Us, December 25, 2021: Leo, Roy, Ondine, John, Shadow
Us, December 25, 2021: Leo, Roy, Ondine, John, Shadow
It's been a pretty quiet week for us, not even an absence of having to go in for jury duty to report.
Work has been humming along for both of us. Friday there was a Thrive Local online workshop that Ondine put together. For his part, John thrived locally working on a project just down the hill, which unexpectedly gave him Friday off! So, he got to do a bunch of his usual Saturday chores on Friday, leaving Saturday free to visit his Mom in LA.
We went to Ikea last weekend, to pick out a dining room light fixture and also to eat at the restaurant. We've been on a mission to “earn and burn” our Ikea rewards points, because they do expire. We'd collected a lot of points because of our living room bookshelves and chairs, plus furnishing two rooms in Barbara's house to get them ready to rent. Anyways, we had enough points for $50 off our purchase (a dining room light fixture named “Nösund” and a spider plant, plus we found some great throw pillow covers in the clearance section) and free entrees for two! We tried the new fish balls and falafel balls, and they were both great! John, as usual, got two desserts and a cinnamon scone to share! (The scone was taken home and split the next morning.)
Then, John made a mid-week after-work run back to Ikea to buy a small “Burvik” table for our living room. We'd chosen it on our previous trip, but forgot to buy it. We still had enough points to get $20 off! And now we have nearly enough points for another two free entrees!
We also have an appointment with a kitchen remodeling place, although John has also been playing with the online Ikea kitchen planner.
Over the weekend, Ondine did a deep dive into our monthly and yearly expenses, prior to a meeting with a financial planner this week as part of our pre-retirement planning. We want to make sure we'll be OK if she stops working, since she's the main breadwinner; we also want information on how to transition to things like Medicare, when to start taking Social Security, and how and when to actually take our required minimum distributions from our retirement accounts. Even if she retires, John will continue working as usual, because he loves his job and his work is on-call so he's essentially a professional day-laborer.
John, meanwhile, drove to L.A. on Saturday to visit his Mom. She was very excited to learn about Leo being accepted at both
UCSD and UCLA (her alma mater). Here they are at lunch! The dessert was taiyaki, a traditional Japanese fish-shaped
waffle-like confection filled with sweet red bean paste and/or ice cream. Yum!
Coincidentally, Leo was also on the road to and from L.A., to attend an event for potentially incoming students at UCLA. He loved the campus, and said the engineering school there is really nice, as is the support for transfer students. Leo's car, we're pleased to report, did fine.
Speaking of cars, John took his for a smog check last week; Ondine's car is also due. Now that John's Automotive isn't open on Saturdays, that makes ordinary maintenance stuff a lot harder for us!
Also, Sunday we had a bunch of yardwork done, cleaning up the front and back yards. Ondine visited her Mom, baked scones, and continued our Grosse Finanz-Check.
Our summer trip to Germany and England is getting closer, and we're very excited about it! Leo will be joining us, and has helped with the organizing and arranging of activities. It's hard to believe that the Coast to Coast Walk was exactly two years ago! John is still organizing photos and materials.
Neighborhood gas prices still range between $5.89 and $6.49 per gallon.
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