I work down the hall from the Eye Bank, and every so often you get to ride in the elevator with someone transporting eyes. They're all packaged up, though.

I have officially seen it all now: Probably NSFW

OK, imagine a picture of that with a cat sitting in it. Now create a LOLCat caption....

I'm in your pussy, being your pussy.

Pussy Cat is watching you....

We get paid the 10th and 25th (DH and I both being state employees) and so I divide the bills into first and second half of the month. Second half is much bigger, since it includes our rent and daycare, so I always shove about half of our bill money from the 10th paycheck into a checking account leftover from when I kept a separate account for freelancing so we don't accidentally spend it before we need it. We each have an individual account that we use for personal spending money, plus a joint account that's mostly for bills and groceries.

I think I've finally come up with a way to keep myself from spending too much $$ on insignificant crap. As mentioned in any number of angsty posts in the past few months, we've got debt problems. One of our vows for the year is that if we can't pay cash, we're not going to buy it unless it's a dire necessity, with a pretty strict definition of "dire."

Anyway, I love to go to writers conferences. They're a highlight of my year, getting to go away for a few days and be 100% a writer. But they're not cheap. If I'm going to go to one this year, I have to find a way to pay cash, and that by setting aside a chunk of my personal spending money each month. So what I've just started doing is setting aside whatever is left in my personal spending account on payday into our holding account before transferring the next pay period's personal $$ over from the joint account where our paychecks are automatically deposited. The conference I'm hoping to go to, the Surrey conference in October, hasn't posted its 2008 prices yet, but I made an estimated budget based on last years for everything from the bare bones version (skip the meals package, get a roommate) to luxury (go early for the master classes, room to myself).

And you know, so far I'm barely on track for having enough money for the basic version. So I'm looking back at my spending for the 10th-24th and thinking, "If you'd shrugged off your tiredness and cooked instead of ordering pizza that one night, that'd be an extra $20. Days you ate in the cafeteria where you could've brought lunch from home is at least $25. And you really, REALLY didn't need to go to Jack in the Box for lunch while DH was in Oklahoma. You had plenty of quick stuff in the house, but you were just lazy and didn't want to get dishes dirty. Keep this up, and you're either not going to the conference at all, or you'll be stuck eating peanut butter sandwiches in the room you share with a snoring near-stranger and missing all the keynotes that go with the meals."

I have the feeling that imposing financial discipline on myself to be able to afford this conference is going to do more for my waistline and healthy eating habits (by keeping me away from the junk food and making me cook) than any number of stern lectures to myself about the necessity of losing weight and the sheer magnitude of cardiac and cancer risk lurking in my DNA.

Ok, that couch cracked me up.

I'd love to have it in slightly less-obvious colors so people sitting in it would catch on slowly.

I spent all morning writing perl code to analyze some log files, and when I finally ran it, a pattern emerged that nobody expected. I love it when something like that happens.

Eyeball transplantation gives me heebiejeebies. Eyes in a box? shudder. ALSO the poster for the The Eye also freak me out.

Allyson, Los Feliz is too far. I was thinking somewhere in that local district? I have a list of elementary schools. I should send letters and a resume next week.

ALSO the poster for the The Eye also freak me out.

The first time I saw it it freaked me out. I was on a train and caught the poster out of the corner of my eye. I was all WTF? for a moment.

in the running for asshole of the year: [link]

One of our vows for the year is that if we can't pay cash, we're not going to buy it unless it's a dire necessity, with a pretty strict definition of "dire."

Supposedly people spend about 15% less overall when they use cash. Not using credit cards is the single best thing I've ever done for my budget (and diet).

Plus, it was incredible to spend January not paying off Christmas bills.

yeah, msbelle. he is asshole of the year.

I love having found Catalog Choice which allows you to opt out of catalogs! neat!