Not much on any economic front. But the 75$ front of the month pay yourself first payment made it into savings. Just waiting for over 24K to get sucked into ING...seems to be taking days longer than my other deposits. Guess ING is trying to figure out whether this deposit is a joke or not.

Several co workers today and several yesterday joked how "I'm just wasting away." Why is everyone noticing now? Another co worker even told me that she joined because of me..she saw me head out 2-3x week every week for months.

My trainer told me that if I get ahold of them first to tell them to tell the gym that they joined because of me, for every four people that come in like that, she will give me a freebie training session. My balance and my form and even my endurance during the exercises seem to be improving geometically now.

I'm hip-deep in crazy at work. The number of questions and advice is picking up, and the money itself for our non-profit is starting to roll in.

Sunday: went to the Greek Festival for a hit and run. Didn't sense that DH was in the spirit of the thing, so I went alone. Bought a 2$ raffle to go to Lost Wages (Vegas), olive oil, feta cheese, olives, taramosalata, braided butter cookies = 42$ (mostly due to the olive oil).

At the grocery store, found a very good unadvertised deal on lamb neck @ 1.49$/lb. Lamb stew!


Monday: Put 4$ in the tip box.

Now that I've gotten busier, I have an assistant. New and exciting and scary because I'm a serious control freak and find it difficult to delegate...not to mention as a practical matter that with the buses, I'm finding it very hard to get to work before 8:30am to supervise. It was her first day and we got her up and running and trained a bit. Tomorrow I'll put her to some of her basic tasks.

She generally brings her lunch, but didn't today because she wasn't sure of the facilities we had and the lunch rules. Bought her first lunch along with mine - 23$. There's frugal, and then there's nice.

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.

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.

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.

Nice quiet day at work - did the data intensive project today (the type that distractions are very unwelcome). Still have a couple more updates before I'm really ready for the months to come.

Sent off the passport and renewal application by certified mail. Since I won't need the passport for at least another year, I should get a new one back in eight weeks.

My 30K CD is maturing at the end of this month. I'll double check the APY on the next leg just in case, but really my plan is to put 6K of it on the credit card (bed and the next set of personal training appointments) to pay it off, then put the rest into a simple Vanguard index fund. Come January of 2007, the maximum goes into a Roth IRA.

Had a chiropractic appointment today - next week I'm down to one/week, which will free up another 20$/week. I asked him what he meant yesterday. He was still cagey, but promised that he would do something for me "legally". I said that I have to keep my clothes on.

No sense pushing anything. Let people give you a gift and be modest, grateful and appreciative if they do so.

Put 6$ in the tip box.

Trip 1: to get an emergency nice outfit in case I have to go out on the road with the fundraising staff for the non-profit that I work at. The mission is to look nice, but not too nice. You don't want people to assume that their gift goes to your favorite boutique, and besides, this blog is part of Saving Advice, not spending advice.

So it was Ross Dress for Less, where I got a wonderful surprise. I am 2, count 'em 2, sizes down. I'm now a 14, instead of an 18. Freakin' Woo hoo! Got a brown suit and a pair of nice black pants = $38.06.

Trip 2: Best Buy. More of a treat, but it will be used a lot. Got an FM transmitter that plugs into the cigarette lighter of the cushmobile, and it broadcasts what's on your MP3 player on an unused FM band. Not fancy, but it'll work with either mine or DH's MP3 player. Set it up and it did what it advertised. Best of all, you can unplug it and take it with you or hide it from prying, thieving eyes = $54.39.

Used a 2 for 1 coffee coupon at a local coffeeshop - coffee for DH and myself = $2.00.

Yesterday I got all bummed out and wigged because I took that test that I promised to take after the Nashville trip...

I failed it. By 3 questions.

The Director of IT took it about a month and a half ago and my other two compatriots took it and passed, so we got our three people for the cheap rate, and yep the questions were crapily worded (blame the tools, not the craftsman)...but still. Sigh...

I'm not the gal I used to be in that regard. In my first year of grad school, I took a immunology midterm when I hadn't even bought the book and had to borrow a pencil from a nervous pre-med (frugally excellent psych-out technique, FYI) and scored second in the class. "Imagine how I'd do if I bought the book," was all I said.

Good times, good times.

