Saturday was Rain, Rain and more Rain. I ran some errands in the morning to take advantage of sales at 2 grocery stores. Both are not stores I normally shop, but I do peruse their flyers for their sales. The first had top round London Broil for $1.99 lb which is a very good price (at least in this area). I bought several pounds for the freezer and will probably hit them again later this week for a few more. I would rather buy it on sale and freeze it than pay full price. ...
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Just came back from our local graveyard where I was watering flowers that my mother and I put out there a few weeks ago.

Anyway was watering flowers on my Grandad's grave when I saw an elderly gentleman tidying an adjacent grave. Got chatting. Get this:

He was born in 1922 - nineteen twenty two !!! He had BICYCLED the 2/3 miles from his house to the graveyard on a busy road. He was clipping grass/pulling weeds and had been out yesterday too.

He knew my Grandad (everyone...
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Stock market talk.

News of government bailout on Freddie and Fannie is setting the market abuzz this morning. This is one of the strongest pre-market days I've seen so far, especially for financials.

Oddly enough, both Freddie and Fannie have gone WAY down in pre-market trading. Could be a good run for those who want to buy in today with money they can afford to lose.

I'm already out of Dell. I was hoping to catch a reaction high, but no dice. Weak forward fundamentals...
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Yesterday I walked for 6 miles, today I took it easy, and just went for 3. And I caught a couple of football games. So darn lazy.

This weekend, I have been noticing several effects of the current recession.

1. More restaurants are taking cash only, no credit cards. Along with gas stations, a couple of other restaurants are offering different prices for cash vs credit card.

2. (this during the week) Seattle buses are now filling up so much that they have to pass stops.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008163633...

My 5 bus had an increase of 9% ridership.
My 28 bus had an increase of 15% ridership.
My 15 bus had an increase of 5% ridership.

Advanced bus rider tip: If you see a large group waiting for the bus at your stop, walk backward along the route to the previous stop.

3. This is very funny in a mean sort of way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuKYP2cBvBA

4. One WaMu banker went out the window, metaphorically.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200...

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I saw my parents today, and they brought me a huge cooler full of concord grapes. So, tomorrow I will be canning those, as well as more apples.

(Guess we won't be getting scurvy this winter!!!)

Some local boys were killed this weekend, drinking and driving. They also hit another car head on--no news on how those are doing. Seems things like that hit the small towns really hard--effects the entire town, since everyone knows everyone. And, it hurts more when they are young...
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How do you record onto your computer? I want to record an accapella version of a song to send to a friend (as a kind audtion)What do i need technically to do this?

i have a new computer bought last september from dell
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I have had the worst week. First, my dad and I have it out because he thinks that I am trying to steal his rental property. It is a long story but basically my dad is an alcoholic and all his life he has thought that some one is trying to rob him and now I think he has early signs of dementia but it doesn’t bother me that he thought I was attempting to steal his property (his new tenant mailed me the rental check in stead of him, and I cashed it the same day and took it to him)...
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I ended up going to a party last night instead of staying in. Brought some drinks from my fridge as a contribution, so no out of pocket spent.

This morning, I slept in, made breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. Premade food for tomorrow. Deep cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the living room. Cleaned the upstairs bath including lots of scrubbing. Did three loads of laundry and only used the dryer once for bathmats. Hung everything else inside.

I cleaned out the closet and put...
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4586


Yesterday was Mom and Dads 50th Anniversary! We had a great time with family and friends. How amazing they are!
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Yeah!! I have $692.77 to add to my CC savings to the left:

$592.72 Saturday job pay for 2 weeks
plus 1 week back pay
80.00 Reimbursement for CE course
20.00 Discover Cashback Bonus
.05 Found $ at work
_________
$692.77 Total

So now I have accounts #1 and 2 fully funded and just waiting to send the CC payments. I have an additional $123.25 leftover for CC #3. I'm hoping I can achieve this final goal before 1/1/09!






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I figured I'd share our old home. Well one like it. It is the home of one of our old neighbors - same model (condo). I just saw it is for sale:

http://www.movoto.com/real-estate/homes-for-sale/CA/San-Jose...

