Footprints on the Moon

I had a good day today, and not just because I didn’t have to go to work. Well, partly because of that. It was nice to spend a Friday being lazy around the apartment… I watched TV and caught up on some DVDs I have from Netflix (I know, I know, I said I’d cancel my subscription. Eventually). I considered taking a nap, just because I could, but I dawdled too long and then didn’t have time.

I went to dinner at my Grandma’s house because it is her birthday! So I got a wonderful home cooked meal and hang out with family which is always good in my book. Killian is starting to say words now, and he never stops moving so that’s always a lot of fun. Try and change his diaper though, and you’d think you were trying to check him into drug rehabilitation against his will. It takes a couple of people and you still feel like you’ve wrestled an alligator by the time you get his pants back on!

Well, I think I’m heading off to bed before too much longer here but I wanted to check in. Everyone wish my Grandma a happy birthday! Trust me, if you knew her, you’d love her!

That was the subject of the first email I sent to my best friend from work this morning. We email back and forth all day because she’s doing basically the same job I am at another company across town. So why did I find Thursday so fabulous?

Well, it is the first day of Spring. While it wasn’t exactly warm (and it’s supposed to snow tomorrow), it still counts, and the sun WAS out all day. It was definitely a day to appreciate the amount of windows I have surrounding my desk. There are SOME advantages to being at the front desk, you know– I have the best view in the building!

It’s also the last day of the work week. It’s a paid holiday at the company where I work tomorrow. Since I’m the receptionist, I get the day off when the rest of the plant does. Woohoo! It’s always exciting when everyone passing your desk says “Happy Friday!” on a Thursday morning. It will make next week seem especially long, but let’s not worry about that just yet.

And finally, it was a Fabulous Thursday morning because my boss handed me a plaque– naming me Security Officer of the Month for February 2008! Woohoo! It comes with a fancy plaque (I’d show you a picture, but it gives away a little too much personal info) and a bonus check that they’ve taken taxes out of. So not much, but it made me feel good!

A week or so ago, I had a paper doll arrive in my mailbox. It was a part of a Flat Stanley Project for a first grader named Jeremy. So this doll is actually a Flat Jeremy. According to the instructions, all I need to do is purchase a postcard, write a message to this first grade class, and then send Flat Jeremy off to a new locale so someone else can send a postcard.

I just so happen to know, however, that this poor first grader hasn’t had the greatest response from his flat stanley so far. I know that if it was me, I would be very disappointed so I decided to make it a step better than just one postcard. I’ll probably send 5 or 6 cards, and each one will have HIS Flat Jeremy in the picture! WOW! I have a bad habit of letting pictures sit on my SD card for ages, so I decided to get them off my camera, upload them and share them with you!

My friend Sarah went with me on the photoshoot and our first stop was Lake Michigan. We stopped a few places in Michigan and Indiana but couldn’t find quite the picture we were looking for. Finally, we got this one in Michigan City, Indiana.

I wish the background was less blurry, but you can see a Jeremy-less picture here. It’s actually really cool… all that white on the other side of the sand piles? Those are frozen waves!
We also stopped at the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana:

The South Bend Chocolate Company had their chocolate cafe just across the parking lot, so we snapped a picture there too. They’ve spread out quite a bit from South Bend last time I checked, and their chocolate is GOOD.

We drove around in circles in the parking lot at the University of Notre Dame to get this picture of Jeremy with the golden dome. (Go Irish!)

Don’t worry, I got a less blurry picture than that that I’ll use to make the postcard. I also braved the wrath of some security guards at AM General to get a picture of Jeremy where they manufacture the humvees for the army! (They also make the H2s for civilian purchase at the same location.) I kid about the security guards… you’re allowed to take pictures of the vehicles.

We stopped at the train yard because you can’t go ANYWHERE in Indiana without waiting for a train (or several, when I’m really late for work!)

And finally, we got a picture of Jeremy at Amish Acres in Nappanee, Indiana. I was hoping to find a horse and buggy to catch a picture of, but the only ones we saw were traveling down the highway and I didn’t think that photo would work out so well.

