Saving log - $7 tip box
Spending log - $1.91 large coffee + $9 lunch

Today was the downside of working for a large non-profit. We were very busy today, the last day of the year, charging the credit cards of the procrastinators who want a tax substantiation for 2007. When I left for my hour of gym, a donor was actually waiting in the lobby, tapping his card on the bullet proof glass in the lobby. Sigh. I have to admit that today's a lot easier when it falls on a weekend.

It feels like the recession is coming, even here in supposedly "bullet proof" Seattle. Other years we would have 3-4 unchargable credit cards/ week; this year 18!

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee

Nearly no spend day because we had our Winter Event - aka the afternoon office holiday party. A lunch in a nice venue in downtown Seattle, with a drawing for prizes, and a couple of speakers. It was all right, but not nearly as entertaining as ones when they had the no host bar. Now there was frugal entertainment! I don't remember the precise year when we stopped having the ability to buy a drink. A guess that's a good sign that I don't have an adult beverage problem.

I won 2 tickets to a John Denver (esque) concert at the Seattle Rep that I must use by Dec 24. I put the esque in parantheses for a reason, John Denver's been dead for awhile. Or maybe, just maybe, if I have that adult beverage that could appear to change.

Paycheck tomorrow. $50 goes to another DRP account. The interest that I've been earning on T-bills has been dropping like a rock - over the summer its been 5%, now its about 3%.

I keep getting Ameriprise materials, so I know that an account in my name had been created and bits of grandmas trust is moving into it, but nothing final. They say that trusts resolve more quickly for heirs, but in my experience the probate process was much more absorbing and a bit more transparent. I know that's a bit weird to say, but with all the decisions that sister and I had to make it seemed that probate knit us together a bit more. I'm sure sister would disagree - she had to do most of the heavy lifting. Trusts just seem mysterious. If its that much a done deal, just cut us two checks and be done with it.

Saving log - $2 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $15 chirashi lunch

I'm on disc 2 of an F/X series called 30 Days. 30 Days is made by Morgan Sperlock, who famously tried to live on McDonalds for 30 days in Super Size Me. Different people lived a different lifestyle for 30 days. For the purposes of this journal, the two interesting 30 day experiments were of 1) Sperlock and his fiancee trying to live on minimum wage for 30 days in Columbus OH and 2) a couple trying to live "off the grid" for 30 days. Both couples managed it, with some insights, but 30 days is not that long a time. They are both punks compared to lrjohnson, living for ONE YEAR on CA minimum wage. I miss her...is she coming back?

Managed to lose 1% of body fat last week. How did that happen?

Work is crazy, of course, but now a tad strange. One of the higher ups (defined as anyone higher up than me) is having issues that I find hard to describe. The closest I can come up with is mental confusion. Not emotional issues, and not dangerous, but ...odd.

Monday
Saving log - $2 tip box
Spending log - $2.39 coffee, milk + $8 lunch

Tuesday
Saving log - $5 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $7.50 lunch

Nope. While I'm in North Seattle, I did not get flooded out. I'm on a ridge, but about 20 blocks from the flood plain near Northgate. Sure has been wet rain, not a mist - a quick jog for a couple of blocks gets your legs soaked.

The rain's made a hash of the work schedule. Temp guy had to take off work to go rescue his stuff from his apartment. Day care places have flooded out, so I've had to be flexible and allow for a child or two. We work in the basement, ordinarily okay except for this fall we've had a lot of leaks - water coming in from leaks between the sidewalk and the curb on 2nd Avenue.

DJ friend is back on the mend, but his finances got wiped out from the week he'd been out. I had been looking for a Christmas gift for him - instead the stars aligned to give him a much better gift. I had been paying my copays to the chiropractor, but during the physical therapy billing phase the copay turned into a credit. My original plan was to ask for a refund of the chiropractor at the end of the year. Instead I asked to put half of my refund into DJ friend's account, good for a month of back popping at the student rate.

Trust administrator is asking for "one more form" for grandma's estate. This time I'm the foot dragger - it looks like the trustees are setting up new accounts in my name. Sigh. Just give me the inheritance in my name.

Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $8 lunch + $25 poker game

Crazy, crazy day today. I work for a large non-profit in Seattle, who shall remain nameless (initials are UW). Today we organized and readied pledges for processing from a large company. From my perspective it was fun, putting pledges in piles, adding things together, taking a box of unruly and making it "ruly". Just a few observations on the process.

1. Fascinating looking at personalized/ artistic checks. It makes you wonder what kind of adult writes a Kenny Chesney or a Scooby Doo check. Since artistic checks come in a series you have to wonder ... for every Kenny Chesney-guitar pose check, do you get the Rene Zellweger handing-you-divorce-papers check?

2. Checks are a magnet for another kind of transaction - badly filled out checks. A fundraising staffer showed one check which had the money amount written on the to:line, where our name of our non-profit is supposed to go. Nothing else. We can't cash it. I was pretty sanguine about it. "Fake pledging at its finest," I said.

Fake pledging happens every so often. Its a badly filled out check or a pledge form. Sometimes the check bounces, sometimes the "donor" wants his gift to go to a place that we can't send it (a place that's not a non-profit). If you are new to the non-profit biz, you think, "how can the person be so careless?" The old hands to this biz just smile. Fake pledging. After all, if the person is paying a mortgage or rent ... they know damn well how to write a check.

Fake pledging is perfect to the passive aggressive employee. They appear to follow the herd and pledge, and if they do it in the sight of others they aren't bothered for the rest of the fundraiser. They don't have to go through the discomfort of saying no. Best of all, they spend no money - when the fake pledge gets to us, we can't cash the check so we don't book it.

Too bad the employee who didn't want to participate couldn't say no... they could save themselves a check, we could save some time, and we would have no one to laugh at.

Saving log - $6 tip box
Spending log - $4.50 groceries

New temporary staff orientation with a little breakfast provided. And again, another lunch with turkey salad on top of a toasted english muffin. There's only enough salad for a couple more days; even so that's a good 4 day run of bringing my own lunch.

Also paid a total of $375 to my DRPs - $300 in one, $35 for another, $40 for another.

Homework for gym last week was to hold a hollow plank - on the back, legs up at a 45 degrees, arms parallel to legs, shoulders up off the mat - for a minute and a half. I told the trainer that I practiced and that I'm ready.
Want a countdown? the trainer asked.
No, let's just see how long I last, I said.
So in the middle of this, I'm thinking that this is the llloooonnngggest minute and a half, and I was about to drop when the trainer said that I had nine more seconds. I made it past the nine seconds...and it turned out that I had held the position for two minutes.

Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.30 coffee + $15 chirashi lunch.

Keeping on an even keel financially. Collected $49 from my tip box this month and put it into savings. I've been debating putting some new money into a WaMu 9 month CD, but WaMu got caught doing some interesting things during this subprime mess. Sure, its FDIC insured, but is it worth the agita?

We are now all busy at work. My supervisor and I went through my 6 month evaluation, which was successful. I'm the boss of DJ friend so I'm happy that I'm keeping things in a good place there. My other employee is working out very well, too - I've given her a bit more responsibility and she's run with it...that was good to see.

DH picked up our turkey - its huge, but it means that everyone will get a lot of turkey, darn it.

I'm usually not jealous of other people's thanksgivings, but my temp guy is heading back to Oregon to a Chinese feast of seafood hot pot. The WASP traditional feasts are nice, but the ethnic traditional ones are much more memorable. I was invited to an Iranian thanksgiving with turkey, pilaf, and a gigantic bowl of pomegranite pips. Just take your favorite feast food, make a ton of it, and enjoy.

Saving log - $5 tip box
Spending log - $1.50 coffee, milk + $10 lunch

Mixed up day at work!
--In the last couple of days, my little deli hasn't gotten its half pints of no fat milk, so the manager has been giving me little covered cups of no fat milk either free or reduced rates.
--Our roof - actually the roof of my office is right below the sidewalk, not below the building - is leaking, so a guy from the City of Seattle has come by to fix the leaks. He complained that since its now dry, he can't find them. Well, duh. Today he was mixing up sealant trying to seal up the concrete over my office.
--Teaching a couple of my staff how to clean spreadsheets. Teaching moment was conflicting with the sealant.
--Chiropractor's staffer came for boxes.

