I bought some canned goods on sale so lugging the 15 lb sack that 1/2 mile counted the same as the brutal hill.

I still have to do a little research for a $56 discrepancy with the landlord utilities payments. The check image I sent was accepted. Now I'll have to do a little more digging. I feel as if this is an old, recurring problem, like I'm going to break down and give them the money just to shut them up.

DH finally called around. No body shop is very thrilled with fixing our car - its about 15 years old, and no one wants to touch anything much older than 10. Parts availability and blah, blah, blah. DH could have looked into it before I wrote the 2000$ check for him. But he's not a planner. Grrr.

The grocery stock is getting a bit low. Soon what we will need will be a lot more than what we can carry. Time to spend a few hours with Flexcar if necessary to load up. (The other twist is that, per the lease, we have only one parking spot.)

The other thought is that DH's mom wants to buy an new car for herself and give us the old one. I have to laugh - a white Buick with automatic transmission not his style. The "plan" is that around the time I'm in Nashville, DH will go to Montana and drive the car back. Ah well, okay free car and if DH isn't thrilled with AT, well, it means he'll drive it less. Fits the frugal ticket.

Of course, that means that I get the $2000 check back.

Got my sewer/water/garbage bill from the landlord today - $113.58. Not bad for two months. But the next letter indicated that we were two payments behind. Ha, I think not. But it has been 10 months since their last odd calculation. I think I'm training the new accountant.

Lesson 1# - I have an iron grip with my money.

I went to my online account with my brick and mortar bank, found my check number, and promptly came up with an image of my check for the exact amount of the previous payment with the account number & "Sewer/water" written on it and -- I love this part -- an image of the back of the check with the landlord's stamp clearly on it.

The only annoying thing is that I found the check for the other payment, but it was written over 90 days ago so I have to order it and wait 7 - 10 days for it to come in the mail. It would be sweet to get an image of it on my secured account, like how I get my bank statements. Maybe I'll suggest that. It's got to be way easier and faster than printing the image, putting it in an envelope and mailing it.

I'm not even going to bother with the innocent letter. Let the check image speak for itself.

One of the directors at our workplace resigned today to take another position. Not my immediate boss, but I worked with her, liked her, and I learned a lot from her. Three weeks ago I was in a very hot meeting where the COO was trying to track down a snafu, and she was mighty quick to point fingers at other people and other departments. The COO would have none of it, and I can't say that I blame him.

Another 6$ in the tip jar.

A nearly no-spend day. We had a little department brown bag lunch, walked to City Hall where we listened to some jazz. Frugal fun. All I spent today was a $1.75 coffee.

Got inspired and added $9 to my tip box, and $40 to my DRP.

Solving ancient problems at work. Life seems thousands of times calmer than six weeks ago. Compared notes with the other two people who are going to Nashville on the same junket - my ticket was $100 cheaper. We'll see whether I'll be bragging about it when I take the trip.

Today for lunch I picked up a .33/can of fruit/punch/soda. Frugal adventure. Note to self: Stick to water next time, sport.

Two weird things happened on the bus commute. In the morning, a control freak with a cell phone kept up a 30 minute conversation about how her boyfriend shouldn't smoke clove cigarettes in front of her, then on how the hike last weekend was fabulous. Bet she was on her cell phone the entire way... In the afternoon, our bus passed loads of bicyclists, one of whom was riding beside us on a 10ft high bike --wheels on stilts-- as we crossed the ship canal. "How would he stop?" said my seatmate.

Put together a crock pot split pea soup this morning.
.88 worth of frozen smoked ham hock,
1/2 onion, chopped, leftover from a week ago
2 carrots, sliced
4 cups chicken stock
Dried parsely, 3 bay leaves
about 1 lb dried split peas
water to the level of "stuff"
(option) 2 chicken boullion cubes
salt/pepper
Turned crockpot on low.

A few groceries today - $28.51 for the usual, 2 jars of mayo, 2 cans of tuna, 2 lbs of frozen corn, 2 whole fryers, 1 bunch of celery, 2 lbs of carrots, bread, 2 lbs of fresh salsa, 1 lb of butter...and a very yummy pink frosted coconut flaked doughnut. Romaine lettuce prices are positively insane due to flooding in early April, but nothing is really a deal, according to my price book.

Yesterday, I woke up early (early for me) to walk to the nearest branch of my bank. I just wanted to deposit the $15,000 in person. All weekend, it was walking our errands - bank, weekend breakfast, library, 3 grocery stores, and a yard sale. I must have walked at least 5 miles total yesterday and today, and with buying groceries - 1 mile with 20 lbs of weight. Figured that I really didn't have to slip into the gym...I'm living the gym.

