Spending The Moolah & Vacation Time!

1.  I bought a new bathing suit on the weekend.  I have two others, one 7 years old and one 10 years old.  Both were well past their best-by date and will now be solely used in the hot tub as the chemicals eat up bathing suits.  I found a nice one but had to spend $47 as ended up buying a tankini with separate bottom and top sizes.  No big surprise there as I am rather large up top.  I also spent $8 on new water shoes.  These along with underwear likely will be my only new clothing purchases in 2015 for my wardrobe.  Everything else will come from thrift stores.  I HATE shopping for swimsuits.  Who doesn't, right?  So after trying on several I finally found one that works (hubby even likes it), got dressed, paid and came home. Then I realized that when I got dressed I put my shirt back on inside out.  Hubby was with me and didn't notice either.  I found out when I looked in the mirror at home. FRACK!  I went through the store, through the till and all the way home before the discovery. Talented, aren't I?


2.  Buddy is doing very well after his man-parts surgery.  He no longer has to wear the cone of shame except at night for 3 more days and has healed up nicely.  He will be able to jump in a few days but has been running around with no issues.  Doggie jail sucks, he much prefers his freedom.

3.  I am fighting with the Canadian Revenue Agency with some company business.  Every payday I send our source deductions (paycheck taxes) to the government.  In May 2014 either Canada Post (another useless Canadian Government agency) or the Canada Revenue Agency lost that cheque.  Then the same cheque magically appears exactly 1 year later and they tried to cash the cheque this month.  I had already put a stop payment on it, paid May 2014 deductions plus a late penalty.  Now - they send me notice I have to pay $15 for a returned cheque (because they told me to put a stop payment on it), plus repay those same deductions and another penalty.  Oh yeah, you cannot talk to a live body about it - you have to mail or fax something in.  I am beyond p***ssed off.  If anyone with half a brain looked at our account they would see notes and also see we are obviously paid fully up to date.  STUPID GOVERNMENT! That is the part of the job that I hate, even if we are self employed.  Count on the Government to fully screw things up.  Let's see how many months it takes to correct.

4.  I am already saving for our vacation in 2016.  We are planning to go somewhere in Europe/Eurasia or Middle East.   We have to plan way ahead for this both the saving the money part and for booking the time off with our company as we already are almost in a sold-out situation for 2015(business is booming after a rougher than normal start to the year) and our next bookings will be in 2016.  Due to points collected on both company and personal credit cards we should have enough for one ticket to Europe by September.  That should save us at least $1000 off our travel expenses.  I have also over-saved for our trip to Mexico.  Any money left when all the Mexico bills are paid goes towards our 2016 travels and I am guessing there will be at least $1000 in the travel fund.

5.  We returned several months worth of bottles (deposits are mandatory here) last weekend and put $25 straight into the travel fund.

6.  Our garage sale on Saturday was moderately successful.  The weather was almost too good - sunny and hot and people were enjoying their yards/the beach instead of garage saling.  Between Mom and us we made $75.  It seems like a small amount but we had no high priced goods for sale, mostly small items.  Hubby put a high priced item on Craigslist originally intended for the garage sale and we made $60.  Our portion of the garage sale money was $40 so between Craigslist and the garage sale another $100 went into the travel fund.  I enjoy doing garage sales, and it was nice and short so not a ton of work.  I call it a success.  Anytime you get paid to purge items you no longer use it is a win-win situation.  I bought two items for $3 from another Condo's table which I will document in a later post.

Just over a week to go before we go on vacation to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico!  Woohoo!  After #3 of this list - I need it.  I have decided to take a 3 week blogging break so I can concentrate on packing and getting everything sorted that I need to.  If you feel like seeing what we will be seeing here is a live webcam from the hotel next door:
http://livestream.com/accounts/75381/events/1721273

There is a bit of a sea grass problem in the Mayan Riviera area due to global warming right now, but that will not bother us in the least.  The beaches get cleaned daily and unfortunately this is happening in a lot of locations around the Caribbean.  We love walking on the beaches and if grass is on your beach there is likely a clear one a few hundred feet down the beach.

I see a lot of rum and cokes, snorkeling (*not at the same time) and relaxing on the beach in my future.  I promise to take lots of pictures to show you when I return to blogging the last week of June. Hasta La Vista!