Mo Money, Mo Problems

Well, the problem isn’t that big of a deal, I suppose, but did have to get a new credit card after some suspicious charges showed up over the weekend. After confirming with Ian that he didn’t not make a purchase from “Digital Store”, I did some research on the company – found a phony website and a bunch of sites full of people sharing similar experiences. Clearly, it’s fraud and these people are hoping that small charges of $25 will go overlooked by most. Unfortunately, I bet it works a lot of the time. The most annoying thing is that I have to wait 10 days for a new card and I have a re-occurring charge going to it, as well as lots of travel plans for work coming up. PITA to change everything! Boo!!!

In other household financial news, we met with a tax person on Monday and got that stuff taken care of. Prior to the meeting, I did them myself on TaxAct.com to get a vague idea as to what the bottom line would be, then see if/how much paying a professional to do it would actually benefit us. Boy was it worth it! Even after the $260 preparation fee (woah! sticker shock, yes), we will be getting several hundred more back than if I’d filed for us myself. It was crazy how many deductions she calculated, particularly for Ian’s job.

The biggest thing I learned is that you should just TRY for everything. I wouldn’t claim much because, for example, we didn’t have hard proof that Ian bought a new pair of sunglasses for work, or that he drives around the city for “job area familiarization.” You know what though? The chances of being audited are slim to none, and worse case? We get audited, don’t have all the receipts, and have to take off those deductions and pay back $20. Right? Totally worth it!

Della, the tax expert, said she was only ever audited once back in the 80’s and they ended up owing HER $70 more because she dug up more and more receipts for deductions that she hadn’t claimed the first time around. So take that Uncle Sam! lol

Another fun fact – Did you know firefighters can write off surfboards and mileage to and from the beach for surfing? You just have to call them “paddleboards” and say you’re driving to the ocean, so as not to sound so recreational, and then it’s considered “extreme water rescue training”, or something like that. Crazy, huh? I’m still ok with Ian not surfing though.

Sure Must be Nice, Being a Pet

I'll start with our first born, Buddy...


He enjoys being on top of our couch cushions. Here he is takin' it easy and playing it cool:


Curled in a ball, sleeping:


And in a slightly more loose sleeping arrangement:



And then comes Kasier. He also enjoys sleeping quite a bit. Sometimes in oddly uncomfortable positions like this:


Here he's figured out that he is a pillow fan.


And now I'm catching him sneak onto the bed in the mornings while I'm getting ready! Why does he have to do that in my spot? Gross...

Now that they are friends, Buddy lets Kaiser join him in bed on occasion when mom and dad are not paying attention:

I don't like the looks of this though:

Yep, I was right. Buddy was getting ready to wack Kaiser.

As you can see, he particularly enjoys chasing tail. =)

Gosh, kids these days just have it so good. Must be nice.

Las Vegas Vacation

Last weekend we headed to Vegas to celebrate my youngest sister, Becky, becoming 21 years of age. My parents joined us, along with my Aunt Mary, cousin Katherine and of course my sister and 3 of her friends.

Ian and I left a day early (Thurs) and stayed the night in Laughlin so we could enjoy the company of many a senior citizens, cheap gambling, good food and tons of free alcohol.

Here is where we always stay, the Colorado Belle:



The “riverboat” theme is fun! The best part is at night when they have this cute little band play in the middle of the casino and all the “urban campers” + local junkies come in to dance. LOL

We ended up taking a few hundred extra dollars with us to Vegas after a sucessful night at the ‘Belle. The whole gang decided to stay downtown in Vegas since most of us didn’t care about all the fine dining and overall party scene. The Fremont hotel was surprising nice inside, as I think they’d redone it fairly recently.

Unfortunately I don’t have many pics from the trip. Just a few of Ian and I goofing around.

Here I am with my classy beer-in-a-bag:



Ian enjoying the Fremont Experience:



A rediculously good drink we discovered that really F’s you up fast! HAHA



Shockingly enough, I wasn’t the one who insisted we try the deep fried oreos.. Ian wanted them in a bad way. Here he is getting ready to dive in:



MMM, fried fat:



I opted for a fried twinkie. Pretty huh?



With the exception of a rainy Saturday, Vegas treated us pretty well for the weekend. It was some good QT with the family, and hubster!