Delivered good news yesterday to DJ friend. He got a small payraise, retroactive from 4 months ago.

I'm been exploring what to do with my grandma's inheritance. One of the local banks is in the process of offering a CD where you can donate interest money to the non-profit where I work, but the bank also will donate 20 basis points in addition. (I knew about this because we have to figure out how to put their proceeds onto our books.) I asked for more info by email, left a phone number. One of the bank's VPs called me back - turns out that I'm the first person who asked about it. (they hadn't made the CD public yet.) We had a great conversation. I could get used to having good conversations with banks.

Saving log - $6 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $6.50 lunch

Work was on the snoozy side today, so snoozy that we had a debate about whether daylight saving was this weekend or next.

Next, it turns out.

Been noticing, strangely enough, all the "No Public Restroom" paper signs on all the local businesses. Don't know if they've always been there and I've only recently gotten a clue, or they're new. The paper looks fresh, FWIW.

I've also been noticing safety lately. I work on the southern end of downtown, a bit north of Pioneer Square. Now with the days getting shorter, the nights getting longer and I work a bit later and get to the gym on Sundays, what I've seen has put me on my guard a bit. Two incidents.

1. An older, larger woman was testing out our front doors after hours on the weekday. I was about to open the front door to leave when I saw her. She asked me through the crack of the door whether there's a pay phone. No, I said. And then I stood there, and she stood there for about 15 seconds. Like I'm going to open the door. She sighed, turned, and left, and that's when I opened the door.

2. I was stopping over at work to unload before gym on Sunday. I spotted a guy in his early 40s testing our doors. I wasn't about to unlock the door; instead I walked past with a purposeful stride, then turned to see what he was doing. Yes, testing the door I was about to use. I walked slowly away, watching, until he crossed the street, then I looped back and unlocked the door.

It seems like over half of my coworkers have bad door hygiene. We have key cards for after hours (not a key), and 15 ft tall, heavy brass double doors that look like they take more work to open than they do. Most people use the key card, then love to open the door using the blue handicapped button, flinging both brass doors wide open for 15 seconds. That would be a very long opportunistic 15 seconds if someone was testing the doors.

Cripes, I feel so cynical, but geez, what's not to like about opening the door the regular way? Safety and a little upper body strength. How we've escaped having something horrible happen is anyone's guess.

Thursday
Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $4 lunch

Wednesday
Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $15 lunch

The hold on the 95K dug a bit deeper - I tried to send money to me to pay a credit card and to sister and couldn't do it. This time I called and sent an email. They will unblock at the end of the week. It was a security issue - the system thought the transactions looked funny, so close to a deposit with a hold on it.

I asked the bank's customer service to send the checks by physical mail. I'll see how long it takes to the electronic - electronic so far takes 4 days.

Today our HR at work unveiled the market research data - the average person working at my job (or jobs like mine) makes about 14% more, so I can expect a few more payraises in the next few years, which means that setting the 403B at 15% ensures raises there also.

I still do gym. My weight has been rising again - its at 190. Sigh. However, my new clothes fit better than they did 6 months ago. Go figure. We did the tape, something we haven't done in awhile - I lost .5 inch off the hips, .25 inch off each arm, and 1.5 inch off the waist. I'll just have to lose weight the old fashioned way: lie about it.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.16 coffee + $8 lunch

I wonder how many people walking up or down the Cherry Street hill between 2nd and 3rd Ave past the parking garage ever noticed the fern growing out of the side of the building? Thinking about all the nasty paint and the shade the fern has to deal with, wow, its amazing its here and looking good.


This morning, I used the restroom, which meant washing my hands, which meant either wiping down the massive puddles around the rim of the sink and the counter, or ignore them completely. I've been wiping down the sinks and counters, but man, I'm just sick of it. This is what I did:

1. Wrote this on a PostIt note in tiny lettering -

"If you can read this -
You probably now have a line of soapy water cutting across your pants.
Please wipe down the counter when you are done."

