Well I don’t know about you all, but this week keeps getting better and better.
State Fair Fun
Saturday we decided to go to the Arizona State Fair. This was, I think, the third year in a row that we’ve gone, and as usual we had a great time! We did some of the rides and games, Jake bought me a new semiprecious stone for a metal torque/choker that he’d bought me at the same booth last year (I’m liking this tradition), and – the theme of this year’s fair visit – ate everything in sight. Yum, food.
In addition to $8 drafts of Bud Light (!) we had strawberry margaritas, corn on the cob, Indian fry bread with refried beans (my absolute favorite), the brick of curly fries drenched in melted cheese, a deep-fried Snickers, a deep-fried pickle (I don’t recommend this), and Indian fry bread with honey and powdered sugar. Can you say absolutely fantastic?!
Rollin’ in Dough
Sunday we did some grocery shopping but were otherwise lazy. Then on Monday when I stopped by the mailboxes, I finally got my freelance check. WOO-HOO! Honey’s $2500 richer, thank you very much. I’m not ending up on the wild spending spree that I had hoped – the final breakdown ends up like this:
- $1000 monster credit card payment
- $600 Christmas shopping money
- $400 repay my savings account for my dentist’s co-pay/deductible
- $250 new sweaters for work (it’s starting to get cold and my other ones were worn out)
- $250 the remainder of my repayment to Jake for our New Year’s trip to Vegas
It looks like the bike may have to wait, and the trip to Illinois to see Jake’s grandparents for Thanksgiving will have to come out of regular spending money. Which is actually fine – we fly into Chicago, but then we drive three hours to where his grandparents live – and there is nothing to do there and they are not very mobile (~90 y.o.) so I doubt we’ll be doing anything tremendously exciting. Instead, we’re saving that for…
…Vegas!
That’s right, we’re heading back – this time for New Year’s. The same couple we went with in May is coming again, as well as another friend of hers from high school/college. Lance, you should come, too. You’ve been in a funk. Vegas will do you good.
We used a package deal that we got from Vegas.com – for $420 apiece (all taxes and other dastardly fees included) we got our plane tickets, reservations at the Luxor and tickets to see Ka. I also bought a $50 gift certificate to Aureole at the Mandalay Bay – for $4 from Restaurant.com. They have a 10,000 foot wine tower with “wine angels” who use a sort of auto-belay system to scale the tower and bring you your wine (we saw it on the Travel Channel).
We’re also going to go to the shooting range at the Gun Store and to the CSI Experience, and there are some rides within walking distance – The Roller Coaster at NY, NY, the In Search of the Obelisk ride at the Luxor, and the Motion Rides at Excalibur. Jake is also interested in Bodies, the Exhibition. Sounds like fun to me, and Jake and I have only stayed on the strip one other time (the first time we ever went, when we’d been together less than 2 months and drove the whole way!) so this is very different from how we normally do it.
I’m timing my $1000 credit card payment so that it’s my payment for the month…then I can take what would have been my credit card payment ($400 or so) and put it in my savings account for the trip. I’ll probably make the minimum payment or close to it on my credit card in December, as well, which’ll give me a good chunk of change to play and have fun with. Hooray!
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