Before we knew it, Thursday had arrived and it felt like nothing was done!  Granted, we didn't have all that much to do since I'd trimmed our list of need to dos down to next to nothing.  But the truth was, we were rushed off our feet at work and trying to wrangle arrangements according to a slightly archaic system.

Luckily, work wasn't a problem ... in fact, my boss strongly suggested I get the heck out of there early because he thought I was insane. I suspect my team thought the same since he'd outed me behind my back.  Not that I was keeping it a secret, I just didn't have time to tell them!

Rings were stricken from that list - not critical.
New shoes for me, not critical.  If I could get a dress altered, great. If not, old dress. If not, slacks and nice shirt. No, wait, incoming text from cousin - "wear a dress or else." Big cousin, I grew up with from toddlerhood. Means it. Old dress it would be.
Manicure, pedicure, veil, hair piece, decorations, fooforrah - definitely not critical.

We needed gas for the car, we needed a place to stay post-wedding (because I do not care how frugal it is to stay at a parent's house in town, I'm not staying there on our wedding night), we needed our travelers to be situated, picked up and dropped off at the right times.  Ok, scheduled, sorted and sorted.

I called the tailor trying to explain the situation - he wouldn't let me.  "I understand 'emergency', come come, just come in, I can do this!"
"But ... no, I don't think, please, let me explain, it's -- "
"No no, just come in!"

He didn't really understand.  Sweet man, but really should have let me explain.  After pinning me up and giving me the price quote and explaining the alterations, he offered to rush the job and have it ready at 5 pm Friday.
Er.
How about noon?
Er.
Today?  You need it today???
..... *nod nod*
..... I'm going to have to alter the price a little.
......*nod nod*
$10 more.
/head tilt/ -- In my head: really??--  I will see you in at closing, sir!

We went on a panic shop for PiC and found his entire outfit minus a shirt at Macy's in 2 hours.  Then his shirt was another 15 minutes at Banana Republic (yay for gift cards!)  And back to pick up my dress. Fit. A. Dream.  It was an exorbitant amount, but for a three hour rush job, I can accept that.

Despite a semi-early exit from work, the errands took us long enough that we didn't leave until *really* late. The drive was easy, though and we arrived at dark o'clock in the morning. I napped for a few hours before heading out to get a hair trim and pick up a guest arriving at the airport. Or so I planned. I was held hostage at the hair salon while my long-time stylist trimmed and then styled my hair as she felt was more elegant and appropriate to the occasion.  Hostage, I tell you!   Not only would she not listen to what I asked for, she wouldn't tell me what she planned to do.  Point blank refused.  "I'll take care of it," she says.

And then she undercharged me massively for it.  She didn't put it up or anything but I know for a fact she charges $75 for bridal hair before tip.  She only charged $38 for cut and style, and wouldn't let me tip her.  Have you ever heard of such a thing??

But, she was right. It looked really much better than my original rush-out-the-door hair plan.   We even had time to stop for coffee before our airport errand.  Miracle worker, that woman.

Back to the house to get dressed and futz around on the internet.  Oh, and book a hotel for that night!  Hotel points, FTW!

{to be continued}

Part One: Race to a Wedding: Five days to a Faux-lopement

Remember how I said wedding planning was a pain, and I didn't like it?  Well, I (and PiC) didn't like it so very much that the unthinkable became thinkable.  And then ....

Well, at first, I thought it was a joke.

A couple days after that post on the 11th: 
"What about the end of October?"
"What about the end of October?"
"What if we just went to the courthouse?"
/head tilt/ "... to ... do what?"
"You know. Get married."
-- *mentally reading the calendar* you're going to be traveling most of this month. When are we going to talk or do anything about getting married with even just a few people present?--  "Surely you're joking."
No answer from PiC.

Ok, he must have been joking.

October 23rd, he returned from a trip.  The subject was reopened the next day. "You weren't kidding?  You're not kidding? Right now, you're not kidding me?  You're kidding me. Right? What?  WHAT?"

He was not kidding me.

