Well, at the beginning of the season, I thought these tickets were too expensive and a waste of money. How fast things change after dumping a crappy coach and making some key trades after the All-Star game. (I hope they can re-sign Federov.)

You have to understand something. I am not an NHL hockey fan. I like to watch hockey. I really don’t actually care who is playing. Because I don’t have any friends who play club hockey in DC, I decided to buy some professional league tickets last season and give it a try. It was fun enough that I thought I should buy season tickets for 2007-2008 to have something to do with a boyfriend who likes sports. I actually hate the Southeast Division because I don’t know any of the teams. I grew up in Philly and there is still a small pull at my heartstrings for the Broad Street Bullies. These expansion teams in Florida don’t mean anything to me at all.

When deciding to get tickets, I calculated which seats were the cheapest/best value for me and bought them. I figured out that I could miss 13 games and still come out ahead on the face value of the tickets. I sold off a bunch of games at cost to friends and gave away a bunch as birthday presents and gifts to friends. At $30 a pair, that makes a nice present without being ridiculously generous. I think I only wasted about 4 games worth of tickets out of 41 regular season games and 4 pre-season games.

Of course, by game 35, I was sick of going to The Phone Booth, aka the Verizon Center, and eating their concession food. I sold off the last three games, with some mild regret. My tickets for the last regular season game on Saturday night went to a friend who is a huge San Jose Sharks fan. He misses pro hockey and I was glad to unload the tickets. However, when I found out I could have put them up on Stub Hub for $200 apiece, I was naturally kicking myself. That’s one-third of the price of my season tickets! It was really exciting and I kind of miss not going, but at least my friend is someone who can appreciate what the Caps have done this season.

As a season ticket holder, I have purchased my playoff tickets already. There are privileges to having season tickets. The perks are ok. Special invitation-only events where you can meet the players, etc. I bought 100-level seats for the Penguins-Caps games for a me and a friend who is a Pittsburgh native at a steep discount. I also got 4 100-level seats for free and shared them with another couple that holds season tickets in the 400-level.

I waffled on renewing since I bought the tickets with a boyfriend I am no longer dating. However, I decided to renew the tickets for two reasons: 1. I wanted to secure my playoff tickets. 2. I found that I like hockey enough to want to go again next year. It also helps that my new boyfriend also enjoys hockey and also has the money to share the expense of tickets with me. We have the opportunity to upgrade seats later in the year at a Select-A-Seat event, where you get to see what seats are open and move. I happen to like my row and section, but we’re talking about springing for 100-level seats because we can afford it and there is a different level of energy down in the bowl of the stadium. I’m staring at my budget and trying to make an extra $100 a month for making this happen.

Really what I’m trying to express here is GET THE RED OUT and GO CAPS! Sure, it’s costing me a lot of green, but I have really enjoyed watching Ovechkin do some amazing things, and Semin turn into a pivotal player (he was about to get traded for lackluster performance if he didn’t turn it around this year). Kolzig got his 300th career win, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I am really ambivalent and I still nurse some distaste for the Caps since I didn’t grow up with them, but I have playoff fever like everyone else in town and I am SUPER EXCITED for the team. I never thought my investment in hockey tickets would give me this much enjoyment. Hockey is as volatile as the stock market.

It was worth the money though. Every penny.

ps- If you are in DC, please be aware there is a new 10% tax on sporting tickets. It’s bumped up the price of my renewal by $120. Might want to budget that in. FWIW, I went from a monthly charge of $100 to $114 from season to season on the extended payment plan.

So frozen tofu turned out to be way better than I thought. It’s pretty darned versatile. We’ve thrown it into curry for an entree, boiled in soup, and now I’ve tried frying them.

There’s a fried tofu appetizer at Bangkok 54, one of DC’s best Thai restaurants, that I love. I haven’t figured out the dipping sauce yet, but the main thing is that I have a more than acceptable alternative.

Since I usually freeze whatever is leftover from making dinner out of a 14oz block of tofu, it’s usually a log about 1.5 inches square and about 3-4 inches long. I freeze it, and then thaw in boiled water for 20 minutes as I was instructed by my tofu cookbook. Once that’s done, I drain it really well. It’s kind of spongy, so I end up squeezing it just a little bit over the sink to drain it even further. After that, I cut it into half inch slices and spread them on a paper towel to dry.

I then mix up a tablespoon or two of flour, add garlic powder, curry powder and cayenne pepper. I put in enough to make the flour brown like light brown sugar, but not enough pepper to burn my tongue. I suppose you could dump everything into a bag and shake up the tofu cubes to coat. Shake off the excess and let them dry out a little bit. Then deep fry them. I pour in just enough canola oil into a pan till it’s about a half inch deep. Then fry the cubes. I flip them when they turn brown on one side and drain on paper towels. I like them to be really crispy on the outside, but still squishy in the middle.

I also tried this without flour and then drying the tofu cubes for a few hours. They come out MUCH crispier that way. Feel free to experiment and leave your results here. The main issue is driving the seasoning into the tofu for lots of flavor. I’ve also been using Goya Adobo seasoning as well, but the curry and cayenne flavors come out the most.

For a dipping sauce we’re experimenting with soy-sesame for a more Korean style sauce. We’re also investigating fish sauce for a Thai style sauce, and a sweet and sour type sauce too.

I like them really hot, fresh out of the pan, but they are pretty good room temperature too. It’s a pretty quick appetizer.

Goal #1
Specific - Contribute to my 401k plan

Slow and steady definitely wins the race here. The regular contributions are doing well and it adds to my overall retirement accounts growing or staying relatively flat even though the bulk of my holdings are down nearly 9% for Q1 2008.

