Today at the office the head honcho of the department where I do my supervising from, brought in a huge plate of holiday delecatables. A bunch of different kinds of cookies - snickerdoodles, lemon tarts, the cookies with a Kiss, another kind of chocolate cookie, and a number of other things. One of the sweet treats was particularily interesting and creative. It was made out of Bugles and vanalia frosting drizzled over to make individual clumps! I'd never seen anything quite like it, but believe me, it was VERY good.

You just have to laugh. Yesterday I was still waiting for one surveyor to come in and bring his material to download. Well, this morning when I walked into the office I found his bag with all his materials sitting on top of my desk -including his access badge. On top of his bag was a note. It essentially said that he hadn't been able to remember how to find the program on his Palm, so he wrote all the information down on paper. Now, if I hadn't given him a piece of paper with my PHONE NUMBER on it, or told him to CALL me anytime if he had ANY questions - that could ALMOST be understandable. Of course, finding the program was a simple matter of scrolling down from the main page! So, anyway, that just made yet another assignment to add to the que of assignments to be completed in January.

Tonight while dad and I were cleaning up from supper (we had our free Mac and Cheese) someone knocked on my door. Lo and behold it was the UPS woman! Apparantally she recognized my name on the package from my brother and realized that it had the wrong address. Wow! What customer service! The box itself is kind of heavy to be a Pilates mat - I can hardly wait till tomorrow when I can find out what;s in it!!!

I started reading Dan Brown's "Deception Point." So far, I am really enjoying it. I really like the thick books better than thin books.

In the mail today I got my snail mail confirmation from Emigrant Direct, then went online and confirmed my account. I also sent Jeffery two of my Ing referrals (about 6 pm) and by 10 pm tonight I had an email telling me that I had already gotten my first bonus!!!! I should probably transfer it over to my ED account, and I might just do that on Friday. After hearing about all the problems people were having getting their ED account setup, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy and relatively quickly it all happened. Now I've got to make a decision - should I keep my Long Term Savings in ING at 3.75%, or transfer it to ED at 4%? With the bonus, my LTS is at about $45 (yeah, paltry, but that was the first account I hit for living expenses, then I hit my Contingency Fund.) I'm just not sure if percentage wise it would make that much of a difference.

Well, I didn't get called in for a job tomorrow. So, I'm considering taking in a matine in Burleson, which is near Fort Worth where I'm meeting my parents for supper. Maybe get a haircut (last haircut was when Scott helped me move out of my Dallas apartment last May.) Or, maybe I'll just relax the day away, watch "Polar Express" brought to me by Netflix, and then mosey on over to Macaroni Grill in time to meet my parents. Hmm... one way would be no spending .. the other way would be around $20 or so, but how many times in life do you celebrate going from one decade to another? Probably the deciding factor will be if there is any movie at that theatre that I want to see badly enough to fork up $5 for a matine ticket.

Today was a no spending day. I came very very close this morning to buying something from a gas station. It's almost habitual with me, if I go inside a gas station to use their bathroom, I feel almost obligated to buy *something*. But today I fought my temptation and won. I was glad I held out too, when I found out about the cookies in the office -- I mangaed to limit myself to only four treats.

30 minutes left in the 20's!!!

Keeping It Frugal in Texas,
Laura