I look like the Elephant Woman. The left side of my face is where the implants were put in and it looks a fright. I am swollen up. I’ve eaten nothing but mashed potatoes for the last two days. I bought some from KFC on Thursday night because for some reason I really wanted fried chicken for dinner. I got extra large tubs of mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese so I could eat them for leftovers. Smart move on my part because I really was out of it after surgery. I ate very little, about three bites at a time before I felt nauseated.

My lovely friends came over later in the evening to bring me flowers and entertain me. He plays really nice guitar music, stuff he just improvises, but it’s very relaxing. She brought some knitting and generally fawned over me till my boyfriend came over and we all hung out in my apartment. It was a good way to spend the evening and cheap too.

Today, my boyfriend called to make sure I was taking my medicines on the proper schedule. He also brought me more mashed potatoes and mac and cheese from Boston Market. I have to say, they taste way better from Boston Market. I figured out why they recommend soft foods. It’s not so much that you need to eat soft things, but that your jaw will be sore from the surgery so chewing is a chore. I cut up some leftover chicken into small bits and the protein was really good on my stomach, but the bits were wee and little.

My really awesome surgeon called me late on Friday to follow up and I told him I was putting ice packs on my face. He told me that it was a good idea, and he warned me that I would be experiencing a lot of swelling on the upper part of my face. I had little idea it would be this bad. It seems to be getting worse. My eyelid is all fuschia and spreading from the inner corner of my eye towards the middle of the lid. It’s going to be purple, green and yellow the next few days. It’s going to be uber sexy. I answered the door with an ice pack covering my face because I didn’t want him to see that my eye is almost swollen completely shut. It’s like I have two faces on the left and right, mashed together.

As far as the surgery’s cost goes, I called the dental insurance company and the rep on the phone made it sound like it was going to cost me $4.5K, and they would only cover about $1500.00 of the $6000.00 total. When the doctor’s office called to confirm my appointment, I made them call the dental insurance company again and confirm the cost I would have to pay out of pocket. I was distressed by the rep’s figures. Turns out the rep was wrong and I only had to pay about $3000.00 for surgery on Friday. That leaves me about $1400.00 for the permanent crowns, meaning I will only have to save up another $600.00 cash to pay out of pocket. That is a HUGE relief! That is exactly what Medical FSA is for. Someday I’ll have to do the entire tally of what I paid out of which accounts. Just not right now. I’m still feeling loopy.

Wish me luck. Surgery is Friday morning. For the commenter who asked me what I was doing and why it costs so freakin’ much, I will explain. I think it might help people who are considering dental replacement work understand the costs and options.
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Cap, of Stop Buying Crap, was interviwed this month at Mint’s blog.

Cap is one of the first PF bloggers I met online and he’s pretty interesting. He tells it like it is with his blog title.

He’s had a few thought provoking posts lately including asking us when did we start caring about personal finance and a follow up called Finding That Special Reason to Care about Your Finances.

Really good posts they are. Go check them out.

As for me, I started to care when I was 12 and applied for a scholarship at private school. Such are the burdens of immigrant children. It’s your job to grow up fast and learn how to navigate the system for your parents. It’s a long, slow, ice cold bath you take through out the financial aid process when you realize that a nice middle class income isn’t enough and you’re too green to know that the family accountant deliberately is making you look poor to the IRS. It’s very hard to swallow. Yes, I have a chip on my shoulder, but I’m proud of it. Now I make almost twice as much as was the reported income on that first tax return I saw. It gave me a life-long motivation to be successful. (Call it insecurity if you like, I don’t care. I’m really happy doing my job and making good money.)

For the last few months, I’ve been holding back an off-topic post about privacy and the Internet. I’ve been trying to keep this blog afloat and on topic as much as I can and still hold down my day job and have a life.

But on Tuesday, I was reading an Oracle blog by Tom Kyte and was tipped off to a post by Kathy Sierra. She’s being victimized by a commenter and then further victimized in a vile fashion in images at another website. For those of you who don’t read a lot about the blogging medium, Kathy is a proponent of the Internet as a community building place. Her blog is called ‘Creating Passionate Users’. This is a woman who really cares about the community of people on the Internet and making it a welcome place.

