If you couldn't tell from all my blurry pictures, my camera was on the fritz. Perhaps it's a testament to the length of me and Ryan's relationship that the camera he gave me for our second Christmas is dead. So this year he got me a new one. That means you get nice clear photos. So instead of a lengthy "what I did on my Christmas vacation," I put together a nice photo essay on Flickr.















And Ryan got me a blue coupon folder, because he knows me too well.

I mayd uh nu lolcat:


Wil let joo no if it maks teh frunt paeg. An doan wury Jen, if it duz mak frunt paeg, wil sai: Foto Bai Jen B


moar funny pictures

My blogging frequency is directly proportional to my mood. For the past little while I was feeling like a zero. So much so that I finally had blood drawn on Thursday to get my thyroid and iron checked like my pdoc recommended last year. The internist said that the test results would be emailed to me that evening or next morning. Still waiting. Maybe they are waiting until after the holidays because they found something else and I only have 3 months to live or something. Oh, and with my crappy student insurance the blood work is going to cost me $200. DO NOT WANT!

I am feeling ambivalent about Christmas. I'm not in a social mood. I told Ryan not to get me anything expensive because we just got the car. I know his mom got me stuff off the registry. And we will be without the kitties.

Tonight we're doing two Atlantic City shops- one is an overnight hotel stay and the other is at a different casino. I have to play roulette for the casino one. It's going to be a lot of work writing up the two reports on Monday, but hopefully I don't blow through money as fast this time. Roulette may be total chance, but that's got to be better odds than those slots last time. I should put all my chips on red because red is the color of Soviet Russia, and in Soviet Russia, casinos pay you.

Think I'll rotate the picture in the top right according to my taste. Now that we're rid of the devil car, how about my girliest cake ever? Hard to believe that someone who made a cake like that is going to have a wedding cake like, well, the one we've got planned. Mwah hah hah.

Somewhere in my Squishycashing and all, I made the mistake of signing up for free baby stuff in exchange for a dollar or something. Mostly just baby junk mail, although sometimes I'm a little paranoid the mailman will start spreading word around the neighborhood that we're expecting, then one of Ryan's parents will be down and the neighbor will be all, "Congratulations about the grandchild on the way!" and it will all go down like some sitcom.

Anyway, last week I got a baby offer that actually looked promising: create a baby registry at a certain store, then they give you a $20 gift card. So that was one of the things Ryan and I did on Sunday :P I think we did a pretty good job of seeming legit... I didn't suck in my gut (heh), asked about if we could edit the registry online, and we added items that made it seem legit (one stroller, one crib, one playpen instead of 3 strollers for example). And we got our $20 gift card :) We also thought about if we created the registry and added a bunch of cat accessories, food, and litter, but thought that might raise a red flag.

I didn't mention how I further "Slickdealt" the car purchase beyond negotiating and Ryan's work discount, did I? We'll be getting a $25 Circuit City gift card just for test driving a new Mazda. You can do this too if you want to see what my car is like and don't care if the salesperson thinks you're a cheapskate (www.mazdaholidaydrive.com). $17,000 car, $25 gift card...not as good a ratio as my CVS deals, but what can ya do?

Let the wooting commence!

Woot, woot, woot!

We bought the Mazda already. Needless to say, we also finalized the Neon sale. We got a pretty good deal on the Mazda, I think. We negotiated quite a bit, then after the price was set and they started running our credit check, the manager came over and said to Ryan, "You work at L0ckheed Mart1n? Mazda has a partnership with them, so you get an extra $300 off." :) I'm glad they didn't learn that until after we'd "set" a price, or else they probably wouldn't have gone as low overall.

We pick it up on Tuesday. It's black (yay!) but has a beige interior (boo). But I was willing to take it because since it was a test drive car, they (at least said they) were willing to negotiate lower. So we got the moonroof and 6 CD for "free"ish, making it worth settling for the beige interior. It's a manual, and the clutch was more forgiving than Ryan's, but still fun to drive. The guy was like, "That's odd. Usually women want an automatic." And of course the car handles somewhere in between the Neon and the RX-8, but closer to the RX-8 end of the spectrum :)

I must give a preliminary woot! I *think* I sold the Neon. That is, a family came and looked at it to buy for their teenage daughter, she loved it, and they gave me a $100 check as a deposit. They're going to the bank in the morning and getting me $4900 cash. I would've preferred to get $5300ish, but as long as they show up with cash in hand tomorrow, it's zoom zoom to the Mazda dealership for me!