Civic Roadster

This past weekend I learned 2 v.v. important things about my car.

The first occurred on our way to Vegas as Ian stopped to fill up on gas. He started things off, then went inside to get something to drink while I got out and finished. Where he stored the cap to the tank astonished me! I was beyond belief.

Here is what I usually do with the cap. It rolls around and I fiddle with it until it’ll stay put on my trunk:

Here is where Ian put it:

How in the world did I not know that nifty little thing existed? Never seen anoyone do that before. This revelation seriously made me freak out in excitement. Ian thought I was weird since, according to him, it is on a lot of cars. Do you have it?

Second thing I learned on our way home from Vegas, when a NV police officer was kind enough to stop us along our merry way and let us know that my car’s registration was expired.

“What? Me? No way! It’s registered!!! I know it is!” (Looking feverishly for a non-expired registration in the glove)

“No ma’am, I checked with CA before I pulled you over. There is no record of this vehicle being registered.”

“Well f-me then!” (Okay, I didn’t really say that)

But it totally sucked! Sure enough, my registration expired in September. WHOOPS!! I believe that after we moved, I never changed my address with the DMV, thus, never received the renewal notification. Ian couldn’t believe I didn’t know what month my car is due for renewal.. Sorry, never paid much attention to it! So yeah. That sucked. Kinda. At least we were told the $190 fine would likely be reduced once we took care of it.

The cop-man was pretty stern with us but I considered us lucky to continue on our way. Apparently it’s a liability for the state to let an unregistered vehicle continue driving once spotted, but he didn’t tow us away. Ian credits the fire department sticker on the rear window, as well as the Santee Firefighter hat he had stored on the dash, in case of such instances. Public service providers have a thing for each other, I guess.

Anyway, this is why I had to spend a good couple hours at the DMV first thing Tues. morning – changing my addresses and renewing the registration. PS – those late fees are REDIC!! Like double the original fee if you are over 3 months late. Just FYI. =)

This thrilling tale ends with a new fine of $90 to the state of NV. And can I just say, the customer service people for their justice court are extremely kind and helpful over the phone. Almost made the whole thing my pleasure. HA!

Beater Blade

I don't think this is actually all that new anymore but if you are a proud owner of a KitchenAid Mixer and you do not have this already, you need one NOW!

Actually, now that I'm on the website, I see that there are many different ones for a variety of stand mixers! Neat-o Frito!! Check out the BeaterBlade.

I was introduced to this nifty attachment back on my first day of cake decorating class. I think at that point in time, I'd only ever used my mixer for baking about twice and knew the annoyances my instructor spoke of with the standard beater attachment -- how sugar and other dry ingrediants get stuck at the bottom of the bowl and you have to keep turning the thing off and on to scrape it down?!?! Yes! So annoying! So much for letting it run right?

Not with this little do-da. The rubber blades are constantly scraping the sides of the bowl, all the way down to the very bottom, picking up all those sugar bits. It's amazing. My second favorite kitchen fun thing after the grater piece that goes on the food processor. What? Grating cheese is fun!

Television Tendencies

I thought it’d be fun to share some of my favorite shows and as I started compiling the list, I became somewhat disturbed. I guess it’s true. I do watch this much TV. Can I justify any of it by the fact that it’s all pre-recorded, which saves ~20 min/episode? Some nights I guess I’m a total couch potato and watch a ton, and other times I get behind by a week or two. I swear, I do have a life, a job, chores, responsibilities, some other hobbies, so on and so forth. Oh well. It is what it is.

These are my tried and true favorites (although I could be forgetting some)

One Tree Hill
24
House
Desperate Housewives
LOST
Grey’s Anatomy
Private Practice
Ugly Betty
Glee
White Collar
+ tons of reality that I can’t help but love

Then there’s what I like to call “filler” TV:

Law & Order
CSI
Cold Case
+ Ian’s other random stuff

And now that Ian discovered Netflix live on his Xbox, we signed up for it again. Now I get to play catch-up on a few old favorites that we lost along the way…

Nip-Tuck
Weeds
Prison Break (maybe? or maybe we’re over it)

….and will likely try out some of these popular favorites:

Dexter
Mad Men
Big Love
True Blood

Is this sick? I hope I’m not the only one!