Wheels started turning.  Panic set in a little bit.  It was all a joke before!  Now it wasn't!  Holy chickaree!  But aside from a few moments of {why are we doing this ...??} it felt right.  Mom's health has been steadily declining. I haven't been happy with any of the earlier compromises or attempts at planning largely because of my worrying over her health and how she'd be able to handle any kind of event even though she wanted me to have one.  I personally didn't want one.  Talking to my dad Tuesday night confirmed that she's not having any sort of miraculous turnaround or even stabilizing.  There was no sense in holding out for her sake.

PiC being happy to have a much smaller one, even elopement style, was amazing.  He was always happy with the idea of small but not as small as I wanted it to be.  Also I was stuck between the all or nothing situation and wasn't sure how to find my way out.  How do I invite some of the relatives I really want to share this with and not create a family rift?  And that alone would be too many people in combination with his family and friends.  So I sacrificed all of my family but three. Plus surrogate family - old friends so close I've been adopted into their clan.  My heart was appeased.

This compromise of around 20 was manageable - I was pretty sure I wouldn't lose my composure.  We were sorely missing some very good friends but the days hurtled past and we couldn't dwell on that.  Or anything.

Calls were made.  My most amazing long distance people booked their flights (even cross country) the second I confirmed we were trying to do it last Friday - before we even had plans.  We rushed to the SF courthouse for a license on Tuesday. He confirmed the courthouse appointment on Wednesday. We picked a restaurant that night and made the reservation on Thursday.  We confirmed most of our guests up until Friday morning. I was confirming and adding seats to our table as late as arriving at the restaurant for lunch.  This was not a normal wedding by any stretch of the imagination.

{to be continued}

As much work and as costly as Doggle has been in the totting up of his bills over the months, there are some pretty amazing things about this dog that makes me say it's totally worth it.  Also, I like to point out that if you really want to think about the costs, you have to think about the FULL picture, and that includes considering what kind of dog we could have gotten since we did get really lucky with the pup we brought home.

Remember, this big man was abandoned for at least a year before we brought him home, and we have no clue what his history was before that.  He could have been a shivering wreck inside his head and ready to burst out with all kinds of crazy after we took him home, just hiding it behind a stoic face when we first met him.  It's not that dogs are duplicitous, it's just that when they first meet you, all the nuances of their personality aren't going to be evident.  That was certainly true of Doggle. It took him about three months to come out from his shell entirely and show that he actually had a personality lurking underneath.

Happily, most of that livelier personality is more pleasant than not.  There're also some rather ... limpet-like parts to his personality.  It's usually cute but ... sometimes it's not.


Oh Vet Bills (Medication/Supplements):  Doggle has been to the vet every other month since he's been with us.  We've spent over a thousand dollars on his medical bills so far.  *_*

Carpeting:  His poor staggering legs don't deal very well with the slippery floors so we've laid down new (to us) rugs.  Thank you, Craigslist and Costco for relatively cost effective rugs and padded squishy mats.

Food: He just keeps on eating.   And I've turned into a bit of a sucker about buying him a stock of treats.  Yeah.  I'm that dog mom.  I never was before.

Car upgrade:  But let's be honest.  It wasn't like PiC hadn't been looking for his car upgrade for several years.




Furniture:  He doesn't mark on anything at home, thank goodness.  He's embarrassed us in places where other dogs have previously marked their territory as that lights up that little area in his brain that says "oh! I should pee here too!"  But as our home has been unmarked, so it stays.  Whew.

He also doesn't chew, scratch or (mostly) climb.  Occasionally he takes a freak into his head that maybe he should try to get on the sofa.  Then he gets put in timeout.

Shoes/Bags/Socks/Clothes/Books/Small Items:  He also doesn't steal, chew or destroy any of these things.

People Food:  He's not allowed to have any.  Not that that has diminished his interest in our cooking activities or eating at the table or anywhere else one whit.   But he also doesn't beg.  He's allowed to hang around and sniff within a certain limit.

