enjoy the first quarter of 2008 by having one new and fulfilling experience in January, February, and March

Due to my own failure to mail my payment on time to J. C. Penney for my balance on my credit card, I had a late fee and finance charge owed which was accumulating each month it was left unpaid. I had written a check back in January to pay my blance and forgot to mail it until it was actually due. Shortly thereafter, I received a new bill with my previous balance and a finance charge/late fee. Believing I had gotten the bill paid on time, I disregarded the bill only to discover soon after that the payment hadn’t reached them as yet for it wasn’t on my bank statement. Being the great procastinater and a little short on money in February I ingnored the new bill and never even looked at it. Boy, was I surprised with the March statement came. All the bill contained was finance charges and late fees adding up to over $100. A few day ago, my husband told me that J. C. Penney had called wanting payment so they wouldn’t freeze the account. I called to make arrangements to pay yesterday via electronic checking. When the customer service Rep found out my balance included no actual purchases, she said she would erase the balance to 0 and told me to have a nice day. I thanked her. It was so unexpected and even though it wasn’t a life-changing experience, I’m counting it as new and fulfilling.

And I’ve notice the daffodils and tulips coming up in my front yard. Though they won’t be blooming by Easter (tomorrow), just seeing the green is like a new experience every Spring for me. Our lilacs are budding out, also. It makes me start thinking of planting flowers, and planning a vegetable garden, especially growing our own tomatoes.
Next weekend is the 2nd annual Steve McQueen Days in Slater, Missouri where he lived during most of his childhood. I plan to attend and hope the weather will be warm like last year. Last year the turnout was better then they expected and I’m not sure it will be as heavy this year as I haven’t seen much advertising.
Our grandaughter is 4 months old now and I discover something new everytime I see her.

My new and fulfilling experiences for the rest of the quarter may be planning things that will happen in the next quarter when the weather is nicer.

For February so far, nothing else really stands out as new and fullfilling but watching our baby granddaughter grow and change everyday. If I don’t see her for a couple days I swear I can see how she is changing. When she was born, she was wearing premie clothes and the NB sizes hung on her. No longer. She is wearing 3-6 months. When she smiles, I know all is right in the world. I think she will be sitting up by herself and crawling before we know it.

edit: Oh, and she is 3 months old today, February 14.

But I am finally on my way in divorcing myself from my good old telephone company which for now will remain nameless. (They know who they are). My telephone and internet were costing around $89+ ($69 telephone pkg and another $19.95 for the DSL internet) per month. I called our local cable provider and scheduled to have internet installed and with a package deal ($33 for internet and just $29 for cable). Our now former cable bill was $55 for basic tier. Our new digital cable package includes over 40 music channels and several addition channels giving us around 170 channels, an increase of about 100 channels. I wish I had done this months ago when it first became available. The total bill including box and taxes will be $70.80 per month with another $48 for installation. If I had known I could have done it before Christmas I could have had it installed for free (with a $10 donation to the local food pantry which would have fit in with another one of my goals). They offer digital telephone as well for only another $29 per month with no installation fee, but after speaking with my stepdaughter who has still another phone company using internet (Sorry, cant advertise them here, either), I’ll probably go with hers as I will have no installation cost with at least the first month free. I can keep my phone number with either but when we move, I want to keep it still and I can do so when we move with this other service.

My old telephone company sure had trouble cancelling my service. The representative kept me on the line for nearly 30 minutes pumping me for info while supposedly scheduling to turn off date and time. I managed to decrease my phone bill even further with a newer package so now it will be $53 per month for everything. Funny, they don’t automatically give you a cheaper alternative unless you try to leave them. I’ve changed my service package over the years to get a less expensive package with more options only to have them have something cheaper come up right after I put in a change.

So far, I’m saving over $21 per month and as soon as I put in digital telephone using my internet I’ll save around another $25. per month with a grand total of about $105 for cable, internet and telephone. Someone told me I could drop the cable and get a dish and then get internet and telephone that way, too, but everyone who has had it says the telephone service is very poor or nonexistant around our area. I also priced them and it is somewhat more expensive and we wouldn’t probably watch most of the premium channels, anyway.

Today I sent an invitation to everyone I’m subscribed to who hasn’t already joined this goal and already two of them have joined up.