March Updates

March has been an interesting month. I have finally quite procrastinating and made serious progress in updating my Quicken accounts. I also have been using this time to go through my financial diary and update all the changed accounts there. I put together this Financial Diary in early 2009 and it has been a life saver. Every bank account, savings account, expense account, subscription, rental agreement, life insurance policy, car registration information, medical information, prescription copies and so on are all kept in one very large notebook. Having all that information in one place makes life so much easier if you have a dispute with a company or if you want to upgrade a service or change to another provider. It especially wonderful to have readily available whenever you move, as all the contact information you might need for almost any financial event is contained within. Everyone in the house knows that if there is ever a fire, the one thing to grab is that notebook! The goal is to keep this current as things change, but usually what happens is I do a massive update once a year when I’m updating Quicken and preparing for taxes. I do hope that 2011 will be the year that I keep both Quicken and my Financial Diary current all year long!

Another project coming along very nicely, sort of, is the afghan I planned to make for my nephew Daniel for his high school graduation gift. I absolutely love the way it is coming together, but there are two small problems. One, I didn’t order enough yarn. I wanted to make the afghan about twice the size stated on the pattern, which makes 9 of the granny square blocks. So I ordered double the yarn. I’m now almost out of yarn and am just finishing the 9th block. Clearly I will have to order more yarn if I wish to make it any bigger. I am going to lay the blocks all out on my bed and see how large the afghan will be if I join just those 9 blocks, but I think I will need to order more yarn anyway just to join them all together. The second problem is that, while I love the color combination, it is clearly not suitable for my nephew. The colors are much too feminine. David is helping me choose the colors for Daniel’s afghan; David took a color theory class in college and seems more confident in his color combining abilities. Hopefully we can get figured out what colors to order and I can make one massive yarn order!

Earlier this week I had a chance to visit with a cousin that I have not seen since she was a toddler, which was quite a few years ago. She was out this way and sent me a Facebook message to see if we could meet. So we met Tuesday in Tombstone for lunch and had a nice visit. That is THE thing I like most about Facebook, the ability to connect with friends and relatives from afar that you might not ever hear from otherwise. Here’s a picture of myself and my cousin, Darcie Shipman, which David took.

Our cat Copper gave us quite a scare Monday night. One of her favorite places to be is on top of the back of the couch. She perches there to watch the birds out the window and sleeps there a good deal of the time. Monday night was a windy, cool night and fixing to rain. We had the sliding glass door in the living room open about a foot to let the cool air in, with the screen door pulled shut so the cat wouldn’t go out. Shortly after 8 p.m., Copper suddenly launched herself from the back of the couch, across the room, hit the bottom of the screen door, popped it out of its rails, and disappeared into the night. We went outside and called for her, walked around the block calling (and finding three other cats, but not Copper!), and finally just set the cat carrier outside with some cat food in it, hoping she’d come back in the night and crawl in for the food. David checked for her one last time around 1 a.m. before he went to bed and there she was, hunched up on the patio, wet from the rain and wanting to get back inside. We don’t know where she went or why, but we were glad she came back.

David had another job interview this past Tuesday. We had thought he wouldn’t have any job opportunities as long as the government hiring freeze was in place, but then he got a call on Monday to come interview on Tuesday. So maybe he will get a job here after all! He would really like to stay here even if we end up moving somewhere else for another job for Bill. But he’s going to need to work a few months in order to save up enough for security deposit on an apartment and a down payment on a car. Hopefully it will all fall into place, or not!