So what do you think?? Now you’ve gotten to see some of the landmarks all over Northern Indiana (we were driving basically all day!), do you think he’ll appreciate my efforts? Well, even if he doesn’t, I had fun doing it!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I’m not really into celebrating St. Patty’s day, but kudos to all of you who are. Around here, it’s mainly about cabbage, and green beer, neither of which I’m remotely interested in. Mainly I just wear green so that I don’t have to spend the entire day fielding comments such as “But where’s your green?” and “Ooh! I get to pinch you!” Seriously? Didn’t we outgrow that in the third grade?

For the most part, people kept their thoughts to themselves today. I was prepared for a bigger onslaught of comments, since my uniform is white and black. I do have green earrings on, so maybe there were some really observant people who noticed. Or maybe I’m finally working with enough people that don’t care who is or is not wearing green! Well, whatever the reason, I’m grateful that I can count the comments I received today on one hand.

How about you? Did you proudly wear green today, or spend the day defending your decision not to?

This picture is actually from Tuesday night, so Loretta at least has seen it already. I had taken a shower, and when I took my hair out of the towel, this is what it looked like. No joke– no combing, no product, no nothing. I had to take a picture to share because you know I could never get my hair to look that nice on purpose! And you can see just how stubborn my hair is being about holding on to the curls I’m desperate to be rid of. I decided to use the picture today because a) it’s a self-portrait that I took this week and b) I’m being very critical of myself today, so I just couldn’t manage to take a picture that didn’t reinforce that feeling.

I had a very good day! I was somewhat productive this morning– I washed a load of laundry so I don’t have to go commando this week. I started cleaning in my bedroom and made some SERIOUS progress. I also finally moved my DVD player into the bedroom (I can’t get it wired correctly with the Tivo, and I was tired of fighting it) so now if you want to watch a movie at my house, you have to cuddle! Maybe that’s why I finally got motivated to clean in there?

My dad had Ryan, Ash-lee, Killian and I over for lunch, and then my college roommate came up and I met her at the exit to the highway and we went to dinner and Walmart. It was great to see her, catch up, and talk about how some things changed during school. It was the first time I’d seen her since graduation. We both felt kind of awkward at first, but by the time the food arrived, we got past that. She was a great roommate, so it was good to see her. I’m hoping we’ll stay in a little better contact going forward.

Now I’m just trying to wind down from being out and about all day… I need to go to bed soon. Those Monday mornings just come around way too fast!

Well, I updated WordPress and we seem to have come out fine on the other side. Please let me know if you see something out of the ordinary!

Today was a very good day. The sun shone all day, and let me tell you, it did WONDERS for my mood. Amy, Janette and I went out to lunch today which was great to get out for an hour. Then Sarah and I actually left the apartment for date night! We started out going to Hacienda for dinner, and then I thought we’d come back here for the usual Tivo, but we got almost all the way home and decided we just weren’t ready for that.

We decided to just drive. Aimlessly. It sounds strange to say when everyone is so worried about the gas prices, but I decided just to forget about that. I’m not interested in skin lightening (uh, wait until you see a picture of my pasty white legs and you’ll understand why I said that!), but SOUL lightening, now that’s something I’ll sign up for. And today was just perfect for that. Driving for the sake of driving and enjoying the weather, and catching up with my best friend. I’m going to bed in a little bit, but I’m doing so with a smile on my face AND in my heart. As cheesy as that sounds, I know, but it’s true!

I’ve been hesitating on updating WordPress over here for awhile. The last time I upgraded this blog, it broke. And I cried. And wailed. And whined. And eventually figured out how to fix it. Yes, it worked out in the end, but not without a lot of stress and anxiety in the meantime. I upgraded Jenn Cooks awhile ago and lost my emailed comments– it’s how I keep track of your comments, and reply to them so that was simply unacceptable! I refused to change this blog until that little problem had been rectified.

Well, with the latest upgrade on Fantastico, I have my emailed comments back on Jenn Cooks. Which means I just lost my last excuse for not upgrading my copy of WordPress over here. I’m nervous! If my blog breaks, you know what happened!

Ever since I started my debt reduction journey, I’ve started to read more and more personal finance blogs. And you know, personal finance bloggers link to each other. A lot. Crazy, isn’t it? When you are doing something difficult, it’s a bit easier when you hook up with a bunch of other people trying to make the same changes in their lives? (Sounds a bit like weightloss bloggers too, actually.)

