Also

Should I be worried that my blog has been viewed by someone in the occupied Palestinian Territory of Nablus?

"In times of unrest in the region, Nablus is often a focal point of protests and not safe for visitors."


Yikes!

Why?

Why is it that when I decided it is actually safe to brush my teeth while fully dressed for work because I have not gotten toothpaste on my jammies for over a month that is the time I make such a mess I have to change my entire outfit?

I'm a smart girl. I went to college. When did I forget how to brush my teeth without looking like I have rabies?

Easter stash

Scott made me an awesome basket this year. He stole my Lizzie Kate cross stitch pattern and bought me all the materials I needed to complete the project. I have promised myself I would complete Hunting Nostalgia before I started a new project, but it is SO tempting! This will be my first project on evenweave. He also got me a small Lindt chocolate bunny and the soundtrack to Across the Universe. He is wonderful and so thoughtful. We listened to the CD on the way back to Southie, and I totally love it. Scott's basket was filled with peanut butter with honey, ginger preserves and pistachios. I think he liked it!

Easter 2008

We spent Easter at my Mom's house. Mom has always had this tradition of taking a photo of the family around the holiday table, so I have kept it alive. This is us at Easter.

We still have ham left over!

More good news

At work so blogging quickly...

Logged onto my credit card account to gloat over my new zero balance and decided to check to my balance transfer offer. It had always been 6.99 % financing. To my surprise, they were offering 0% financing on all balances transferred through November 2008. I quickly applied, knowing that even at my current rate on that card, it would be paid off by August. I got my approval today. Yay! I did some calculations and figured I would be saving about $350 in interest charges by making the transfer. (It would really be $450 but it did cost me $100 for the transfer.)

Did some more calculations, and figured if everything goes well, I could be completely out of credit card debt by November 2009. I know it seems so far away, but in terms of paychecks, it's only 41 away! I need to figure out how to create a taskbar for that...

One step closer to being debt free

Today I paid off one of my credit cards. I am doing a happy dance in my pants! For the last year, I have been obsessed with paying down my consumer debt. I want a house, and the only way I will be able to comfortably start looking for one is without all the debt I have boosting my finance rate up. My credit rating is good, but I want it to be excellent when I apply for a mortgage. Heck, the way the housing market has blown up over the past few months, they may not give mortgages to anyone with less than excellent credit!

How have I done it? I listened to quite a few financial advisers on satellite radio and NPR, and this is the method I have chosen:

• Choose the card with the smallest balance and focus on paying that one off. Pay the snot out of it (as much as you can afford) and just pay the minimum on the other cards.
• I call my credit card companies ( had 3, now I only have 2! Yay!) every few months and ask them to lower my interest rate. My method is to tell them I got an offer to transfer my balance to another card at a lower rate, and ask them to match that rate. The have never matched it, but they have given me a temporary lower rate for a few (9) months.
• I changed the rewards program on my Discover card to the new Motiva plan. If you pay on time every 6 months, they give you a months worth of finance charges back as a cash bonus.
• Now that I have one card paid off, my plan is to transfer the balance on my card with the highest rate(Discover) to my now clean card. I just got my 6 month bonus, and ended up getting an additional $10 by redeeming it in gift cards instead of putting it back on my card. I thought long and hard about that one, because I really wanted to just use it to pay down the balance. I decided to reward myself instead. I earned it, after all. If I had not gotten my bonus yet, I would have waited for that before transferring the balance.
• I will use the $$ I was paying on my first card and add it to the minimum payment of my card with the next smallest balance. Then, it is the same formula until that one is paid off. It will get paid off quicker, because I am able to pay more on it.
• I get paid every 2 weeks, so every time I get my pay stub, I go online and pay on my cards. By paying every 2 weeks instead of once a month, I am saving on interest charges (because it is compounded daily) and I never have to worry about running short at the end of the month, because I pay it out as soon as I get it. What I have leftover is my budget for the next 2 weeks for gas and any other personal items I may need or want(our household budget automatically goes into a separate account). Everything leftover at the end of those 2 weeks gets transferred into my savings account. (If I have $5o as my beginning balance on payday before my paycheck posts, I will transfer that into my savings account, where it stays unless there is an extreme emergency. I've been doing this for almost a year now, no emergency yet.)

