In April, I started the process of refinancing the original mortgage on my house. On Tuesday, May 19 I signed closing papers for the refinanced mortgage with a new lender. Today -- this evening, in fact -- the process concluded and my original mortgage was paid off by the new lenders ( Read more... )

Earlier this year, I'd planned on taking March 13 and July 28 off from work for convention-related reasons. The convention in March was canceled and, once Joe moved, there was no benefit to driving to Indianapolis and back in July, so I bought plane tickets for that trip. I turned those PTO days back to normal work days and took today and next ( Read more... )

I'm looking into refinancing my home, and there's a particular, streamlined sort of refinancing that is available to me. When I go to a website or call to ask about it, the conversation is always about a conventional, not-streamlined loan. I'm not interested in that. If I showed up at a car dealership and said "I want to see your basic sedan" and ( Read more... )

They've brought back one of the employees they laid off last week. It was, in fact, the same one that I had shared an office with for so long. His first day back was today ( Read more... )

I don't usually buy lottery tickets, but I had a couple of extra bucks and felt like doing something different. Before you start... no, I didn't win the jackpot. I was trying to get a ticket for the GA lottery's "Win for Life" contest, where the prize is $1,000 a week for life, and the next best is $1,000 a week for a year, but after that the ( Read more... )

I just paid of my car loan. I've paid it off 11 months early. I've given myself the present of not having to make any more payments on it.

GenCon's preregistration and hotel registration process is coming up later this month. I checked today (as I have been periodically) and found that I could get a room at the JW Marriott using my rewards points. So, 5 nights of free hotel stay (well... parking, internet, long distance, tips, etc. still cost, but the room and its related taxes are ( Read more... )

I've just cancelled my Nutrisystem subscription after being on it for about a year. I lost a decent amount of weight at first, but then I sort of plateaued, and then I started eating out for lunch again and started gaining a little back. They changed their menu around, and when they did, they just made substitutions for the items I'd selected for ( Read more... )

Time flies and I don't seem to have as much of it free to keep up with this blog these days. Facebook seems to get my momentary nonsense, otherwise I'd post that here ( Read more... )

On Sept. 28, my endocrinologist recommended I take a cholesterol diagnostic test (another one), and said that it wouldn't cost me anything ( Read more... )