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I know I just ordered it a week ago, and there was the holiday, but I want my Death Note manga boxset! :( I don't understand why it's taking so long when it arrived in Austin on Wednesday according to tracking. In fact, it only took a day to get from Atlanta to Austin, so why is it taking so long to get from Austin to Houston or Baytown? (I think it's supposed to go to Baytown based on previous experience, but I'm not sure.) For that matter, why is it in Austin in the first place? I haven't done the math, but just looking at the map, considering that Austin is in Central Texas and Houston/Baytown is in East Texas, wouldn't Houston/Baytown be closer to Atlanta than Austin? Gah!

Usually I'm patient about these things, but I was really, really hoping it would come in today. I'm so bummed. *sigh* Considering how much money I saved, I should have just splurged and paid for faster shipping. Why do I always have to be such a cheapskate? -_-

But speaking of saving money, if you're ever looking for some ridiculously cheap anime, you may want to check out Big Lots. They don't have the best selection since they sell overstock at clearance prices -- actually, it's downright terrible -- but DVDs there are only three dollars. O.o Can't beat that, can you? Not even Right Stuf can sell them that cheap! I picked up the classic anime movie Memories -- not bad for a blind three dollar buy -- and was tempted by the first disc of xxxHolic, but since they didn't have any of the others, I decided not to. Too bad they didn't have any anime boxsets in stock this time. I was hoping they would, since I heard they usually sell for ten. Oh, well, maybe next time! 
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Okay, so tonight, my family and I went to Sam Houston to watch the (horse) races. While waiting for the seventh race to start, I happened to mention that I liked a horse called Angels Accomplice. I didn't say anything about betting, because I wasn't planning to, but when I got back from the restroom, I discovered that Dad had already placed a two dollar bet on my choice horse to win for me.

To be honest, I didn't think the horse really had a prayer of winning. It wasn't among the favorites, and I basically picked it for the same reason why I always pick the horses I choose: I just liked the name. *laughs* If Dad had asked me before placing the bet, I probably would have went the safe route and told him to bet the horse to show (meaning third or better) instead of win, but since he didn't, I figured it was a wasted two dollars and pulled out my GBA to play Pac-Man. I didn't even look up when the race began.

Then...

MOM: Meg (my nickname), your horse won!
ME: *briefly looks up from the game* Oh, really? That's cool. *goes back to playing the game, figuring that I probably won about ten dollars or so*

A few minutes later when the results are made official:

MOM: Meg, look, your horse is paying $47.40!
ME: *cue jaw dropping to the floor*

$47.40!!!

Of course, I paid Dad back the two dollars, but I have never won that much on a single race in my life! I still can't quite believe it! Actually, we all did pretty well this outing. Mom won sixteen dollars in the eighth race, and Dad won thirteen in the ninth. It seemed the night for surprise winners, since in my experience, most winning tickets pay less than ten.

Hmm, I wonder what I should do with this unexpected windfall. Save it? Or blow it all at Right Stuf? I have had my eye on the Le Chevalier D'Savings DVD Bargain Bundle ($80) ever since I finished watching Le Chevalier D'eon -- fantastic show, btw -- from Netflix... Must ponder this.
 
 
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Okay, I know I said I wouldn't talk about this any more, but today I got a shipping confirmation email from Right Stuf. I thought, of course, that it would be for the order that was giving me trouble. It was, in a way, but it was for one of the backordered items (Full Moon wo Sagashite Vol. 4), which they charged to my card, since I did have enough left on the card to cover that at least.

So now I'm worried about the rest of the order again. I mean, it's been in processing forever, so I figured once they got the new card information, they would send it right out, but they haven't. I don't even know if they got my email. I mean, if they had, wouldn't they have charged my mom's bank card instead of my card for the backordered items? Based on that, and the fact that it still shows the original card on the order status page for "payment", it seems like they haven't changed the card associated with the order. But, on the other hand, they didn't charge me shipping on the backorder, and you're supposed to spend over $49 to get free shipping, so maybe that means the rest of the order is fine, and they just decided to split the order between cards for some reason? And most of the items are on backorder now... I suppose it's possible that when the first card was declined, they might have decided to give the in-stock merchandise to somebody else who could actually pay, but the order status on everything is still listed as "processing" instead of "on order from the manufacturer".

Gah! I don't know what's going on!

I hate this stupid card for causing me so many problems!