Toys: He's still not interested.  He's just starting to get the barest inkling of how to socially interact in play with other dogs or people. I'm trying to teach him and expose him to other big dogs because small dogs around here are frankly, brats, who mostly don't want anything to do with him if they're not being snappy, snippy, yappy and their owners just don't socialize or train them out of those nasty behaviors.  Bigger or younger dogs really like him, though, and that's really nice.

Energy:  95% of the time, he has amazing indoor manners.  Which is to say, he is incredibly quiet and mellow inside.  If you're hanging out, he's hanging out.  If you're sleeping, he's sleeping.  If you're cooking, he's in the way.  But he doesn't bark, he doesn't scratch, dig, growl, or generally freak out in any way.

2% of the time he has little freakouts where he goes into corners and huddles or has to be on the sofa which is a no-no.  3% of the time he is really really really happy you just got home or we're going for a walk.  That is a really manageable percentage, in my mind.

Extra Baths and Carpet Cleaning:  He only gets baths on our schedule which varies between every 3-6 weeks.  We can do this because he doesn't roll in the dirt, he doesn't rub himself in gross stuff he finds on his walks, and while he might get himself a little in his poorly-aimed, old man spatter, he lets us wipe him down after every walk and wipe his paws as well.  Docile as anything.


I'm so glad we've got him.  We have made a lot of adjustments. We factor him into the morning and evening routines to take the time to take him out twice a day, (but that's all we have to do - we have neighbors who walk their yappers FIVE times a day!) We either travel with him by car, one of us stays home with him, or have to make arrangements for him.  We mostly do the first two, though.  I'm hopelessly attached. ;)

Pardon, you might think you're at the wrong blog today.  But I've got to go on another career-related rant.  My colleague told me today that someone was "upset" at the organization.  When I asked why, I was told that the someone had wanted to apply for a promotion but wasn't allowed to because of a lack of a specific key qualification.  That someone was upset: I've been here for years, and I've never been given the opportunity to do that!

........  Really?  Really??

Ok. Nerve? Torched.  Because honest to Jeopardy, darling, that's just it, isn't it?  You've been here for years and that's the end of your response?  No one took care of you?  Did you do anything about it?   Or did you sit there like a limp noodle the whole time and then jump at the chance for more money without considering what you needed to do in order to land that peach?  [I can answer that. No. Didn't do nuffin'.]

And now you're upset at the organization that wronged you.  Honestly. 


I'll give you a hint:  These are not the phrases to use when you want a job or a promotion and you've been told that you're underqualified because of some missing skill or qualification.

In fact, I will heartily tell you that I am sick of hearing them.  Don't even think it.  Imagine your upcoming job or career opportunities.  Imagine what the recruiter, hiring manager or resume screener is going to think when he/she/it looks at your resume and compares it to the list of what they want or need.  If you find yourself reverting to those up there as your only answer (aka: excuse) when your hiring manager disabuses you of the notion that you're going to get the job, I want you to Shake Yourself.

Non.  Non.

Not only will that not get you the job, it will, in certain eyes, reduce any respect they might have had for you.  Like mine.  


Let me tell you what I've discovered that phrase and the utterers have in common: a need for spoonfeeding.  It says to me, on your behalf:  When you hire me, I'm going to ask you basic questions to which I should know the answers or should be able to find myself.  And when you don't have time to feed me, I'm going to do something else without bothering to try to find out the answer myself.

As it turns out, Google is your friend. As it turns out, there are tons of other resources available and when it comes to allocation of resources, do you want to waste our half hour on: "How do I write my review? How does this process work?  What should I write?"

Or do you want to spend it talking over which skills you need to set you up for a cool new project and in line for a promotion?  Because I will answer the question you ask. But if you want to throw away what I can do for you, then you are throwing away your own opportunity. And frankly, I have too many other people asking for time and attention to mollycoddle anyone who won't do anything but flip their hair and flap their hands until the next question.

I'm inclined to helping people grow and learn but there's only so much pushing I can do.   I've learned my lesson - I'm not going to hire any more people who display that lack of savvy and initiative if I can help it.

Granted, there are certain things you need the support of others to do, you need the authority to do, or you plain cannot have without someone giving something up.

