I was going to write this super thrilling, super exciting, totally fascinating (ha!) post about this strange dream I had where someone stole my cell phone while I was on vacation. But um…by the time I putzed around, fed the boys, read & responded to some email, caught up on some blogs, contemplated finding some breakfast, well, it’s gone now. I’ve got nothing. So yeah, hate when that happens.
And now, I have nothing really to say. Maybe I’ll blog later. It could happen.
Yes, it’s nearly 1:30 in the morning and I’ve just sent my husband outside to see if he can find any fires. I walked around the building with him, but nothing going on. You can definitely smell the smoke from the street though. Thing is, you can’t really tell if it’s haze/fog/smog/whatever around the streetlights or smoke.
So he thought that you know, since he’s wide awake after drinking a diet Coke after 8:00PM, that he’d take the pupster and walk up to the corner to make sure all is well. You see, we have a park kind of behind our street and then over the freeway, we have the massive Griffith Park. In fact, last May, we had some major fires in Griffith Park that got a little close to home. So it can be some pretty scary shit.
Okay, he just now got home…all is well in the ‘hood. Whew.
One of my good friends from Spain just called!!! We used to teach together back in Atlanta. The year before I moved away, she got into the teaching abroad program. Since then, I’ve moved twice and she’s lived and taught in three countries – Turkey, Peru and now Spain.
I’ve been lucky enough to visit her a time or two when she’s come back stateside for visits, but she’s never been able to visit me. Now that I’m in CA and her sister is in northern CA I think we’ll finally be able to visit!!! I’m so excited. Especially since I’ll be going to Ireland in November and we wouldn’t be able to meet up that visit.
So we need to decide if she’ll come here to LA and the hubs and I will show her and her boyfriend around. Or…if we want to meet mid-way-ish and head out to the Santa Ynez or Paso Robles wine country. Not so sure. Either way, I’m just so happy!!
On that note, I hope that everyone has a happy and safe holiday weekend!
I’m so worked up right now. I’ve been a Citibank credit card holder since ’88. I have perfect credit. No, really, last I checked my Fico was through the roof good. I’ve also noticed that each month that I’ve gone to pay my Citibank card my due date has changed. And not by just a day or two. We’re talking, over the past year or so, it’s changed by weeks!
I used to be due mid-month, by the 13th. Then suddenly I’m due by the 7th. Then the 5th. Then the 3rd. I’m sure you see where this is going. Today, the 3rd, I go to pay my bill and it was due by the 2nd!!!! What.the.fuck?!?! Basically, I’ve been paying late fees for the past however many months because they keep changing my damn due date and I keep missing it by one day.
So today I called up and asked WTF. Of course, I get the run around that the dates will always change because of Leap Year and how many days are in each month. To which I reply, yeah, sure, it will change one or two days each month, but not by TWO WEEKS! I pointed out that I’ve been with them since ’88 and that they’ve gotten a small fortune from me due to these damn changes. Not to mention that they’re charging me 18.99% (lucky for me I rarely carry a balance on this card). And come on, even my rent has a grace period of a couple of days and isn’t considered late on the 2nd.
Of course once I mentioned how long I’ve been with them, she was suddenly and quite magically able to assign me a specific due date and drop my rate down to 9%. Funny how that works. I mean she didn’t even need to think about it or check into anything, she was just able to slice it in half just like that. What a scam!
I’d read that credit card companies were doing this date changing thing now hoping to earn some money in late fees. It just pisses me off. I guess I’ll just go back to only using the Amex and making sure that we only use the Citibank card as a last resort. If it wasn’t for the fact that I like having one credit card in my name only (you never know) and that I’ve been with them for 20 years, I’d just dump them all together.
The lesson here, go with the assumption that anything that’s due to a credit card company nowadays needs to be in their hands BY the first of the month. Regardless of what the due date actually is.
Like many women in the blogosphere, I’m starting to worry stress think about what to wear to BlogHer in a couple of weeks. And like many of other bloggers, I tend to spend most of my day (and night) in total loungewear – yoga pants, sweats, tanks & tees. I’m not the most stylish, so I can use all the help I can get.
Susan Wagner to the rescue. I read her fashion posts on a regular basis. She’s got some great advice for the “regular” gal. Nothing fancy and better still, nothing crazy expensive. And today, she’s got a great post aimed right at us BlogHer gals.
Now I just have to convince myself to trust her advice. I will not go crazy shopping (like I tend to do before a trip of any sort). I will wear what’s comfortable. And yikes! I will leave my flip flops at home. Yeah, it could happen.
I was looking into joining the Young Women Social Entrepreneurs group. I figured hey, I’m a young woman, I’m social and well, lookey that, I’m also an entrepreneur. So I started poking around the site to learn about the LA chapter. Seems like they do some fun local stuff. Sounds great.