Bought my third 4-week T-bill. So my plan is to have 4 $2000 4-week T-bills, staggered so each is bought a different week, and bought from the account that the T-bill matured in. The interest earned from the bills gets scraped back into ING. This $8000 and the $6000+ in my ING account comprise my liquid emergency fund. Everything else is medium and long term-investment.

Got paid today at the raise rate - it was a 30$ increase, so increasing the pay-yourself rate to 75$ from 50$ at the top of the month means I've saved my raise.

Gym was upper body. For the last several days, I've been stopping on 15th NW, a 7 block further walk.

Found a quarter sitting on an empty bus seat this morning as I was leaving. That was a good sign for my first day back to work. Best haul I've had in a year or two. Mostly I find pennies and dimes.

And it was just in time, too. Vacation just breeds spending opportunity. If you work on an outside job, you have little time or opportunity to spend. I was okay with not buying lunch, but it seemed like everyday I was shelling out bucks for printer cartridges or a bed or a sheets. Good deals, but the best deal of all is 0$.

Shoveled out 155 emails and went through my day. Caught up with the groom from the second wedding I attended (the couple who got four personal finance books) - we hadn't talked for about 6 weeks. Most of my department is getting back from various vacations, so very soon we will be at full strength.

Got my other habits in order. My back was stiff, but the chiropractic adjustments seemed to hold, even with two weeks on the air mattress and couch. The personal trainer threatened measurements tomorrow. Got the footlong sandwich so I have lunch today and Wednesday - got the special for 5$, so it would be $2.50/lunch. Tomorrow I have lunch with lawyer friend (before measurements). I should finish the month with $60 in my checking account.

Savings log - 7$ tip box.
Spending log - $1.75 coffee + $5.00 lunch.

Ate a free lunch today. Okay, the free lunch was so late that I had to buy a little something ($4), otherwise I was going to kill someone, and actually it was a free picnic on the concrete deck of the 62nd floor of the Columbia Tower. A friend works for a law firm and the party was to watch the Blue Angels practice. Hot dogs, wraps, chips, cookies, ice cream, lemon granitas. And to round out each side of the food line: sunscreen at the front of line, tums at the end.

I had a hotdog, chips, and granita, then proudly and politely skipped the rest. "Let the kids have first pick," I said.

The great view was much more satisfying than the Blue Angels; I left for gym right at their second pass.

Found out that my 4% raise goes into effect August 15. Time to save the raise.

$3 in the tip box, and its payday.

Talked to the chiropractor receptionist, asking why my co-pay checks haven't been cashed. Turns out that the office accountant had been on vacation for 2 weeks. Boy, do I feel like a miserly goob!

Chiropractor asked me how I spent the weekend. I told him that I spent it waiting by the phone for news.

Despite payday, we are all a little bit subdued. A lot of folks at our non-profit knew the people who were shot at the J Federation. Security at our offices is going to go up. We got paid a visit from the Seattle Police Department.

Lawyer friend's partner is alright, but I found out that I knew another friend, initials CG, who worked there and had gotten shot in the knees. Time to circle the wagons, figure out what is needed for her and how to help.

Now for the more mundane:
- I put 7$ in the tip box.
- I managed to "play my cards right" and get a week's worth of breakfast coffee for $1 (usually runs $8.75).
- Payment made it to the transfer agent in time to buy comparatively cheap 3M stock next week.
- Signed up for another fitness challenge, along with the two friends from work. The personal trainer rates are cheaper during this time, and she was in a contest to sign up the most people. Since I put her over the top, she's giving me a free session. Might just as well make gym pay me if at all possible.

Scraped up 48$ from the tip box and put it into savings.

Ate the footlong sub over 2 days to save a little bit. Ordered up DH's gift from Think Geek , DH's birthday card, and sister's birthday card. So $1.65 (coffee)+ $5.72 (2 cards) + $29.00 (DH birthday gift).

Our workplace is talking about converting vacation and sick leave into PTO (paid time off). I tend to accrue beaucoup amounts of sick leave and I'm not terribly interested in starting a family, so it'll be an okay deal for me. The COO had mentioned that there were about 30 people who he felt might be abusing sick leave. I didn't think it was that many, but then again I work for a living.

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.

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.

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.

I'm under 200! 198 3/4. Lost another 1/2 inch on the waist, and another 3/4 inch from the hips. According to the original measurements, I'm very close to the loss of inches and loss of body fat 6-month goal that the first trainer set up for me. Except for the weight - he figured that I would be around 180.