Very true, you must be given some of those things.   However.  You can show your initiative by learning about the things you want to do even if you cannot whole-cloth have them.  You can take classes, you can shadow people who are doing the job, you can ask them to mentor and teach you, you can volunteer elsewhere to pick up the experience you want even if it's not in the same place or environment.

If it's an internal promotion you have your sights on, you should, without being obnoxious about it, express your interest clearly in the kind of advancement or experience you would like and why.  In general, you should always be doing that anyway!

If you're going for a new job and it wasn't your job to do the work in question but you've gone and learned it anyway, you bet your boot nails I will rate you more highly than a person who did have the work and was not distinguished in any way by how they did it.

Think about it: who looks better?  The one with fire in the belly, clearly has special interest and has done something about it?  Or the one who has been flapping hands around in a puddle looking like doing a job?  I'm no idiot - I want the fire-eater, every time.

That's not to say that someone who already does the job always gets trumped by an up and comer, I'm just saying that there are clearly mediocre lifer-type candidates who barely do their job.  We know they shouldn't get promoted over someone with real potential because they aren't capable.   But -- you can't be that newcomer if you don't realize your own potential.  No one can do that but YOU.

Potential is just resting, potential is possibilities.  Don't tell me you have potential.  Show me what that potential can be. Get out there and show what you're capable of with every possible tool at your disposal.  Ask for support and learn new things.  Don't just sit there waiting for opportunity to present itself.  You're just kicking opportunity in the face.

This world does not hand you success. It certainly doesn’t hand you a job. I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve had in this life. I’ve taught myself what I need to know to be successful. And, if you see yourself in any of this, my message to you is: You can do it, too. Just don’t expect it to be easy.

[For the record: I passed along a message to my colleague. If that someone did something like take initiative, I'd do a solid in return and recommend that a future application be considered. I may have learned my lesson but that someone should learn one too.]

I'm /headdesking/ so hard right now. I've made a huge mistake.

Back in June, we combined cell phone plans and I took over the financial responsibility for all four phones.  Our family plan share 1000 minutes and unlimited text messages. It's been a few months, and between having unlimited mobile to mobile minutes, and not using a ton of daytime minutes, we were fine on that plan.  Since 250 daytime minutes isn't much per person, I normally use Google Voice on my computer during the week for domestic calls to keep my minute use down as well, so that helps.

I let myself get complacent on this last billing cycle and didn't check in, not even once, on it. And I'm paying dearly for that inattention.

PiC and I went way over our minute allotment.  Shockingly over. I can't even believe how much.  On top of that, my mom's phone listed five charges for Premium Services; those junk charges you get hit with because of  any number of spammy services that sink their hooks into you the second you respond to their junk texts or however they do it.  Well, they got my mom.  Five of them, over two days, at $9.99 per.

For my part, I think my transgressions were the worst during two weeks out of the billing cycle,when I was sick at home, working most of the time.  I was taking regular and conference calls on my cell phone instead for no good reason.  !!!!

PiC went double on his allotment as well but I don't even have the patience to see why. I just told him about the bill and left it at that.

*For the record: my parents were at or under their minute allotment of 250 mins/each.  Only PiC and I went over ours.  And considering we can log in online or check our minute usage via our phones or online???  UGH. Inexcusable carelessness.*

T-Mobile's complying with my request to remove the Premium Charges and block any incoming charge texts for a month for free via a free trial of the Family Allowance service, but that's going to take a couple months to remove $50.  The remaining $400 is on me because I noticed too late to change the billing plan to a higher rate/minutes package - you have to do that during the billing cycle.

I can't even tell you how hard I'm kicking myself.  I haven't seen a bill this big since the days of idiot brother yore, before I removed all long distance capability and stopped paying any cell phone bills for him back home.

This drives me crazy, not just because of the enormity of the bill itself. It's also because of the way we're currently handling our finances.

I've been dancing on a tightrope where PiC and I share but don't share.  We split but don't split expenses.  We've been discussing ways and means of combining but since I won't do that until we get married, I live in financial purgatory where I'm only partly in control of some things, totally of others, and not at all in still others.  It's driving me a little crazy and making me careless.  Careless enough for my hands to have slipped off the reins when they shouldn't have.

