On my way home...

I'm going to be home for Thanksgiving.  Melissa and I will be heading to Dad's house this afternoon and staying there for feasting, socializing, airsoft wars, more feasting, and such.  Hopefully there will be plenty of pie to go around. :)

This week has gone by pretty quickly.  I did some much needed filing over the weekend.  Oh, which reminds me...I got an M&T Bank checking account when I moved up here, but over the past year, I have been disappointed that some of the services that I had become quite used to were not free anymore.  These include Web Bill Pay, No fee for using your debit card as a debit card at the store, and the ability to download your transactions into Quicken on my home computer.  M&T's policy is to charge fees for all of these things...all of which I want to be able to use without the fees.  Well, a few weeks ago, I did some checking into a more local bank..."Community Bank NA" exactly.  I found out that they offer all of these services free, and because I have my car insurance taken out automatically, I was even eligible for the 'VIP checking' that yielded a tiny bit of interest.  So, I switched checking accounts and have been pretty pleased with Community Bank so far.

Web Bill Pay is amazing.  You can send a payment to virtually anyone.  It all is done through the Banks website and they will even determine if the payment can be sent electronically or not.  If not, have no fear, they will mail a check...free of charge! :)  I pay all of my bills this way.  For instance, i have my rent payment set up so at the same time every month, they send a check to my landlord.  It's nice.  And it saves stamps and checks and envelopes and time. :)  I've even noticed that my Chase credit card has the option of sending payments much in this same way only it charges your credit card instead.  Interesting.

Interesting that it has become SO easy to spend money.  It's also interesting that statistics show that people spend approximately 12% more when they use a card versus Cash.  The internet can be a great thing, but it can also help you spend WAY more than you have, only this way, you don't even have to leave your home to do so.  Ebay, Amazon, iTunes, and countless other online stores will suck you dry if you don't have the self control to...well...say NO to yourself. lol.

I had my car in the garage yesterday.  It needed an idler pulley, a tensioner assembly, and a new serpentine belt.  The idler pulley would randomly make this pretty loud noise.  It has been doing it on and off for the past year almost, but i figured i should get it taken care of before it left me sitting somewhere.  I especially didn't want to get left sitting somewhere between here and Ohio this weekend.  That WOULD be inconvenient.

I got a new landlord and this winter, she is willing to let me keep my motorcycle in the shed that is on the property.  That will be nice...last winter, the snow came so fast and so hard that I didn't really get to put it away where I had intended to keep it.  Seein' as I had a storage unit down the road, but the roads were too nasty to get it there.  Anyway, I will put it away next week and take the battery out and bring it inside where it will be nice and cozy warm.  I might even put the battery tender on it for a little while.

One thing about snow not coming quite as fast as i thought it would this year is that I have had my snow tires on for almost three weeks now and still no real sign of snow.  BUT the roads haven't been hot or anything so i probably haven't put too much undue wear on them yet.  Never the less, i would like to have snow soon so as not to waste my wonderful snow tires :)  And so I can snowboard too.

Ok.  I should get going.
Hope everyone has a blessed Thanksgiving.
-Till Next Time