I spent a good chunk of yesterday morning at the Grove working on the library and moving filing cabinets and tv’s on my own. It was surprisingly quiet (everyone was at free spirit or gay pride day), I was alone until about 11 when one guy showed up, and at 12 when another guy showed up with a pizza. But I felt good about all the work I got done, and that I was able to be there for the two visitors to spend time in the spiritual sanctuary.

My uncle decided to get two dozen guinea hen eggs to hatch. He doesn’t plan to keep him, he just wants to see if he can hatch them, and give them to us once he does. We’ll be keeping a dozen and giving another dozen to Highland Farms (assuming they hatch) as a donation to help with their tick problem.

My father found a 7 foot blacksnake in our rabbit cook this morning, and it had apparently eaten our pigeon eggs and peacock egg. We have a few around our property as I’ve mentioned before, but they usually keep the mice and rats down by the animal pens at bay. My dad caught it and took it down the road a ways to let it go in a field. Hopefully we won’t have any others making a meal out of our eggs anytime soon.

I found out my mother somehow got her job back at Northrup Grumman. I don’t know if this means that she is no longer going to school to get her law degree, or perhaps she gave up on it now that she has joint custody of my sister? Or perhaps she’s doing it to make herself look good again because she knew she would never get full custody working part time for $8/hour while living with her father for free?

Whatever the case, I have no doubt she has a ridiculous motive behind it.

I’m a MS Money user myself, but for those unable or unwilling to deal with MS Money or Quicken, there’s a new online personal finance manager called Expensr. I imagine it’s fairly close to the online personal finance managers I posted about before concerning digital feng shui.

“Register for the freshly-launched and free Expensr, which can import OFX files from your bank for batch transaction entry. Create and manage a list of expense categories (with subcategories, so Food > Restaurants or Food > Groceries) and categorize your transactions as you enter them. Expensr also supports multiple “accounts,” though that part gets confusing, as the demo lists “Expenses” and “Income” as two accounts, when you’d expect things like “Checking” and “Savings.” Hit the “Category Analysis” tab to see a detailed pie graph of your expenses. Expensr’s still very new, but it looks like a promising, stripped-down online alternative to wrestling with Quicken or Microsoft Money on your desktop.”

I suppose I am still just old-fashioned and prefer not to store that type of information in a website database, and would rather keep it on my desktop. But for others who can’t afford or don’t have access to desktop applications for personal finance, this is your next best bet.

Of course I am always willing to share my old copy of MS Money and Quicken that I have .zipped up, I just need a place to store them for download since I only have a free box.net account.

Ingredients: (6 servings)
8 chamomile tea bags
6-1/2 cups water, divided
1 large red onion, chopped
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1-1/2 tbsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (option)
2 tbsp light or dark brown sugar, lightly packed
1 can (29 ounces) pumpkin
1 tbsp salt, or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup sour cream or plain yogurt, for garnish (optional)
Sliced chives, for garnish (optional)

Preperation:
1. Bring 4-1/2 cups water to a boil; pour over tea bags; cover; steep for 6 minutes; reserve.

2. Saute onion in oil over medium-low heat until soft, about 3 minutes. Stir in garlic, cumin, and cayenne, stirring constantly until mixture is aromatic, about 1 minute.

3. Stir in tea, remaining 2 cups water, pumpkin, sugar, and 1 tbsp salt. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until mixture reduces and lightly coasts the back of a spoon, about 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

4. Serve in individual soup bowls. Garnish each with a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt and sprinkle of chives.

Tips:
Use a heavy saucepan or soup kettle to prevent soup from scorching as it simmers.

I lent my father my new ING debit card to get some groceries. This would have been the virginal expenditure for the account, but instead, he lost the card. Most likely somewhere in the grocery store.

I’ve already ordered a new card and cancelled the old, but it’s still a bit of a pain because now I have to fill up on gas on a credit card. And I hate using credit cards.

In addition to that debacle, my father had already rung up the groceries, so he paid with -his- debit card, overdrafting probably $100 or more. I’ve now had ING send him a check for $150, which concludes the invariable “fuck up Crystal’s finances” for this month.

I’m not too worried, honestly. I have a decent emergency fund for just such an occasion. But I would seriously like to get him on his own ING account where he’s not dealing with NSF fees.

In other financial news, I start my 401k at my current company next month, and I -was- going to do the RothIRA thing this month, but I suppose that will wait till July 1st as well.

A year ago I would be more panicked about my financial situation. But I have worked to set up a good niche and secure my finances so that if something crazy does happen, I’m still well off. My next step is paying off the mustang early and then putting all of that money that I’m used to shelling out in a car payment into maxing out my Roth IRA contributions and adding additional to savings.

In other financial ramblings, I now have a new FREE Dell laptop, and wireless set up at my house via my cable. I mainly wanted the laptop for Grove business, which it’s perfect for, but I just didn’t want to shell out $600 for one. Thankfully Angelo was able to get me one for free, with a super nifty (and hardcore) case. He helped me set up the Wireless at the house, it’s tested and works (and is encrypted, yokels). Savings: $750 at the very least.

I also purchased my father and I a fireproof safe for all of our titles and important documents, as well as to store my external harddrive in with all my file backups.

Two other purchases I’ve been thinking about, but can’t yet justify is two flat-screen monitors to clear up some space on my desk from this huge old CRT, and a new digital camera. But the monitor I have now works sufficiently, and I’m using duct tape to hold my current digital camera together. So I can’t legitimately purchase replacements and consider it a sound financial decision.

On the way home from work last night from Frederick, I heard some thunder in the distance when I left work.

As soon as I got onto 70, rain poured down by the bucket-full, halting 70 to 30mph because no one could see anything.

Once I hit New Market I ran into this:

View other shots from my cell: 1 2 3 5 6

Once I hit Libertytown, the streets were flooding.

But we so needed the rain, our crops looked wonderful this morning.

I don’t know what it is about storms in general, but I think they are beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

If you believe in global warming, you should watch this video.

If you don’t believe in global warming, you should watch this video.

I just called the local Comcast office, and was on hold for 19 minutes at 4 seconds, during which time our accountant at work decided to snoop around on the Comcast website for me while I waited (still on hold). Now I know I checked numerous times on the Comcast website and tried to submit a cancellation form for the automatic billing, but it continued to give me an error.

However when my co-worker did it, she was able to do it successfully, so hopefully that should be the end of this little debacle.

I wonder how long I would have been on hold.