2. Attached said PostIt eye level onto the mirror.

Went back to the bathroom at 5 pm. No PostIt but the counters were dry. I'm considering it a win.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $7 lunch (for 2)

Had a free espresso drink card laying on my desk so I used that instead of the usual coffee and milk breakfast routine. Had the $3 in my wallet to put in the tip box.

DJ friend saved up a multitude of 2 for 1 cards at a new restaurant, so he organized an outing. Trouble is that when one friend accepted, he had to find another to keep it even. A co worker didn't have the cash on him, so I bought the 2 for 1, plus tax and tip. He now owes me at least one.

Normally, I buy very few t-shirts; I get one every so often, so why bother buying? I hadn't gotten a t-shirt in about 2 years when today I got my third t-shirt in 3 weeks. Tomorrow, as a payment for some of my work on DJ friend's internet radio station (see links), I will get my 4th t-shirt. Weird how gifts run like that.

Saving log - $0
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk

Ate the other half of the sandwich I bought on Monday. These days a lot of people use the work refrigerator, but no one used the vegetable bin. Ha ha, score for a hiding place!

Last night I got the final piece of mail from the executors - a Schedule K-1. I'll have to look it up in the IRS site to see when and if its used. The letter stated that they filed a copy with the IRS, so we shouldn't. I suspect that it means that they've filed and paid so if I file and pay, I've paid twice.

Tonight I voted proxy as on one of my DRP stocks - M&I - is splitting off one of its subsidiaries into a new company - Metavante. If the split goes through, I get some additional Metavante stock.

Saving log - $4 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk

Got bought and ate a Vietnamese lunch today with my Viet host, along with four other co workers, one from Thailand, one from the Philippines, and two of us mongrel WASP/Germans. Very fun and I learned of several new places to try around Seattle.

The three south asians all compared the consonants that each language didn't have and discussed intently the dishes they'd order.

I learned that pho (soup) is a breakfast food, although my host said, "we eat it for lunch and all the time."

Chopsticks are rarely used in Thailand - only for noodles in broth. I very much admire the pushing of food with a fork to a large spoon. Its a delicate, beautiful way of eating: a secondary cooking stage because you construct your spoonfuls.

I shared that it was interesting that the United States really took pho under its wing, while in Paris its bahn mi (bagette sandwich with pork pate and thin sliced pickled veggies).

And at the end of the meal as a digestive, my host and I ate 1 raw garlic clove, provided for by the restaurant.

I heard a rumor - which Wikipedia didn't confirm - that Ho Chi Minh studied pastry making with Escoffier. Fascinating what could have been.

Saving log - $2 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $7 lunch (footlong for two lunches) + $11.84 groceries

I was busy for the entire day, that kind of rushing around busy that isn't really exciting or financially descriptive - unbloggably busy, in other words.

Found out that in three weeks, the chiropractor is moving 3 blocks in the other direction. In other words, what would take me about 30 seconds would now take me about 5-10 minutes. Not horrible, its just going to take a bit of getting used to.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.65 coffee + $10 lunch

Three co workers and I traveled to get supervisory training. There were two highlights:

1. The dude who didn't set his cell phone to vibrate. He got a call. His ringtone was "Back in Black" by ACDC. Nice.

2. If you are going to fire someone, do it in the middle of the week, so they won't spend the weekend buying bullets. (Actually it was presented as contacting the lawyer, but I thought this quip was funnier.)

Actually it wasn't horrible. It was just... obvious. I guess that's what happens when you teach empathy to people who might not be naturally empathic. But in a nutshell:

Do unto others as they would have them do unto you.
Pass on as much information as possible and do it face to face.
The obvious might not be so obvious. (I guess this includes the training too.)
Follow your HR policies.

And yet afterwards, I got a headache (rare for me) and I wanted a nap.

A homeless man's sign, as spotted from the bus:

Father killed in Ninja attack.
Need money for karate lessons.

My assistant for the pledge processing season came on board today. Bought him lunch.

Needed a haircut, a couple of grocery items, and I had to write a check to copay the chiropractor, so I broke down and transferred $100 from the brick and mortar bank savings account - a little buffer against an overdraft fee.