I was actually curious on the price and came across this. We drove by the area yesterday and it struck me as VERY tired and run down. I am sure not much different than when we lived there. But our perspective has changed with time. (We are used to new and fancy for the same price - with our move to LCOLA). I wondered how much people were paying to live there these days.

Some observations:

Listing says 2 garage spots. Wrong-o. Unless they got some special treatment or we were really screwed. No garage, for one. We had ONE parking spot - for a 3-bedroom home. (That kind of sucked, but we got a significant discount on the price of the condo because of this, AND there was plenty of parking - which you can not always say of condo developments. I remember driving there all hours of the day/night/weekend to check out the parking situation, before we put an offer on the place. The 1-parking spot thing was a little unsettling).

If you click on picture #9 you can see how tiny our kitchen was. It looked EXACTLY like that. *sniff* (The memories). But you could barely open the fridge door all the way. I remember being peeved when the prior owners took the fridge with them. Nearly impossible to find one small enough to fit the space. We had no interest in taking that fridge when we moved - we didn't want it and we had pity on the buyers.

The homeowners' fees have risen to $344 (monthly) from $250 in the last 6 years. Yowser. Includes some insurance, utilities, and the common facilities, but holy cow.

The kicker is we paid more in insurance and utilities in that home. (Older/less energy efficient. Insurance cost more because just more expensive area). & the large homeowners fees considerably lessen what you can afford as far as PITI. However, I do appreciate that the upkeep/repairs would be minimal there compared to our current home (should be, in the long run. We had half the square footage and no outside walls or land to maintain).

Anyway - asking price - $340k. Prices have come down a bit. I've seen them MUCH higher. We sold for about $299k in 2002.

But with time and a new perspective it's almost hard to believe we once paid $260k for the same home. !!!!! I have thought in the past we would have made do if we had to. & I guess if our perspective hadn't of changed, we would. But I think it would be hard to settle for that, for those prices, in the long run. Our perspective has really changed. We've experienced much more for much less cost.

To rent the same place? $2k-$2500/month, these days. Funny thing is rents have come down a lot since when we owned. You see why we were willing to buy and not so eager to rent, when we lived there.

Of course, for $325k (cheaper), this is what you can get in our current neighborhood:

http://www.sacramentohomefinderservice.com/Listing/ViewListi...

& to this day people still ask me very dumbfoundedly why we moved...

(& I understand by many perspectives it would be insane to pay upwards of $300k for even this. )

------------------------------------

This weekend was pretty darn nice. We went to San Jose to visit the fam. I was almost blown over when we arrived at dh's parent's house and the ENTIRE famnily was there. Everyone. Dh's aunts and cousins and uncles and sister and everything. I didn't even know it was a big party. For US I guess!

So we had a nice lunch and went swimming. The kids were just in heaven - playing with all the cousins and swimming. They are all just getting to ages to enjoy all of this.

Dh and I decided to take a rather impromptu date. We went to an Indian restaurant over by our old condo and why we drove past the area. We had a coupon and ended up paying $13 for TONS of food and even more leftovers. It was just insane. I was rather pleased.

So we went to a frozen yogurt place when we came out. IT was self serve, piles of toppings, 35 cents an ounce. I wasn't as impressed since we don't eat out much and $5 for our yogurt seemed like a bit much. But it was about the best yogurt I had ever eaten. Dh piled his bowl with fresh fruit. I guess in that sense it was a good deal. We will have to take the kids back some day (if they can stay in business). So we had a VERY pleasant evening.

We decided since dinner was so cheap and we had free babysitting we may go to the movies. We went back to his parent's house to peruse the movie listing but there was just nothing we really wanted to see. Decided to save our pennies.

We visited my parents today and drove home. At my parent's house the kids looked at sound waves on some machine (BM is a budding scientist and my dad is obliged to encourage him - I guess he is a scientist of sorts himself - an engineer/inventor). Anyway, BM has been obsessed with sound waves so he had a blast. I was practicing writing his name properly with him (only capitalizing the first letter - he has been writing in all caps and I don't think his teacher appreciates it). Anyway, I am working on letters the other day and he just wants to draw sound waves. YEs, that's my 5yo - hehe. So when Grandpa said he had some kind of equipment that showed images of sound waves, well, he was in heaven.

(I have to admit if the likes of The Mythbusters were around when I was a child, I may have taken a bit more interest in science. I think have learned more from those types of shows than I ever did in school, and BM just eats it up).

