Lack of Blogging, and Some Bad Luck

Well, I have officially been a slacker. I have posted only a handful of blogs during this month of November. Part of it is due to Steve's schedule. Part of it is due to holiday stress. Part of it is due to my lack of creativity. I digress.

I mean to post pictures of B Man. He is growing like a weed! He's started to get up on his knees and rock back and forth. We tried to convince him that he needed to start crawling over the Thanksgiving holiday so that his Chicago grandparents could witness the milestone, but Brett thought otherwise. Oh, well. But, I don't think it will be long now! We have started buying babyproofing gear. We bought a net to put over our loft railing and electrical socket plugs. Today I plan to make another trip to BRU to buy a baby gate with my coupon. I am thankful they just started an "R Us" rewards program. Lord knows we are going to spend money on all of this stuff!

We also just bought him a new carseat. After much research, we decided on the Britax Roundabout. It is perfect for my VW bug since it is designed to fit into compact cars. His infant carrier was getting a bit too cramped for him, and once we added the winter coat, the kid became absolutely miserable in the thing. Well, we purchased said carseat online because the color I wanted was only online. Plus, I had been saving up for this carseat for months, by selling things on Ebay - so it was all in my paypal account and I could pay for it via paypal online. Simple enough, right? Plus, I got a free shipping coupon, a 15% off coupon, and I was able to use my R Us rewards. This was looking really good! Until the carseat came in on Tuesday and it was "granite" instead of "tan swirl". Grrrr!!!! I was pi$$ed to say the least. We called customer service and after a long conversation had them ship us another one overnight for the same price with free shipping. So, now we have two sitting here in our living room. The right one and the "granite" one. The good thing is that the granite color matches Steve's car perfectly... but I hadn't yet budgeted for another expensive carseat. We did however get it at the discounted price. And, it will be a pain in the a$$ to re-ship it back (they won't accept it in store because it is also a color that they only carry online). So, anyway, I think we are going to hold onto it for a little while and see how he likes the one in my car and decide if we can affored to keep that seat for Steve's car or not.

Otherwise, the other news occured black Friday morning. And, this did make my Friday rather black. We had pre-planned our route and our first stop was Staples. Our printer had gone out early in the summer and we hadn't been able to afford a new one yet. Well, they had exactly what we were looking for at 50% off and I had a gift card to spend at Staples... so we ended up getting this printer for free! (well, $1.16 after taxes). We got in line before the store opened. Steve dropped me off and I got in line. He parked and joined me. We spent all of 5 minutes in the store. We located the printer, picked it up, checked out and got back into our car.... we arrived at Kohl's not realizing what had happend yet. Steve couldn't find the spare $$ he had for tolls which was sitting in the cupholder next to his seat. I didn't think anything of it until we were leaving the Kohl's parking lot. I went to start my iPod. And, it wasn't there. My $299 first generation video iPod, which I bought in January of 2006 with over 2,000 songs on it, the first season of The Office and countless hours of work to customize it uniquely for myself was... gone. I was beside myself. The worst part is that it wasn't backed up so I lost everything. I never kept much on my computer harddrive because I didn't want to eat up the memory. So, in addition to everything... Brett's 200 + song playlist and my beloved Ben Fold's 150+ song playlist? GONE (Gone, gone, gone........ kudos to anyone who gets that reference). Oh, and the $79 monster radio adapter was swiped with it.

We called insurance and we have a $500 deductible, so basically I am SOL. I am actually mourning the loss of this small piece of my life. I am not an electronics junkie and I never have to have the newest of the greatest piece of technology. But I LOVED my iPod. I never used my car radio... it was all iPod, all the time. And, when I would go jogging in my neighborhood? I had the whole jacket and armband for it so I could use it for motivation. I'd just turn it to my "running mix"... which started with Republica's "Ready To Go".... ah, I am already sad. And, what makes me even sicker is that I know that probably within minutes of it leaving my hands, the thief restored it back to it's original factory settings... deleting the 15 GB of my stuff.

I'm really trying to get over this.. I am. And, it couldn't come at a worse time. We are financially very tight right now. My salary was cut in half when I took a part time job. We knew it would affect us, but didn't realize how much. We are being very creative for Christmas.... Tina introduced me to this fabulous "Mypoints" site. So, I have done alot of shopping online, trying to accumulate points towards gift cards. We are concerned with paying the bills and buying groceries... so the LAST thing I NEED is an iPod. I hope to have another one eventually. I have asked for gift cards now for Christmas... so that I can hopefully accumulate them all into a purchase of another iPod. I am also going to keep selling little things here and there on ebay to hopefully make enough $$ to buy one. I am also taking my time to research all of the new models. They have changed a lot since mine came out 3 years ago. I am leaning towards the iPod touch (I guess it has wi-fi with it!), but I'll be lucky if I can afford the 8 GB nano (which is also cute... I could get a blue one that matches my bug). This time I won't put as much effort into downloading my whole life onto it. I am just going to add what I will most often listen to. That way I won't be so heartsick if this new one gets swiped.