Got a letter from Capital One. They're going to shift my billing cycle backward a few days back to the 16th. No matter, I now don't have any recurring charges on it anyway. I moved the newspaper subscription to the new, WaMu credit card. Sweet justice. I would have had to write a .35 check, but I bought a spare set of bedsheets from Overstock.com. The bill turned into a semi-respectable 50.34$, which I'll pay next week when the paycheck comes in.

Last week I talked with lawyer friend about 403Bs. It turns out that we made similar money moves with our 403B, but for different reasons. I trimmed my stock portfolio a bit and went for cash and bonds because I wanted a bit of safety. 90% stocks is pretty aggressive even during the best of times. I believe that a recession is on its way and I want a bit of ballast for awhile.

Lawyer friend nearly took all of his stocks and put them in the cash money market fund for a different reason. His favorite fund in the 403B, an international one, was eliminated in favor of a different one, which he hated, because of the fee structure. Yeah, so what about that 1.5% fee, lawyer friend ranted, my favorite posted great returns!

My thoughts drifted a bit, and I'm a bit ashamed that I didn't have the heart to explain it to him. Fees are important, and can be in some cases and conditions even more important because fees are inexorable. That fund manager will charge that fee whether that fund has a good year or not. The fee is fine if you're making in the rare instance a 15-20% return (although it means you are making 13.5-18-5% return), not so fine if you are only making 7-8% because you are barely keeping up with inflation, and it just becomes worse and worse - most actively managed accounts don't do as well as an index fund, and you pay for that privilege. Imagine if you lost 20% of your 403B, which often happened right after the dot.com bust. You'd still be charged that fee with the excuse that "imagine if we weren't your manager - your returns would be even worse!"

Fees are so important that there is a story about them. An investor met with a stockbroker to perhaps give him his business. The stockbroker gave him the grand tour, showed the investor how properous the firm was, tried to impress the investor even to the point of going to the slip and showing off the stockbrokers' boats. The investor wondered, "where are the investors' boats?" Fees, of course.

Anyway, by that time lawyer friend concluded, "I wish we had more choices." It turns out that lawyer friend's partner could choose up to 650 funds. Hear, hear. At least for me - I figure I could handle it.

It was a bizarre day at work yesterday. We interviewed for my temporary helper. The first interview went with only a minor, non-bizarre hitch, but the second one... well, you hear about it maybe as a joke or urban legend. What happened was this:

The HR person on our panel confided in us that she wondered if she would make it - interviewee wanted to come in at 11 am, rather than 10:45. One of our panel had to leave at 11:30, so to get at least the 45 minutes, HR was insistent - 10:45.

At 10:45, the person was waiting for us. We ushered her into the room, and while we were all standing, introduced ourselves. Interviewee, a woman, introduced herself - and solved the mystery about how we were to pronounce her first name - then said that she had to use the restroom. Fine, the HR person (a woman) escorted her to the restroom, maybe 30 ft from the interview room.

Back in the interview, while we were waiting for the interviewee, we chatted a bit about this and that, listening. DJ friend, who was on the panel, told us about the little whooshing sound people make as they walk on the carpet between the cubicles.

Minutes pass. I make a joke that the interviewee will be interviewing at 11:00 am. But we thought - well, zippers, snaps, putting yourself together, the fact that women have number 3 to deal with, etc. A few minutes after that, the other woman on the panel and I went to the bathroom to check.

Bathroom empty; interviewee gone.

Other woman and I make a cursory pass along the cubicles in case she got lost. I went and chatted with the front door receptionist. She described the interviewee, saw her go in, didn't see her go out.

Oh boy. The four of us on the panel each took a floor to make sure she wasn't hurt, hiding, lost, committing a crime, etc. I took the second floor and chatted with a coworker little about our "runner". Other than the fun fact learning that visitors to Bill Gates' mansion are given a name tag with a GPS unit in it... well, we saw or heard nothing odd or amiss in a bathroom, stairwell, cubicle, office, store room.