There's a vague sense that I knew this was coming. Not this specific thing but that some sort of financial issue was looming because of our laissez faire compromise style of management.  Because I wasn't controlling every last detail myself.  And because of that vague sense that something, somewhere, was going to go wrong sometime, I've been trying to force all aspects of my life into financial order, still without imposing myself on everything. Like a bit of a manic fool, I've been paranoically looking over all the things I do control and trying to not to miss anything but worrying about all the things I can't fix.  Just like I used to do in the bad old days when I was paying the bills for my family but not actually in charge of them.  Awful, in other words.

Not that we haven't attempted going at it forward but the few months of planning over the summer was fraught with other deadlines, an incredible amount of travel for other obligations.  As usual, it seemed like everyone else's lives came first.  And as we did our research for the very simple, very small budget wedding I wanted to aim for, more bits fell off the wagon than stayed on.

I still haven't figured out what to do about the guest list as far as the question of the whole of my family, for one.  I've had long heartfelt talks with my closest friends who know the history, know my mind, and me.  I'm conflicted because what I want to do is not what I need to do.  My willingness to cut out my family out of the wedding isn't only my personal choice.  No matter how much my dad says he's willing to bear the fallout, it's a sacrifice that he'll have to live with.  And I will have trouble knowing I've contributed to complicating his relationships and somewhat tenuous support system.

So instead of dealing with it, and the parks that won't cooperate by costing less than actual venues by the end of all the fees, taxes or restrictions, we resigned ourselves to not making the November date and backburnered the wedding.

Not the honeymoon planning, though!

We were gifted an enormously generous gift for the wedding: a week in a timeshare. That came with an expiration date, so we had to get on that straightaway.

After searching the world over for available locations, which my confused Twitter followers might remember from my very random tweets one night (Me: British Virgin Islands? Netherlands? Sweden? Paris? Spain?), we found that we had, in fact, very few choices because everything is meant to be booked a year in advance and we were hoping to finish this whole wedding business sooner rather than later.

Change of plans

A more exotic locale, improperly researched or timed for the high season, as Well Heeled discovered, can easily burst your budget. Doing similar research, comparing prices on airfare as a starting point, I found that the initial places that sounded fun to us (Australia and New Zealand) were easily twice as costly during the months we speculated about traveling.  With my visions of belt tightening on our honeymoon, we were happy to turn our feet to a different path as well.

We're going to Hawaii!

It'll be a more manageable trip insofar as flights management and time management go.  We won't fly for a day and a half just to get to our destination, and we won't be paying nearly $4000 just for flights.  Instead, it'll be a morning's flight there, and a day coming back.  I might even be able to wrangle enough points or miles to pay for the flights themselves.  This is still a work in progress.

Neither of us are emotionally invested in the specific vacation or destination.  It'd be cool to be going somewhere really cool, but at the end of the day we'll be happy to relax, eat good food and not incessantly worry if we're going over budget.

After some grumbles, I set myself to the task of filing PiC's taxes yesterday.

I was annoyed at first because, well, it's October.  I'm a February Filer.  Different philosophies.  He had to wait for a Schedule to come in that didn't arrive until September, so he had a reason but it still gets under my skin to be doing last year's taxes at the point when I'm already thinking about next year's.

Setting up the account was nearly impossible - I couldn't get the page to accept a password.  Fifteen minutes of error messages.

Finally, I got into TurboTax's guts and we were off to the races.

Income

I had a whole pile of forms and shuffling through them, nothing was terribly complicated.

I did hate on Wells Fargo for a minute for sneakily combining a 1099-Div and a 1099-INT onto the same page, though - I like order and since I was inputting the forms by type, that interrupted my flow.  And they had this whole "see Details" thing going on for a few boxes.  You'd obediently flip to the Details section and it'd show you ... nothing.  THANKS.

(In my New Order, I'm banishing Wells Fargo.  Especially since they were such a waste of time.)

