New games and Jeopardy!

Well, I was looking at my sheet of new games for the year and I'm up to 30 new ones. If I stay at this pace, I won't hit 100 new games for 2006, but I'll be pretty close! Although, with that convention later this year, that might put me over the top. We'll see... One recent new game took a mere 3 1/2 hours to play!! :-) It was a little longer than expected, but fun anyway.

I am going to watch a friend compete on Jeopardy! tomorrow. I'll let everyone know when her episode will actually air. I'm honored to know that I inspired her to try out for J!. Not by my fearsome trivia knowledge (ha!), but because I organized a group of people to watch a taping last year. Apparently, it had never really crossed her mind to try out until she went to watch a taping. She's supersmart, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she will dominate the competition!!

Chocolate? Yes, please!

I am not a food snob. There are things I don't like to eat (the #1 icky food is olives), but as far as quality, I don't get weird about eating mainstream stuff.

Why is this coming to mind? As I munch the head off of my Easter bunny from See's Candies, I am reminded of how much I really like See's and how my sister prefers Godiva Chocolates. I think it may be that I love the sweeter chocolates and Godiva is Belgian, so it's not quite as sweet. However, I can also be perfectly happy with a very mainstream Snickers bar or Hershey's. My sister will eat it, but prefers not to stoop to that level when eating chocolate.

She must not be a true chocoholic!! And my favorite See's candy? Dark chocolate chip truffles... Mmmmm.....

Traveling

I have made a decision to start traveling more this year. I already have quite a few tentative trips planned:

Summer

• Las Vegas - I was invited to see a friend play in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas! So, I'll be headed there to stay in a free hotel room and hope that he wins the big money! I think the jackpot is $8 million or something like that.
  
• Colorado - My sister is moving to Colorado, so I might be going on a road trip to help her move, but that hasn't been confirmed yet.

Fall

• Washington, DC - to visit my friend Cindy. This will probably be around Labor Day since that's her birthday time!
  
• Phoenix - My friend Shane's sister Alix is getting married, so I'm headed out there twice! Once for the bridal shower and then a month later for the wedding. Right after the wedding, I'll be heading to:
• Jackson, MS - to meet my friend Carolyn, her husband and her new baby for the first time! Then I'm heading directly to:
• Dallas - for a gaming convention. It'll be the first time I've ever gone to a convention of any sort. Actually, scratch that. I once went to a comic book convention to stand in line and get an autograph from Scott Bakula. I was having a Quantum Leap fixation at the time. :-)
• Chicago - My friends Josh and Jane moved to Chicago last year and I made a promise to visit them and visit them I will.
  

Wow, writing them all down really does make it seem like quite a bit of traveling, huh?
Most of them will be for weekends, except for the Phoenix/Jackson/Dallas trip which will be a 10 day trip or so. But it should be fun!! I'd really like to head out to Jacksonville, FL to visit my friends from high school too though. We'll see how it goes.

Now, I just need to start planning what trips I'll take next year. Shane and I have been discussing Fiji. I ran across an old email (because I'm an email packrat!) and she suggested a trip to Hawaii. That would be fun too! Somewhere tropical for sure.

Money blogs

Blogs are odd. For example, all the people I have on my friends list on LiveJournal are people I know in real life. Most of the people on my blogspot blog are in real life friends and some people I've never met in real life. Well, I've decided to start a third blog (because two just isn't enough) and it's going to be a money blog. This one will be completely anonymous! If you're interested in starting one, Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog started a new website only for money blogs. I don't know how it will work, but I'm going to give it a shot.

I started blogging because my sister had her blog going and I thought I'd give it a shot. I started writing about the stuff she and I like to talk about (mainly food and such), but then my money obsession starting taking over and little bits of that popped in with a side of friends and games. This thing has turned into a mish-mash which is fine, but I think I'll try the money-dedicated blog because I get down to particulars without having to worry about who's reading it. Sounds like fun, huh?? :-)

Maxed out for 2006

I made my final payment to max out my Roth IRA for 2005 today. The due date (in most states) is April 17th, so if you haven't done it yet, get on it! I started my Roth IRA in 2002 and I have maxed it out every year. This year I set up my account so that it will max out by December automatically. That makes me feel happy. Or maybe accomplished is a better word.