(Edit: Emailed them, so hopefully I can put my mind at ease.)
heavenly_pearl: (Default)
So, I found out why my credit card was declined at Right Stuf. The first statement came in today, and it turns out the company charged a $59 annual fee right off the bat, which was just about the total of my order. Sure would have been nice to know when they sent it to us.

Not cool. Not cool at all.
heavenly_pearl: (Default)

Good news from Right Stuf. I can email them another card's information, and they'll let me charge the order to that. Yay! I don't have to cancel my order after all!

Except...now I kind of want to. *laughs* I was looking through their in-stock manga inventory earlier, trying to see what else I could order if I couldn't sort out this mess (since most everything I ordered the first time is now on backorder), when I noticed how cheap the Death Note and I's manga were. Right Stuf usually sells them for $5.99 a volume, which is already quite a steal, but with 20% off that, I could get them for about $4.79 (if my math is right) each. At least the volumes that they had in stock.

But, you know, I think I'll just stick with my original order. I don't need to start collecting another series right now, no matter how good a deal it is. *laughs* Maybe next time, since I'll be finished with Full Moon wo Sagashite by then and Suppli's future is murky because of the Tokyopop restructuring. We'll see.

Oh, BTW, the last Absolute Boyfriend volume came in today. *dances* Haven't read it yet, but I can't wait to get to it. ^_^

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Got an email today about the order I placed with them last week. Seems the new credit card Mom got me was declined, and I have no idea why. Mom has charged some things to it, but I made sure to ask her if there was enough money left on it before I made the order, and I don't think I messed up the security code or expiration date (the other two possible problems). This totally sucks. I'm hoping they'll let me switch it over to another card without actually having to call them -- I do not do the phone thing; I hate it, hate it, hate it and refuse to do it -- but if not, the order will have to be cancelled. *sighs* It wouldn't be such a big deal if those Trigun keychains I ordered hadn't been limited quantities, and if it hadn't been such a great sale. I hate this.

EDIT: You know what? I am an idiot. That Right Stuf sale is still on-going! It doesn't end until Wednesday! *laughs* They even still have a few of the Vash and Wolfwood keychains in stock. I'll wait and see what kind of reply I get tomorrow concerning the email I sent them about changing to another card, but if I end up having to cancel the order, it's no big deal. I can just reorder everything!

*phew*

I feel much better now. ^_^

EDIT 2: Darn it! The sale applies only to in stock items, and most of what I ordered (except for xxxHolic Vol 12, which ironically is now in stock) is now backordered, so I won't be able to do that. *sigh* I guess I'll just have to hope I can switch the card on the first order. Or I could order something else, I suppose. Maybe a short series... Hmm.
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So, I finished the HTML coding for my Fruits Basket timeline today. You can find it here. I have to warn you that there are, of course, spoilers up to Volume 19, so stay away if you don't want to be spoiled. If you do happen to give it a look, though, feel free to point out any mistakes I might have made or events I forgot. The bolded sections are parts I was unsure about, so if you think they should go somewhere else, I'm open to suggestions.

In other news, Mom totally surprised me today by giving me my own credit card. O.o Well, technically, it is her account since I don't have a bank account -- I like dealing in cash -- but I'm an authorized buyer on it and it's basically mine to do whatever I want with as long as I have the cash to cover it. Whoo! No more having to buy Visa gift cards or borrowing Mom's bank card whenever I want to order something online!

*dances*
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I don't know what it is, but, lately, I keep managing to buy things on sale without actually realizing that they were on sale. ^_^ Last Friday, Mom and I went to Wal-mart to get stuff for Thanksgiving dinner, and I decided to spend the thirty dollars I (finally) got for my birthday to buy the new Celine Dion CD and Josh Groban's Christmas album (both which are fabulous, by the way). They were both originally around $14, but when I got up to the register, I found out the Celine CD was actually on sale for $10. Then, today when we went back to Wal-mart after church, I decided to get a couple of cheap video games for my GBA: Castlevania (NES Classic) and a Pac-man cartridge with four different Pac-man games. Those were priced as being $15, which I already thought was a good deal, but again when they rung up, they were on sale for ten.

Man, I hope this streak lasts when I start buying Christmas presents! *laughs*
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Just got in from Midnight Mass. I'm about to go to sleep, but I want to get down my annual loot list before I do, since we opened gifts like we usually do on Christmas Eve.