I’m a b*tch. Plain and simple. I’m not a nice person and I have email exchanges from commenters that prove it. I didn’t mean to start off on the wrong foot, but I guess I should stop trying to be funny because I sound like a haughty wench all the time. I suppose I thought that’s why people were reading this blog in the first place. Guess not. I never should have engaged my commenters and readers at all, but I was showing my own naivete in trying to be interactive and helpful in the near utopian way that I remember the Internet being back in college 15+ years ago. But how quickly I have forgotten USENET flamewars and their idiocy.

This thing that has happened to her is disgusting. It is beyond the pale. It is verbal abuse and terrorism. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It may possibly be NSFW depending on your workplace policy. I know I was greatly disturbed by the graphic image she reposted, and remember, IT WAS DIRECTED AT HER.

News posts covering the topic directly at BBC News and Slashdot. The Washington Post has their own article about anonymous commenting.

I hope and pray that the person who did this to her grabs a clue and stops. I hope he gets help before he actually hurts someone. He is sick and deranged. I hope and pray that Ms. Sierra can overcome this, but I’m not sure how. I know that after reading it, I seriously thought about stopping blogging altogether and permanently. Before finding out about Ms. Sierra’s situation, it’s a thought I’ve been having for a few weeks now for various and sundry reasons related to being out there to be attacked, ridiculed, criticized, labeled, blamed, threatened, stalked and terrorized.

If you think I’m overreacting, please read Mindhunter by John Douglass and Mark Olshaker and The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. (I’ve only read the first one, but the second has been highly recommended by a friend of mine who teaches self-defense.)

I was recently walking with a friend who is a former Marine. He’s 6′2″ and upwards of 200 lbs. We were talking about doing some solitary activity and I had to remind him that women don’t do that sort of thing by themselves lest they inadvertently make themselves a target. He paused and told me that he hadn’t thought of it the way that I do since physical threats are not part of his every day assessment of the world. Despite what I write in my blog about emergency preparedness, I’m not actually a nervous nellie. But I am street-smart about not looking like a victim. My natural mean b*tch look comes in handy that way.

Much thinking will commence. I am deeply ambivalent about blogging now.

If you do anything after reading this blog, buy yourself some pepper spray and a flashlight and keep them accessible at all times when you are out of the house. Yes, I even carry it when I take trash out to the dumpsters in the parking lot. Nothing’s ever happened to me and hopefully, nothing ever will. I wish the same for all of you.

If you are a blogger, publicize this. Repost about it. Express your disgust and return some civility to our world. Get angry dammit!

Apparently I am the clueless hostess. I completely forgot I signed up! So please submit your articles this week. Please use this handy, dandy form.

Meanwhile, go read the 67th Festival of Frugality over at Debt Hater. Thanks for hosting DH!

No lie. I went to the movies on Friday night. It was a free promotional event at a movie theater/cafe. So the film was free! (Actually two films for free! Gotta love sneak previews and the chance to be on another blog!) Because my friends work there, I was getting offered extra drinks the bartenders had poured incorrectly for other tables. Though I violated Lent by drinking a rum and Coke, who was I to turn down the free drink? It saved me from ordering a drink of my own. No, I didn’t ask for it. It magically appeared. The waitress who brought it didn’t even know I was going to be there. Someone else must have told her where we were sitting because we weren’t in her section.

Restaurants screw up orders all the time. It doesn’t happen every day necessarily, but is there something wrong with accepting a drink they were going to pour out anyway? If you’re in the industry, please let me know if my friends have just put themselves at risk for a drink that was going into the drain. Seriously, if they were going to serve it to another table, then fine, I wouldn’t take it. I figure the good karma factor came in pouring a beer for the table next to us out of the pitcher our table ordered since I didn’t think we were going to finish it off. If they added the drink to our check, then fine then too. No, I didn’t add in the price of that drink for the tip we left the server. She wasn’t the source of the drink and she seemed confused by our table’s order of meatless potato skins for Lenten Fridays, which was then delivered late.

