baselle's Financial Diary

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.

Stepping into my routine nicely - found a good deal on pork ribs ($1.37/lb). A jar of sauerkraut that I had already, and my crockpot equals dinner. It is a little heavy for today - 80, but the temperature is going to drop tomorrow. All I did this afternoon was revert back to my childhood and watch the DVD of the original The Wild Wild West, disc 1, season 1. Thanks Netflix.

Yesterday, we discovered a bit of geographic coincidence in Seattle. There are produce stands on the corners of 65th and 15th NE and 65th and 15th NW. Mirror images of each other, and each has been in there place for years. Mentioned it to the owner of the NW stand and he told us that both addresses are 6501 15th (NE/NW). I feel a Rod Serling moment coming on.

But the something new I'm trying is to buy $2000 of 4 week Treasury bills using my ING account. I won't know what the interest rate until Tuesday, but last week's was at 4.75%. After the T-bill matures (4 weeks), I going to rollover that 2K for another 4 weeks, and so on, and so on. Heh, heh. I must be inspired by the ghosts of Jim West and Artemis Gordon*.

(*Secret Service is part of Treasury Dept.)

I read this while I ate my Friday curry special. Nearly put me off my food. Kudos for the anarchists not being black hooded and smashing up stores, but I think it takes group frugality just a tad too far. And actually, group frugality and those rules just make that shared house seem like a joyless experience. Guys, the revolution has to be attractive, because to the average American, living well is the best revenge.

Put another 3$ in the tip box. Did the gym and the chiropractor. I'm getting my routine going and it feels good.

Word from sister: Sister and I are still waiting for the WiDNR final proposal. I have to remember that this is a government entity. Its not like they can just hop on an opportunity in a matter of days.

Expense check from work came $1,223.88. It includes the Nashville junket and the bowling awards. There apparently were no problems with either. YAY! It goes directly to the credit card, which along with what I would put in normally per month ($500), means that I will be only about $200 away from clearing it, even with the trainer. I felt the expense check burning a hole in my wallet, so I ran a special errand to deposit it in my bank.

On my way back, I picked up two pennies on the sidewalk right next to my bank. A guy on the street gave me the fish-eye for stopping to pick up the change.

"I run a coin rescue," I said.

Hey, if you saw an cute little kitty (forgive me kashi), you stop to rescue it, right? And that would cost money. Why not rescue a poor penny, which will increase your net worth by a few hundredths of a percent? Liberate the poor pennies from the chilly sidewalk and get them where they belong - straight into the tip jars and leave a penny trays of the world.

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.

Don't laugh, I made a batch from a recipe that I got from the New York Times food section. I finished my first batch during dinner tonight - I'm taking another batch to the potluck tomorrow...And pearl barley is .49/lb right now.

Scottish tabouli (heh, heh, heh)

1 cup pearl barley
2 cup whole kernel corn (I used frozen - we're not in corn season yet)
2 ripe tomatoes, chopped
4 radichio "rocket" leaves (recipe called for arugula, so I winged it) - shredded and chopped
2 tsp dried parsley

olive oil
lemon juice
salt
pepper

Soak barley for a couple of hours, or overnight. Boil until tender. Drain & cool - this is cold or a room temp salad.
Cook corn according to package directions. Also drain & cool the corn.
Chop your tomato, shred your rocket.

Make a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper - think tabouli, and also take into account that the barley really sucks up the dressing.

Fluff up the barley, add the cold corn, dress with dressing. Add the parsely, toss, add the tomato, toss, add the rocket, toss. Taste, and correct for seasoning (barley seems to take a lot of salt). Serve at room temperature.

After reading a bit more on the thread "Why ING?" I decided to start a 6 mo CD "escalator" in my ING account. Right now the interest is 5.00%. I expect that the interest rate will go up a bit in the next few months, so I plan to buy 6 6-month CD for 2K around the first of the month. 6 months later, when the first CD matures, I see what's what. All the interest goes into my emergency fund.

