Money In, Money Out

Hello Friends,

Thanks for coming back for another read. Upon being nagged for another posting, I'm taking some time out of my lunch break to write a little bit.

First let me again thank everyone who's been supportive and thoughtful during this hospitalization issue with my Mom. A quick update; she got to go home last night, after a second ERCP. What's an ERCP, and why'd she have to have another one you ask? Well, and ERCP is an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography procedure. Basically they snake an endoscope through your digestive system, and then place a stint in her bile duct which hopefully opens the blockage and allows her biliruben to drain naturally so her jaundice will go away. Well the first one didn't work, so they went back in and did it again. Apparently that one didn't work either, which is odd but they sent her home anyway. I guess because she's going to be back on Tuesday as it is. Tuesday is when she will undergo surgery to have the mass around her pancreas removed. It's apparently a long, envasive procedure, so your continued thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated. I'll be heading home Monday night for a few days to be there.

So moving on. I've realized that though my blog's title leads the reader to believe that it is a collection of thoughts and well, ponderings, I haven't actually pondered anything yet. Well let me assure you I'm trying to change this. Life has just been a little busy since the creation of this blog.

So since I've started my full time job and moved into my own apartment, I'm painfully aware of how expensive it is to do anything. Now I can already hear you guys making comments about how frivolous (read: frugal if you're Jamie) I am with my money, but that's just because I have to furnish my apartment and such, and I'm really very conscious of my money and try not to spend it.

Recently I tried to sell a set of the extra wheels that came with my Saab, but I wanted to keep the tires. So I called up all the tire shops in the area and asked them if they could remove the tires and how much that would cost. To my overwhelming surprise each of these places wanted to charge me upwards of $20 per wheel to remove them. Now I dont know how many of you have ever had your tires changed while you stay at the shop, but it's actually a very mundane process. All these guys do is stick your wheel, tire and all onto a machine, flip a switch and stand back and watch. The machine spins the wheel around and peels off the tire, the guy steps over, places the new tire on, and flips the switch in the opposite direction, and presto! Process finished. Now how can a company seriously try to charge someone $20 for that process? There's hardly any labor involved, the machine has long since been paid off if the tire shop has been in business for any amount of time. Really, I mean come on. Well to make a long story short because I have to go to a job training, the guy at Pep Boys must have realized how ridiculous this was because he hooked me up with a really sweet deal. $10 to have all 4 tires removed.

So I ran out of time before I was able to talk about todays ponderance, but I promise that soon there will be some. Thanks again for reading!