Today, in the space of three hours, we were approved for fifty thousand more than we thought we could possibly qualify for on a home loan, I won two free tickets to Las Vegas in a drawing, and my boss gave me a bonus of several hundred dollars more than I expected. Best Thursday I've had in years.

The home loan means we can look at something we'd actually like to live in. It doesn't mean we can afford anything nice, mind you, just something liveable in a decent neighborhood. I don't actually care that we now owe more money than I've ever imagined. Years of living beyond my means have inured me to worrying about mere figures. Maybe once we put down an offer on something it'll hit me, but I don't have a qualm right now.

Winning the office drawing for the free tickets was terribly exciting. I was supposed to go to Vegas in June but our reason for going was cancelled. I have a strong desire to see the new hotels that have opened since I was last in Vegas three years ago, chiefly Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Paris, and the Venetian. I'll probably stay at a Travelodge instead of someplace fancy, but it will be very useful to tour the hotels and get up to date on one of the primary destinations we sell. Three years might as well be thirty when it comes to Sin City. The regular airfare is $140 round trip from the Bay Area, so it represents a nice little savings.

And ooh, that bonus. Considering we lost a huge account last year I really didn't expect an increase in the size of my year end profit sharing check. Sweet. That sucker is the basis of my brand new savings account. I'm not chancing putting it into my checking account. Far too much temptation. From now on I'm going to divert a bit into my savings account so I can buy some of the big money items I crave, like a sofa that's more than five feet long, or a cruise to Mexico, or even a new computer. Do you realize we've never bought our own computer? Both of them were given to us, one for our wedding gift (an amalgam of various ancient Apple components built by Allen Baum just for us), and one by Vanderbilt so John could work at home. FrankenLisaSE still works perfectly, by the way. But as I was saying, we haven't bought anything ourselves for home use, and this Performa seems terribly slow at 75 Mh with 48 MB of memory. I'd really love to get a laptop. Now, maybe, I will do better at setting money aside with that seed money sitting there to encourage me.

On second thought, maybe Vegas is a bad idea. Talk about temptation.

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