Call me Ahnold. I guess I'm not a girlie-man girl. I turn fat to muscle instead of having it go poof.

Checked up on my 403B, the accounts where my vestments were weird. One was right; the other showed 80% vested, which was right before Feb 1. It take a little more work, but at least movement has appeared. HR didn't appreciate that I emailed my co-workers about it...so screw it. I can look at my accounts and I can report to my friends my findings. HR is not your friend, usually.

I'm going on the junket to Nashville, so I've booked the hotel and the plane ticket. I used Priceline to get the cheapest round-trip ticket I could ($435), but comes with a real Twilight Zone itinerary. Hopefully William Shatner is not flying the plane; bad enough when he has a window seat looking out at the wing.

Put 5$ in the tip box.
Gave DH $2000 to get the car fixed.
Pulled the last 740$ of gramma's gift to pay off the credit card completely, for now.

Sister called today. The Wisconsin DNR (WiDNR) is interested in quite a bit of it, but of course not really interested in the farm and the buildings. Sister's thought is to again split it, use a realtor, and try to sell the house, barn and 5-20 acres as a farmette, leaving the back 50 wetland acres to sell to WiDNR. The thought (maybe) would be that WIDNR would begin to restore the wetlands, making the farmette potentially appealing for a buyer interested in what a wetland would offer - a hunter, fisherman or birder. But real estate is chilly right now, so who knows?

The executors were trying to get a renter for the land this year. The month of May is not the time. It should have happened in January/February, but I suspect that they had hoped that the second piece would have sold by then and they would be done. City slickers!

Ah the weekend. Not that work is bad right now (not like the nightmare of late March), its just that on Fridays I have a low tolerance for ijits. You know the type, the ones that call or stop by to give you one of their projects that they've procrastinated on for the week, and then they have to gall to tell you to hurry up with your tasks so they can "supposedly" do theirs. Ahem, stop wasting my time then!

Gym was yesterday, lower body and abs. I'm still marveling at the fact that I can touch my toes and walk my hands to out to get into a push up position. The personal trainer tells me that the goal is to touch toes, walk my hands out to push up position, hold, do a pushup, walk back, straighten up again, then do a squat. Its nearly a full workout on a yoga mat. I'm supposed to drink even more water than I am, which I have to work on. I did change my walking route home. My normal route is to go up a moderate hill, but one block closer to home is far, far steeper hill, so I took that. I felt like a mountain climber.

More measurements next week. And I'm marveling in the fact that I can wear any piece of clothing that I own.
"New item?"
"Yes - from the house of chez baselle."

Another 4$ in the tip box, $35 in a DRP.

$5 in the tip box.

Decided to put in only $100/month into I-bonds this 6 month cycle. I like the idea of 1.4% fixed more than 1.0% or 1.2%, but I think I will see something higher than that in the near future. Just a feeling, 'cause I'm an INFP.

Did the footlong sandwich strategy for lunch. Bought a footlong, put every vegetable on it (I want a salad with my sandwich), had it cut in 4s. In other words, I bought 1st lunch and 2nd lunch for today and tomorrow. (I'm supposed to eat 2 small lunches slowly instead of huff down 1 large lunch). Washed it down with water.

Gotta love water. It does what you ask of it with no calories and probably at no cost to you. I think its even better than diet or unsweetened tea. You have to pay for it, and somehow a flavor conveys an expectation. I don't know how to explain it. If you get used to water, you have less of a craving for sugared soda or even diet soda than you would if you got used to diet soda. At least for me; YMMV.

Did gym yesterday. Balancing and upper body. I'm improving my balance each time. Now can balance myself on an air dome thingee and do bicep curls and shoulder presses. Exciting!

The junket to Nashville is getting more interesting. Apparently I can save my non-profit some money if I take a test and certify myself in special training. It smacks of taking a test for money, a situation that hasn't presented itself to me in twenty years.

I'm a ringer! Ha ha.

Put another 2$ in the tip box. I'll have to take a picture of it for Jeffrey's collection. It's been nearly two years since I started moving money through the tip box; since that time I've "rescued" nearly $1000 from my paycheck to my savings. Most months I collect 40$ or so. I had a couple of hot months above 50$ and I usually take a break from tip boxing in December, for obvious reasons.

Tip boxing is my version of the change jar, and now I have my habits with it. I keep my tip box at work, because 1.) I know that DH would raid it if it was at home, 2.) the bank is two blocks away, 3.) its useful for the 1$, 2$ surprise office collections, and a fourth reason below.