Anyways, that’s how I came across the blog Debt Kid. I don’t even remember whose blog I clicked through from, but I found an entry where he proclaims dumbest purchase ever was a Nintendo DS lite. Typical of your middle of the night Walmart runs, and he hasn’t even played it in months. So he asked the blogosphere to share their dumbest purchases ever for a chance to win his!

It didn’t take me more than 30 seconds to decide which was my dumbest purchase. It’s my laptop. You might be thinking, but JENNIFER! That’s your computer… your lifeline to the internet. And you’d be right. I use this laptop every single day. I connect with people around the globe, I’ve met some of the most amazing friends I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve even managed to make a little money on the side. So why on earth do I call it my dumbest purchase ever?

Because until the day that I purchased this laptop from Dell, I never carried a balance on my credit cards. I had two cards, and I always paid the balance off in full every month. Sure, there may have been a month or two in college where I carried over a small balance (like Christmas presents bought in November and paid for when I worked over Christmas break), but for the most part those cards stayed very close to zero. And then I decided that my desktop computer needed replaced, I needed a laptop and I needed it NOW. I couldn’t afford it, and rather than saving up my money for it I decided to buy it on credit. I didn’t even have one credit card with a high enough limit to finance the purchase so I split it between two cards. It was more than I could pay off the next month, so for the first time I carried a balance on two cards and not a small balance at that. It was the catalyst for the debt that I have now… it made it easy to justify buying things I couldn’t afford, and letting the balance rot on my credit cards. The day I sat down to start this debt reduction I realized I had gone from two cards with no balances to four cards and credit card debt of approximately $11,000. Add that to my $20,000 of student loans and you can understand why I felt like I was drowning. When you look at it that way, you can’t help but wonder if laptop rental might have been a little more cost-effective in the long run! LOL

I don’t regret buying my laptop. I do regret buying it on credit before I could afford it, and then not diligently paying it back. Instead, it became easier to justify larger purchases elsewhere. $200 didn’t seem bad when I’d just spent $2,000 on a computer! So yes, I’ve gotten good use out of my computer, and still do, but when I look at the avalanche of debt it seems to have created, I definitely believe it was my dumbest purchase ever!

It was officially depressing driving in to work this morning, and not just because it is Monday. Last week, we’d finally reached the point where the sun was starting its ascent as we drove in. Not quite coming up, but the sky had lightened considerably, and the sun was beginning to tinge the horizon. Then, thanks to every Hoosier’s friend Mitch Daniels, we had to adjust our clocks forward by one hour. Today it was right back to driving in the dark. This time last week, it was looking light out. Right now, daylight looks hours away yet… so depressing. Just when it was starting to look hopeful that Spring might come this century. I really want to go back to our non-conformist, non-Daylight-Savings-Time changing ways. I just don’t get the point.

And sleeping. Pshaw. 9:30 is my must-be-in-bed time because my alarm goes off at 5:15 in the morning, and I’m one of those girls that really needs a full night sleep to function. Last night at 9:30, it was “really” only 8:30, and guess what! I wasn’t tired! Eventually, I went to lay down anyways, but I’d still say it was well after 11 before I fell asleep. I woke up at 2am to go to the bathroom, and was afraid I’d be up for good then, but I did eventually fall back asleep. Needless to say, if I get a lot of phone calls today from people looking for plasma mounts, RVs, or phone numbers for a completely different company (all things we get calls for daily, and no we don’t manufacture anything close to plasma TVs, accessories, or RVs) they might just find that I am a little short on the patience today. Especially the phone numbers thing. Do you call McDonald’s and ask them for the phone number to Burger King? Then why do you expect me to know the phone number for another company? Get out your phone book!

I’ll probably spend the next week or so feeling a bit out of sorts. It always takes me awhile to quit looking at the clock and thinking what time it “really” is. Right now, it’s 7:33, but it’s “really” 6:33. Trust me, it is a bad habit because then it takes forever to adjust to the change.

Edited to add: See? Even my blog knows that it’s “really” 6:33! Apparently, I need to manually change for DST.