Oh yes, the yard sale - $1 shoes - they are those 1/2 tennis shoes, 1/2 clogs (they dip in the back). They were the rage a couple of years ago. They are bright white and looked like they were never used. Because I bought them, I tossed out a seven year old pair of sneaks with holes that I rarely wear. Also bought a $1 Burts Bee sample kit - 2 soaps, 1 cream, and the heavy plastic bag that I can use as a travel bag for my little soaps and shampoos. So 2$ total there.

The office is thinking of sending me along with a couple of other people to a conference in Nashville in mid-June. Been a long time since I was sent somewhere on a junket.

Got a ton of paperwork moved today.

Another 3$ in the tip box
Moved 50$ from checking to savings.

My after lunch fortune cookie:
"You will receive something unexpected in the mail."

All I got was Carnivale, season 1, disc 3 from Netflix. We'll see whether that counts. Maybe nothing in the mail was the unexpected thing.

Put another 3$ in the tip box, and as I was stuffing the bills in, I saw that the top one was stamped with

www.wheresgeorge.com so I registered the bill for giggles and grins, just to see what would happen to it after I put it in the bank.

Got a huge stack of work in my inbox over yesterday. Waaa!

Did a frugal good deed. I went back to where I got my glasses to tell them of my many compliments and thank them. I caught the woman who helped me pick my glasses out so that was especially nice. She was thrilled to hear from me.

Today was my day off, but I did hit my appointments with the chiropractor and personal trainer.

It was a chain of money mistakes, though. For the want of writing a check the night before, I had to pull money out for my chiropractor copay, and as I got my copay my bus pulled away from my stop. Still have my timing with buses - exactly 15 seconds too late! Five minutes late for the chiropractor, so a new customer was ahead of me. I was five minutes late for the trainer and no water, so I had to buy that. A big bottle - but $2.50! It's what you get for not planning ahead.

I made up for it. I knew I had good Szechuan leftovers at home so I didn't spring for lunch, but headed straight home.

DH and I had a long conversation about the car. The insurance companies are dueling and it will take up to six months for DH to get the money there to fix the car. These three weeks have been okay but DH needs a car to pick up temp work. We struck a deal. I will give DH the bucks to fix the car; he will pay me back with the insurance money or his mom's gift money. And if you don't DH, I joked, you will be living in the car.

The CD earned me 114$ in interest in April; ING increased its APY to 4.15%, new I-bonds have a higher fixed rate of 1.4%. I'll figure out in the next couple of days how I want to play that.

Sister asked for another $15,000 advance; sister's partner's brother (call him brother in law - BIL) is asking her to loan him a bit so he can fix up and help sell BIL's mother's house. Hmmm. Not something I'd do.

To even things up, the executors will be giving me $15,000 also. Now I have to figure out what to do with the second advance.

So many of us save and save and save to get out of debt, and as we do it we dream about what to do with [insert windfall here]. I'm sure right now you're thinking - boo hoo, I sure wish I had your $15,000 "problem". Strange, really, that it's way, way more fun to save small amounts of money and watch as those 1$s and 5$s and pocket change grow and collect interest, than it is to get a fat whopping check.

Suddenly that fat whopping check makes you second guess all your money moves. Am I that stupid to put it ... there? Not to mention that because someone died you got this. And then the fat whopping check has the nerve to make all your saving look puny.

Savings log - 3$ tip box.

Yip, yip, yah! (crack of the whip)

DH told me that our scanner works just fine and it was ready to go on the desktop. And today, I loaned him my bus pass so he could go to his gym, so it was just me at home for a few hours.

Just a few things I've scanned and put on my password-protected financial USB drive:
SSN card
health insurance card (both sides)
eyeglass prescription
original lease from 2000
lease riders we signed in 2000
2005 1 yr lease
(gotta get the signed 2006 lease)
2005 1099's (-DIVs and -Rs)
2005 W2
Dad's will
Dad's death certificate
group insurance certificate
CD certificate

All I've got to do is find my out-dated passport (scan the old one and renew to a new one) and find my birth certificate. I know sister has one - we dug it out on the second day.

That reminds me - sister is in negotiation with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WiDNR) - for the second piece of property. 25% of it is untillable wetland, and the WiDNR is interested.

...without any car.

DH's car withdrawl symptoms seem to be passing quickly. After all, if he had a working car, he'd be buying gas and getting medical symptoms of a different kind! I secretly miss the car - out in the car with DH doing errands really sets the weekend off from the week. Now that we have to stay close to home or close to a bus line. DH is waiting for the insurance to settle out, so who knows? It might be quite awhile until we're out on the road again.

