What's Next

Getting a little nervous.

The Epitome of Addiction

Last night while doing a near-midnight run to the Post Office to mail a check I promised I would mail out, I had the urge to stop at Top Foods and feed one of my strongest addictions: chocolate covered gummi bears. If you've tasted these succulent little chocolate covered wonders, you're missing out on one of the greatest things in life. But, be careful where you buy them. Top Foods = good. Nama's Candy in Downtown Edmonds = good. The Sweet Factory in many malls = bad, bland, tasteless.

Perception

Ah, perception - you gotta love it.

I think my kitchen is small. Often times I daydream on how I can make it bigger; by taking out a wall and moving the refrigerator over there and the oven over here and then laying down hardwood floors throughout the whole house to give it an over all appearance of biggerness. Yes, I am consumed with my kitchen. I not only daydream but I talk about it - talk about it to Tycen, my co-workers, friends, family, strangers on the street - I don't care who - just as long as they will listen to my dream of making my kitchen bigger.

After seeing this, I am VERY grateful for my BIG kitchen.















Perception - it can change your whole world. Or at least, in my case, the kitchen.

Give a Drunk a Drink

As I said in a previous post, we're attacking our BofA Platinum card now - we've been making extra payments and our balance is coming down. So what does BofA do? They raise our credit limit by 40%!!! "Hey, alcoholic, good job going to AA and kicking that drinking habit! Here's a couple kegs to celebrate with!" Thanks a lot Bank of America.

It's a good thing we cut up our cards and are on a plan to get out of debt - who knows what that extra credit limit would have ended up being...new hardwood floors? flat panel TV? many unaccounted for trips to Starbucks, restaurants and the movies?

Ask me how...

Sonja and I ran to Home Depot last night and I saw the walking debt-dealer again...so I grabbed Sonja's phone and had to take a picture (hurray for camera phones!)

Let's all go...

We can start planning now.

http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2006/12/2008_str_cruise.html

This will also take place of Sonja’s birthday party that year. :)

I did some quick math – calculating 600 days between now and then and an approximate cost of $2000/person for the cruise (probably less), each person would only need to save $3.33/day to go. Let’s see…what costs about $3.50/day that I could cut out of my life…hmmmm…

(Todd, I know an Alaska cruise is far less exciting for you than it is for those of us not currently living in the Last Frontier)

(for those of you unfamiliar with STR – it’s an apologetics/training organization. The lineup for this is great! Koukl, Moreland and the McDowell father/son duo – good stuff!)

One-Stop-Shopping

Tycen and I were shopping at a of those one-stop-shopping mega stores. As we were browsing (aka: sonja being sidetracked and looking at clothes) we heard over the intercom "Sonja, your children are at the front of the store. Sonja, your children are at the front of the store."

I thought, wow this store really does have everything, as I walked to the front of the store...

Sinking to New Lows (or Height$)

Last night while waiting in the checkout line at Home Depot, I noticed a guy (employee) walking around with a cardboard sandwich board on that said something about asking him to save 10% (and we all know what that means). I thought, “great, instead of having the checkout clerk ask you if you would like to enter into bondage with their credit card, now HD is paying some guy to walk around and accost people as they wait in the checkout lines.” Of course, HD seems to pay people to walk around and not know any answers to your questions anyway, so…

But, after I got over the disgust of their new marketing tactic, I started to do the math…

Assuming the guy gets slightly better than minimum wage ($8/hour) and assuming he works a 40 hour week, his monthly wage would be $1280 (based on a 4 week month). Plus any benefits HD offers (if at all).

But, then you have to factor in the 10% HD gives up when you sign up for the card. I’ll be really conservative on my numbers here, but assume the average purchase when signing up for the card is $100 – in that case HD loses $10 for each one of these transactions. I would figure the guy solicits at least one new card holder every hour (on average, probably less during the week, more on Saturday/Sunday).
$10 x 8 = $80/day x 30 days = $2400/month

(of course this also does not factor in processing and related costs)

So, just with this one activity alone, HD is paying $3680 each month (conservative numbers). Why? Is it a customer service thing, covering all of those costs just so someone can save 10%? Wow, are they really that nice?

Not likely. HD is just like every other retailer and is out to make money. They also know that (based on statistics) the average American will a) not pay off the balance and pay interest, and b) a majority of card holders will be assessed a late charge at some point for missing a payment due date.

