Being financially responsible

We were planning on hitting Vegas next Sunday. After looking at my bank account I decided it would be best to avoid such a large expense.

We would pay for one of the two nights for a hotel, $60 for a rental car, $100 a day average in gambling (per person), and Kelli would have to pay $135 for a pet sitter. Ouch. I could dig into savings, but we are going on a cruise next month. Makes more sense to save money for that.....will be gambling on the boat as well.

Instead we are going to Los Angeles for two days. Kelli mentioned hitting Sacramento. Flights to both are open (for the first time ever a flight from Sacramento is wickedly open....less than 30 people on board!). We could head out separately. I want to hit the Los Angeles Auto Show. This will be my fifth auto show this year. I hit Detroit, New York, Dallas, Tokyo and maybe Los Angeles. We went to the Chicago Auto Show last year. All I have left would be Miami.....that's about it for the "big" shows. Miami really isn't that big. Eh. For Los Angeles we are using Starwood points for a night at a Four Points by Sheraton. I love the Starwood Preferred membership program.

Under the Starwood Preferred program I can get a hotel for as low as 2000 points. More commonly is 3-4000 points. With our previous Holiday Inn program we needed 25,000 points. By and large the Starwood hotels are all nicer than Holiday Inn. We both have Starwood American Express cards. We used Starwood points for our hotel in Denver and Tokyo. Painless. Awesome.

So free hotel in Los Angeles. I found a Hertz coupon for $26 all in (taxes, fees and BS) for a midsize car for two days.

Beyond that I get to work in the Kitchen today. Kelli decided to cook last night. Kelli is an incredibly intelligent person...but the kitchen is not her domain.

She peeled four good sized potatoes. No problem. But she put all the peels down the garbage disposal.....without any water running....or the disposal turned on. Clog. Bad. No water is getting through. I bought some professional strength drain cleaner from Home Depot. Nada. I am going to have to get some PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and manually drain out all of the drain cleaner/water and take off the disposal and likely elbow down below. At least it's my day off.

Passed 13,000 miles on my car yesterday. Only 12,200 are really mine. It came with 800 on it. Still averaging 642 miles a month.

Back in 1995 I went to a Target in Lubbock, Texas and bought a copy of Netscape. What is Netscape? Well Netscape was an Internet browser (like Internet Explorer or Firefox). Back then there were very few "browsers". I paid $30 a month for a dial up Internet account. I remember the ISP (Internet Service Provider) having to really work with me to get my account. Very few private individuals had dial up Internet accounts. Mostly businesses and well....that's about it. Netscape was slow to load, but ran great. I never used Internet Explorer until Eric told me about Internet Explorer 4.0 and how great it was. This was at least 1997. Eh....Netscape is long gone.

I've got a secret. Fatsecret.com. A Weight Watchers like site that's FREE. Has a free application for my G1. I can scan the bar codes of food with my phone and it stores it in the phone and online. It counts calories, fat, carbs, fiber...everything. Very easy to use. Even calculates Weight Watchers points.

When I worked in an office I did very well on Weight Watchers because I could put my food into the website as I ate since I worked on a computer. Being mobile it was hard...thus I didn't do it. With this new application I have no excuse. It has a huge database of fast food and restaurants as well. I am more than happy with the quality of the program and website.