Grade: Pass!

Goal #2
Specific - Reduce my credit card debt
Measurable - By 50% or $9,137 (rounded up to $10K)
Achievable - Monthly payments of $762

I am making payments, but if you click through on my Networth IQ graph, you’ll see that I’m basically back to where I started. I am holding $18K in credit card debt and I have 9 months now to chop that in half. I really thought I would be making a lot more progress on this goal in March since my medical FSA reimbursement came through. However, I had some unexpected car repairs this month for ~$550 which I put on my credit card. In April I am going to cash out a CD that is expiring and putting it towards this goal.

Grade: Fail because at Q1 checkpoint, I should be 25% complete on this goal. Tsk tsk.

Goal #3
Specific - Reduce my credit card debt on my highest balance card ~$10K
Measurable - By 50%
Achievable - ~$450 a month

Last month I gave myself a Pass rating for this goal because I am consistently making payments of $500 a month on this card, and my finance charges on its balance are about $60 a month. I think I still get a pass rating since I successfully made those payments all quarter. However, I am going to make a $800 payment in April to ensure I hit this target by year end.

Grade: Pass

Even though I got a pass on two out of three goals, I still don’t think I’m doing so great at the end of the first quarter of 2008. I think I have figured out why my big payments aren’t making a big dent.

A long time ago, I used my HELOC for a balance transfer on some of my credit card debt. That was July 2007. Since then, I haven’t really increased my payments to my HELOC to pay it down faster. However, I still classify that debt as credit card debt since that’s what it really is. I just wanted a lower interest rate on it.

What does this really mean? It means that I think I’m going to have to bump up my HELOC payments every month or else hold a bare bones amount in cash and throw every spare dime to my credit cards. I’m not really sure. I think I could easily increase my HELOC payment by $200 each month without much pain but I am uneasy holding my cash balances close to zero. I’ll have to think about it some more.

I’m up quite a bit because I was able to get my Medical FSA reimbursement earlier this month. It’s up 14.2% month over month and up about 15% from March of last year.

The main thing I noticed is that my main retirement account holdings is down 8.88% since the year began. That’s a lot and it’s kind of disturbing since that’s an old 401k plan to which I cannot add new funds to dollar cost average out that low dip. I’m now safely past the 60-day holding period for selling off my funds without penalty so I can roll it over and out of the plan holder’s firm. But I think I’ll wait another quarter anyway just to see if the S&P improves any before selling it off and moving the money. Someone told me I can have the fund shares transferred without being hit with penalties for moving money in and out of a fund to quickly, but honestly, nothing in that account really thrills me. I’d rather sell everything in it and reallocate it all.

I took a close look at my abnormally high cash holdings. Since I get paid on the last day of the month with my new job, I expect that I will continue to have artificially high cash holdings unless I start doing some planned liabilities to offset that amount. It disturbs me because usually I have a mortgage payment waiting to go out of that money right after the new month starts.

At any rate, I think I can almost double my usual credit card payments in April. I have been hoarding cash a little due to my friend possibly needing to borrow money and wanting to buy a replacement laptop. But I think I am going to buy neither right now. I am going to another wedding in Boston in April and I plan on using a credit card to pay for that trip. It’s mostly just a hotel, gift, and a possible car rental. I hope to use cash for all other expenses that weekend since I can look at it as a self-indulgent spending weekend at home in DC. Costs for meals should be comparable.

Well things have resolved for my friend. She’s going to move back in with her old boyfriend and live as roommates in a little while so she is going to give me back my keys in a few days. Honestly, this is a relief to me since I need to get to my desktop PC and my Quicken! It’s time to do my taxes and my March Net Worth!

She won’t need to borrow any money from me since she forgot that she has a security deposit her ex-boyfriend will buy out her share of their current deposit. That’s good because I had another car repair this month for about $550.00 and miscellaneous wedding expenses, namely advance deposits for a beach rental for the wedding in May. Unfortunately, that means I’ll be putting off a laptop purchase for a few more weeks.

Oh and my girlfriend offered me a few hundred dollars for the last few weeks, but I told her to knit me a nice scarf or something instead. Considering how long it takes to make an item and she has a lot of knitting talent, it’s a pretty fair barter. Hm. But of course, if I took ‘rent’ from her I could take it as a tax deduction…Now there’s a thought!

A few weeks ago I wanted to get all spiffy to go clubbing. I work near a mall with a lot of cute clothing options, so I figured this shouldn’t be too hard. I could pick from Bebe, Agnes B, Forever 21, etc. I budgeted about $100 for new cute clothes. Try as I might, I couldn’t find anything I wanted except a $500 dress from BCBG, but it was in the wrong color so no dice.

Instead I left with a pair of new spangly earrings from Claire’s for 10 bucks and a lot of disappointment.

Why is it that lately I’ve turned into a really bad shopper? I’ve been reading about Single Ma’s fab shopping trip, JD’s need to revamp his wardrobe and Debt Hater’s wardrobe update. It makes me want to shop, but then I get to the stores and everything is a big fat yuck.

The last thing I added to my wardrobe was a Threadless T-shirt courtesy of my boyfriend. It was on sale. Maybe it’s ok for certain kinds of clubs, but I want to be kind of swanky, cute, and all kinds of hot. Short of cutting up the shirt and DIY altering it, it’s actually super boring.

UGH. I guess this is a good thing for the budget though. I haven’t bought anything else but the clothes I needed for work. *sigh*

Frumperella loves spring. She’d like some new, fun clothes, but alas, there is very little she likes at the moment. (There’s a reason why goth/industrial black makes a nice fall back style. It’s extremely consistent.)