ExpandChristmas Presents )

I think that's about it. Like I suspected, I didn't get much from my wishlist, but it was still a nice Christmas. ^_^
heavenly_pearl: (Default)
Make a list of everything you would like to receive for Christmas. Yes, Christmas is supposed to be a time of giving and thinking of others, but we’re all guilty of experiencing those greedy gimmies. So why not give in to it, if just for a moment? The list can be short or long. It can be as simple or as outrageous as you want it to be. You can list what you actually asked for, create an ultimate wish list, or a mixture of both. It’s all up to you! 


I guess that's about it. Makes me wonder what is under the tree since I never got the chance to give Mom my list before she announced she had finished her shopping and I doubt she knew I wanted most of the stuff on the list. Guess that means she spent a lot of money on stuff I don't want. *sigh*

*sigh*

Dec. 4th, 2006 09:24 am
heavenly_pearl: (Default)
Netflix, get the last disc of the second season of Kaleido Star in already! It's been out for a month now. Why don't you have it yet?

Yume is sad. :(

In happier news, my dad paid me $140 for typing up his inventory, so I think I'm going to go ahead and get that Planet of the Apes boxset for Mom despite it being more expensive than I originally wanted to pay. I think I'll probably get it from Best Buy, though, which has it for about seven dollars cheaper than the B&N website.

I also got my dad his Christmas present -- a white dress shirt to go with the nice pinstripe pants Mom got for him -- so once I get the boxset and maybe buy something else for Dad since the shirt was only $13, I will officially be done with Christmas shopping.
heavenly_pearl: (Default)



Yep, I did it. ^_^ The story is ...not very good, but the important thing is that I actually finished. Wahoo! Hopefully, now I've trained myself to be a little more faster with my writing from now on, although I still don't know what I'm going to work on next. I want to write a Kaleido Star short, but I can't start that until Netflix gets the last disc -- which came out earlier this month -- in so I can know how the series ends. :( So, for now, it looks like .moon's holiday challenge is top priority, but that should only take a day or two at the most to write 2,000 words. (I have been writing 2,500 a day this month, after all. ^_^) I don't know what I'll do after that.

Anyway, today Mom and I also went to Humble do a little more Christmas shopping. I bought a scrapbook for Crystle and got a gift card from B&N so I could order the Planet of the Apes boxset for my mom, but the stupid website raised the sale price from last night of about $25 to $43 today. Grr. I'm not paying that much of an increase, so it looks like I'll just have to hope that it'll go on sale again before Christmas or think of something else to get her, which sucks because it was the perfect gift. :( 

Also bought a couple of things for myself with the $60 I got for my birthday: the Witch Hunter Robin boxset and Il Divo's new Siempre CD.

My poor wallet is beginning to feel a little empty. *laughs*

Czech Fest

Oct. 1st, 2006 10:13 pm
heavenly_pearl: (Default)
Why is it that every time I look forward to something, I always seem to be disappointed when the day finally comes?

I had been looking forward to our church's annual bazaar, the Czech Fest, for the past couple of months. It had been a long time since we had gone, and I remember that it used to be a ton of fun when I was a little girl. Unfortunately, it just wasn't the same. We only stayed for about twenty minutes or so, and out of the $25 Mom gave me to blow, I only spent a dollar at the cake booth. A dollar! That's how lame it was.

Well, it might have been fun if it wasn't so hot and Mom hadn't decided that she wasn't interested in any of the booths that required more than picking numbers and someone spinning a big wheel. Sure, I suppose I could have gone off and played the actual games myself, but Mom clearly wasn't having a good time, so when she suggested we go, I didn't argue.

However, the day wasn't a total bust. After we left the fairgrounds and got groceries, we decided to go to the grand opening of Cato's, which had just moved to a new store, and I got some cute new clothes. ^_^ The $24 I had left? Much better spent on a blue twinset.

(Another disappointment: The Astros lost their last game of the regular season, so they didn't make the play-offs. :( Oh, well, at least I don't have to worry about missing my favorite shows to watch them.)
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My sister Laura came home Friday night so that she could go car shopping on Saturday. She found a 2001 Cavalier (or however it is spelled) that she really likes, but it's a bit out of her price range at the moment. (It was about $6,000, I think.) She's trying to figure out if she can handle making payments on it, even considering selling blood platelets for money. We'll see what happens.

In other news, my life is dull. :P

That is all.
heavenly_pearl: (Default)
Sometimes, I really do feel like a bank.

So, Laura's car finally died on her. It's been dying a slow, painful death practically ever since she bought it. There was always something wrong with it, and quite frankly, I'm surprised that it lasted this long (about four or five years, I think). Anyway, she has to buy a new one, so I'm loaning her the $500 I had saved up.

