Tracie's World

First off, let me qualify this by saying that no, this post is not about BYU.  There.  Now, to begin...On Saturday, Angel and I still had some energy after the diabetes walk, so we decided to go cell phone shopping at the AT&T store. So off we went to the downtown store and began our browsing.  Now, one thing about the AT&T store is that it is staffed mostly by young adult males in their early 20's.  They are very nice, but let's say they are perhaps a little more technologically fluent than we are.  Our Salesman was a nice good-looking young man named Greg.  He politely answered all sorts of questions about each of the phones and the plans, but mostly let us play around with the phones without being too persistent or rolling his eyes too much.   The big question - the Blackberry or the iPhone.  I was torn and went back and forth between several different ones.  On top of that, there was a problem with being able to move from my...

Word today that the classic cartoon "Cathy" will be ending it's run in newspapers after 30 plus years.  Apparently it's creator Cathy Guisewite, has decided the time has come to move on and do something else with her life.  I for one find it terribly sad.  "Cathy" has always been a fave of mine, perfectly catching the angst and complexity of the modern single woman.  As any of my single friends can probably attest, we're constantly torn - we have a love-hate relationship with men, with our careers, with exercise, and with chocolate.  Whether through her on-again off-again relationship with Irving, or her issues with her Mother, or her boss, or the sales-lady, I could always relate to Cathy. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.  I guess readership was down (Cathy and Irving finally got married, and I guess it's just not so exciting anymore - kind of like when Harm and Mac finally got together, or Tony and Angela, etc), and as we all know, mos...

Saturday morning I joined Angel and Max for the annual walk in support of Diabetes Research.  It was held up at "This Is The Place" State Park.  There were a ton of people there, and we had a great time walking around the park and enjoying the foothills.  Brother Brigham would have been proud of our community involvement, I'm sure.

Still in the spirit of making changes, I made another one last week.  For several years now, I've had my emergency savings in a Credit Union.  It was a branch which was recommended by a co-worker, and was close to my work, which made it very convenient.  They were always great to work with, and over the years, they even worked with me on a couple of car loans. All was well, at least so I thought, until Linda came back to the office a few weeks ago after running to the Credit Union.  Seems the recession and the scary home loans has got the better of them, and they were forced to close the branch.  Now, there's only a few branches left, none of which are very convenient to get to in a pinch.  Soooo, it was time to move on. Friday I went in to the closest of the inconveniently placed branches, withdrew my emergency funds, and switched over to a new Credit Union.  This one came highly recommended by several friends and co-workers, and has a gazillion bra...

Aside from one's family and friends (and for women perhaps their OB/GYN), there seems to be no more enduring relationship than with one's Insurance Agent.  I for one had been with mine for 8 years.  He may be difficult to get hold of, and when I finally do, he may share a little too much, but mostly it was working.  So lately, in searching for ways to save a little extra cash (because let's face it, I don't have the nerve to break up with the cable company), I called said Insurance Agent and asked to change my deductible from $100 to $500.  This in turn saved me a whopping $7 a month.  If I went for even less coverage, it would reduce my payments by a whopping $3.50.  Are you freakin' kidding me?  I'm already paying $1,100 a year, and all you're willing to go down is a lousy ten bucks?  Granted, there's not much he can do - his hands are tied by the big evil corporation ALLSTATE.  You know, the one who is being sued because they won't pay on ...