Imagine it in a sing-song voice and it works, trust me.

Today is pay day! And we're not talking salted peanut logs. (Because ew.)

It's nice to get a check again.

It's even nicer that I thought I'd have to go up there to get it on my day off but lo, direct deposit kicked in already! Smell that? Smells gooood.

So now I am flush with cash. I've already squirreled away a good bit into savings to kick off the renewed house-saving extravaganza. Docked another bit for bills. Now it's our turn.

Mike and I are taking a portion of my check plus some of the stimulus and get to spend it for fun. I'll leave him to talk about what he's planning to get. Me? I'm still a bit up in the air. But I think what I might do is finally get that widescreen LCD monitor I've been wanting for a few years now.

I am, in fact, looking at this one. Thoughts?


In other news, last weekend we saw Iron Man. I won't go into much, as it's pretty much been talked to death online. I'll simply say that I really did like it, even as much as I hate Tony Stark. And that Robert Downey Jr. was pretty much perfect. I'd definitely rank it up there among the best comic movies.

During the previews though, we saw a trailer for a one-night-only showing of Rambo: First Blood the following Thursday. Have I mentioned how much Mike loves his classic action movies? Because Mike loves his classic action movies. I think I was sitting next to a small lake of drool when we heard about it. Long story just slightly less long, we also caught Rambo yesterday. I'll also leave it to him to talk about if he wants. I will only say that 1) it was better than I remember; 2) I neither needed nor wanted the 20 minute Sylvester Stallone interview before it started; and 3) the original ending? Kinda blows.

Looks like this is either a regular thing (these one-off movies) or something they're just doing for the summer. Next up appears to be Death Note followed by the (a?) Bleach movie. Not interested in either, but we'll have to keep an eye out. There are plenty of old movies I wouldn't mind seeing on the big screen.


Oh, and speaking of movies, one more thing I can solicit an opinion on.

Netflix gives us all the free eight-at-a-time subscription, right? We split that up, so Mike has some and I have some. Problem is that my some are sitting there and I haven't watched them yet. Which I'd like to do. So pick me one of my movies for today, and I think that I'll watch it around lunch. I've not yet seen any of these, so they're all good choices for me. I've got: Raising Arizona, Little Miss Sunshine, Across the Universe and Sweeney Todd. Thoughts, take two?

Until then, I think I'm gonna go chill with Rock Band for a bit. I love days off. (And getting paid!)

Click click click. Gamefly canceled. Who has time with Rock Band?
$22/month saved.

Beep beep. Chat chat. Top tier of Internet service that never worked anyway gone.
$10/month saved.

I don't watch TV. Limited basic, you say?
$40/month saved.

Why yes, I would like a promotional plan on my internet, how kind.
$10/month saved for six months.

Ten minutes of work, $924 saved this year.

I am okay with this.

Today I did our taxes. I did our taxes SIX TIMES. Every single time I got the same results. The final time I did them, I had Mike at my side as we checked over each and every single item to make sure I didn't somehow slip into some alternate dimension where the government isn't screwing me.

Know how much federal tax we wound up paying in 2006?

Ten dollars.

Out of the couple thousand they took for taxes, they are keeping exactly 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,TEN of those dollars.

I think for this we have to thank Mike adjusting the tax taken out when he got promoted last year, his exceptional diligence to his 401k, me hot doggin' it on the education credits, and ... and the faerie who came down from heaven and blessed us. I don't know.

I filed, but it's freaking me out. I keep thinking I must have made some gross miscalculation somewhere along the way (SIX TIMES) and that the government is standing just out of sight, sniggering at my ignorance and anxiously awaiting the moment when I will least expect to be buggered beyond all buggering.

Reposted from original Daily Deformations

I so love national holidays. I spent my 4th of July doing three things.

1. Reflecting on how, one year ago yesterday, I embarked on a life-changing journey.
2. Attempted to keep my dog from having a heart attack from fireworks.
3. Waited about three hours for pizza.

The height of entertainment, to be sure.

But the weekend is approaching, and this can only be a good thing. My plans include going out to buy a desk for Mike to proudly display his new computer, and much lazing around. Although I am considering doing a rant or two. I have a few topics that have gotten my blood boiling lately, and what better way to channel the energy?

Reposted from original Daily Deformations

Sorry again for the huge delays. Work has been running me ragged lately. Salary is nice, but the unpaid overtime sure isn't.

I'm going to be resting up this weekend, watching some more of the Olympics and hopefully updating my pages a bit more. I even have a few rants that have been turning around in my head. Oooo.

Until then, however, I invite all of you to gasp in wonder at our largest purchase since moving. No, I didn't pay that much, but it was still expensive. Darned nice, though. As Mike exclaimed last night while watching an interview with a skier, "His head is bigger than mine!"

Reposted from original Daily Deformations

You'll notice that lately, most of my entries (such as they are) have been about work. I think that this should be indicitive of my current life situation. Work, work and more work. With a bit of sleeping and cooking thrown in for variety.

But perhaps that's all about to change.