The family's dad is a Dodge mechanic, which should come in handy! But the extra funny part is that I had a mystery shop this morning where I got a free oil change at the his dealership! The dad had planned to check out the engine, but when I mentioned I'd been at his dealership this morning, he was like, "oh, I think it was Tom that worked on it! I don't need to look under the hood then, because I know he would've taken a good look at it." So even though I'm just selling the car tomorrow, it was still sort of worth getting the oil change :)

Anyone interested in buying Spiderman 2 or Spiderman 3 from me, brand new in plastic wrap and everything? Make an offer...would make a great gift!

I didn't tell you how the casino mystery shop went, did I? Not according to plan...

We showed up at 4:00 and started evaluating the different people we were supposed to. For the beverage server evaluation, you have to sit and play slots until someone offers to bring you a drink, then you ask them a question, yadda yadda. So we played slots and evaluated 6 of the 8 people we were supposed to. I couldn't believe how terrible the slots were. Let's see, I've gambled at a casino in Washington, one in Montreal, and twice at Turning Stone. All of those times my balance would bounce up and down, usually a little more down, but it kept me busy for a couple hours. On Sunday, I maybe "won" $4 en route to losing $50 (or losing $54, depending on your perspective) in a half hour (the terms of the shop said no penny/nickel slots).

I can't help it, even when they're paying me $75 for the shop, I still felt lousy after throwing away all that money, and so quickly. (btw, we spent $16 round trip on train fare) So although the gambling sucked, we at least figured we'd get a nice (ie expensive) dinner through the shop. The restaurant I was assigned was closed Sunday evenings, though. So we were like: ??? No way to rate the host and server if the restaurant is closed. So then we were even more disappointed. However, when we arrived at the casino and applied for their rewards card, they said that as a special for new members, if I returned after playing slots for a half hour, they'd have some coupons for me. And you know I love coupons, heh. So I went back and they gave me a $10 comp toward any of the casino's restaurants or retail stores. I didn't want to just get a discount on something overpriced; I wanted something absolutely free. The casino had a donut shop, so we got a half dozen donuts and a soda. They were pretty good donuts, like the biggies Wegmans used to have, so I actually left feeling much better about the experience.

And that's the story of how we got comped a half dozen donuts.

Fucking a. Or what is the proper punctuation there? Fucking A. ?

The dealership took apart my car and found that the radiator was busted and the transmission fluid was mixing with the radiator fluid. Sound familiar? This happened in August and I paid $700 to fix it then. This problem is not covered under warranty and is going to cost me $600 this time. WTF? I don't think this is due to poor quality workmanship in August; there has to be some sort of design flaw to have this problem twice in so short a time.

Seriously, I can't get rid of this car soon enough. Dodge has managed to surpass US Airways on my list of most hated companies. A difficult feat, indeed.

The afore-hinted-at car trouble really had pissed off on Thursday and Friday. The transmission gave out. At 47,000 miles?!!? We had to get a rental car for Friday (it was snowy so Ryan's car would have been dangerous). I was expecting I'd be faced with the options to either 1) pay $2000-$3000 to have it fixed or 2) trade the car in as-is and get a lot less than it would otherwise be worth.

However, when the dealership called after looking at it, they said it was covered by the 70,000 miles powertrain warranty. Whew. There's a $100 deductible, but they're taking the whole transmission apart, so I'm very curious to see how much it would have cost otherwise. Serves Dodge right- if they're going to make lemons, they should have to pay the consequences. Curiously enough the car was fine during my first year owning it, while it was still under bumper-to-bumper warranty, but they didn't make the powertrain warranty short enough, it seems, to make a killing on crappy cars.

Considering how much aggravation this car has caused over the last few years, I've decided (with Ryan's input, of course), to get a new one. We're only going brand-brand new if we can get 0% financing, but I think our chances are pretty good. So, the plan is to get the Neon back from the shop and advertise it on Craigslist (and if necessary, the newspaper) to see if we'd get more than it'd be worth as a trade-in (which is highly likely). If the Neon sells, then we'll buy the new car ASAP. If the Neon doesn't sell after a month or so, then we'll just trade it in.

I already know what kind of car I want; the kind I wanted after graduation, but was too poor. More surprising to you may be that I don't want a blue one! My first choice is black so that it'll match Ryan's:














Aren't they a cute couple? 3 and 8, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes road salt on the undercarriage.

Just in case you know someone who is:
1) looking for an unreliable used car
2) Catholic priest seeking to build exorcism client base
3) really, really, REALLY stupid and/or gullible


FOR SALE
2002 Dodge Neon. Only 47K miles! Exterior and interior in great condition. "As is." $5000. Model not included.

