I’ve got another thing to cross off of my 101 Things in 1001 Days list, and I didn’t even realize it while I was doing it. #76 was to sew something, and I accomplished that on Sunday when I made an apron!

The seams are not so straight (what do you mean they’re not supposed to be wavy?), the one bottom corner didn’t turn out very well, and I’m certainly not going to zoom in on the stitching on the tie. But it’s done, and it’s cute!

I think that counts as having sewn something, crooked stitches and all!

As I mentioned in my Self Portrait Sunday post yesterday, I was at the Notre Dame vs. Purdue game on Saturday afternoon. I also mentioned that I really had no idea what was going on, as far as the game was concerned. Although I did eventually get into what was happening on the field, and start to understand a little more, I thought I’d share a few of the other things that held my attention in Notre Dame Stadium.

The Marching Band

As the announcer kept repeating, the band is the first University marching band, now in it’s 163rd year. And hopefully I’ve got that right because I didn’t go check facts on that. However long they’ve been around though, they play the best fight song

At half-time, they played Sinatra, and I only wish I’d had my camera ready when they made like the Rockettes.

The Fans
From the good natured ribbing to the downright bragging. From the little old lady in our row shouting, “Gentlemen PLEASE sit down!” to the Dad in front of me who threatened to pound the young guy in front of HIM if he didn’t watch his language. And of course, this guy:

Cause it’s not enough to wear a gold helmet when you can put a Jesus on top.

The Man-Beef Buffet

aka, all the cops in a row LOL There are 5 cops in this picture that I was calling the Man-Beef Buffet.

Imagine how excited I was by the end of the game when the man-beef buffet more than doubled in size.

What can I say? I like a man (or men lol) in uniform.

And of course, there was football

38 to 21 over Purdue. Let’s go Irish!

In the realm of the ever rising grocery prices, I’ve found that one thing that works really well for me is stocking up on the non-grocery items. When you have to buy all of your skincare products, shampoo, feminine hygiene products, toilet paper and paper towels all in the same week that you need to restock the basics in your fridge and pantry, it adds up to one hefty total at the checkout. Even for someone living by themselves! So instead, I like to stock up.. hopefully the big sale on the toilet paper I like falls on the same week I have some wiggle room in my grocery budget. If not, I buy one or two packages on every trip until I have a good stock going. Then I don’t feel the pinch quite as badly on every single grocery shopping trip. I know I’m not the only one who does this… my friend Tina has a 6 month old baby girl, and when we went to lunch a couple weeks ago she said she probably has enough disposable diapers to last her until the kid is out of diapers entirely.

This paycheck is a tighter grocery budget week, so I won’t be able to stock up this time around, but I know it’s coming out of the next paycheck. I’ve got plenty of paper towels (been using hand towels more lately), but I’m running low on just about everything else. Do you stock up on the essentials, or do you just buy as things are needed?

Lousy, out of focus picture but I didn’t get the chance to look at it until later and since I was in a crowd of people, I just took one picture and moved on. I took this picture yesterday at the football game. If you were following me on twitter, you know that I was at Notre Dame stadium for the game against Purdue yesterday afternoon. The 10 mile walk to and from the parking lot notwithstanding, I had a pretty good time. I did discover just how little I know about football, however!

Today has been a usual Sunday for me: mostly lazy. I managed to sleep in for the first time in ages. Then Sarah came over and helped me hold down my couches for awhile. I finally washed all my dishes, and in a minute I need to go down and switch over my laundry so I don’t have to go to work naked in the morning.

In the meantime, I’m catching up on the Tivo and attempting a sewing project. The last time I sewed anything was in the 8th grade, so we’ll see how it turns out! I’ll share it with you later if it doesn’t end up looking too scary!

Alternately titled: Why I Will No Longer Be Doing Business with WaMu MyPoints Visa.