One of my good friends has a relation in the bar/nightclub industry. We can’t go anywhere without his getting extra strong drinks. Even when he doesn’t want them. The bartenders see him, and it’s like Norm from Cheers. They call his name, they wave, they pour his signature cocktail with a double shot of alcohol, which in fact is not the way he likes it. But bully for us! We get the crazy strong cocktails which end up with everyone drinking about one drink less for the night. (Or else one free beer.) All in all, a cheaper night out than originally planned.

So don’t be a mooch, one of my perennial fears. And don’t expect the perk. Just be hopeful. And don’t take advantage of your friends. I really don’t know why they foisted drinks on me. (There were actually two and I was able to give away one to someone in our party.) But free is free!

1) The commenters saying online bill payment is the way to go are absolutely correct. However, there is a small catch at the moment with doing this. I’m shopping for a different checking account in VA. I am royally irritated with Wachovia for charging Quicken users from avoiding the Wachovia website. While I have been training myself to download directly from the bank’s website, I don’t like it. I’m actually looking at Bank of America once more. Many years ago in California and Maryland, I banked with BofA. I found their online payment site very easy to use and convenient. Who knows when I’ll get around to do doing this, but I will soon, hopefully.

2) I cannot wait for bonus season to get here. (Nevermind, since drafting this post, I got paid the bonus today rather than on the regular paycheck cycle! Whee! Kick up your heels and do a happy dance!)

3) I ate at one of my favorite restaurants that carries Old Dominion Root Beer. I completely forgot and broke Lent by having a soda. The restaurant is the Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington’s Westover neighborhood. They freeze the glass so cold, that the soda freezes in the glass. It’s AMAZING. There’s no ice at all in the cup so they serve you a full pint, just like they would with a beer. (of which they have many, a bit like the Brick.)

4) My homeowner’s insurance is due. It’s $55 more than last year because I filed a claim, but I can still pay it in one lump sum, which is good.

5) I liquidated some of my emergency fund for some car repairs and to finish paying off one of my credit cards because the balance is less than $500.00 now. I am down to two cards, one of which is 0% till June.

FMF is big on car dealerships. A lot of other PF bloggers are not. I’m in the dealership camp, but only begrudgingly. First off, you need to know that my pop ran a private garage while I was growing up, but started out as a dealer mechanic for Ford. I will try to pick a private garage if I feel I can trust them. Second, I don’t think I trust private garages around my area. I just don’t know them and feel like the one place I did try out didn’t serve me well. Third, ever since pop got out of the car fixing business, he takes his car to the dealership, even for an oil change. (But I can’t tell if that’s because he’s known the service manager for almost 30 years now from way back in the day.)

Observations about the experience this time:

1) I was offered a dirty rental car by the in-house rental agency. All I can say, is take the dirty car, but ask them if they will knock down the gas you have to put back in. I accepted a dirty car and they said I could return it with half a tank instead of the three-quarters that were in it. That was good.

2) What I would have really liked though is some wiper-fluid. There was road salt all over the car and windows. But no, that wasn’t the $850 car wash. There was also a really funky maple syrup odor in the car when I turned on the heat this morning. Made me gag. I also really hated the Aveo they gave me. I preferred the PT Cruiser the same agency gave me last year. The Aveo’s rear window was too small, and the lack of power mirrors made it a pain in the neck to adjust the driver’s side mirror to my satisfaction, causing a few near misses while I was changing lanes. I made my complaint to the rental agent who accepted the car and he wrote me a little free upgrade discount coupon for the next rental. I laughed. There’s a reason why I had the last car on the lot. Next time, there’s probably going to be nothing to upgrade to. (glaring dangling preposition!) BTW, this rental was free because the dealer gives you a courtesy rental if you spend more than $200.00 in services.

