Waiting on the Weekend

I'm pretty excited for this upcoming weekend, I'm not gonna lie. Tomorrow [Thursday] is relatively busy at work, and Friday night we're setting up for Saturday's Chinese martial arts competition. I suppose I'll work late Friday night and then have to be here early on Saturday, staying through lunch or so on Saturday to make sure everything runs smoothly this year. Yes, you guessed it. Last year didn't go so well. No repeat performances of failure this time around!

Saturday night is dinner with 3 of our good friends, then adding 1 more to the group who couldn't make dinner to hit up the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. I've heard that Ron White won't be at this show, but I'm hoping he surprises us and makes an appearance. He's by far my favorite comedian on the tour, but even if he doesn't materialize, I'm sure it'll still be a night full of laughs to remember. And dinner? Oh yeah, it's at a fab restaurant called The Olive Tree. Trust me when I say their food is divine. Love-love-love it! Check out their website --- makes my mouth water!

May has some great things in store, including a trip down to Virginia to see a good friend from junior high and my ex-roomie's going away party since she's moving back to Connecticut. I'm also hoping to squeeze in a visit with my sister sometime during that month; we plan to meet in Pittsburgh 'cause she has to pick up her scanner there. I said I'd meet her there and we could spend a weekend together, so we'll see if that pans out. Good times!

Side note --- my commission bar is steadily climbing, although I'm still not sure if I'll reach my end goal. Good progress so far anyway. I'm also $498.97 richer as of last week. When I was 18 and lived in Green Bay with a roommate, she took my debit card and checkbook and stole approximately $500 from me. I received $12 last year when they garnished her income tax, and another $498.97 last Friday. I'm now paid back in full. We're friends again too, which might seem odd to some. I say life's too short to hold a grudge, and it's nice to be in contact with her again. Ah, things are good.

Commission Update

Sometimes I'm just not good at math. I think it has to do with my attention span and how sometimes, I just don't care. Case in point: I had to rework my commission sidebar because it was slightly jacked. Since I actually received my first commission on a paycheck in December [November's commission], I'm actually making it a 13 month attempt at savings. This meant I had to add to the total I wanted to save. Which affected my percentage saved so far. That, and I received January's commission on my paycheck on Monday, which meant I had to update anyway. So there we have it. I think I'm writing this more for myself in the future than for anyone out there reading it. Just so that when I'm having a blond moment again, I can pull this up and have an "ahhhh" moment. On the up side --- I'm almost a quarter of the way to my goal and slightly ahead of schedule. Sweet.

Commission

Commission is a wonderful thing. This is the first career move I've made where I earn commission, and while 2% doesn't sound like a lot, I learned in November that it can add up if I work hard at booking events. As I said in my previous post, I earned 5x what I was predicted to earn for my first month, which means I booked a helluva (dip? cheese?) lot more events than anyone expected. And while I'm assuming that some months will be leaner than others, I've decided to take all of my commission and put it into a separate savings account, which I plan only to touch in case of an emergency.

I've given myself a reasonable goal to reach by the end of 2010. Since I've seen how greedy Uncle Sam can be, I'm only counting what I actually see on my paycheck, not the amount I actually earn before taxes. It should be an interesting journey to watch my status bar climb each month. I haven't figured out what I'll do with the money eventually, but it'll be nice to have a tidy little sum to play with. Outdoor hot tub? Vacations? Motorcycle? We'll see!