Show me the money!

Geesh - the real world kinda sucks!

After waking up from 12 hours of blissful sleep (thank god I have the worlds laziest dog - he slept for 15 hours meaning even after 12 hours sleep, I still had 3 more hours of getting life sorted before having to take him out for his morning (ahem 1:30pm) walk)!

Anyhow, my point being that in the mere two and a half weeks that I was away, there seemed to be a whole lot of crap that happened. First was that a check I wrote to a friend and mailed must have been intercepted and cashed by some asshole (excuse my French) because my friend never received it and yet it was cashed. a minimum 90 day investigation is now open with afidavid's having to get signed etc - geesh...

Whilst I was dealing with the above shenanegans, I also notice that there was over $2000 missing from my personal account and another $1000 from my joint account. All were taken out of ATM's which is strange as
A. they were done while I was in NZ
B. they would have had to have my cards (I had them with me in NZ)
C. they would have had to have my pin numbers
people are telling me now that there are things that people attached to ATM's to steal this info - I wish to say to whomever did this that I curse the day they were born...
Another 90 day investigation and I SHOULD get my money back... AGH!

It was then onto calling my car insurance company to ask why on earth they decided to up my insurance $50 a month for no reason followed by another call to my health insurance to ask why, after being insured with them for a mere 2 months with NO claims have they decided to up my rates 40% - seriously folks.. what is going on here?

After that, I was hungry and realized that my husband Ryan (bless his heart) does not know what a grocery store is (this is fine as I have a secret obsession with grocery stores and LOVE to do the shopping), but this also means that there was NOTHING to eat in the house as I have not been here to refill the cupboards. One trip to the grocery store ($150 later), I then got on my next "to do" item which was to deal with a $250 bill I received from the NZ hospital I went to when my eye decided to become a softball sized puss pod (ewww). When I was there they said because I was an Aussie that it was going to be free - guess that was a big fat lie as there was the bill waiting for me. Still have not figured that one out as it would seem because I have not lived in Australia for quite some time now I am not allowed to use Medicare which means I may just have to pay the damn $250, but given that I am currently unemployed, have had most of my funds drained from my bank account and have rent coming up... it may have to be placed on the back burner for now...

PHEW! So what does a girl do in times of stress? She makes some fried food is what! Thats right folks, I busted out my inner Asian Martha Stewart and decided to cook some Japanese food. Ryan had been hanging out for what he calls Japanese Friend Chicken (to the more refined it is called "Karaage")

and consists of marinating chicken (and for me firm Tofu) in a mixture of soy sauce, grated ginger and Mirin for a few hours...

Then putting them in a bag with corn starch to coat them...

Then deep frying them in vegetable oil...

Then eating them hot with a dipping sauce that consists of Soy Sauce and White Rice Vinegar...

YUM! It is also important to set aside some chicken and just plain boil it for your four legged friend...

Now we are both having water wars as we are having total salt overload but it was totally worth it! We walked off out dinner with Little Pig and ran into one of our neighbors who is not having such a great start to 2010. I offered to bring some morning tea over to her place tomorrow so have to start planing that now... (notice that I am trying to keep myself super occupied so as not to think of the impending Your Big Break announcement??!!)... In fact a friend just forwarded me another competition for a Los Angeles competition to enter (for this one you actually have to MAKE a 3 minute movie)... perhaps this is what I shall do in the coming weeks! Although not lucrative, I may become a professional competition entererrrerrrer... is there such a thing? Can I get sponsored? hmmmmmm...