Welcome to Monday's...

[jsbowden]

Can I take your order?

No? Okay then, that's cool too.

I'm on the list to test for my Brown belt this month. I want to wait for Evan, but it'd be really cool to go ahead and move up to Brown. In the end, it won't have any effect on our testing for Black together to be one month off at this point. He's also got a very cavalier attitude about keeping up. He's just assuming I won't move ahead of him. Might be a small object lesson for him in there too.

I'm fairly confident that I can pass the test Outstanding without spending another month at Red, which is a very nice feeling. I'm getting more out of assisting with the kids classes than I expected. Bonus! If I were to spend another month at Red, I know I'd pull it for sure.

Had lunch yesterday with cerebrate, silmaril, and a couple other local DFs who aren't LJ enabled as of the moment. We ate at Jaleo in Bethesda,wandered over to the Hagen Daas across the street, and then hung out of the Barnes & Noble on the next corner down for a bit. Burned a gift card I'd recieved for Christmas and picked up Last Call by Tim Powers in the process. Hopefully I'll find it as enjoyable as all the other people I know who've read and suggested it in the past.

robeli updated me on our finances this morning and where we stand. We stand in a good place. My car has about 4900 miles before its next major service is required (120k is a big one, every 30k is), and the current tags and inspection both expire this April as well. I REALLY don't want to dump any money into it, but I don't want to replace it until we're debt free (excepting of course for the house, car(s), and monthly recurring), which should be May on our current schedule. You see the issue here, and how it ties in to my seemingly irrelevant opening. I REALLY don't want to dump ~$1000 into a car I'm planning on getting rid of a month later, but I refuse to ignore maintenance on a car as old as mine (I will have been driving it exactly 8 years on Tax Day 2005). Suckage, comma, major!

And hey, have a meme, courtesy of deza.


<td>You are a Kitchen Knife.



You are a very aggressive person, not hesitating to make a fatal move in order to succeed. You are always aware of what is going on around you, though other people aren't. You are over-protective of some of your valued possessions, though you gamble to gain more. If someone gets in your way, you kill them. If you hate someone, they die. Well, not literally. People fear you for your skills and envy your success, but you don't care. You liked to be feared in order to gain reverence. You are the most powerful of all silverware, and cut up peoples souls. I mean food.

Most compatible with: Toothbrush.


Click here -- What Random Object Represents Your Inner Self?
</td>


You sure you don't want a hot apple pie with that?

Comments

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

OK, OK, I'll have the apple pie. Especially since it's probably not safe to refuse you, given that quiz result.

It was a good afternoon, and I feel very book-enabled for the upcoming trip.

Take care,

[thormation.livejournal.com]

Early last year, I wound up dumping a metric buttload of money into a new transmission for our old, reliable 14-y.o. Nissan pickup. About a month later, that money was completely wasted when I destroyed the pickup in a fender-bender on I-5.

Moral of our story: Don't be obsessive-compulsive about the health of a vehicle whose days are numbered and who never called you "Mother".

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that I'm obsessing over it, it's more that the car is starting to show its age in little ways, and ignoring maintenance, even that that last extra couple thousand miles, just feels like a sure way to end up on the side of the road waiting to die. The last place you want to be on an interstate/major highway in DC Metro is in the emergency lane. It's a regular event for a stranded motorist and/or police officer to get hit and seriously injured or killed while on the side of the road.