July by the Numbers

So… once again, not a lot to report. However – This is hopefully the last month that the debt snowball is on pause!

While I was laid off in April (and now plan on staying home), the self-employed one in the house has had a tremendous increase in work. Praise the Lord!

Also, baby boy was born mid month! 🙂 He’s so precious. Yep, I’m bias, but he’s a super cutie!

And if you recall from previous “by the numbers” once the hospital bills are finalized, we’ll be able to use the Crisis Fund to Pay All the Medical Bills (creating no new debt!) and throw the rest at my student loan.

I’m guessing that the total number toward debt will be a bit smaller than I would have liked or hoped (mainly due to my not working since mid April), but every little bit helps.

I was looking at my student loan this month, and just paying minimum or a few dollars over minimum since November means we’ve still made a little progress. We are now almost under 13K for the loan. To put this in perspective, this loan was around 35K when I consolidated it into a 20 year loan, in 2008. (We’ve paid off 22K in 6 years. And we plan on having it done in less than 12 months, which is ultimately 13 years ahead of schedule.)

All that to say I can’t wait to report back for “August by the Numbers.”

One thing that was a bummer for July is that we seem to have spent a lot on food. However, this is because my mom was in town and we made trips to Costco and Sams. We purchased extra, and then she made us a bunch of meals – of double or triple proportions. Now we have somewhere between 10-15 meals in the deep freeze for simple cooking. We also have a wonderful community of friends that are providing us with meals a few times a week for the next few weeks. Which means the August food bill will be low and more than make up for the larger food bill in July.

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Done

Finally finished painting!

Check out the color:

Here’s the wall color with the print from our bedding set:

New Glasses!

I picked up my new glasses yesterday!

It’s always a bit tricky with glasses. You have to find an angle where the lenses don’t have a major glare. (Thus, I’m not looking at the camera.)

It’s so funny. I tried to post this picture earlier today and I got everything set, clicked “insert to post” and nothing happened!

I kept getting a WordPress error.  Turns out, WordPress had a major issue with their back-end code or server or something and they had to put all sites in “read-only mode”.  So one minute I was able to click away and the next minute, nothing. It made me feel like I broke WordPress for everyone.

My car, the gigantic piggy bank.

Have you ever left the sun roof on your car open? Have you ever left it open in an uncovered area and it rains?

After a lovely drive Saturday afternoon, I parked my car in its spot (on the street) rolled up the windows, battened down the hatch, and went in for the night.

Late that evening I thought “oh! Did I close the sunroof completely? Yep, I know I closed it. I remember turning the dial.”

The evening came to a close and I went to bed.  At about four in the morning, I woke up to rain. Not just any rain, but extremely boisterous rain. A beautiful, yet treacherous melody.

Sunday morning, my car, the window, and the rain must have been on my mind because the first thing I did when my alarm went off was look out the window. To my despair, I saw my car, sitting in the rain, sunroof cracked open slightly. I just stood. And stared in silence. After a minute or so, I got dressed, grabbed a stack of towels and went out to inspect the damage.

Expecting the worst, I discovered no evidence of water in the vehicle. Shocked and also very relieved, I turned the car on and moved the dial from the last setting to the closed setting. Operator error as I must have not turned the dial all the way.  I also noticed a very shiny penny sitting on the passenger seat. Odd. I guess it could have fallen out of my purse the day before. Funny I didn’t see it Saturday afternoon…

As regular readers know, I collect pennies for “Pennies for Debra” – a fund that takes unwanted, homeless pennies and gives them a new purpose, paying off my loans…

As I drove to church, I heard what sounded like coins sliding around. I discovered another penny. Hum…a suspicion grew in my mind. Did ‘someone’ decide to take advantage of the open sunroof and pretend that my car was a giant piggy bank?

I relayed the story to my roommate and we both agreed that it would not be an action all too surprising from our friends who happen to live next door. I didn’t say anything to them about it, as I didn’t want to look foolish if I was wrong, nor was I ready to acknowledge the brilliance of such an idea if my suspicions were correct.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon, I finished work and got in the car to drive home. It was a gorgeous day, so I attempted to open the sunroof. It would only tilt up in the back, but it was stuck and would not slide open at all. I was, at first, discouraged with the thought that perhaps the rain did do some damage after all.