Then I click over to the membership page. Turns out it’s only for gals in the their 20’s and 30’s. While I am still a gal in my 30’s, let’s just say that I won’t be for much longer. What a sad way to realize that you’re getting older. I’m aging out of a networking group. So sad.
Today is the day that CA (and WA I hear) go mandatory hands-free. No worries, I almost always (9/10x) use an ear bud while I’m driving. Since phones keep getting smaller and smaller, there’s just no way to talk on them comfortably without being hands-free in my opinion. So I’m perfectly fine with this law.
What I’m not perfectly fine with is the fact that I can’t seem to find my Jawbone that I got a while back. I found one in a parking lot once and figuring that there was no way I’d be able to track down an owner, I let them know inside that I found it and left my contact info. Needless to say, it’s mine now. I just needed to buy a charger, which I did.
I was still messing with it and hadn’t yet gotten around to syncing it to my phone. Well, it was on the list of things to get to anyway. I had it charged any everything. I thought it was sitting on my desktop, but now I can’t seem to find it. It’s clearly no where on my desk at all.
Thing is, I seem to be misplacing quite a few things lately. First the Jawbone and charger. Then, after my trip to Jersey, I can’t seem to find the inside of my dress (basically a slip, to the more chiffon-like outside of the dress). It was accidently dropped in the dry cleaning pile, so the last I saw of it was in my car where I left it on the seat to take back inside. Now, it appears to be missing.
A few other things have gone missing as well (though for the life of me, right at this moment, I can’t think of one thing). So either something is in the air, or one or both of my boys have managed to stockpile my stuff for their own, four-legged enjoyment. Or we have a ghost – it could be the peanut butter eating one from my childhood. Maybe.
All I know is that I want my stuff back. So if anyone has a way to conjure lost or misplaced things, please share the love. Please.
And now I must go take allergy meds so my eyes will stop this god awful tearing and weaping. I can barely see straight. Hey, maybe that’s why I can’t seem to find my stuff!
somebody better put you back into your place!
Yeah, yeah, so I’m a bit of a Queen fan. Actually, I tend to forget just how much I love Queen until I hear them on the radio. And well, then I just can’t seem to stop singing along and dancing in the driver’s seat. ‘Cuz Queen, well, they totally rock. And um…I do have mud on my face right now as I type this.
So last night we attended the Cheap Trick/LA Phil’s tribute to Sgt. Pepper. It was an absolutely awesome show (then agian, I’d expect nothing but excellence from both Cheap Trick and the LA Phil). There were some guest performers as well, though they only one I really enjoyed was some Ian guy from a band called Gomez (and yes, I honestly don’t know who that is). But to listen to an entire show, outdoors, under the stars of nothing but Beatles tunes, well that was just a great night indeed.
Today we got the family together (in-laws) and celebrated the past four months of birthday season. Out of the 14 (including the baby), 9 of our birthdays are from March through to June. It makes for a crazy season, that’s for sure. It was fun to hang out together though.
I was good too. I didn’t stress about anything. I made the salad, picked up some award winning guac from the farmer’s market and we stopped by Marie Calendar’s for a strawberry pie (to offset the birthday cake and ice cream). I left everything else to everyone else. Overall, I think I’m doing a pretty good job of letting go the planning and coordinating of all the in-law functions if I do say so myself.
The gifts were fun too! I got a bath & body package (hence the mudd – my face is now SO smooth!), a $25 Amex gift card and a beautiful necklace and earring set. The hubs got all gift cards – Best Buy, Fry’s and Amex (which I’ll no doubt be spending). But the best part…I borrowed my brother-in-law’s steam cleaner! I can finally clean our carpets, our couch AND steam clean our ancient tile floors. SCORE! So excited about this.
I’ve also decided to pick up a Flip video camera. I figure I can use it to make video blog posts both here and on my biz site. But more importantly, I’m hoping to interview some of the gals at BlogHer so I can ask them important blogging questions – how did you get started, how did you find your niche, what can you recommend, blah, blah – so that I can post them on my biz site. We have a batch of Amex gift cheques that have just been lying about that I’ll cash in for the camera, so it won’t cost anything out of pocket (and the hubs has those birthday giftcards for me to spend!) 😉
Okay, that’s it for me. I’ve got to do some research on Grammar Girl so I can write up a couple of questions for her (we’ll be giving away her new book on my site the second week in July). And tomorrow I’ve got a workshop on networking – online and off – to prepare for. I’m changing things up from my last workshop, so it’s pretty much starting from scratch. Should be fun though!
Hope you all have a happy Monday.
pleadin’ with you eyes gonna make you some peace someday.
I mentioned a while back that I was lucky enough to have interviewed Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon, the women behind The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business. If you head over here, you can read a nice chunk of that interview transcribed. Even better, you can enter to win one of two copies of their awesome book. You have until midnight tonight to leave a comment and enter.
Good luck!
Mix it up with some yummy Italian and well, you’ve got a great night. ‘Nuff said.