mwah-ha-has in Bart Simsonesque fashon.

If you guys did that, I would love to come. My married friends never had any(and in fact, one married the same guy twice and didn't even ask me to either wedding.)

waits for Pete to wander through the thread and start being unnerved.

Oh goodness. I am bemused and terrified at the notion of what sort of trouble you people would arrange for us.

It would RULE. C'mon, you know it would!

It would RULE. C'mon, you know it would!

Oh, I have NO doubt that it would. That doesn't stop me from being slightly terrified.

I was a bit flabbergasted that my company's 401K plan returned something like 13 1/2% on its stocks last year—I hadn't been aware that the market was doing that well, aside from oil companies. Though the plunges of the last few days probably mean 2007 won't look nearly so rosy.

Susan, I was in much the same position. After the horrific demise of a long-term relationship in my early 30s, I was left with no house, no job, no car, no savings, and enormous debt. It took more than a decade to pay it off. I'm still not where I think I should be - or want to be - financially at 44. Late last year, after I paid off my car, I took a look at what debt remained and realized I could afford to draw off enough from my 401k to pay it all off. I dithered over it, because that's a huge decision, but I am so very glad I did it. The repayment has barely been noticeable out of my paycheck, and the relief of that burden I'd been carrying around for 13 years made a huge difference in my emotional state. It was well worth the hit to my 401k. (The clincher of the decision was when a friend said, You could die before you're 62, and what would you have been saving it all for, then? Be happy now.)

I paid the car off before some credit card debt because I was haunted by the memory of having my car repossessed. Now I want to always have a car they can't take away.

Appropo of nothing, there is a school bus across the street that's been booted.

How does that happen?

Argh. ISA strikes again. I told him to make me some hotel reservations using Starwood Preferred Guest. I gave him the Starwood phone number, my SPG number and included dates of the reservation and the phone numbers of the hotels to make sure that he had the right one. I'm sure that you see what's coming, right? Yes, he called the hotels individually. Of course, they all wanted a credit card, which is not necessary if you call Starwood and use the SPG number. *sigh* Thank god tomorrow is his last day.

My married friends never had any(and in fact, one married the same guy twice and didn't even ask me to either wedding.)

Humph. With two weddings to the same guy she certainly qualifies as married, but the "friend" designation seems a bit more doubtful. But possibly she has other fine qualities to make up for it.

A giant bachelorette party co-hosted by Vortex and Matt sounds BRILLIANT. As long as erika attends and gets a lapdance.

Also, how are you doing generally? I heard a wretched report on NPR this morning all about how insanely hot Phoenix is this year and how it's such a badly designed city that it's actually creating more heat for itself and people are keeling over everywhere and it's just awful. And I thought of you and your mom and pup and got all worried. Do we need to start sending you fans and iced drinks and cabana boys waving giant palm fronds?