For you Seattleites - and a know that a couple of you are on this blog - I've been having a good time with Seattle Bus Monster

http://www.busmonster.com. Its a mix of three great sites so you can see traffic cameras, color coded routes, and little icons of buses as they run along their routes, so you know where yours is at any point in time. If this gets on a cellphone, fantastic!

Worked out Tuesday by myself using the machines, and Thursday with the trainer doing calisthentics and balance moves. Been walking home from my alternate bus route every day as a habit. I noticed last night that the bath towel goes all the way around, if you know what I mean.

The chiropractor claimed that my eyesight improved because of the neck adjustments. "Stop it," I said, "if my eyes improve any more I'll waste 350$."

Ate a nice cheap lunch with lawyer friend. Lesson 1: get the special. We'll get there, we'll get there.

I have 42$ in the tip box so far this month, and will probably go to the bank with it on Monday, after adding a few more dollar bills to it. I will head into the next paycheck with about 150$.

Spending log - 1.65$ coffee + 5$ lunch (it was still 4.36$, but I tipped) + 2$ for a birthday gift collection.
Saving log - 6$ tip box.

Tomorrow will be the one week anniversary of no DH car (I haven't owned one in 7 years). He's surviving, but he really enjoys driving so its hard on him. We are within walking distance of 3 grocery stores, so no biggie on the basics. The problem is the lugging of said basics, so we'll have to invest in one of those wheeled wire carts. Kitty litter bag + hill/2 hands = long, slow trip. But today was just materials for easter dinner and easter dinner leftovers : ham, potatoes, milk, cheese. Today is easter dinner; while tomorrow is easter dinner au gratin.

Paid the electric bill - 160$! Yikes. I must be more diligent in trailing DH and turning off lights after him. We heat by electric (NW, land of hydroelectric power) so we also suspect that some of our heating bill is caused by our fireplace. We closed the damper, and lit a couple of candles in the fireplace to warm it up a bit. Our thought is if we can warm up the fireplace cheaply, the fireplace won't draw warm air out of the room, so the thermostat won't kick on.

After looking at my obligations for this paycheck, I've shored up my immediate savings by 100$ this month. I will buy a 300$ I-bond at the end of this month to still get the six months' worth of 6.73%. The next set of rates for I-bonds is really up in the air; the inflation rate is low, so maybe, maybe the fixed rate would improve. We find out May 1.

Work is easing up. I'm swatting at big horseflies right and left, so I treated myself to lunch at the Uwajimaya Food Court and a browse in Uwajimaya proper.

Uwajimaya is a grocery/small goods store and a Seattle institution. Any Asian ingredient, and I mean any Asian ingredient, can be found there. One of the best deals in Seattle is the 3 for 10$ sale table piled high with very pretty bowls and sushi plates. Sometimes there's even a 3 for 5$ sale table - I snagged 3 small colanders a couple of years ago. What a coup! I use those all the time. Next to the sale table lay the regular priced bowls - its fun for me to keep track of when one set of bowls moves from one table to another.

I didn't buy anything. Just looking was relaxing for me - peeking at the little jars of wasabi infused fish roe, checking out the lamb patties for 4.99/lb (pricey, but 2$/lb cheaper than my usual grocery store), oohing and aahing at the fresh, real wasabi root for 56$/lb. Its nice to know that if I wanted to run a real Hawaiian luau, I've got the poi covered.

The paycheck got deposited today just like it usually did. At our workplace, the minutes of the management team are emailed to us. Today the email talked about retention and how they should recognize to retain the most productive staff. I wonder if they mean it, and whom they mean.

Put 13$ in the tip jar. Call it a do-it-yourself recognition program. With the advent of exercise, chiropractor, and trainer, I haven't put in my usual 40-50$/month for several months now. It seems so long ago, and I miss that.

Measurement day today. I lost 4 pounds, putting me at 200 and 1/4 pounds. Knew I shouldn't have had that breakfast bar...
And lost another 1/2 inch in the chest, hips, waist, arms, calves.

On the wrecked car front: insurance companies are talking. Talk about infinitely slow and infinitely fine.

Got the glasses this evening. I like them, they are very different in style. I look like I should be reviewing German existential films. I have to learn to tilt my head up slightly to read the fine print.

Sent 40$ to one DRP, 35$ to another. Managed to finish the end of the paycheck with over $200. Slowed down my lunch spending by buying a footlong, having them cut it into four 3 inch pieces, then lunched on them for a couple of days.

90% done with the last nightmare project; now its catchup booking of a lot of little projects and my "pile of shame".

Got home from work and found that DH's car was parked rear out, versus front out.

I didn't think much of it when I yelled, "you made it home alright?" I thought of the big immigration rally in Seattle this afternoon - it took me an hour and a half to get home.