But, that still wouldn’t be enough to cover the cost, I don’t think.

Maybe HD is banking the fact that people tend to spend 30% more when using credit as opposed to cash (source – a pro-credit card article, but still some good info).

Just for fun, let’s work the math backwards. Let’s take those 240 purchases in one month (for each person that got a credit card and “saved” 10%. $3680 / 240 = $15.33. But, wait, on that $100 purchase you saved $10 (10%). Didn’t you? The problem is, for HD to be profitable, they need to get $15.33 out of you to recoup their losses. So, instead of saving $10, you lost $5.33.

I recognize there are a lot of other variables that come into play, but I hope you see my point. And, I know, none of us are dumb enough to fall for that trick. We’ll take our 10% savings and stick it to HD. Yeah, right.

Farewell CompUSA…

Last night Sonja and I called and closed our CompUSA credit card. When we started attacking this card, it had over $1000 in debt on it and a credit limit of $1700. Now it’s GONE! I (Tycen) will say that it was a little bitter-sweet for me. Sweet because we’re paying off debt and closing out these cards…Bitter because, well, I’m a gadget freak. I opened the card back in 2002 so I could buy my Xbox. *sniff* Many “emergency” computer parts, games and electronics were purchased on that card.

Bank of America Platinum card…we’re coming for you next!

(originally posted by Tycen)

Snow...SUCKS!!!

"Oh look how pretty and beautiful it is out there...oh look at the pretty pictures of our house covered in snow..." PHOOEY!

A lot has happened in the last 24 hours, so I'll try to keep this post brief. I started to write it last night, but got distracted...here's how far I got:

I’m sitting on a bus right now. It’s 7:45pm. I left work at 5:00pm. I usually take two different buses - but tonight my first bus was late/out of action due to the snow, so I walked the 1.25 miles to my 2nd bus stop and waited there for about 30-45 minutes before I caught my 2nd bus (it was cold!) - got on my 2nd bus around 6pm. I’m only at Northgate right now (a little over half way home). And my iPod battery died an hour ago. What's worse is that I have to go to the bathroom. Really bad. So, the beautiful pictures of snow aren’t so beautiful to me now…I just want to get home! But, I guess I should be thankful…Sonja’s bus got in an accident and hit a car. She’s okay, but I’m sure it was a bit of an experience for her. Scary! She’s home safe now, though. I hope to make it eventually… Oh, and our bus just started spinning out.

We were stuck in that spot for a while. The freeway was a sheet of ice. Finally, our bus started to jackknife (it was one of those extended buses that flex in the middle) and couldn't go any further. After a while another bus pulled up and we got off and transfered (all in the middle of the freeway mind you) to the new bus. I didn't walk in the door until 10:15pm last night...and headed straight for the bathroom.

So this morning I decide that I am definitely WFH (working from home). I chained the car up and drove Sonja to work this morning, though. After that I had a dentist appointment (that I almost forgot about). The exciting part was when I pulled in from the dentist appointment. As I got out of the car I heard this "pppshhhhhhhhh". Huh...that's a funny noise. I looked around and saw we now had a decorative water fountain where our outside water faucet used to be. The faucet was on a pipe that came straight out of the ground - the pipe had cracked. I went to call my landlord and then remembered that we own the house and I am the landlord. So, after sobbing for a few minutes and calling a couple people wiser than myself (thank you Eric and Jim!), I proceeded to do the following - found our shut-off valve, dug the dirt away from our shut off valve (the "ppsshhh" sound goes away), went in and warmed up by the fire, dug the dirt away from the water faucet pipe, cut off the pipe below the crack (God bless the Sawsall), warmed up by the fire, drove to three places before finding the part I needed (God bless the Galvanized Compression Coupling), got home, heated up the now frozen stub of a pipe, assembled the compression valve and other pieces of pipe, and, finally, warmed myself up by the fire. Then it was time to go pick Sonja up from work. Yup, it took me all day. I'm new.

So, I'm now ready to sell the house and move to California or Florida. Of course, more snow is expected tomorrow, too. And, tonight the temperature is supposed to drop into the teens. Stupid snow.



(originally posted by Tycen)

Snow!

Last night Sonja and I went out and played in the snow...and of course took pictures. That's when I said, "we need to do a blog". So here it is!

This first post is really just going to be pictures of our house in the snow. :)

(originally posted by Tycen)