It's a little bit different than the ladder, when you construct it so that your CDs mature at once.

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.

Might just as well do the net worth calculation.

$ 6,747.81 - stocks
$56,147.34 - IRA and 403(B)
$ 8,297.96 - bonds
$30,334.50 - 6 mo CD in brick/mortar bank
$19,385.48 - ING, checking, bank savings
-$ 652.00 - credit card*

$120,261.09 - grand total

*I signed up for more personal training on June 30.

I learned from my trainer that gym time is a bit like the car lot. The trainers in the gym have a quota; if you sign up at the end of the month you'll probably get a better deal.

It turns out that I will get a freebie from my trainer. I only got two new members, but by coincidence the managing CEO was working the table at our site. Seeing that I was an ad ... He got the idea to scour his records, find other downtown worksites that have a lot of clients, then schedule a gym "roadshow" at those offices.

Turns out that I'll need that extra training. The wedding on Friday night was beautiful with great weather, but the reception was a blowout - a couple of glasses of red wine and my judgment turned poor for the buffet.

We had a little benefits fair at work today. My gym is a benefit, and guess what? - my trainer was there, working the info table! I got a couple of coworkers who had been complimenting me these past months to sign up with her and try it out. It's fun being the ad! She struck a deal with me - if I could get three people to sign up, I get a freebie. Only got two, though...that I know about.

But one my coworkers that I got to sign up came down to my office and we chatted about what you could expect. My trainer is very enthusiastic; annoyingly so at first. Then I realized that the opposite would entail not being enthusiastic, and that would be way, way, way worse.

Filled out the expense report for buying bowling awards. It came to $205, but we bought a lot of awards, and 5 of anything is going to be spendy. We'll see how the budget worked out for the event.

This is so rare, but I'm down to my last $6 this month. I even raided the tip box. Payday tomorrow, and it can't come fast enough.

Filed my Nashville expense report today. Over $1000. Did pretty well with the hotel room, which was about 80% of the expense. The only added charge I put on it was the long distance phone call to DH. The wake up calls were free, apparently.

I haven't filled out one of these in a long time, and I never filled out one for myself, so I had to brave the dreaded "you didn't know that?" embarassment E and ask around. Apparently tips are included, and food at the airport.

It brought back memories of one of my first jobs away from science. I was an administrative assistant and one of my tasks was to fill out expense forms for my boss. I was new to the "delights" of Raleigh, NC, so when I kept running into a lot receipts called Pure Gold, I thought "jewelry?" and pitched them. Turned, heh heh heh, they were receipts to the local strip club. I heh-heh-heh it because while the boss was mad and needed the bucks ...what could he do?

Ah sweet naivete. Too bad you could only do that once. For the year or so that I worked for him, I figure he spent a 1-2K there at Pure Gold. Wonder what his wife thought of it...?

Food and sights...

Here's where the going got tough. What to do to satisfy three things: make frugal choices, eat in a healthy fashion, and do so in such a way that your co workers won't kill you (or worse, whisper about you back home)?

Can't say I did a fantastic job at it, but I did have a couple of principles:

1. Default drink was water or iced tea, and very rarely an adult beverage. I learned in college that it was way cheaper and far more entertaining to watch the drunk people than to be drunk yourself. I gave away one of my free drink tickets at the junket host party; that made up for the teasing I got for ordering water at the bar.

2. Since both meetings took care of lunch, that saved me a bit. Dinners I aimed for salads and food that Nashville specialized in, if nothing else for the experience. Loved the meat and three places. If nothing else I learned that fried pickles are weird but very, very good.

3. The Sights. That was really, really hard because you're either going or you're not; no frugal rates. I had to turn the frugal button off a couple of times.

My only tactic for the Country Music Hall of Fame and RCA Studio B tour was to buy the package, and get as much out of it as possible. It was fun and I learned a lot...probably not 35$ worth, but you only live once. How many times can you claim to stand on the same square of linoleum that Elvis did?