Yesterday, my pay got moved from hourly to salary.

It's a good rate. It's a darned good rate, really. I technically got a pretty hefty raise. But the problem is that the stability of salary comes without the possibility of overtime.

Now I expect that I'll have to put in some OT. Besides my required one Saturday per month, I also have piles of work to do that I haven't been able to get to in my normal working day recently. But "some" OT doesn't mean coming in on Sunday. Or working the 6 to 3 shift on Saturday and then saying up there until 8pm. So perhaps this isn't a bad thing in the long run. Perhaps my day will become more than get up, work, come home, shower, cook, eat, sleep, get up, etc.

But damn, that OT was nice. <sigh>

On a refreshingly un-work-related note, Mike and I are getting excited about Christmas. We're going to buy ourselves a PlayStation 2. Yes, we spurned the PS2 on its release, but now it has games we actually want to play. So many, in fact, that we're having trouble in breaking it down. If you have a suggestion for us, pop on over to The Wolf Pack and give us your top 5 PS2 gaming choices and why.

Mm. PS2 and 5 games for Christmas. Maybe salary isn't such a bad thing after all.

Reposted from original Daily Deformations

Man, what a week. Another loaded with overtime, so I was really looking forward to my weekend. Half of my Saturday was cut in by the need to be at work, but as it was all overtime at that point, I didn't mind so much, and I was able to leave at 10:30am, enabling Mike and I to still enjoy the day.

As I think I mentioned last Daily, I got a promotion at work. Finally, as of this Friday's paycheck, that promotion's raise came through. I was hoping it would go up by about two dollars an hour. I haven't yet seen the pay stub (we have direct deposit so I check online to see the amounts), it looks like I got a six dollar an hour raise. Can you say "Hot freaking damn"? Sure, I knew you could.

That meant that on my Friday's check, with fifteen and a quarter hours of OT, I made five hundred dollars more than I was banking on. Oh yeah. Time to finally buy some luxuries.

While Amy was here she had pre-ordered Snow White from Suncoast, so I had to go to Lloyd Center in Portland to pick it up for her anyway. I decided that while I was there, I was going to also pick up Tori's new CD, as well as Dark Age of Camelot (seeing as how I had pre-paid for three months at the Beta rate, a working CD key would be a good thing to have). From there, I fully intended to spend Saturday with my hubby and the Sunday camped out in front of my computer enjoying my new game.

So off to Lloyd Center. As usual, I couldn't find it directly. Hey, I'm still new to the area, cut me some slack. I finally managed to track it down, though, and reveled in the idea that I would be spending money today. Stopped off in Electronics Boutique. No copies of DAoC, they'd sold out. Okay, no problem, I had some other places to check yet. Went to Sam Goody. No copies of Strange Little Girls, they'd sold out. Okay, now I'm getting minorly irked. Software Etc. Nope, no DAoC here either, but they should have a new shipment on Tuesday if I'd like to put my name on the list. Grrr.

I was luckily able to find the only remaining copy of Tori's latest in FA, and it was on sale, so that cheered me up slightly, but as I had planned to spend my entire Sunday around DAoC, I was really disappointed that I was striking out everywhere. Toys R Us, same thing - no copies. Plenty of strategy guides, though. <eye roll>

Extremely disgruntled, I left Lloyd Center feeling wholly unfulfilled. But I still had one more place to try.

Have I mentioned that I adore Best Buy?

Not only did they have about 6 copies of DAoC, they also had copies of Metal Slug X and Tales of Destiny 2 which Mike was looking for. So we both made out like happy little bandits, and headed home with our loot.

So, of course, you know I had to have a flat tire greeting me when I came out of the store.

I had been warned by the Saturn dealer that the treads on my back tires were getting a bit thin, but that I still had some wear left on them, so I think I drove over a nail or something. But regardless, I had to get that tire replaced. I'd heard that Costco (a big warehouse place much like Sam's in the South) had excellent tire deals. Given that there's one of those just down the street from my complex, I stopped there and checked them out. They couldn't exactly match the rating of the tires I already had and their policy wouldn't allow them to sell me just one, but they did have four which were better than the ones I currently had, so I had them set those four aside for me for tomorrow -- I wasn't much inclined to wait for two hours today, so planned to return just before they opened on Sunday. It was a $200 fee I wasn't expecting, but even with that and the money we'd spent earlier, I was a good couple hundred over what I had been banking on. I felt pretty good.

So Sunday morning rolls around and we get up to Costco around 9:45am. Would you believe there was already a line for the tire place? When it's finally our turn, they locate the tires that were saved for us, got ready to put us in the system, and then asked for our Costco members card.

Uhhhh .....

One application, bad photo and $45 later, we were proud gold star members of Costco. Ah well, we'd been wanting to join the place anyway. (Shush, I'm trying to look on the bright side.)

All in all, it was an expensive weekend. But it was a great feeling to know that while it was expensive, it still never touched the money that was in the budget. And what's more, I have 14 and a half hours of overtime on this week's paycheck.

Mmmm. Money.