Miscellaneous Monday
I didn’t get around to a Friday Randomness, so you get your randomness on Monday instead. Aren’t you lucky?
The picture above is art in Golden Gate Park. They have shut some of the roads off to traffic, which is great but a little disorienting if you used to live there 30+ years ago and think you know where you’re going. When Birchie was here last year, I thought I would drive through the park to pick her up, it’s a beautiful drive that I used to make almost daily on my way to school. Nope. Anyway, when I went to see the Monet exhibit a few weeks ago with my friend Elaine, I enjoyed seeing this dog and bunny duo hanging out in different statues.
This is Ziggy. We were on our walk last weekend, and stopped at the park to use the bathroom and get some water. When Ted turned the faucet on, Ziggy ran over and helped herself. I love seeing a joyous confident friendly dog. I mean, I love all dogs. Neurotic dogs, reactive dogs, all of them. But that is not Ziggy. BTW, her person had water for her, she just wanted THIS water. You do you, Ziggy. She has heterochromatic eyes (one blue, one brown) so we assume she was named for David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona.
Speaking of dogs, look at this clearly AI generated image I saw on Facebook. Part of me says it’s ridiculous, and the other part of me wants it.
Speaking of ridiculousness, what say you about this popcorn bucket tie in for the movie, The Odyssey? Why would they pose it this way instead of like the Trojan Horse? (OK, never mind on that one, this is the horse from the poster. Still.) Why would someone want these popcorn buckets to begin with? They always seem so dumb to me, but apparently theaters make bank on them.
Ted and I went to dinner the other evening, and parked in front of this house a block away from the restaurant. I like that they are embracing the overgrown lawn, and have a cute little goat to help them manage it.
Closer to home, we have this yard with not only lawn flamingoes but also a lawn something else. A heron I expect. These are so much more classy than the ones my Grandma had in her yard, but then again, those might have been older than me.
Have you ever seen Moon and Stars watermelon? So called for the large yellow ‘moon’ and the much smaller yellow ‘stars’. My coworker mentioned them one day, and I’ve been keeping my eye out for them. I thought I would see them at a Farmers Market, but here they are at a local grocery store. Our results were not good – I bought one and it was not ripe, and my coworker bought one and it was over-ripe. I don’t think these are issues specific to this variety, we just picked poorly.
Our local Best Buy used to have wisteria growing up this trellis on the wall. I was sad when they removed it a month or so ago, but mostly I’m surprised that this is the current state of things. Why haven’t they removed the rest of the trellis? Why is there a ‘Got Junk’ trunk permanently parked here, not taking the junk? It’s an eyesore for sure.
Before and after of one of our local Little Free Libraries. Looking closely at the picture on the left, you can see that they’ve had to resort to placing the books two deep. I didn’t like that, so I straightened things up and took the extras to another LFL about 1/2 mile away.
Remember how I was bitching about the ending of the A Little Princess films, and how Sara’s father was alive with amnesia rather than dead? Well, first time commenter HKS told me about a British miniseries from 1987 that is far more true to the book. I watched it, and it was very cheesy with the close ups and soap opera type camera work, but I really enjoyed it.
I watched it on Pluto TV, but you can also see it on Amazon (I believe for free) which would probably be much better, because Pluto is horrible. They cut it up very weirdly into perhaps 18 parts, with credits and dumb commercials between each time. Still worth it for me to see a version that was true to the book (except of course it took place over the course of maybe a year, not 6 or more that the book takes, which makes perfect sense when you are working with child actors). I don’t know who you are HKS, but thank you! I wish you had a blog so I could pop by.
I was sitting in our tiny yard reading my book on Saturday when I was distracted by a hummingbird at the feeder. I love seeing them pop by for a snack, and I especially love that the feeder is right outside our kitchen window. It seems like you can’t be in the kitchen for more than a few minutes before you see one. God forbid a second come by, however, because man, they are territorial and will chase each other away.
Look at this puddle of cuddles at the pet rescue the other day! They are so cute. On an unrelated note, I was thankful to Elisabeth’s post the other day about saving money, because she mentioned that Chase Sapphire Preferred currently has a deal where if you get the card and spend $5,000 within the first 90 days, you will get a 100k bonus points, which is the equivalent of $1,000 cash, or which you can use for travel or whatever. I was happy to do that, and the fact that Elisabeth said ‘not an affiliate link’ in her post reminded me that if someone referred me, they could get bonus points too! So I sent Birchie a text and she referred me, and it turned into a win-win. Now I just have to put all of my charges on this card until I hit $5,000.
This is excellent timing, because in the same conversation, Birchie alerted me that the PayPal debit card that I’ve been using to pay for groceries is changing their policy starting August 1st. For the past 15ish months, I’ve been transferring $1,000 into that account every month, and buying all of my groceries with it. They pay 5pts per dollar spent in the category of your choice, up to $1,000 each month. You can transfer the points to your PayPal balance, which you can use to buy things or transfer to an external account, which is what I have been doing. I’ve made about $800 this way over the past year, which I put in my high interest savings vacation fund. Free money! Well, starting August 1st you can no longer transfer the points to your balance, so no more cash. Instead, you can only use them to buy things via PayPal. I gave it a test drive with some points that I currently have, and tried to buy something at Ulta using my PayPal, and was only given the option of using my cash balance, not my points. So unless that changes, this will be the end of me using my PayPal debit card. I’m willing to jump through a few hoops to get points, but if it’s not convenient to spend them, then that’s a no from me.
Speaking of Birchie and her free money hacks, I have opened a few credit cards and checking accounts over the last year or 18 months, and just like in this case, I did it for the bonuses, which have ranged between $250 and $400 each. I currently have my paychecks deposited into 4 accounts, but I’m thinking there is no reason to keep three of them. At first I was keeping them because I have credit cards with those banks, and it was super easy to pay those cards with that money, so why not, but meh, it’s a lot. I don’t mean it’s a hassle, because it’s not, my brain works this way and I like it, but as I’m putting all of this information down on paper for our Trust and so on, I feel like it’s just EXTRA stuff for someone to have to deal with someday. So I’m going to close those extra checking accounts. This hobby has turned out to be great, though, because due to the savings account at one bank, I found out that they still have safety deposit boxes. Most of the banks around here don’t do that anymore, and it was something that I wanted. The same bank gives 3% cash back at grocery stores, which is not as good as 5%, but still better than 1 or 2% I was getting elsewhere. So while I will close that checking account, I will definitely be keeping the credit card and safety deposit box. (Note to self – research whether I need the checking account to have the safety deposit box, because that would be a good reason to keep it.)
Here’s your palate cleanser from money hack talk. My plumeria continues to do really well. I think I’m going to buy it some kind of cover when it goes dormant this winter, so I can (hopefully) keep it alive. The one I brought home from Hawaii a few years ago has sadly left this world. Well, it’s gone to the compost bin, so it’s still in this world and still contributing to the circle of life, so that’s a good thing.