Deductions

This was fun. {evil laughter} The know-it-all came out. I had a couple items in the pile from PiC, and then made out my laundry list of things I knew he should have deductions for that he'd missed.  

His proof of charitable deductions were missing, for one thing.  Property tax, mortgage interest totals, car registration.

And then upon review, I was mortally certain, without actually having seen his property tax bills during the year, the total he gave me was still too low and sent him back again for another look.  Right-o, there was a supplemental tax bill he'd been dunned for, more than $1000, and had forgotten about.  That put nearly $500 back in his refund.

Analysis and Completion

Clearly, he wasn't taking the standard federal deduction.

I think his CPA was shortsighted for telling him to send in a chunk of additional tax money this year for state taxes, assuming he was going to owe just as much in 2010 as he owed in 2009.  Did the CPA not consider that he was going to be paying a full year's home interest and property taxes?   That seriously affects your AGI!   Think this through, my good fellow.  When your state refund is twice and more what you paid in quarterly taxes ... *smh*   There was no real good reason to do that, is what I'm saying.  He wasn't in danger of an underpayment penalty at the end of 2009, and he wasn't going to owe at the end of 2010 as much as he did the prior year.

Filing 

I'd snagged him a fantastic prepaid code for both state and federal, saving him $140 on both filings.  Did him one better than my own, I even had to pay for my state filing!

One Day, One File 

It didn't take the whole day, but we finished his taxes on the Saturday I started them.  I had him review it with me at the end to make sure he understood everything that I did and all the notes I had.   I'd initially complained that doing his taxes weren't any fun but halfway through I was a liar because I was having fun again.

I could actually enjoy doing this for other people, now that I've gotten past my initial weirdness of not having the fully organized, spreadsheeted, noted, checklisted pile of forms to work from.  Maybe I'm not quite ready for the shoebox of receipts thing but, you know, I could deal with the less organized anyway.

TeacHer's "ridiculous" idea about tricking herself into saving by establishing a (possibly fake) Move to NY fund resonated with me.

I've never had to trick myself into saving, ever.  Obviously.  But I do have opinions that aren't always in line with what's "best" for me on a daily basis.  Opinions that might sound a lot like:  I hate this job I hate these people I hate this job!   Her post reminded me of a dark and grumpy period when that was a daily refrain in my life.

I knew why I was sticking it out for at least a while longer - there were a lot of practical reasons.

I was learning the ropes of that job, of the industry and needed to really master as much as possible before I made my next move.  There's a natural break between levels of mastery, levels of maturity, at any job or in any work you do, and I was bound and determined to move up the next level before or when I left. I refused to make a lateral move or flounder in between an entry level which, in the newly breaking recession, boded ill for my upward movement just as much as a lateral move.

The job itself was paying for all the things at home, and was flexible enough for me to be there for my parents.

Buuut that didn't change the Awful of the people I worked with or the Horrid of the .. people I worked with.  Etc.  So, to get through my days while I was Learning All the Things, I thought: how do I focus on Not the Horrible?

There was no positive thinking to be had at that time, in that place, so I had to bring the positive to me. I printed out a pretty picture of a place far far away.  It had horses, it had amazing hot springs, it was really far away. I cannot emphasize how strongly that last point commended itself to me.  There was no way on heaven or earth I could have afforded to go there. There was no sense in even dreaming of going there in real life.  But it didn't matter. I had a lovely picture of the hot springs, and an Icelandic horse and as each day tightened or loosened its noose, I focused on breathing in however I imagined hot springs air to smell and breathing out the stress.

I hugged a horse in my mind and smiled.  And smiled in real life because even though I had no idea, still don't, whether I would ever actually want to go to Iceland, it was saving my sanity one day at a time.

Iceland, and the bet on experience, paid off, by the way.

:: When's the last time you lied, tricked or distracted yourself into doing something good for you?  

I don't even have the heart to post it, the progress has been so meager in the past two months.

Retirement Downturn
Since the last time I viewed my Vanguard fund, the fund that contains all the retirement monies I've saved between ages 21 through 26, it's lost another $7000.  In two months.  !!!  Yes yes, long term horizon, blah de blah.  STOP THAT.