That and grandpa also has a drum set, so the kids had a BLAST!

It's kind of funny because our parents are so different. But the kids had their own little fun with each.

Just a very pleasant visit, all around.

I dare say it was also VERY frugal. We came home with $60 gas money from dh's mother. It was frugal regardless, since we spent less than $20 on eating out, and had a fair amount of fun. Maybe $30 gas at most. So perhaps we came ahead $10. Hmmm, we should do this more often. We rarely get to go on a date for so cheap!
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Prescriptions, dry-cleaning, party room booking, clothes: went to discount outlets so paid $129 for what would be $452 at full price: two tops and two cardigans for me, a pair of slippers for His Nibs, and two pairs of earrings. Then we used our two free movie tickets to see "Wall-E."

After seeing "Wall-E" I feel a twinge of self-contempt for being so consumed by shopping, but the truth is I buy clothes for myself maybe twice a year. Also, we went to an appliance store to price...
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I have an over-abundance of what you call "the Puritan work ethic." If there's a choice between "doing something that needs to be done" vs. having fun or goofing off, i'll likely do what needs to be done.

I'm just hardwired that way. Keep busy, keep busy, work, work work, even at home. I write my list of things i want to do and then i tackle them, one by one.

Today, for instance. It was a gorgeous day, the way days following god-awful weather usually are. I left my knee-high...
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I not only got my paycheck, but I ended up only putting in $10 toward our party anyway. Still, it's so difficult to control anything while at school. Diet, money, exercise, friendships... Over the summer I had the time to get OCD over tracking my entire life on Excel. Now I barely have time to shower.

It doesn't help that my school is essentially a US News-ranked summer camp. They should add a category: "Shirts optional". This place is ridiculous. I can't study when at 2pm...
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I'm officially 2 weeks through the first month of the grocery challenge. Goal, to reduce grocery bill and eating out by 25 percent, to $725 a month.

Two weeks to go. And EEK, we only have $244 left in the grocery budget. Eating out has really killed us this month.

Every time my mom babysat, we went out to eat as a date, plus throw in some restaurant breakfasts for hurricane evacuees, and then a MLS soccer game that cost us $34 in concessions, and well, you see how it adds...
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My computer was getting an "error 104" message a lot. I decided to Google it and found a site that claimed it would fix it with a free download. RegCure, it was called. It scanned my machine and found many things that needed fixing. But I had to buy a bigger version to actually fix most of them. Well, I looked around a little and it seemed legit. When I got to the part where I charged to Paypal, I thought it said it was $9.95. So I bought it. Then I get a message from Paypal...
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So, the topic recently seems to be not about whether spenders have a saving issue, but whether savers actually have a spending issue? Do we, savers, actually have a problem spending money?

Maybe that's not the exact point of discussion, but at least that's how I saw it. Well, even if it's not directly aimed at me, it's got me thinking and wondering if I actually have a spending issue!

I like to think that I don't, but people who are in denial say that too.

I do know...
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As I've mentioned before, we do not have cable. Instead we borrow DVDs from the library and have an obnoxious set of rabbit ears on our bedroom TV so we can kind of tune in to local channels if we get desperate.

The big TV is in the basement family room, which we rarely use so all it's hooked up to is a DVD player. When it's too icy to run outside, I will go downstairs to run on the treadmill and put a movie in the DVD player so I don't go stark raving mad from boredom.

However,...
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Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post! Definite food for thought. I'll visit the topic again in the future, as it's one that I still struggle with from time to time.

Today was one of those wonderfully lazy Sundays in early fall ... the Georgia sun is beating furiously down on us all, but I still detect a hint of crispness in the air! And right now I'm watching Randy Pausch's 'Last Lecture' on GPB. He was a really inspiring man.

Did some grocery shopping this...
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We went on our first vacation of the year, 3 days in Gatlinburg, Tenn. My husband loves old cars and every year they have a show in Pigeon Forge called "Shades of the Past"
We stayed at a nice hotel right down town, had several excellent meals and really enjoyed ourselves.

However, all that changed when we got home. There was a message on the answering machine that said someone had found my husband's youngest brother dead in his house. He had not been sick. He was only...
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