It was equally tough when we were going from bar to bar, listening to the bands. The tip jar would come out - How much do you put in? I went for generous, especially if the band was good. I figured they were working hard for the cash.

In other words, not really. I checked in, set the mini bar key on the TV where it did not move. Why bother looking if you don't want to spend?

The hotel room was lovely and comfortable and a veritable minifield of temptations that "we will just stick on your bill". A CD player/alarm had a small rack of wrapped CDs that if you unwrap, you bought. Webtv-esque Internet access at $10/hr. 2 Fiji water bottles for $4/each were sitting right beside the icebucket (Reader, after taking a stroll in 95F, I nearly fell for that one). First-run movies for 11$ - 14$. Strung from the door knob came more temptations - room service and massage service and laundry service and breakfast in bed, and even on my last day, an offer for the hotel to pack a lunch for the trip back.

Luckily, I'm a great sleeper and I stay put when I do so. I'm pretty sure I don't spend money when my eyes are closed. Unfortunately, I'm a great sleeper and I stay put when I do so, and I've been burned by setting hotel alarms. I sprung for the wake up call.

And so it was during most of frugal land last week. I had to make choices. I'm not even sure if there was a cost for the wake up call, but since I wanted to wake up, I paid the insurance. The continental breakfast coffee just wasn't waking me up one morning, so I sprung for Starbucks (3$/drip - yikes!) I came on this junket with two coworkers - we holed up one night to watch a movie, then split the payments for 5$ of fun.

But you all would have been proud of me. I looked at the fiji water, then got some ice and hit the tap water.

So getting to Nashville was a crazy adventure - a hopscotch from Seattle to San Diego to Dallas to Nashville. The Dallas connection was the crazy one, and I knew it would be crazy. In my purse went the just in case stuff: a pair of fresh socks, fresh panties, a bottle of water, 5 energy bars, 2 paperbacks, my Saturday paper, PDA, MP3 player.

The first rule of the airport is to think "prison". One checked bag, one purse, slip on shoes, no belt, no jewelry, all metal in the purse. Thankfully the metal detectors missed the underwire in the bra.

The second rule of the airport is that if you roam it with "needs" you'll spend money. The only need I should have provided for was to pack a lunch. I bought that for an uninspired $6 in San Diego.

As I said before I just made the connection in Dallas to Nashville; I had about fifteen minutes to get across the gigantic Dallas Airport. Yay for gym class. Ten minutes into the flight, though, after the relief that I made my flight came the realization that there was absolutely no way that my checked bag had made it. It tempered my relief until I realized something very important: all my clothes in that bag were at least 1 size too large, no one has seen me wear what I have on, and everything was Seattle summer-y, not Nashville summer-y. I cheered up at the thought of actually buying something.

At the Nashville baggage claim, my bag was missing, and so I stood with about 15 other people in various stages of high dudgeon, asking an airline rep to rescue their bag. One woman even threw a tantrum about her cell phone charger being in the missing bag. "That's my life they lost!" Here's a hint...if it was that big o'deal, it should have gone in the purse.

My turn with the airline rep. Many thanks to anna, jester of the bees for her customer service tips here and here that informed my tactics.

Me: Bad night, eh?
Rep (with a southern drawl): If you're here, the news is never good.
Me (low voice): To tell you the truth, I'm not that upset. You see, I've been at the gym for seven months now. All my clothes in that bag are at least one size too big.
Rep (laughing): Well bless your heart! So what did your bag look like?
Me: Carpet bag, green and kinda pink. No wheels. So I'm at [hotel]. Do you deliver? I don't have a phone...
Rep: We sure do, honey. No need for the phone, we know where that is. Do you have everything you need - toothbrush?
Me: toothbrush I have, but I need toothpaste.
Rep: Oh, let me get a little something for you...(returns with a little spa kit.)