I got assigned an Atlantic City casino mystery shop for this Sunday! We get a $100 dinner and $75 to play slots (and keep any winnings). This excites me. I get to gamble and am guaranteed to not "lose" $ :)

I ordered all of my seeds and mail-order plants for the coming year. I am really looking forward to spring. We'll have:

2 hazelnut trees (we use a lot of hazelnuts for cooking, and the 2 trees pollinate each other)
1 peach tree (millions of peaches, peaches for free!)
1 apple tree (Granny Smith, my favorite)
lots of strawberries (Jibblin's favorite)
raspberries
onions (not the most glamorous, but we use 3 or 4 per week for cooking)
spinach (yummy bacon spinach salads!)
cucumbers (I like to eat them sliced and tossed with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper)

And those are all in addition to the stuff I ordered a few months ago:
honeydew melon
watermelon
pumpkins
mini lemon tree
mini lime tree
mini blueberry bushes
romaine lettuce
iceberg lettuce
mixed greens/mesculun mix
green beans (the one thing I know I can count on!)
potatoes
carrots
radishes
cauliflower
broccoli
brussels sprouts
turnips

Sounds ambitious, you say? I anticipate having a lot of free time in the spring and summer. More on that later. Ryan's consented to having me install a bunch of raised beds in the backyard. Hopefully all the plants are going strong by the time you see them on June 1st!

We took Jib to Petsmart on his leash last night. It was a laugh riot. Fortunately there was only one dog in at the time, which we managed to avoid. We nearly died laughing when Jib repeatedly tried pouncing and climbing around the bird cages. He seemed to like the rats and hamsters too. I think he also recognized, "Wait a minute, it's an entire wall made out of wet food!"

Then we dropped him off back at home and went to CVS to earn $10 bucks and get free snacks. We're so clever. Sure, call me cheap if you like, but with Ryan's salary and my inclination to save/make money, we're going to millionaires in no time :)

Since all y'alls are probably more interested in certain types of CVS freebies over others (bar soap? um, yeah, thanks...), I'm going to look into charities where they could get the toothpaste, soap, etc to people who really need it. So there. You can stop making fun of me now.

You'll noticed I changed around the toolbar >>>>>>>>>>
It now includes "Cat's deal of the month," which you can use to kick-start your road to millionaire status as well.

We got a Christmas tree yesterday, but not "the Christmas tree." Grumblecakes- I just tried to upload a picture, but we're having USB issues. Anyway, I really wanted a medium-sized potted live tree, but Ryan thought it was a bad idea and would be too much of a hassle to move in and out of the house each year. True, it would be really heavy, but with the appropriate simple machines we could do it. Alas, he would not give in. Sooo, I got a $28 potted dwarf spruce that's about 2 feet tall. It's so cute, like a Grem-sized tree! We're using it as an outdoor decoration this year and probably next year, then it will be big enough to be our main indoor tree (while still potted). Maybe we can get 2 or 3 years out of it until it's too big to move in and out, at which time we'll plant it in the backyard (since it's a dwarf it will only get 6 feet tall). For this year Ryan gets his way and we'll also get a normal cut tree. At least one of us wants to reduce her carbon footprint.

Hmm, is it time to get a different pair of wedding shoes? These would probably be a lot more comfortable...bridal color...fits theme...comes in my size...



















WTF?!? They're $15 in size 9 and $72 in every other size?! Grrr...

We're back from central NY. It snowed there this morning, which made me extremely grateful to not live there anymore. Thanksgiving was pretty miserable. I made 3 delicious pies, but Ryan's mom made a cheesecake and announced to the crowd, "We have pumpkin pie, apple pie, and AUTHENTIC HOMEMADE TRADITIONAL ITALIAN CHEESECAKE!" So everyone had cheesecake, which Ryan said was not very good (I of course had pie). So no one got to be impressed by my pies. Then this morning when I woke up and wanted a slice of apple pie for breakfast, I went downstairs and found that his mom had taken MY apple pie to give away to her coworkers. GRRRR...

Other than the pie frustration (oh yeah, and I had to roll out my pie crust with a wine bottle covered in wax paper because she didn't have a rolling pin because she always buys the cheap prepackaged crusts), I had a stomachache and headache for most of the weekend. I'm pretty sure that it's withdrawl from the old medication that I just tapered off of. I keep cycling through normal, furiously angry, or tearful despondent moods. Poor Ryan. It was overall a pretty sucky Thanksgiving.

Today we drove back home and made a total of 4 CVS trips to "buy" all the Black Friday deals. That's "buy" in quotes because after all our coupons, we made a $27 PROFIT and got all of the stuff below:














So. At the moment I'm in a normal mood and proud of my hoard.

Car bill was $770. I have a great intuition about these sorts of things. My formula? Think about how much it should cost (my feeling: $250), then add $500. Bingo. But at least that included a tune-up in addition to actual repairs.