Interviewee went poof. The HR person scratched her head. No shows, yes; but she never had anyone bail out at the interview stage before. Someone thought that maybe she thought that she could count us as one of the three contacts/week needed to collect unemployment, but that would mean the definition of contact really stiffened up in the past 15 years.

One thing's for certain - she had a transporter and we didn't.

Wednesday
Saving log - $8 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk

Got taken out to lunch on Wednesday, so I put what I would have spent in the box.

Today
Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk +$20 lunch

Spendy, kinda. I was interviewing several folks for temp position beginning at 9 am, which meant that I had to show up by 8:30am. DH offered to drive me, so I let him. Since I rarely do that and its out of his way, I gave him a $20 for coffee, gas, and its insurance that he'll offer again. Just my luck though that the 9 am slot had to reschedule. It always happens that when I rush I needn't have.

And then there was lunch. A new place, tasty enough, but the service was slow, and I paid for the decor. Not going on the short list.

Payday is tomorrow and I'm in very good shape for the end of the paycheck. I'm not depressed, but lately everything's flat, even. Nothing near term to get excited about.

Saving log -$1 tip box
Spending log - $1.15 coffee (still no no-fat or 1%) + $5 lunch

We have a display case near our offices. I rearranged the letters, as a shout-out to the James Bond fans out there. We'll see who notices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Stavro_Blofeld

Saving log (Friday) - $5 tip box
Spending log (Friday) - 1.84$ coffee, milk + $5 curry lunch + 40$ ATM

I keep my paper financial files on the lean side, just enough to carry in a portable tote. I cleaned the old stuff out. The next step is to shred, but the house shredder is old, delicate, and cheap, only designed to do the casual 3 sheet shredding. I had a more than that, so I had to develop a strategy.

Looking at the papers carefully, I found that I only needed to shred the paper that had my name, address, and account number, and those only occurred on the top third of the paper that I wanted to shred. The rest, a couple of quick rips. It really saves the shredder from getting hot and making that strange grrrry sound when its unhappy.

I took a look at some of my old 403B files. Right now I have about $53K total, fully vested. But at the beginning of:
02, 3K and 20% vested
03, 7K and 40% vested
04, 14K and 60% vested
05, 22K and 80% vested
06, 29K and 80% vested (February 06 was when I got vested)
07, 41K and 100% vested

You never think you get anywhere financially until you look at where you've been.

That reminds me, time to download a few months worth of my monthly statements to my flash drive...

Saving log - $0
Spending log - $1 coffee + $7 lunch + $7 snack, mocha

I was away from my desk all day today at a training in Adobe Acrobat. It was entertaining and a nice change of pace. I got wind from DH that I'm going to participate in interviewing a temp staffer bright and early at 9am, which means I conned DH into driving me back to work to print out the interview questions, the resume, the job description. I shouldn't have looked at my other emails, but I did. Crisis! Sigh. Sometimes I think some of my coworkers can't find their collective hhmmm with two hands and a flashlight. If you know what I mean.

Had the camera on me, so a couple of interesting snaps.
Yeah, how many space needle pics can you take?
This one looks like the War of the Worlds Martians had just landed, mid-zap.


And this one looks like the Daily Planet. Not quite, its the PI building (the training was held a block away).

Saving log - $8 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $5 lunch

Got a form letter from Capital One this evening. They've gotten rid of the $29 late fee. Because its a form letter doesn't say whether they are moving the closing date back to the 15th; the next paragraphs were just a note that if you got a late fee, you did these two horrible things - yadda yadda yadda. I got most of my loaf - the slices that cost me money. I'll take it as "Go and sin no more".

The first round of temp staff has arrived, putting some energy in our sleepy doings downstairs. I overheard that they should make friends with me "because I fix problems".

At least I fixed mine.

Saving log - $0
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $15 dim sum lunch + $11.04 grocery store.

We had some excitement at work at noon. The Director of IT felt the door of the server room and it was hot.

Hot is not good. The room was 99 degrees.

The servers all had to be taken down and since it was around noon, the first hour of no computer wasn't too bad. I told my co workers that I "give us about a half an hour of no Internet before we resort to savagery and cannibalism."

