This morning I returned just one of the summer tops I bought at Macy’s and since I was there, I purchased another $100 worth of capris and summer tops at Macy’s and Coldwater Creek. Not my usual modus operandi, but I haven’t clothes shopped in 3 years, and I’m determined not to look like a middle-aged woman with no fashion sense with all these 20-somethings I’ll be working with. I put it all on my new Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. I need to charge $3,000 by end of August to earn back $400 in gift cards.

After the mall, I hit Trader Joe’s. It was super hot today, up to 91 degrees, so I brought a small cooler with ice paks to keep the food cold. Also put it on the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Later in the day I went to pick up my new Honda Civic. Was able to pay $1,000 of it with the Chase card. (That’s the most they’d let me charge, in addition to the $1,000 deposit.) I’ll post a photo of her tomorrow! The salesman ran through all the controls in the car, but of course I quickly forgot most everything. I will be carefully reading the manual, to be sure. The car even has a camera mounted in the back bumper so when you put the car in reverse, you see an image of the ground behind you. I think it’s meant to make sure you don’t run over anyone; it will likely be a standard feature in all cars one day, I think.

I don’t think my old kayak rack will work with the new car, especially since I got it with window visors to keep out the glare and rain. They disassembled it for me and I have it, but I guess I won’t be kayaking on my own anytime soon since I’ll have no way to transport the kayak unless I meet another kayaker. This kind of bums me out, becus I got so much enjoyment out of kayaking, but truth be told, I’ve been going less and less since I bought my kayak in 2007.

After picking up the car I headed to A.’s to show it off to her, and we had already planned to go out to dinner. We went to an old favorite of mine, an Italian place I haven’t been to in years due to my frugalness by necessity. She wound up treating me to the dinner to celebrate the new car and the new job. I paid the tip. But I was able to charge the whole dinner on the Chase card as well.

Also tonight I charged my water bill on the Chase card. So I’ve had the card less than a week and have already managed to charge $1,260 on it. I had hoped to also charge my new car insurance, which would help hugely in reaching the target spend, but my agent told me it would be significantly more expensive if I treated it as a new policy, since I wanted to charge the full $770. Instead, it’s just being treated as a modification of the existing policy, so I’ll get a bill for just $93 to pay. So anyway, I still need to charge $580 for each of the next 3 months. That seems doable when you consider groceries and gas and maybe some more clothes shopping for the job. The only other non-recurring charge I can think of is my $80 dump sticker, which comes up for renewal in June. I can also charge the phone/Internet on it too, each month, although at least one of those phone/Internet bills I want to charge on my Americard, since they have a deal, good thru June 30, where you get a $15 gift card if you charge just one phone/Internet/cable bill on it. Seems too easy to pass up.

I might consider getting two new faucets for the upstairs bathroom. The hot water handle on the one faucet locked up ages ago and can’t be used, while the plug thingy in the sink on the other faucet is beginning to rust becus I made the mistake of leaving that sink filled with water for my old cat to drink from. If I ever sell the place, those things will need to be fixed, so why not pick out some faucets now at Home Depot and then have a plumber do. I could charge it. There are probably other small home improvements or items I could buy for the house if needed. Now that I’m making better money, I will allow myself to consider that.

Nothing much planned for the weekend, besides mowing. It’s very, very hot here but I have NOT opened any windows yet this year at all (!) because Waldo has had such terrible allergies each summer. He had a lot of trouble breathing and I disliked traumatizing him by taking him to the vet for a shot. His breathing is fairly good now. I’ve been checking the pollen count daily, waiting for a day I can open the windows, but the pollen count has largely been “High” or “Moderate.” When it becomes “Low,” I’ll open the windows. I need to get through one more warm day tomorrow, up to 86 I think. Starting on Monday, temps will moderate to the 70s.