The reasons for my favorite kitty changing all the time should also include all the reasons NOT to pick a certain kitty:
Grem- peeing outside litterbox 3-4x/week
Choco- knocking food all over floor, jumping on counters
Jib- biting little ones past the point of squealing

Ask me how I saved $360 in ten minutes last Caturday. Go ahead, ask! Ok, since you're prying it out of me... I called Comcast and said I wanted to cancel my cable TV (totally bluffing btw, there's a new season of Project Runway starting!). They asked why, and I said it was just too expensive, especially with the holidays coming up, money is tight and all. Boom, $30 off per month for the next year :) You should try it too if you have Comcast, just make sure you actually ask to cancel first, because from what I've heard, merely threatening to cancel or saying that Dish Network is cheaper doesn't always work. Also, I doubt it would work if you were already on a reduced intro rate.

Ryan beat the Legend of Zelda on the Wii. I've played some but haven't become as interested...I'd rather look for deals on the interwebs while he's playing.

We got a STD for a wedding at Sage Chapel next year. That's Save The Date, get your minds out of the gutter. No sharks, but I always thought that SC was really pretty inside with the stained glass and whatnot. Plus, it's an easy drive and we have free lodging at Ryan's mom's.

Ryan's mom's, which is where we're going for Turkey Day. I think Ryan and I will be cooking everything but the turkey this year. His mom had surgery recently, so that serves as a good excuse to "help" her out a lot. But if you'd tasted the pie last year, you'd know why we want to seize control (help! nut...meg....over...load... *clutches chest*...*keels over*).

So Grem is the chosen kitty, eh? My favorite changes with every silly or cute thing they do every day, including:
Grem meowing while carrying a ball in her mouth around the house
Choco kneading me with his paws (provided I'm not trying to sleep)
Jib head-butting me or weaving through my legs

I'm sticking with the CVS dealings. We're getting Ryan's stepdad's Christmas present essentially for free with our extra bucks. I have plans to put together little gift packages of stuff for select wedding guests, or maybe as door prizes for the afterparty. Sooo...no more scoffing at my deals, lest ye not receive any goodies! I will try to get as much "fun" beauty-type stuff as I can, but we already have more toothpaste than we'll use in a year, with more on the way due to Black Friday deals. I can pass up cheap stuff, but I can't pass up stuff that they're essentially paying me to take!

I have been feeling a little better lately, but my dosages change tomorrow so I'll probably feel like crap for at least a few days. It's surprising how many physical effects there are (mental effects are to be expected). I've learned that "flu-like symptoms" means feeling like I've been run over by a bus.

My car is at the shop right now. I finally took it in to get the work that the mechanic suggested over the summer. He did say that it wasn't urgent, and I don't put many miles on the car during the school year. We are going to use it next week for Thanksgiving, though. So I wonder how much these repairs will cost...my guess is somewhere $750ish. Pleh.

The kittens are sad that you haven't voted for any of them. Just imagine that for some reason I had to get rid of one cat and you had to take it. Which one would you pick? Vote for that one.

Turns out that Sears got a Wii in the day after they called to cancel my order, so they called again to offer it to me. So we have it now, and Ryan likes playing with it. I will have a chance to play it more in the future now that my fellowship application is submitted and this week's homeworks have been graded.

New poll (and ads)----->

Bah. I thought I had awesomely found and ordered a Wii for Ryan, which would have really made his day. Sears called and said their system was having problems and they were refunding my card. They're not getting any soon. Grumblecakes.

Every once in a while you get an interesting post: marriage, house, etc. Well, I guess you're overdue. I'm pregnant!

Right...kidding, of course. Couldn't resist the opportunity.

I guess I'll reveal the "mystery" I alluded to last post. In a nutshell, I have been clinically depressed for about the past four years. For most of the past year I was on an antidepressant that worked like a charm (with a few side effects, but better than being depressed). As happens to a lot of people, though, it just sorta stopped working. At the low point, I ended up sobbing in my advisor's office, in turn made him get teary-eyed, and he postponed my exam until I'm feeling back to myself. I'm now transitioning to a different medication, but it hasn't been long enough to tell if I'll be back to "normal."

At this point you may be thinking, "Aha! It makes sense!" I went from someone who'd stay at PSP parties until the very end to someone who got tired and cranky and needed to go to bed at 9:30. I had to stop going to weekly poker because playing a couple bad hands in a row would make me cry. I was filled with venomous hatred of working at the field station, and now I'm hating school, though last year was okay. Probably the worst symptom is the lack of interest in everything (save Ryan, kitties, and making "free" money). Aside from hating school, I'm not enjoying my free time, either.

In addition to loving Ryan a lot, it's a total no-brainer that I want to marry him because he's shown he's patient and supportive enough to put up with my "moods" for all this time. If he's wanted to stick with me through this, he'll be around through anything. That's why he's the best.