So, I am feeling pretty awesome right now. I am happy, happy, happy!

My hubby loves me

When I was sick last week, Scott came home with this. He thought it was a "one up". I didn't have the heart to tell him the green ones were "one up"s. What a good guy...

After a brief absence...

I have been home from work for 2 1/2 days this week. I'm feeling much better now, but it was a rough week.

I got my goodies in the mail, so now I am ready to start a new project and go on a picnic! Unfortunately, it is currently snowing and I made a committment to finish a few projects before starting any new ones. So....I guess I will continue on with Hunting Nostalgia and prepare for St. Patrick's Day. I live a block away from the parade route in South Boston, so I'll be cooking all day tomorrow, and I need to start preparing for company. I'll prepare, but I doubt we will get any, because that is just how things are with hubby's side of the family. I've learned to live with it. (BTW, hubby made that lolcat for me.)

Picnic Season

Last year for my birthday Scott and I went on a picnic along the Charles River. We had such a fun time he has decided we should go on a picnic twice a month once it starts getting warmer. I wasn't sure we would be able to do that until I saw this picnic cooler. I had a gift card I was able to use, plus I get free monograming and shipping, and now I can't wait to picnic!!!

Work in progress

Here is my work in progress on Hunting Nostalgia. I would estimate I am almost 3/4 done with the regular stitching. Then the dreaded backstitching...

The first pic was taken last Saturday, and the second one was taken a few minutes ago.

*Blogger is being weird, sorry for the ugly layout...

Gifties

I just purchased this pattern. I love it's simplicity and the fact that it looks like there is no backstitching. I will work this on evenweave, which will be my first attempt at anything other than Aida. I've used plastic canvas and waste canvas, but those don't count, as they were very similar to Aida, for me. I must admit, I'm a little scared of evenweave, but if my experience is anything like the experiences of the other stitchers I read about, I will soon stitch on nothing else. Can't wait!!!

Yay Friday

I am blogging quickly today because I want to get right to stitching. With such a busy work week, I did not get much progress done on HN. I will take another progress pic when I start tomorrow, so you can see how much (or how little) I can get done in a week.

I don't know who I'm talking to when I say "you", the only one who knows about this new blog is Scott, and I'm fine with that for a while. This way, I can post the pix I want and not have to worry about my family seeing gifts early.

Okay, off to my weekend!

Busy Kitty

I did not blog yesterday because I had to work late. Part of my job involves computer programming and we were changing the way we were going to deliver a weekly newspaper product (until today, we mailed it, now we have home delivery). The deadline for this project was actually a week ago, and I set it then because I knew I would have a hard time getting corporate support. Our company is currently being sold (as part of the Wall Street Journal sale) so all the corporate programmers will be out of work soon, so they really have no interest in helping the individual sites get their projects done. Yes, it sucks. So, yesterday, I was forced to wait until the very last second before I was able to proceed with my conversion. And since I have an hour commute I did not get home until after 10 PM.

The good news is that the project was a success and now my boss will leave me alone for the rest of this week (And I realize that means it's only tomorrow, but it's still a break!). He even let me leave 2 hours early today! Yay! I spent my free time purchasing my favorite imported cross stitch magazines! I have a subscription to the first one but it does not start until next month (but I already got my first issue. I know, strange).

So, I have BB9 to watch and Survivor to watch tonight, which I will do while working on HN. Later!!!

I am breakfasty!

This couldn't be more correct, right down to the Sunday morning pancakes...

Finally wireless!

Thanks to my brilliant brother, I am finally wireless! I would have never been able to do this on my own, so I am forever in his debt. Am currently updating the Wii so we can exchange Wiimail!

My weekend was very lazy. Spent a LOT of time working on "Hunting Nostalgia", and actually took before and after pix, which I will upload soon.

Must go now, playing with the Wii...