Mishaps and other haps

Although we’re in the middle of the holiday season and an entire month out from the end of the year, I have started to plan ahead for 2010.

Primarily, this is because I know we have some expenses and changes coming up in the next couple of years:

1) At some point in the future, we will want to put our house on the market and we’ve identified several home improvements that need to happen before selling.

2) I don’t know whether Michael and I will rent for a while or immediately buy again.  It probably depends on our savings in the meantime (and circumstances that might interrupt savings– such as needing a new car) and the likelihood of finding the house that we want while our current house is on the market.  Both of us are of the opinion that we want to move one last time and then NOT AGAIN.  So we need to find a place that we will be happy with, which will also adequately meet the requirements of future plans (like having kids).

3) It’s possible that we may stay in our current house, but we bought with different requirements in mind in 2006 and have since developed new plans and goals.  Our current place is not bad, but not ideal, for a 40-year commitment.

So we have already agreed that 2010 will be a year of saving more and spending less.  It will help that we don’t have a wedding to pay for in 2010, but I know we already have some travel plans in the works (family-related– we haven’t even started talking about a “just-us” vacation yet), Michael is eager to make some electronics upgrades, and I’m just hoping my car will continue to get me to work and back without needing major repairs.  So we’ll see what happens.

It’s Friday morning and I am not at a “Black Friday” sale!  I haven’t actually been to one of those.  Perhaps I am not yet at a stage in life (i.e. children) where running out in the black of early morning is a valuable use of time.

It seems like a lot of the sales are geared toward purchases for adults, though– cheap appliances, particularly.  Lower income people seem to be a particular target (wow, a coffee pot for only $10?).  Bargain-studded fliers override careful consideration of purchases and smart buying based on consumer reviews.  You’d think that if you’re living on a tight budget, you’d want to invest your dollars in quality that would function well and last– but this example may show how perspectives are askew in our culture.  The people who drive the least reliable cars are people who can’t afford to have them repaired.  Is Black Friday such a good deal, or does it entice people to buy things that do not contribute to a better lifestyle?

We had a pretty fabulous Thanksgiving Day at Terry’s with friends and family.  I have a four-day weekend, but Michael has to work today and is driving straight to St. Paul from Dodgeville after work to help his sister and her husband move into a new apartment.  Maretta and Kyle’s previous landlord failed to notify them early on that their building had failed to pass fire inspection codes and was in jeopardy of being condemned, so they have had to scramble to find a new place this past month.  It just worked out that Thanksgiving weekend was the weekend that they had to move (to be out of the condemned apartment by the deadline of December 1st).

I have a few errands to accomplish this weekend and am hoping to start on Christmas cards at some point.  My list is updated and ready to go, I think.

My work week has been pretty quiet so far and I have Thursday and Friday off, but Michael’s has really exploded.  It’s 10 PM and he’s still working on technical support issues with a vendor tonight (luckily, over the phone and VPNed in at home).  It figures, though– his company does the most business this time of year and we’re less than a week out from “Cyber-Monday.”  I hope he’s able to resolve everything tonight/tomorrow and have a restful Thanksgiving.

Hope all of my friends and family have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week!  Leftover wedding cake is thawing on this end and I will start my share of the cooking tomorrow after work.

Cat perched on back of chair — check

Tasty coffee and blueberry muffin acquired/consumed — check

Beef and vegetable soup cooking away in the slow cooker for Sunday dinner — check

Good books on hand — check

New jeans and shirts acquired for Lisa and Michael at “Deer widows shopping weekend” sales — check

Thank you notes finished — not yet, but they’re getting there

Components for cooking Thanksgiving dinner acquired — check

I just opened the Winter edition of On Wisconsin, UW-Madison’s alumni magazine, and discovered this quote among others from the university’s notable alumni:

“A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.” — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

As we’re coming up on Thanksgiving, I am definitely thankful for the good man in my life and I can confirm that this quote holds some truth.

I’m gonna have to dig into the articles in the alumni magazine this weekend.  It looks like a good issue!

We have had a most excellent Saturday!

First, sleeping in until 8:30 was wonderful.  I really like sleeping in on the weekends, despite having cats who make it very hard to sleep in.  Although the cats like it when we stay around the house more, they also like routine and sleeping past 6 AM ALTERS THE ROUTINE.  Ah well, once we shut them out of the bedroom, they eventually stop nagging us to wake up and entertain themselves for a while.

We leisurely made coffee and oatmeal for breakfast, showered, and then Jack came over around 10.  It was his first visit to our house, so we showed him around the place and he met our cats.  Then he and Michael went shopping for an iPod Touch and a hard drive and I went over to the Dotzours’ to share wedding photos and plan our Thanksgiving dinner.

I had a good visit with Althea, Bryan, and the kids, then ran a couple of errands and met Michael back at home … where he was installing a hard drive on my new computer!    Tom had been thinking about replacing his 24″ iMac with a new model that recently came out (and is a bit larger, 27″).  We had already asked about buying the old computer from him since my iMac has been having some problems that make it painful to use (although it was still working, which has prevented me from dropping $300-400 on a netbook or something).

The hard drive on Tom’s old computer failed a few days ago, so he decided to go ahead and replace it, but didn’t want Michael to pay him for the old one since it had no functioning hard drive.  So for the cost of a hard drive (the one Michael bought earlier today), I have a new computer with a screen that currently seems HUGE to me and specs that are much better than my previous iMac.  Wow, it seems a little like Christmas today!

Oh, and I am not at work!  After the past week, that is indeed a blessing.  Just one of those weeks …

Man, I love this time of year!  The trees are beautiful, the weather is unpredictable, and there are turkeys, pumpkins, squash, apples, and cranberries in season and featured in all of the cooking magazines.

Michael commented on the weather yesterday– it was warm and sunny, the kind of weather we were hoping for at our wedding, which has been over for four weeks now!  We’ve been married a whole month!  There was a small celebration last night with carrot cake cupcakes.

We spent Saturday shopping, raking and bagging leaves, and then went to a hockey game.  I had won the tickets from work while we were on our honeymoon, so we sat in the corporate suite and hung out with some of my co-workers (Tiffany and Carrie).  My manager and her manager (the director of our area) were also in attendance so now Michael has met a bunch of my work people (I have met practically all of his coworkers since Mom, Dad, and I dropped by his workplace when they were visiting in June).

This afternoon we are having lunch with Terry, Tom, and Jack at the Edgewater and are then seeing Madison Opera’s Carmen.

I just made coffee and put a turkey breast into the crockpot to cook for dinner.  I have never tried slow-cooking turkey before.  I stuffed several garlic cloves under the skin, drizzled it with olive oil and salt and pepper, and am cooking it in a bottle of Sand Creek’s Cranberry Ale.  So it should be interesting!  There’s something to be said for a traditional oven-baked turkey, but we will be having one of those later in the month.

Meanwhile, I am about halfway through my thank-you list from the wedding, so I had better work on cranking those out.  I wanted to have them done by Thanksgiving (after that, it will be time to start Christmas cards).