Which is totally fine. It's just rainy and icky here. I always take a 3-day weekend or two in May to make up for it. Just too much work to do. But since I like working, it doesn't bother me a bit. I particularly like working weekends because it's so peaceful and so few interruptions. When I start getting sick of it (usually when the weather gets NICE), the busy season will be over anwyay.

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I don't have many thoughts on the stimulus. I am waiting for it to be signed into law (don't think it has been?) and then let the experts dissect it. All the commentary on it before there was even an agreement bugs the HELL out of me. A lot of wasted effort arguing the merits of things that probably won't even come to be anyway.

I notice the news reports a lot of misinformation. It's like playing telephone once the bloggers gets their hands on the info. So just be careful what you read. I have read too many conficting things about the latest agreement (formal news reports) to make much of the commentary seriously.

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The kids had a clean bill of health at the dentist. What a sigh of relief - you don't even know.

Phew!

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My Credit Union- wonderful customer service, no fees, many branches, no complaints here. BUT their loan departments SUCK. LOL.

I had applied for a credit card and never heard anything. I mean, I called and they couldn't do anything with the fraud alert on my credit reports. So when they called to verify that I was really me, they said they would get back to me. The fraud alert apparently screwed up the flow of things.

Granted I lost sight of it, but today I decided to call. I couldn't have been denied, could I have? It's been like a month. (Plus I worried if they sent me cards in the mail and someone else got them or something).

So I Called and they said I was approved but my application had expired because I "didn't do anything. " It was a frutsrating conversation because they were like "You didn't do anything." & I am like, "What was I supposed to do?"

Yikes!

So literally the guy was like, "Okay, I extended your application." & was like about to hang up. So I am like, "Um, okay - so what am I supposed to do next???" "Go into the branch and sign paperwork," was the answer. Um, I can guarantee no one said anything about that before. Last I heard was, "We'll get back to you." Not - "Go into a branch to sign paperwork." I Was under the impression it was all online as any other card I have ever applied for.

But whatever, I have to go deposit my paycheck this week anyway.

I asked for the max $15k credit limit and I got it. Woohoo. I was starting to worried I was denied or something!

Their mortgage department was about as annoying. Anyway, I went to them due to my disgust with Chase. Not convinced at this point that this will be any better...

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Along the same lines, we are almost done closing all our balance transfer cards. Mine was a piece of cake. Dh had a blip because they told him he had some rewards available or something and they had to transfer them to his account. (Utter BS, by the way). So I was jealous they wanted to keep his account open but not mine. LOL. I assured dh I was well aware of the awards system and it didn't work like that. We had redeemed all our rewards. So he waited a week or 2 for the phantom rewards to appear, they didn't, and he finally called back to close the account.

I could check that little chore off my To Do list, but I was keeping my last WAMU BT card open for the free FICO score. Chase (took over WAMU) announced they stopped the free FICO but it would last until March.

Um, not. I can still see my past scores but they usually update it monthly and haven't updated it in like 45 days. SO I am going to cancel the card. I have been waiting and hoping, but oh well. Time to kill that card too.

The timing is extraordinarily sucky. I have never had a negative impact on my credit from closing unused cards. So, since I just closed one I was extremely curious what the short term result would be on my FICO. I expected maybe it would maybe drop 5-20 points and maybe that was it. I don't know. I knew it would bounce back quickly. So my score may drop to 780 for a month or 2 or 3. I coud care less. But I Was curious if it would even drop at all...

Basically, now I will never know!

But it will be nice to close the card, for sure.

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I got a $150 refund from my disability insurance premium. I paid in about $300 and got back $150. Not a bad deal! IT's for pretty ample disability insurance. It's cheap because it is through my professional association. But more importantly it's also a good program. They have more money than they know what to do with so we always get large refunds. Funny thing is I thought they were going to try to lower premiums and decrease refunds in 2008, but it was a banner refund year.

More interestingly, I got a notice that they will offer 20-year and 30-year term life insurance policies, starting later this year. Could be interesting. Though I am wary if we will be able to improve on our current policies.

We got our current 30-year term life insurance policies in our 20s. As a result of our youth and high health rating, the policies we have right now are cheaper than anything else we could get today. So I am not expecting to be able to lower our costs. But who knows.

I also have a small annually renewing policy with my professional association (I call it the supplemental SAHD policy - enough for dh to go back to school and/or not work for many years while the kids are young. I could survive without his policy so I felt like he needed a little extra in turn - he'd need mine. This is the "get back on his feet" policy).

Anyway, I may be able to turn that into something more affordable or bigger with their new policies. We'll just have to run the numbers and see.

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Anyway, I could save my $150, but I think I am applying it to my bike purchase. I also got my IRS refund. $50 and horribly slow compared to the state. Go figure! I pretty much have the money for my bike. & I won't have to dig into savings. I am excited!!!!

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Reminds me, we may shop some of the PResident's Day sales this weekend for a new bed for LM. He is outgrowing his toddler bed rapidly. We could maybe get $50 for it on Criagslist - about what we paid for the whole thing (on Craigslist)!

We want to get him a really nice twin mattress (one that he can use forever). BM has my old childhood forever mattress. It is a nice one. So we have not bought a mattress for the kids before. But we want to get him something nice. Maybe a bed too if we see a good deal. The bed itself can wait though. We had wanted to spread out the purchases a bit.

We bought BM a forever bed already. Too bad dh's family only bought him cheap crap. LOL. Orelse we would maybe not need to buy a mattress. We don't buy much new, but the kids' furniture we buy in the hopes to last well into adulthood. Not that it needed to be new to last that long. But I guess it is kind of our one exception.

I have a nice bed from childhood, but it was a waterbed and it is HUGE. We decided to give it away due to the small bedrooms. I guess that is the downside of buying "forever furniture." It's hard to know what will be best in 20 years.

These days they make the houses much BIGGER but the bedrooms are WAY smaller! Who knew!

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Dh and I are going on a date tomorrow. IT's not a V-Day thing. Just happens to coincide. But since I am working today and we wanted to go to the movies this weekend, we decided on tomorrow. Probably lunch and a movie. Woohoo.

That being said, I guess it is nice to reflect on V-Day about all the love I am blessed to have in my life. My spouse, for sure. Not exactly sure why I met him so young (We met when I was 18 and I Wasn't interested in a serious relationship, marriage, kids or any of that when we met). But you meet that right person and you know you just know you want to be with them forever. I don't know if I was lucky to meet the "one" or if I was luckier to realize it. Stuff I ponder much as my single friends struggle. I sometimes wonder how much was luck or just being open to settling down or simply realizing when I had it good! I can't say I know the answer. My parents met at 18/19 too.

Of course, then there are our parents who are the most wonderful supportive parents ever. They have their faults, but don't we all. I think we'd be hard pressed to do better.

& then there are my kids, the most amazing love I have ever felt in my life.

For all that I do feel very blessed on Valentine's Day.