So if you're a customer service rep, whose bag are you going to rescue first? Tantrum woman or woman with a funny story? I got my bag at the hotel by 10 am the next morning.

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.

Only spent $4.50 today. $2 for a coffee and $2.50 for 1/2 a good tuna sandwich. Saved the first half of today's lunch from yesterday.

Put 40$ in the 3M drp. After 2 years, I now have 27 shares. Put $35 in a WEC drp two weeks ago, I now have 18 shares of that. Put $50 electronically in KO last week, I now have 72 shares of that. Dividends for this quarter are: $22.28 (KO) + $12.05 (MMM) + $3.95 (WEC) + $2.98 (MI) = $41.26. It's not a bad deal - I put in money in quantities that I don't miss and it generates reinvested money that I also don't miss.

Haven't heard boo on the 2nd property.

The trainer has raised the resistance weight on most of the machines. Where it was 20 lbs, its now 30 lbs. We are now being to do "future" exercises. She had me try to do several real man-style pushups. I could still only bend my elbows and dip a couple of inches or two. For the future, the trainer said. I surprised both of us by holding a decent full plank position for 45 seconds.

yeah, I'll get back to the financial bits tomorrow.


Potato salad

2 lbs boiling potatoes (red, white, yukon gold...) the waxy kind.
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 bunch green onion or 1/3 red onion, chopped

Other good options: peas, sliced hard boiled egg, chopped french-cut green beans, artichoke hearts, blue cheese

Dressing - 1 part light sour cream, 1 part light mayo, a bit of lemon juice, crushed dried tarragon, salt, pepper.

Boil potatoes until potatoes can be pierced with a fork. Drain potatoes, allow to cool. (Frugal step here: if you want to use frozen peas or green beans, put them in the bottom of the colander, so when you pour out the boiling water, you cook the vegetables). Let sit. Potatoes should be room temp or colder, and they should be dry so the dressing will stick.

Dressing: Beat sour cream and mayo together, add the lemon juice to get the dressing to the consistency of heavy ranch dressing. Crush tarragon, salt and pepper to taste.

Toss cold cooked potatoes and vegtables with the dressing. Let sit, covered, in the refrigerator for about 30 min. FYI - If you add blue cheese, it is delicious, but it will shorten the lifespan of the salad considerably.



Yeah, I promise to blog on more financial bits. I love the frugal aspects of salad - something creamy, something crunchy, a little protein, a little sweet, a little sour, and whatever great vegetables you have. Proportions in whatever you can spare. And you are lucky, you don't have to turn on the stove.

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.

This is the time of year when the deal is this: DH grills something, and I make the salad... 2nd of three.

Black bean, corn, onion, tomato salad

Proportions can vary on this...

1 cup dried black beans
1 cup corn (frozen works well)
1 cup fresh chopped tomato
1/3 red onion, sliced thin

Dressing
3 parts olive oil
1 part lemon juice
chopped Italian parsely
salt and pepper to taste.
(additional options - chopped Italian parsely, oregano, chopped garlic, garlic salt...you get the idea)
Be aggresive with seasonings, the black beans are going to be bland.

Soak black beans for 2 hours, then boil them until tender, but still whole. (this salad is not good with mashable black beans!) Drain, then cool beans to room temperature.

Chop tomato, add a little bit of salt and allow to drain. Slice onion thinly and hold slices in salted water...keeps the slices from being too 'oniony'. If corn is frozen, cook then drain and cool to room temperature. (Microwave works well here).

Make your dressing (if you are dressing challenged, a good bottled Italian dressing will work here).

Dress the black beans first - they are the blandest and you'll need to give them time to suck up the dressing. Add corn next, toss: add onion next, toss; add tomato last; toss. Cover, let sit for about 30 minutes.

Great the second day, but tastes best when at room temperature.

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.

I broke down and figured what I've paid so far to get in better shape - trainer, gym fees, chiropractic copays. Look if you dare - its high...