I got out of the car, looked around at the top, tried to find if something (such as a leaf) was preventing the roof from sliding. As I reached up on the interior, my fingers came across a Penny. A penny jammed in the space between the glass and the metal. Pulled it out – no luck, still stuck.

I texted my neighbors letting them know I was onto their scheme, but both denied involvement.  As I drove home, each red light, taking a moment to trace the window track above my head, fingers getting grimier with each attempt, I found two more pennies. Removed each, retested the window. No luck.

I got home. Got out of the car and started my search.  One more penny stuck, this time in the actual tracking of the window. Successful removal of the penny. Successful reinstatement of working sliding window. And all was right with the world. Plus, I had a total of 6 more pennies to put toward the fund.

As far as the ‘culprits,’ I did have the one who thought up the idea, acknowledge that fact. He also explained how they stopped due to getting some stuck in the window, though I have yet to discover who his accomplice was.

And the number of pennies, that is unknown. I found one more, so there were at least 7, though he couldn’t give me a definitive number. I’m betting there are at least a couple more Pennies lost, sitting kittyWampus, somewhere in the interior of my car, er…I mean gigantic piggy bank.

#51 – 9 years – 200 hits

As you know, I had a blast at the Mariners Double Header (in-spite/because of the rain). Here are the best of the best of my pictures from the night (yeah… that does mean the “best” of hit 200 is blurry)

Pictures

Sadly, most of the photos we took were really, really blurry. (Operator Error)

Here is our view of the field from on Wed.

And here is a picture of me & the signs.

The story on the sign, Tim went to an M’s game Friday in Minnesota. His sign said “Help. Mariners Fan stuck in South Dakota”
Apparently he was put on TV back home and the broadcasters loved his sign. I was hoping that because that was only five days earlier…if they saw my sign they might think it was funny. More so, I just find it amazing that one of my brothers and I attended away games for the M’s in two different parts of the city within five days of each other.

Also – side note – just watch the season 5 finale for LOST. Seriously considering that this show may have a chance at overcoming the place that the West Wing holds in my mind.

Progression of a Rain Delay

Ok, here are some photos:

These first two are from our original seats. They were great seats and for wonderful price – but they were pretty far away.

These next three are from our first move down and closer. As you can see we were just up from the on deck circle, in between home plate and the dugout.

Do you reconginze this back of the head?
I’ll give you a hint…Low Rider…A song that was played when he went to bat?
I’ll give you another hint: my favorite player in 1995 and a few of the subsequent years.

Joey Cora! He’s the bench coach for the White Sox.

We moved a second time and ended up practically behind home plate.

Me. Please excuse the “I look like a drown rat” look. That’s about how I felt. My shoes are still drying out two days later.

Finally, this is a picture of me preparing for the M’s game next week. I recently realized that I did not have a hat to wear to the game when I go watch the M’s play the Rangers, so I picked up a M’s circa 1981 design. – I also acquired a lovely retro jacket to wear as well.

I still love November

Thursday already?

So it’s been a busy, but good week.

On Saturday, I got to celebrate my birthday with my family. Seriously, there is nothing that makes you feel young like celebrating your birthday with a 3 and 5 year old.

On Sunday afternoon, I headed back up to play Settlers of Catan.

On Monday, I got a new couch! Someone at work was giving away a sleeper sofa so I really lucked out.

Yesterday, I bought a new vacuum. I purchased one at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago, but it was not cutting it and I really needed to vacuum, so I got a new one.

Tonight I am heading out to see my niece in her thanksgiving school program.

And to top off the week, tomorrow I have friends from work coming over to eat pizza and play Settlers. -the reason for needing to vacuum 🙂

Busy, but good.

Blowing out a candle on my b-day cupcake with the “Birthday Princess” hat.

New Do

I finally got my hair cut! I did take in choice “f” as what I wanted.

New Glasses

Here is a photo of me wearing my new glasses. They are similar to my old ones, but these are slightly wider and they are dark blue and light blue (not black).

Sorry the photo is not the best. It can be pretty difficult to take a photo of yourself.