We got back up at around 2:30, but as I left at 5:30 I couldn't save files, so tomorrow might be very interesting.

well, entertaining lunatics...




In case you missed them, the signs said:
Needs Good Home
Take Me. I'm yours.
Cheap & Easy
If I Could Talk

Oh yes, don't be fooled. The only thing more uncomfortable than those chairs would be a board with nails in it.

(And yes that's a vault door in the background. Our building used to be a bank. It cost too much to get rid of it during the remodel, so it remains as an historical artifact.)

Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk

Saving log - $2 tip box (have to pick up the pace for this month)
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $9 lunch

Got my first paycheck with the raise - $50 more each paycheck, $100/month. I get paid on the last business day and on the 15th of the month (earlier if the 15th is on the weekend). No three payperiod months for me.

Added $50 to my recurring savings at ING, 50$ to my recurring savings at my brick & mortar bank, and tried out online bill paying for my new credit card (the one I've transferred the trainer and the newspaper charges).

The office picnic is for tomorrow (Thursday) lunch, and the co worker that I worked with for that hour and a half last Friday offered to take me to lunch Friday. I'm going to team it up with buying morning coffee with my Starbucks card and attempt two no-spend days in a row. Cross my fingers that I can do it!

Saving log - $5 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $25 lunch

We took lawyer friend out on his birthday, so that's why the lunch $ were freakishly high. We went to the all-you-can eat Brazilian restaurant that we took DH's family to last summer. "Meat fest" we called it. It did throw a loop out of my simple strategy for handling all you can eat places:

Avoid the brown and white foods, eat as much as you want of the brightly colored ones.

I got one plate of bright colored stuff - and then it was dark brown beef and white pork all the way.

Tomorrow I'm off, but not quite off. I'll be helping a co worker out of the office for an hour or so. Right now its just waiting, waiting, waiting for what the new paycheck will hold - its the first one with the 4.5% raise.

This weekend DH and I will be sleeping over at our friend's place in Duvall for the tractor fair, market, and all you can eat breakfast. Again, the simple strategy is not going to work. Hash browns, sausage, bacon, pancakes, syrup, eggs ... all brown or white.

We'll go to the fair for a little bit, and then I'll hold class on waterbath canning. The blackberries are not ready, so we'll be making pickles and marmalade. Not in the same jar!

Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $8 lunch

Quiet day - meetings got canceled right and left, and because my trainer's in Florida on break I have gym later this week. Did I get a lot done? Nope, got some but mostly I was putzing around and the day dragged a bit. I love being not busy, but its really bad for me.

The banker from WI called me back. The way we are trying it is to set up the joint account as a Payee to my WA checking account. Manual transfers, of course. Wouldn't want to be transferring dollars monthly. So I set it up and transferred 50$ to WI, then alerted sister to see if it worked.

Looked at the receipt for the groceries that I bought last night. I got a .05 credit for using the cloth bag. I'll have to remember that. Not a lot, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as grandpa used to say.

Saving log - $5
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $4.50 curry

Found an interesting tool.

http://walkscore.com/

It assesses the walkability of any address in the United States, giving you a score between 0 to 100. My home address got a 75, my work address got a 91, sister's address was a 62, the farmette got a 0. Check it out - we are still trying to figure out how you get a 100.

I managed to use my cloth bag at the grocery store today. The grocery store was nice about using my bag, and I'm happy that Clif bars are back at .99 apiece.

Paid the sewer, water, garbage bill - $123/ month. I remember when it was in the $80 range 3 years ago.

Only three people were kicking around the department today - it made for quiet times, good times to put in a couple of phone calls.

Call 1: into the Wisconsin Bank that sister and I have a joint account with. I want to be able to electronically transfer dollars from my bank to this account. I figure that mail is slow, and control freak that I am, I want to see both ends of the transaction. I've set up my WA account for bill pay to this bank. We'll see which is easier - pushing money out of my WA account to this WI account, or vice versa.

Call 2: Arranging the pick up of the canning jars. I will be driving (gasp, driving!) Thursday morning. Haven't heard word as to how the berries are doing. A quick look at some of the brambles in our neighborhood tells me it will be another week or two.