I tend to find myself thinking about finances at the end of the week. Maybe because I get paid on Fridays (every other week), maybe because we’re headed into the weekend which is always where a lot of my money tends to disappear. Either way, I decided it would be a great time to write something regarding the state of my finances/financial topics. I’d love to announce a new Finance on Fridays feature at Footprints on the Moon (how’s that for alliteration?), but I know how quickly those things can fall by the wayside. So instead, I’ll just tell you that I’m going to attempt to write about the financial side of my life more, and update on my progress more frequently. If that happens to be on Fridays, so be it.

In all the personal finance reading I’ve been doing over the last six months, one theme has jumped out at me over and over again: The credit card companies ARE out to get you. I’ve always read those sort of statements and said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” Until about a month ago.

I was logging into all my accounts online like I’ve basically become obsessive-compulsive about doing. But when I logged into my WaMu MyPoints Visa account, I was in for a big surprise. My formerly $81 minimum payment had suddenly jumped to $113. When you’re trying to pay off debt, a change of $30/month is a big deal. Eventually, I figured out that my interest rate had been raised from 16.99% to 25.99%. What I couldn’t figure out was WHY. I certainly hadn’t missed a payment or incurred any fees. I’ve never made a late payment on this account, or ANY account for that matter.

I tried to call the fine folks at the credit card company for some answers. I barely got the words, “I’d like to know why my interest rate has been raised,” before he jumped in with his little ready made spiel about how he was sorry to hear that but interest rate changes are usually due to (insert generic list of reasons here). I could not get him to tell me anything about why my rate had actually been changed, and the only thing he would do for me is put in a request that they send me a letter detailing what happened. Since he refused to do anything else (just before asking me if there was anything else he could help me with today), I ended up waiting for them to generate my letter and 7-10 days for it to arrive in the mail.

When the letter arrived, it said that they’d changed the terms of my account based on my overall credit risk. The “events or circumstances” they identified that indicated an increased credit risk were:
- Lack of recent retail account information.
- Account balance history.
Oh, and they consider the change(s) necessary in light of the increased risk. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that basically say that they raised my interest rate because I stopped using my car for new purchases and my balance is going down rather than up?

I’m really frustrated because it was hard enough to make progress on my credit cards without 25% interest rates. This credit card went from being last on my list to pay off and got unceremoniously shoved to number one. I’m a little disappointed that they absolutely refused to work with me because I was planning on keeping this one after I’m done paying off my debt– I really liked the rewards on this card. Instead, I’ll be cancelling this card not too long after it is completely paid off. It’s unfortunate, but I’ll no longer be doing business with the people at WaMu.

I’ve had this picture on my phone for five months with a promise that I would put it up on my blog. Back in April, I picked up Sarah for some running around town and there was a problem with my car. So I ran over to my mom’s house and had her husband take a look under the car. I don’t remember now, but it must have been raining because when he came back inside, this is what he looked like:

He was so proud of the outfit he fashioned out of a garbage bag to keep himself dry. And Sarah, bless her heart, without missing a beat, exclaimed, “Have you ever seen so much shit in one bag in your entire life?” Oh. My. Gosh. I knew I had to take a picture of him in that get-up cause that was definitely a bloggable moment, but I could barely manage to get the picture taken because I was laughing SO hard. I think the look on his face is saying, “What did she say? Why is everyone laughing?” Cause we ALL were laughing so hard we could barely breathe. I laughed until I cried.

I’m sure waiting 5 months has made the story lose a little “oomph” because I sure don’t think it is as hilarious now as it was then, but it was still funny!

Not the best picture ever, but one of the better ones from the batch I took today. One of these days I’ll learn that picking at acne only makes it look worse, but at least from this angle, the only one you can really see is the horn I am apparently attempting to sprout above my eyebrow. That isn’t nearly as huge as it looks in this picture.

Today has been pretty lazy. I added a few things to my sidebar here (I changed themes recently, if you’re reading from a feed reader and haven’t clicked through lately), and spent the morning catching up on the things my Tivo recorded all week. Even though I generally make it a rule to only nap on Saturdays, I took a nap anyways. I am only hoping that it doesn’t come back to bite me in a few hours when I’m trying to go to bed!