DH was on the phone, intent. When he got off the phone, "did you see what happened?"

Turned out that DH's 20 yr old car's front hood now looks like Sofia Coppola's upper lip - folded up on the left into a sneer. DH got clipped 2 blocks from home, so luckily he managed to drive it back.

We'll save some gas money for a couple of weeks. And another piece of luck - I just got my Flexcar card renewed. 10$/hour, all fees, gas, insurance included.

The only uncalm family member was our 19 yr old cat who wanted to go out. We thought of all the liquids from the car dripping on the carport concrete pad that he could try and thought better of it.

The platform on the waterbed slipped on my side. Why my side? I'm the thinner one! It didn't bust, but to fix the platform means that we have to drain the bed bag, rebuild the platform, then refill.

But I found a dime on my side of the liner. Woo hoo!

Seriously, I like the waterbed. It is its own heating and cooling system at night. In Seattle we have the heater on, in Tucson and in North Carolina we turned the heater off. I wonder if a waterbed supports bedbugs? Hopefully not!

The last of the corned beef is going for fire sale prices (Seattle, remember) at 1.19$/lb. Yum!

Sister already got her first disbursment of the estate, so I expect a check sometime this week. The first check in her words was "more than I make in a year." She asked me for advice. Mine was the Roth and to hold it in a short maturity CD to give her time to research and keep her from making an uninformed decision. Her first thoughts are to save it - but I reminded her that inflation and taxes will eat away at interest. We both have enough money to do something, but not enough to do nothing.

Not a lot has been happening lately. I've asked the executors for an advance of 30K and for the paperwork.

Our DVD player gave up the ghost last week - I was reduced to watching either the PBS beg-a-thon (both stations at the same time and with the same program) or American Idol. Actually, American Idol wasn't bad.

Therein lies a tale. We went to Fry's Electronics; I found a basic DVD player with HD upgrade capability for a sweet sale price (67$!). I grabbed a box, one that it didn't look like the corners were mashed up. I went to the checkout, got checked out, paid, walked out, and met one of the guys checking receipts, who got a bit agitated. I had inadvently grabbed a DVD player previously returned, so I should have gotten a 5% discount for that, too, at least according to the receipt checker.

Trudge back to the checkout. No, we take the open box discount first, but the sale price was even lower than that, so the sale price wins.

Back to the receipt checker. No, no, they were supposed to take the 5% open box discount after the sale price.

Back to the checkout. Checkout person brought her supervisor who confirmed the 5% discount should be taken first.

Back to the receipt checker. I told them both that for 3.50$ discount, I got a lot of exercise but the fun was over, I don't have time for this, and I hope you get your facts straight.

At least the DVD player works fine.

Shredded my 2004 paystubs to make room in my financial file cabinet (one of those file boxes with a handle). Got a couple of DRP transaction receipts yesterday - those never get shredded, even though the data is online .

Finally found flip flops on sale (5$), to use for the gym shower. In these last several months have never used the gym shower - its why I exercise late in the day. Of course in 4 years of high school I never used the gym shower there, either.

Made stuffed cabbage last night, for the first time in about 10 years. Stuffing is another good way to hide leftovers, and hid them I did.

Got word from sister, who had gotten word from the cousin who does grandma's finances. No more divesting of assets in March or ever; by law grandma has to have 5 years worth now. 20% of my greedy grubby self is bummed (naughty!); the other 80% is breathing a sigh of relief. I've been trying to figure out what to do with what's left of her money now since November. Won't have to worry about that.

Took the fateful step of rolling over my TIAA CREF money into Vanguard. Its never, ever as easy as the ads make it out to be. You usually have to alert both sides of the transaction what you want to do - Vanguard to set up the IRA that it'll roll into and TIAA Cref to alert them that I want to withdraw it. Worse, it could be that I'll have to call U of Arizona (my original employer). I just know that there's going to be an icky step where I'm going to have get a signature guarantee from my bank. But if a meth-addled identity thief can do it, so can I.

Anyway, I printed out all the Vanguard forms and my TIAA CREF current position, and my TIAA CREF Q4 statement, too. Then I'll call TIAA CREF Monday and set the wheels in motion.

Lunch today was weird. I just wanted to go to a quick quiet place. Unfortunately since this is the first nice, blue-sky, warm Friday of the year, it seemed like everyone and their unemployed uncle was out and about. Every place I wanted to go to and eat had a line and today I was not thrilled about a line. Found a quick sandwich and salad (6$) and saved myself some bucks. It was just plan c.

In gym I learned about the roman chair and doing upside down situps. Lunges yesterday. Geez its hard work to get thin!