I'm still contributing to my current employer's retirement account but that's in a different fund at a different company.  It still irritates me.  I'll stop looking now.

Cash Savings
The expense account did come up a significant amount (40%) but so did my spending (220% over last month).  That figure's actually misleading though - $1200 of that cash is a reimbursement for business expenses and so are the corresponding credit card charges.  Part of it is prepayment of expenses as well.

Also, we are experiencing the first true combinations of expenses between PiC and me.  We have combined forces to rack up all chargeable expenses on a single American Express card to meet a minimum spend threshold in order to earn a 20K point bonus for Starwood points.

On that plan, I've prepaid 2 months' worth of cell phone bills, paid up on auto insurance and vet bills. O, vet bills.

Other Investing
I had grabbed a chunk of cash for my TradeKing account in case I made a decision about investing in a few more stocks. I'm steadily making a whopping $4.70 every quarter in dividends from my stocks.  With the huge dive in the market, I thought there might be a worthwhile discount to buy.  Nothing really caught my fancy, though, so that cash is still just sitting in the brokerage, waiting.


Total Net Worth
Up about a thousand dollars. I should really be doing better.

Specific Spending:
Wedding/Honeymoon:  The reason we're racking up the hotel points and miles is to defray upcoming travel spending.  As much as possible, I'd rather use awards to pay for actual travel as much as we can.  Starwood points are excellent for hotels and for exchanging to airline miles as well.  They add a bonus 5,000 miles for every 20,000 miles you trade in.

Mortgage: I'm keeping an eye out for any other good refinancing options that we could qualify for and considering how quickly we might pay down the mortgage.


Saving Goals: 
Emergency Cash: I'm really close to the $50K cash cushion that I wanted to hit for my peace of mind.  It's in a combination of CDs and savings accounts but I need to find a higher rate of return home for it. Or ladder all of it into CDs.

Then I think I'm setting my next cash savings goal at another $50K.  The first $50K is total emergency fund only.  (Hey, remember when you could earn real interest on CDs and such?)

Pie in the Sky?  As an academic exercise, I sort of want to map out how we might work out life on a single income around here.  Just to see what that might look like.  Or perhaps one and a half at first.

Non-notables:
I don't think I like spinach anymore.
Doggle now gets time outed.  And he knows when he's misbehaving so when he's getting walked to time out, he walks himself the rest of the way.

* If you have a Southwest Airlines card, you can go to waymorerewards.com/bonuspoints to earn 1,000 bonus points after watching their informational video.  You do have to click through bits of the video to progress, it won't just play in the background.  But hey, free points.

PiC has a card, I don't, so I went ahead and did the video for him.  1,000 bonus points, check!

* I loved/hated Nicole and Maggie's post on Teaching Habits: Part II.  The subject matter just gets right back under my skin, the immaturity and irresponsibility in "kids these days".  But it's a good read.

* A related post on the topic by feMOMhist: competitiveness, failure and kids  (Token trophies?  Really?  There was no way I could ever have been proud of taking those home.)

* Career links kindly provided  by Karen Siwak of @ResumeStrategy:
Compensation Data and Tools for Employers
Etiquette Lessons on Considering a Job Offer
Interviewing: As the interviewee, you're the seller; as the interviewer, you're the buyer

* Softy: Maryam's Hearts mood is sort of rubbing off on me.

I wish that sour cream powder (just add water) existed.  I am always wanting just a few dollops of sour cream for a baked potato or some other random thing but we can never use up a whole tub in a go and it feels so wasteful to buy and have it go off between recipes.

I've heard the "you look tired" thing a lot so it never occurred to me that it might be considered rude.  Clearly I've been improperly socialized, as I get the sense I'm in the minority here.

There's a really hard subject to tackle that I still can't write about yet.

Sneezing and coughing hurt.  Ready to be done with this bug.

I'm sad about Academichic going off into the sunset.

Comcast internet keeps quitting on me midday.  That's incredibly annoying but so far it's been an easy fix of resetting the modem.