5.17.2012
Happy Birthday To...
...this blog! Today marks a decade since my first post (there've since been over 1600!), written towards the end of my eleventh-grade year. (Re)read it at your own risk, although it wasn't bad for an introduction to who I was at barely-seventeen.
Like so many childhood birthdays, though, this one falls during the week, but the party (so to speak) won't take place until the weekend. I'll try to do something special to mark the occasion in a couple of days, but tonight I'm just back in the house after a long day, and if I don't go to any kind of get-together for Katy's birthday (since today is also her birthday) or write a cover letter for a job, then what I'd probably better do instead is go to bed.
As for you, dear readers, may I say today that it's been a pleasure to let you in on some of my thoughts. You've made good company - thanks!
5.11.2012
On My Kicking Back and Possibly Going to Starbucks, Bubble Tea, CyberCafe, or Similar (Book in Hand)
I think eight hours of work, plus some two to three hours of job-application work (with a net result of two completed applications, both for positions on what we could call my A-list), is enough for one day, don't you?
I hope - and also think - I've gotten a little better over time at applying to things.
5.08.2012
Somewhere, Dave Ramsey Has Just Facepalmed and Doesn't Know Why
So-o-o, I kind of didn't keep good enough track of my checking account, so my paying my latest health-insurance bill a little earlier than usual (which I had thought had been responsible) looked last night to have possibly blown up in my face when I logged onto my bank's online personal-banking function and saw that I had all of about $40 in my checking, and knew that probably the check I'd written for $219-and-change (what can I say: cut-rate state health insurance, for all its virtues, is emphatically not as cheap as employer-provided health insurance) had been cashed earlier that day, though it hadn't come up on the site's log yet, and though my available-balance still showed in the black.
So I hurriedly transferred several hundred dollars out of my savings to meet it, and hoped for the best. Now my "bank balance" still read $40 or whatever, but my "available balance" (tracked separately, it's the amount of money you actually have, as opposed to the amount you had, as far as the bank knew, by closing time) was enough to cover it and then some.
Tonight, I went out and finally bought a pair of dress shoes, since, seriously, my black pair (which I liked very much and am sorry to lose) has basically come apart, and I grabbed a couple of other things at Target. It was fine, because I was pretty sure I had enough even assuming the check money had been taken out of the available balance. But just in case, and just to see what had happened with that check, I logged on again tonight.
No problem with the available balance - the check had posted, the debit had been made (plus a couple of others), and my "available balance" had covered it with some left over.
But the bank balance, for the first time I've ever seen it do so on any checking account of mine, began with a minus sign. -$151.58, to be exact. The check, sure enough, showed up on the page this time, but was dated to yesterday.
So we'll see what happens if you're overdrawn according to the bank balance but not the available balance. This could be interesting.
Seriously, though, my insurance company needs to start taking debit or something, because then the worst that that would happen would be that the transaction would get denied (which is different from a check bouncing, and carries no monetary penalty, at least unless the party who's billing you is allowed to charge you a late or penalty fee themselves for that, which they probably are, but I'm pretty sure the insurance company wouldn't), and then they'd just call me to fix it, and that would be fine.
But primarily, of course, I should probably pay more attention next time.
So I hurriedly transferred several hundred dollars out of my savings to meet it, and hoped for the best. Now my "bank balance" still read $40 or whatever, but my "available balance" (tracked separately, it's the amount of money you actually have, as opposed to the amount you had, as far as the bank knew, by closing time) was enough to cover it and then some.
Tonight, I went out and finally bought a pair of dress shoes, since, seriously, my black pair (which I liked very much and am sorry to lose) has basically come apart, and I grabbed a couple of other things at Target. It was fine, because I was pretty sure I had enough even assuming the check money had been taken out of the available balance. But just in case, and just to see what had happened with that check, I logged on again tonight.
No problem with the available balance - the check had posted, the debit had been made (plus a couple of others), and my "available balance" had covered it with some left over.
But the bank balance, for the first time I've ever seen it do so on any checking account of mine, began with a minus sign. -$151.58, to be exact. The check, sure enough, showed up on the page this time, but was dated to yesterday.
So we'll see what happens if you're overdrawn according to the bank balance but not the available balance. This could be interesting.
Seriously, though, my insurance company needs to start taking debit or something, because then the worst that that would happen would be that the transaction would get denied (which is different from a check bouncing, and carries no monetary penalty, at least unless the party who's billing you is allowed to charge you a late or penalty fee themselves for that, which they probably are, but I'm pretty sure the insurance company wouldn't), and then they'd just call me to fix it, and that would be fine.
But primarily, of course, I should probably pay more attention next time.
5.04.2012
Self-Promotion v2.0: One-and-a-Half Job Applications Submitted
It would have been two, but I felt like one of them might be more likely to notice that I'd sent it close to midnight, and I didn't want to look funny doing that - or make a mistake because I was getting tired.
I kind of want to go eat pancakes with Ife and Lisa, and to tell Jerry that he should apply for my job here once I get a job in New England, but I think I'll hold off in favor of, oh, reading and sleep.
Tomorrow: birthday celebration with family, which most likely means introducing most of us (including myself!) to grilled pizza, and introducing everyone else to the niceness that is the nearby gelato place.
Also, I should probably start a public blog, just to have something on hand to prove to potential employers that I really am as good as I say with computers. Well, not just for that; also because it'd be nice to give my mom something to read.