My tip box is tiny (3 inches square inside) with a nice hefty lid so it doesn't hold much change. Besides, my bank is one of those that doesn't have a change machine or handles change well. So while I do throw change and 1$ bills in to prime it, what really makes my tip box work is making reverse change, and shorting myself.

I pull a pile of 6-7 ones and a wad of quarters from the tip box and replace it with a 10$. It frees up space in the box for the next round of ones and change. I never have to buy a stick of gum or something to break a bill at work, I just break one from my bank in my drawer! (my fourth reason)

After I do my several cycles of getting $1s and making reverse change for a month, I count what I have. Anything above 40$ I deposit during my lunch hour; anything below 40$ I make up from my wallet.

Then my tip box lays empty, until the clank of the first handful of change... The frugal cycle continues.

We got word that supposedly our 403B calculations would be fixed on the 15th. We shall see.

One of my groceries declared bankruptcy. Drat,it wasn't Safeway.

Sounds like either an oxymoron or a cause of death, doesn't it?
What happened to him?
Frugal sushi.
Oh.

That really holds true with the all-you-can-eat, fixed price buffet style sushi. There's a pretty infamous place in Seattle that a couple of friends got excited about, ate there, and swore about in the bathroom 6 hours later.

I had sushi for lunch today, so I thought about the concept as I ate. With rolls, you get a small amount of raw fish sometimes gooped up with condiments (spicy tuna is raw tuna smashed in a paste with hot pepper) rolled with rice. If you like raw fish its really not the way to go. Nigiri is the style with the little pad of sushi rice under the thinly sliced fish, what most people associate with sushi - okay, but when the fish is sliced so thin that you can see the rice under it...well, that isn't the way to go either. Sashimi is the sliced raw fish, the best stuff, and you will pay.

For lunch today I had the third way which I have been finding is the most frugal style of sushi: chirashi, strewn sushi, where slices of sashimi lay over a plate sized pad of sushi rice. And I got quite a lot sashimi for my buck. For 11$ I got 2 pc of egg, 1 shrimp, 2 lg pieces of clam, 1 pc octopus, 2 pc squid, 1 tsp of roe, 1 large hunk of salmon, 1 pc tuna, 1 pc herring, 1 pc yellowtail, 1 pc red snapper, 2 scallops. And the sashimi pieces themselves were about twice the size of what you would get if you got them as nigiri pieces. Nice.

Or maybe it was a reward from the sushi chef for not celebrating Cinco de Mayo.

Saving log - $3 in tip box.

Received the second advance of dad's estate. DH will research what it would cost to get the car fixed.

End of the third week and still no fix for the weird vest calculations on the 403B.

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.

Mail call yesterday - the totals on the retirement and the 403B accounts for Q1 2006 came. Still looked like I was only 80% vested. One of my co workers, who was fully vested two years ago, had the same ratio. The fact that he saw the same thing...well, I felt better. Not that I'm not vested, but its not like I've read the HR manual closely. Who knows? Maybe I only get my vested bucks if I did all my tasks standing on one leg.

I suggested to him sending an innocent email to HR.

He must have done it because about 30 minutes later all the staff got a yea-yea-we-know-about-it email from the VP of HR. Gee, the problem has only been happening for a couple of months. We were promised that it would get fixed by the vendor in a couple of weeks.

It could be worse, though. At least it was a mistake and not the fee.

Lunch with the lawyer friend and his partner. Ironic that yesterday was ham day and today we went to lunch fundraiser at Hillel. $15, so there was no way I was going to eat enough brisket, kugel and gelfite to make it a deal, but it was nice (the cooking reminded me of college days) and it was for a worthy cause.

So at the end of lunch, over apple crumb, lawyer friend heaves a big sigh and asks, "I spend too much money. How can I can I save some?"

"Stop spending money," I said. "Stop traveling so much." (He had just come back from visiting family on the east coast)

"No really," he said, "I'm sick of this. How can I do it?"

"Get into a routine that you can live with," I said. "You then find ways to run your routine for cheap. And TV is evil."

His partner definitely agreed about the TV, but lawyer friend made a face.

Another minute later lawyer friend mused, "I watched the line at Starbucks - addicts lining up for a socially acceptable form of crack."

I planted a seed; we'll see if it sprouts.