What? Another Year Gone By?

Happy birthday to me!

Yep, I'm a year older as of today. Unfortunately, I had to work all day (and the time wasn't at work, I was running around CSU campus taking care of errands for fall semester) so Kate and I couldn't really do anything special. Ah, well. We'll make up for it some other time. :-)

Anyway, I apologize for not getting this blog updated for so long. I don't know where the summer went to but it appears to be fading fast. 8-/

I finished my summer semester class last week ... and finished quite well, I might add. It's only two weeks before the fall semester begins. Part of my CSU errands today included buying textbooks for the four classes I'm taking in the Fall. For those of you interested in such things, I'll be taking Computer Organization, Business Database Systems, Operating Systems and Networks, and Introduction to Weather and Climate. Wild, huh? :-) Yeah, that last one is just to finish off my Science credit requirements. Next semester I still need to finish off a "Global and Cultural Awareness" credit and I'm hoping to get into a class about Asian civilizations. Maybe I'll even learn a little about the region my mother comes from.

Kate and I are getting ready to leave for a much-needed vacation. We'll be meeting her family in Stanley, Idaho for a week. I have no idea what's involved in this trip - I'm just glad to be getting away from everything for a while.

Bill and Tammy (probably my closest friends next to, of course, my wife) celebrated their Ten-Year Anniversary last Friday! W00t for them! :-) Kate and I are only going on our first year come October but, hey, ya gotta start somewhere! ;-)

My Mom recently returned from a trip to Thailand. It sounds like it was seriously whirlwind but she still managed to squeeze in some time to socialize with that side of the family. I got to see some of them last Thanksgiving but naturally it was too short. One day, hopefully, I'll get out to Thailand to see some of my roots. One day...

Oh, point of W00tness: Thanks to Kate's amazing ability with managing finances, my woefully weighty debt with Providian bank is finally paid off! (I know there's no link to Providian - they don't deserve one. Grr!) This was an account that 'tricked' me into falling into debt. When Kate and I married, she declared, "We have to get rid of these debts! If not, I'm leaving you."

(Okay, I'm just kidding about that last bit!) ;-)

Anyway, it's all paid off now (after so long). Kate also paid off her car. Yay!

Of course, what this all means is that now we should have some major expense hit us anytime now. :-)

Actually, this helps us out pretty nicely. Part of the deal for the next two years of my schooling is that I'm dropping one of my part time positions at the library. This cuts our income by a quarter. Well, we've been doing the math and we should still be able to make ends meet. As I just mentioned, we're no longer spending our earnings on car payments and Providian. Also, Kate and I decided to cancel our Comcast cable. We just weren't home enough to watch TV - and besides, we can borrow DVDs and videos from the library for free (more on that later). Lastly, we're going to cancel my Sprint PCS cell phone service after my contract is up here a few days. Actually, we'll probably keep it through the vacation next week but after that it's gone. Again, we realized that we just weren't using it enough to make it worthwhile. We, however, do see the value in having the phones for emergencies so Kate found a "pay-as-you-go" plan through T-Mobile that we're going to go with instead. It'll end up saving us quite a bit of money each month.

Oh, I can't believe that I almost forgot to mention. For those of you who don't follow my sister's exploits on her own page - she and her husband are expecting a second child!! Hoorah! They are tenatively expecting a boy and Julie is already talking up how she's going to be a big sister. :-) For more details, you'll have to visit my sister's webpage.

Hmm...I'm certain that there's probably more that I can relate. It's certainly not like we didn't do anything these last couple of months (since my last posting) but it would take forever to describe everything in granular detail. Besides, it's late and I'm too wiped out to think any more.

I think it's time to end my birthday and go to bed. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're having a great day (or evening). :-)