I don't mind, really. Actually, I was the one who offered to do it. My mom wanted to give her some money to help her out, but we don't exactly have a lot of extra cash laying around and I didn't want my parents to take out yet another loan, so me loaning her the money was the best idea. It's not like I really need the money for anything at the moment. I still have a $50 gift card from B&N I can use to buy the Someday's Dreamers manga, among others, so I'm pretty much set for at least a couple of months. (Yes, I have simple needs. ^_^)

It just really amuses me how I'm always loaning my family money. Somebody stole our bank card number and bought an expensive cell phone with it, causing our checks to bounce? Here's $300. A bill's higher than you thought it would be? Take a hundred. Dad needs money for gas? $10? Sure.

*laughs*

I really am the Bank of Yume.
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I'll type up a longer update later, but I wanted to go ahead and type up my list of presents while they're still fresh in my mind. (My family always opens up presents on Christmas Eve.)

Pretear boxset
Ah, My Goddess! DVD
Vol. 13 of Ayashi no Ceres
Vol. 16 of Fushigi Yugi
Vol. 10 and 11 of Fruits Basket (one which came with a free mini-calender)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mariah Carey - The Emancipation of Mimi CD
Sarah Brightman - Love Changes Everything CD
Il Divo - Il Divo CD
Blue CD case
Black skirt
Teal satin blouse
Purple sweater with white collar
A couple of picture frames
Candy
A "Scorpio" journal and a couple of pens
A "Mystic Fountain" from my sister (Basically, a fountain that creates steam)
$190 (Twenty from Mom and Dad, twenty from Uncle Stan and Aunt Valeta, and the rest from "Santa")

I think that's about it. ^_^
heavenly_pearl: (Default)
The tree is up, and it's blue and silver.

*sigh*

I suppose it is pretty enough, but it also looks kind of depressing. It's like the tree somehow knows this is going to be a sucky Christmas because of all our recent money problems. It doesn't help that Mom hasn't put up any other Christmas decorations beside the tree. Usually our walls are covered with all our elementary school Christmas crafts, the manger's under the tree, the village is out, and our trailer is covered with lights, but I guess Mom decided it wasn't worth the effort this year. I can't say I really blame her -- it's not like we'll have any company, and Laura will probably only come down for a few days -- but still, it's sad.

I wonder if Laura even knows about the blue Christmas tree yet, since she left before Mom put it up. I didn't even know about it myself until Mom snuck out to Wal-mart on Thanksgiving and bought the decorations. I have a feeling Laura is going to be really disappointed when she does hear about it. She's always loved Christmas trees, and she might not even get to put one up in her apartment because her roommate/landlord (Lacy's family owns the condo) is Jewish and isn't too keen on the idea. Actually, that's not true. Lacy did eventually say that she could put up a tree if she decorated it in Hannukah colors (blue and white, ironically), so to come home to find the exact kind of tree she didn't want will probably be kind of a letdown.
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Remember last week when I was talking about how someone had used Mom's bank card number to buy a cell phone?

Well, the bank gave us back the stolen money, only to take it away again after Mom already used it to pay off some bills.

GRRRR!

Apparently, they have to do an investigation because somehow this guy (or girl) also used the PIN. My mom doesn't even know the PIN to that card! She forgot it a long time ago, so she only uses it as a charge card. What did this person do? Hack into the bank computer? A complete lucky guess?

Now all my cash (over $300) is gone because Mom had to borrow it to try to take care of the hot checks, and she had to take some money from Laura's old checking account (which was joint since Laura was underage when she opened it) as well. She says she'll pay us back in a couple of weeks when she gets the money from the Christmas savings thing they do at her job, but the way things are going, I don't know if she'll be able to. I hope she can pay us back by Christmas, even if it's just some of it. This was the first year I was actually going to be able to buy half-way decent Christmas presents for my family with my own money. I even had the gifts picked out: a Folgers gift set for Dad, a Sims expansion pack for Laura, and the Back to the Future DVD boxset for Mom (or maybe chipping in with Laura for the third season of Charmed).

This sucks. It's already bad enough that we're behind on bills because of Mom and Dad missing work during the Rita evacuation, and now this. Mom's even saying we might have to cancel AOL and Netflix for a while since she doesn't want them to take any more money from our checking account until this is fixed and most of our credit cards are maxed out. I don't really mind if we have to cancel Netflix for a few months (as long as I can finish RahXephon before we do), but I really hope we can somehow keep AOL. I need my Internet!

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