I finally drug myself into the shower at about 4pm, and then out to the grocery store at about 5. I just realized there were a couple things I forgot to put on my list, and therefore forgot to buy, but I have enough to feed myself through to payday, and that’s what matters! As for the rest of the night, right now I’m watching LOST reruns and trying to motivate myself to clean litter boxes since my picky little furry one is starting to get antsy. At some point I’ll put together my lunch for tomorrow. I know, so exciting you can hardly stand it right?

My car has issues. I would love to put on my professor voice and say, “I’m sure it’s just the ac compressor, no problem.” But I don’t even know what an ac compressor is, and even if cars actually have those, I AM fairly confident that it would not be the problem.

Actually, I think I know what the problem is, I’m just not sure what to do about it. I’m pretty sure there is a loose wire in my dashboard. Occasionally (and sometimes more than occasionally), I’ll lose everything on my dashboard. All the lights will go off, I have no speedometer, odometer or gas gauge. Interestingly, my parking brake light comes ON when the others shut off. It makes no sense. When the dash goes out, everything else still works– radio, heat/AC, headlights, etc. I just have no gauges, and no back lighting. It’s troubling to me for several reasons: I have no way of knowing when or why it’s going to go off or come back on. When it’s off, I don’t know where my gas tank is at. If it were to stay off for long enough, I could potentially have a problem as I couldn’t see my gas gauge OR monitor my mileage. And it’s just not safe for me to not have a speedometer. I can’t afford a speeding ticket, and I sure do have a lead foot!

Finally, it’s troubling because even if I knew what to do about it, I can’t afford to have it fixed right now. My oil is past due to be changed now because I just don’t have $20 to get it done. So I’ll deal with a finicky dashboard for awhile I suppose. I have a 2001 Honda Civic EX, if anyone has some insight into my issue!

I’m a sad old lady (at the ripe old age of 25), and I’m trying to convince myself that I *don’t* really want to go to bed at 8pm on a Saturday night. So I’m watching The Biggest Loser: Families that I recorded on the Tivo earlier this week, and playing on the internet. There’s noone on to talk to, so I’m stumbling.

Which leads me to a question. What the heck is a Stokke Tripp Trapp? Well, I’ve been to the website, so I “know’ what it is, I just must be a little dense since I can’t figure out how it works. It’s supposedly a high chair that can grow with kids into adulthood, but I all I see when I look at the picture is a step stool. I can see from the pictures that you add straps for the wee ones, and remove seats or steps to accommodate adults. But do we really need a chair that goes from infant to adult?

And something else I found in my random surfing that gave me a case of the giggles:

more animals

I thought it was time to update you guys on my 101 Things in 1001 Days progress. Mostly I put together the list and forgot all about it, but I do have a few things to cross off.

21. Save all my change for one month.
I don’t have specific dates for this one but since I started just before my list went up, and can’t remember the last time I spent change, I’m going to go ahead and mark this one done. Other than quarters for laundry, all my change has been added to empty peanut butter jars. I would update you with how much money I saved, but I didn’t keep it separate from the pennies and other change I’ve half-heartedly saved for years.

34. (Private)
Well, as this one is private on my list, it will remain private here as well, but I did want to let you know that I am able to cross this one off the list as accomplished.

79. Receive flowers
This one originally read “Send myself flowers” because I tried to keep the list to things that I didn’t require another person in order to accomplish… Really all I wanted was to get flowers, but in the spirit of making sure the list was all things I could accomplish without relying on another person, I said I’d send them to myself. Since my best friend is AMAZING and she has a wonderful fiance, however, they sent me flowers at work on my birthday. This meets the spirit of the goal, so I’m marking it complete!

And if anyone wants to buy me a camcorder so I can cross #29 off my list without having to spend my own money to do so, awesome.

Oh, here are the flowers I got on my birthday:

I was so freaking excited