$5,154.85

Waaaaah!

I am feeling better, my posture's a lot better, I've lost a lot of inches, and I got a compliment from my trainer. She looks forward to our workouts and told me how rare it is for a client who comes in 10-15 minutes early to warm up and - our new thing - to roll out my knots in my legs. It means that our workouts together are for the full 60 minutes, or from my perspective, 70 minutes. Everybody else seems to go for about 45 minutes. I did my best old fart voice and said, "Harrump, I bought an hour's workout and by G*d I'm going to get one." Grinned while I said it of course.

Thanks folks for you all thinking I'm an fitness inspiration. I still wish it didn't cost so much.

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.

All about sister today.

Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and for the last four years I've sent sister a salmon. One of the biggest salmon runs in Alaska happens on the Copper River around the middle of May. Once upon a time that salmon run was so plentiful and cheap the salmon caught were turned into cat food. Today salmon were priced @ the Pike Market for $15.99/lb. Gasp.

I've bought from the fishmonger for years, and as the anti-fish flinger he had the best, best prices and knew the most. He was sympathetic, assured me that more of the run will come in Wednesday and the price will drop. We struck a deal for me to buy in the future for about $11/lb. Just like a stock future, only with a fish.

Sister will get the fish on Thursday.

I walked away, remembering what a great uncle of mine said. "Remember they've got to make some money too." Make friends with your seller; otherwise you pay the tourist prices.

For non-fish reasons, sister called a couple of hours later. WiDNR 73; farmette 7. Turns out we might have an interested party for the farmette - a horse owner. Fingers crossed.

Collected my tip jar, added the crumbs from my wallet - $53 in savings this month.

Its a tip that I put in Carolina Bound's comments. The full tip is a really simple, second nature tip to me now but it has helped me out of a few jams and it lessens the Embarassment and Easy Es in the grocery line.

Grocery stores like to trick you a little bit - or, rather, fleece you a little bit if you're not alert. Sometimes they put branded sale items right next to very similar items branded, not on sale; sometimes the sale tag is not right next to the item; sometimes a coupon is maddingly precise (on the 24 oz item, not on the 20 oz item).

If I am unsure whether I will get the sale price or the coupon price of an item, I put that item in the back corner of the cart. If a store runs out of something and I want to get a raincheck, I write the brand, the size, and the item on a slip of paper and put that in the back corner too.

When I unload groceries on the belt, the items on the back corner get unloaded last and I put a little space (3-6 inches) between the questionable items, the slips of paper and the sure-thing items. Not a huge space, just a little breather so that the cashier will ring up the sure-thing items first and you know when to be on alert.

Now when the questionable items come up, you can watch how they ring up. If they don't ring up as the sale price, you can return them quickly, with less fuss, because they are at the end. And the slip of paper on the belt will remind you to ask for a raincheck. Sometimes the cashier says, "oh item x can substituted." Cool. If the stock boy doesn't run to fetch it and you don't have the time, write it out on the slip of paper with the deadline.

You get what you want, you know when to be alert, you have your fight at the end. And now I've trained all the cashiers in Seattle to roll their eyes when they see that space.

Second property recap:

Two days ago I got a quick, fairly frantic phone call from sister. According to sister's phone call, she thought that the Wisconsin Dept of Nat Resources (WiDNR) only wanted 7 acres, leaving 73 acres for the farmette. From her end: eeek. A little surprising to me - 7 acres would be just the creek and the banks, maybe, why not the whole watershed? - but I hadn't gotten any written proposal. I took the wait and see approach.

Sister emailed me last night. Just the opposite. WiDNR is interested in 73 acres, leaving 7 acres for the farmette. Again, I see no written proposal. Still have to take the wait-and-see approach.

Would love to see the pieces of paper but I have to be sanguine about it. The most important thing I learned from last November was that as the other heir, sister and the executors are going to have consult with me and show me the proposal sometime.

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.