I'm going through my spending trends info for the past year on Mint.com and getting sick to my stomach.

Also I burnt the fuck out of my tongue on my coffee this morning.

OTOH, I've got homemade bread in the works to go in the oven shortly. Yay?

I'm going through my spending trends info for the past year on Mint.com and getting sick to my stomach.

Did you waste all your money on Nintendo and Orange Julius?

My door locks automatically when I close it, and so do both outside doors to my building. I usually lock the deadbolt at night, even if the chances of someone robbing the apartment furthest from the entrance and up 4 flights of stairs are slim to none.

Did you waste all your money on Nintendo and Orange Julius?

Heh. Might as well have. Ugh. Need to make some changes in how I operate, I think.

I grew up in LA. The idea of not locking a house door appalls me. For that matter I'm pretty much incapable of leaving a car door unlocked either. My late father when was young owned a small house in East LA in the 40s that he always left unlocked. Special circumstances though. He kept it open 24 hours so friends could crash there, and it was never empty. Anyone who tried to take advantage of the open door for nefarious purposes would have run into a houseful of tough guys with knives.

Attention hivemind!

I just bought a slow cooker at Target (on sale for $15!) What are your favorite slow cooker recipes?

Brenda -- what made you try mint.com? it loos good and useful, but I am trying to figure out how safe it is.

Hmm. I've been using it about a year and a half, and I remember spending a fair amount of time scouring the internets to make sure it was up and up before I did it, but I can't recall the details. I really like it, despite how painful it can occasionally be.

I've never had a hint of anything amiss, and it's really nice to be able to see snapshots of everything all at once. I don't make good use of the budgeting tools, which, obviously, I should look into, but being able to track spending across categories is really nifty. And they'll alert you for things like excess spending when a certain category is out of whack and, probably most helpful, notify you a few days in advance whenever payments are due. With the way the credit card companies have started randomly switching up due dates to rack up fees, that's a godsend.

The one account I had on there that I took off was my 401k - I don't believe in monitoring that one so closely, and that was even before the current troubles.

Check this out: [link]

WTF?

re: Caganers

I loved the German version

In German : Choleramännchen or Hinterlader ("Little Cholera Man" or "Breech-loader")

Ah, the peasant sense of humor.