3) I took my car into the shop because I wanted to a routine oil change and to fix the brake pads, because my brakes were mushy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to total up to $200.00, but the nice service guy gave me a free rental anyway. The other thing I wanted done was to aim the wiper fluid pumps higher. While driving around last weekend during a short ice storm, I really needed the salt off the windows, but I couldn’t get any fluid to the top of the windshield. GRRR… I have told them twice there was a problem and they insist nothing is wrong. I made a special point of complaining that there is something wrong because all winter long I couldn’t get the top of the window clean.

4) I get a call during the day. Turns out my engine mounts are cracked, the valve gasket is leaking, needing repair, and I could use a ‘tune-up’. But the brakes are fine. I get the estimate and I tell him I’ll call him back.

THANK GOD FOR THE CAR BUFFS IN THE OFFICE.

I quickly consult them about the repairs being done. They tell me that my brake lines probably need flushing or the air bled out of them if they’re feeling mushy. They also tell me that engine mounts are small pieces of plastic that are sickeningly cheap, but the labor cost is the expensive part, but worth it when you figure that replacing them now for $400.00 of labor is cheaper than the thousands in damage I could pay later if I wait too long. The valve gasket damage? No big deal. I’d rather fix it than keep leaking oil. I knew I was leaking oil because when I topped off the oil the other week, I put in a lot more than I normally would so I was ok with that repair.

But here’s the kicker that really cheeses me off. What the heck is a ‘tune-up’? My pop always gave my car a tune-up before I went on a long road trip anywhere. I know this means checking the oil, topping off fluids, checking the belts for wear, etc. I did not know this meant replacing the spark plugs. Because you see, I did that last year at 90K miles. I’m at 107K and I don’t think I need new ones after 17K miles. Those suckers should last another 90K.

ARGH. I see them on the bill and I am not happy. If they had said the spark plugs needed changing on the phone, I would have stopped them right then and there. One of the car buffs told me later that it was possible they had been fouled up, but never did I once think that my car had no power and the plugs were misfiring. I say something about this at the dealership and they courteously removed the $44.00 charge for the parts.

So rather than pay $900.00, I paid about $850.00 in maintenance, which is far more than the original $200.00 I had planned. However, they did clean the outside of my car and vacuum the interior. The only bad thing was the orange chemical freshener I don’t care for. I had to open the windows while driving in the cold.

In the cost benefit analysis, the cost was only 2-3 months’ worth of car payments. If I only spend another $850 this year in maintenance, I think I’ll be ok. But yes, I’ve pulled money out of my emergency fund for this since it was quite unplanned.

My teeth are going to cost me an arm and a leg this year. The estimated charges for the last surgery is $6K. But once it’s done, it’s done. There goes all my Medical FSA money, but that’s what this money was for anyway. It’s going to cost me about $3K at time of service, and another $1500 a month later on the payment plan. Then the last $1800 at the time of the permanent crowns getting installed. I will probably do them in two appointments and put in one at a time since it takes a lot of time to do them. I get tired and so does the dentist.

I’m lucky that the costs will be spread out over a few months. Again, I am tempted to liquidate my emergency fund for it and pay as much in cash as I can.

This week, a filling replacement with a fancy laser-milled ceramic. (The old mercury amalgam ones are passe, and possibly bad for your long-term neurological health. Perhaps this is why I am so ‘mercurial’ at work?) Next week, full-on surgery with anesthetic and then waiting and healing for a few months.

I am very relieved. It’s almost over.

For the anonymous reader out there with dental issues like me, you can do it. It’s better to take action now. Please don’t wait any longer and call a dentist.

For the rest of you, FLOSS FLOSS FLOSS!

I put in $100.00 just a few months ago and right now, it’s worth $102.33 as of the end of February. As of this weekend, it’s worth $103.00 because there are payments posted since the 1st of the March.

It’s still fun and appealing to do this, but I’m staying focused on my credit cards. No point in putting more into Prosper while I have other debts to pay.

My cash balance on Prosper is approximately $7.00. I figure rather than adding anything more, once I have enough money to make another minimum $50.00 bid, I will do that instead. Hopefully by then, I’ll be in a good position to kick in more money for long term saving.