Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Lazative naming is funny.

Published on December 23, 2009 in Family & Friends and Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: driving.

My new favorite naming convention for businesses/shopping plazas is the combination of the street names it resides at. We drove by “Scharrington Dental” tonight, which is near the corner of Schaumburg and Barrington roads. I go by several on my way to the teams course in Northbrook: Waukdee plaza, at the corner of Waukegan and Dundee; Dunsten plaza, at Dundee and Pfingsten, Dunhurst shopping center, at Dundee and Elmhurst. Is this a Chicagoland thing? I don’t remember such lazy and non-creative (lazative?) naming conventions anywhere else that I’ve lived. It makes me chuckle.

BTW our holiday schedules have changed a bit: here at home, Doug is spending some time in the hospital dealing with an infection. This may delay our Christmas dinner and gift-opening to another day… maybe even next year. Out east, we’ve shifted family days around a little and I think Tuesday afternoon/night and all day Wednesday are still free, if you’re looking to hang out with us, while we’re out there.

Feels like winter, now

Published on December 19, 2009 in Family & Friends and Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: friends, money.

Shoveling hasn’t been too bad, so far, this year… a couple light ones and a couple heavy ones. I don’t have a feeling this year about whether this is going to be a “heavy” winter, like last year was. I really hope we can avoid the storms on the day we’re flying out this year, though. That was a little too stressful, last year. Good job, those of you who claimed days… 12/28 (evening) through 12/30 is still available, for those of you who haven’t (or just want to leave it up to chance). We’ll be tempted to make a trek down to NYC to see the Tim Burton exhibit and maybe catch up with whoever else lives down there and might want to tag along… unless those days get claimed by people in the MA area.

I managed to get through the balances on most of the gift cards that were haunting my wallet… in a related note, some of you are getting christmas presents from me for the first time in years… or ever, maybe. I managed to avoid most of my impulses to buy things for ourselves that we really don’t need.

I’m getting very comfortable with my new phone; I’m happy with my choice… no regrets. I have a new number that sort of forwards to my old number, by the way… so, if you’re on Verizon, it’s cheaper just to call my old number, but if you’re not, lemme know and I’ll get you my new number.

I finished Mini-Ninjas, though I might just play it again on Hard. I am looking for a new game to become hopelessly addicted to during my break from work. If you have suggestions or games that you like to play online that we can play together, hit me up.

gift cards should come with suggestions

Published on December 3, 2009 in Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: food, money.

I’m bad at using gift cards. I’ve dig through my wallet several times in the past year and piled all my gift cards up and went to each website, one by one, to find the value of each card. The I try to use the cards… food-specific cards are the easiest to use. Store cards (especially Target, for some reason) stay in my wallet for years. And those visa gift cards are really the worst; I use them until there’s a dollar or two left on them, and then forget how much is on there, and never use them for the small purchases that might not put them over their limit. By the time I remember to try and split a purchase into whatever is left on the card and the rest of the balance on some normal card, the card is more than a year old and some maintenance fee has wiped out the remaining balance. The exception, of course, was the stockpile of Apple gift cards that Sarah (and her mom) gave me over the past few years. I had no problem spending them, all at once, on the macbook that I happen to be writing this post from, right now.

I’m genuinely worried about the two $100 gift cards that I put into my wallet this week. One is an American Express card that I only paid $50 for at their Daily Wish site, and the other is a rebate from Verizon. Regardless of my extensive and ridiculous wishlist, I like getting gift cards. They make things easy, theoretically, but I’m still bad at using them.

In other news, we got that tree up, and got lights and ornaments on it. Peanut helped untangle the lights.