Called both Ivan and Rebecca for advice. Ivan said don’t lock cause it might go down again before closing, and probably wouldn’t go up again. Rebecca said lock because it would give me more piece of mind and make one less thing for me to worry and stress about. Rebecca also recommended not paying any points, because it would take 6 years to break even with that, and who knows if I will stay that long, plus I will need the cash NOW for various things I’ll find I need when I move in.

I decided to go with Rebecca’s advice. Ivan’s might make more sense in raw financial terms. But Rebecca’s also takes into account soft fuzzy emotional factors. I didn’t really want to sell any more stock than I already had to finance this house thing, plus I *will* need the cash. As it is I’m thinking I will be pretty tight for the rest of the year.

Paying the points back down to where it was would cost the same as the fridge I need to buy plus the vacation I plan to take, plus the cost of moving. At least. If I paid points, I’d still have to do something to take care of the rest of that. So screw that. Long term it may make better sense. But short term it does not.

Having said all that, I’m still pissed at myself for not having paid closer attention and locked a couple weeks ago instead of now. And I’ll be pissed at myself again if rates do go back down like Ivan thinks they might. But oh well. Locked and loaded now. I don’t have to worry about it any more.

OK. Back to work stuff again. And I have to fax one last paper related to this lock back to the mortgage people. But I am locked now.

But I should have done it last week. Let me slap myself in the head a few more minutes. :-)

Stopped by at home on the way between offices for work. Just needed to pick up something here. The AC repair guy was just leaving. Cleaned the filters and recharged the AC, and supposidly now it will cool the place to 68. Of course they left it turned off. I just turned it on. We’ll see if it works. If so, it will be the first time my place has been below 77 degrees in almost four weeks! It will be nice for it to be a decent temperature for the last month I’m here!

Yeah, I didn’t make it. Didn’t try all that hard. If I had really wanted to, I might have been able to if I skipped my shower and such and just got dressed and ran out the door as fast as humanly possible. But I didn’t. I took my time. And I put away some laundry and tidyed up the place a bit before I left. And other stuff like that. Also, instead of going in to my office in the close building, this was a day for me to go to our other building, so I drove further. Could have stopped at the first building just to pay less, I passed it at 13:44, which would have been $5. But my first meeting was in the second building, so I kept driving. Got to the desk here at 14:08. So $7. Bleh. There goes this being the last week of this!

Oh well. Time to work now. I”ve been fighting with the stupid old laptop I have here for work for the last half hour. Finally have it all rebooted and operational. Meeting in 20 minutes. I’ll get ready for that and clear out some simple work email.

My normal work hours are 14:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC. But most people where I work tend to get in at 13:00 UTC. (During the summer anyway, in the winter everybody comes in an hour later. They do that goofy savings time thing here.) Anyway, it seemed like coming in an hour earlier at 13:00 UTC would be a good thing for me.

So a couple months ago I made a bet with Kelly from work as a technique to motivate myself. I would pay her a dollar if I got in after 13:00 UTC, and an additional dollar for every 10 minutes beyond that I got in. So, for instance, if I came in at 13:43 UTC, she’d get five dollars. This would go on until I did an entire week getting in before 13:00 UTC.

This has not gone well. I’ve ended up giving Kelly money almost every day. Maybe once a week or so I’ll not have to. Some days I’ve had to pay up to $12. Kelly is now planning a vacation to Mexico financed by me being late. This is not good.

So this week I am planning on doing the week on time, to end this thing. OK. Good.

Problem. OK. To get in at 13, I need to have my alarm set to 11 to give me time to hit snooze a few times, get up, get ready, and get to work. OK. Fine. That means to have a decent nights sleep I have to be asleep by 3 UTC. Urgh. For me that is horribly early. I almost never get to sleep before 5 UTC. And it is often later.

So today at 3 I started thinking about sleeping. At 4 UTC I actually turned off the lights and tried to sleep. I failed miserably. By 5 UTC I had given up and was surfing the web, answering email and making a couple posts here (my latest distraction). It is now after 7 UTC. I am finally starting to feel sleepy. But now I have to get up in only 4 hours.

I doubt my willpower to actually get up when the alarm rings. My first meeting today is actually not until 15 UTC. In my little brain I know I don’t HAVE to be at work until then. Even though 13 is my goal. And I will be sleepy and not fuilly concious and rational, and I will want to sleep.

But I should try. This daily cash outflow needs to stop! I am buying a house after all! But I will keep my word on my little bet. I need to be in by 13 for a full calendar week to get out of this. I’ve got to try.

Of course, to do that, I should stop writing, and try to sleep again. I think I will do that now.

Hello to pc-80-192-14-241-az.blueyonder.co.uk. You seem to be the first person other than myself hitting the abulsme.com front page after following a link from the Ecosystem. Glad to have you! :-)

It looks like my friend Lynn also hit the front page of my site a little bit earlier, and was the first real human being other than myself to look at the redesigned front page of my site as far as I can tell. She emailed me. I’ll email her back in a bit. I’m behind on my email so it might take me a little bit. :-)

I’m behind on my email because I’m determined to clean my parakeets’ cage before sitting down to do email, and I’m procrastinating.