Caustic Musings

How much did you spend on your wedding?

2008-05-11T20:22:19Z

As our first wedding anniversary approaches in July and the official summer wedding season kicks off down here in central Florida, I’ve been reflecting back on our wedding last year and looking over the budget spreadsheet to see if there was anything I regretted on it.

Chris and I were married last year for just under $9000 (including the rehearsal dinner, rings, clothing, marriage license, all vendor fees, decorations, and food) for a wedding with around 120 guests. We fully planned on paying for the entire wedding ourselves with a budget of $5000-$7000 and a guest list of around 80 people, but our parents surprised us by contributing lump sum gifts ($5000 from my parents, and $1800 from DH’s parents) for us to use as we chose and by picking up the costs of the cakes ($175 from my parents) and rehearsal dinner (~$800 from DH’s parents). I know that a lot of people would simply add the parental contributions to their original budget and up the total for the wedding to $11800-$13800, but we opted instead to stay as close to our original amount as possible while squeezing in the 40 additional guests that our parents more or less made us invite, LOL. Between the unexpected help from our parents and the monetary gifts received from our guests, our out of pocket cost for the wedding was only $704. We are definitely not one of those couples who will still be paying off the wedding 10 years down the road.

Since I have more of a frugal male geek’s attitude toward most things, including weddings, I would have been perfectly happy with a rented dress (bridal gown rentals are pretty popular in my birth country of Taiwan–my mother wore a rental on her wedding day) for myself, origami flowers, 30 guests from my side, a reception dinner held at my favorite Asian fusion buffet at $16.99/person, and a DJ that could also provide karaoke services. Alas, DH is apparently more romantic and traditional about this sort of thing than I am, and I ended up buying a dress after all ($99 David’s Bridal clearance with free minor alterations from my younger sister; it pays to be a stock size 6), paying for flowers (I almost threw up when I placed the order at the florist 2 weeks before the ceremony–I will NEVER spend that much on plant material that I can’t plant in the ground and eat later again), extra required guests, and a reception and ceremony at our local country club that was $25 per guest plus beer, wine, and appetizers.

Well, at least I did get my karaoke DJ.

We did a lot of things ourselves and shopped around for the best bargains on venue (a friend of the family was a member of the country club and got us the $25 per guest rate; the regular price was $30 per guest), favors, decorations, jewelry, and apparel. We used friends for photography and videography, designed and printed our own invitations, ordered many supplies online with coupon codes and free shipping, ordered half a dozen delicious, regular-sized cakes in different flavors from the local Asian bakery and Publix grocery store instead of paying hundreds for an overpriced tower of dry cake coated with fondant, and generally tried to make things nice without paying inflated wedding industry prices.

The only thing I’d change if I could do it all again is to allot some time to learn how to do flower arrangements myself. And maybe to have the wait staff set aside some of those yummy cakes for us. The desserts must have been great, because there was absolutely none left by the time Chris and I finished talking to all of the tables and had a chance to look for some, LOL.

I plan to do what my parents did and contribute a lump sum amount of around $5000 (adjusted for inflation) to the weddings of any children DH and I may have, but we won’t be paying for a $20k extravaganza even if we have a daughter and our finances allow for it. I like the idea of letting the kids know early that they need to foot most of the bill for the extras in their lives and at least half of the bill for grown up things like college and weddings as well. If we do have more to give beyond $5000, we would prefer to earmark that as a gift to help the couple get a start on a downpayment on their home.

Oh, and I will teach myself how to do flowers WAY ahead of time so I can handle that portion of the wedding for my kids and spare them the nauseating “OMG, I just squandered $823 on flowers that will die in 3 days. ARGH!” feeling that I had last July! I may even take up cake decorating.

How much did you pay for your wedding, and is there anything you regret purchasing for it? Did you receive any help from your family and/or friends (monetary or service)? Do you plan on helping your children out with their wedding expenses?

$9.99 Champion Shape Sports Bra

2008-05-01T13:02:07Z

UPDATE: As of 12:30 PM Friday, 5/2/08, size 34B in black AND white are back in stock on the site!

Okay ladies, I thought that the $19.99 Champion sports bra sale last month was a good deal, but oh my…this one is even better!

Onehanesplace.com has my favorite
Sport Shape t-back bra on clearance for $9.99. These are the high motion control rated sports bras with the wicking fabric and shaped seam design that won’t squash you flat like most compression bras. They normally run $33 or so retail.

The sizes are a bit limited if you are lacking in the cup department, but when I checked, 34C and 36B were still in stock. Alas, no 34A/34B for yours truly, though the back-order notice said that they would be back in stock around May 19. I was also kind of bummed that the cute light blue color shown in the pictures was not available in the lower size ranges, but hey, the black and white options that ARE offered are perfectly serviceable, too.

And to make the deal even better, here are some non-stackable coupon codes you can use:

15% off entire order (Expires 5/2/08): 611080
Free shipping on orders $60 and up (Expires 5/2/08): 611081
$3 flat rate shipping (Expires 5/2/08): 611082
10% off $50+, 15% off $75+, or 20% off $100+ (Expires 7/31/08): 470802
Free shipping (Expiration unknown, but still good 5/11/08): 608910

Good luck! I hope some of you get in on this deal.

I’m going to go back to my corner now and sulk about the shortage of sizes for rack-deficient chicas like me.

Total Money Makeover Update: April 2008

2008-05-01T04:16:21Z

It’s been four months since Chris and I began our slightly modified Total Money Makeover plan, and despite our lack of what author Dave Ramsey dubs “gazelle intensity,” we’ve made some decent progress toward eliminating out non-mortgage debt. If you count the $4200 home equity line of credit we knocked out from September 2007-January 2008 for our new air conditioner, we have paid off $17,830 in non-primary mortgage debt so far.

I say that we aren’t gazelle intense because we haven’t done most of the things that Ramsey’s less fortunate listeners often have to do in order to dig themselves out of debt:

- Work a second or third part-time job
- Sell off leveraged big ticket items
- Cut off ALL entertainment and travel
- Eat a lot of rice and beans

Because our debt was largely comprised of low-interest rate student, auto, and home loans, not credit card balances, and we are fortunate enough to have a dual income household that brings in enough to cover basic living expenses, retirement funding, a reasonable amount of entertainment spending, and debt payments on those loans without ever being at risk of falling behind, we have been able to throw a lot of money at our debt snowball without changing our lifestyle very much. Granted, I have had tightwad impulses since early childhood, and Chris has been pretty responsible with his finances since an ex-girlfriend set him straight years ago, so you could say that the only thing holding us back from paying my car and his student loan off early was complacency. It was easy to just keep on making those minimum payments according to the bank’s schedule, especially since we were doing all the right things in terms of retirement savings and budgeting.

We also had no big ticket toys like boats or over-priced new cars to sell off, but we’ve done pretty well just by doing the following:

- Temporarily reduced retirement savings to just 4% of our gross income (down from 15% for Chris and 20% for me)
- Cut back on movie theater outings and used the 12 free Blockbuster rental coupons I earned via e-Rewards instead
- Cut back on dining out
- Chris started making his own sandwiches for lunch at least 2-3 days per week and brews his own coffee at home instead of buying some on the road
- Reduced untracked spending on hobbies, clothing, electronics, games, and other non-essentials.
- Put any bonus income (tax refunds, sales commissions, mileage bonuses, gifts, etc.) toward the snowball

Here’s where we failed to be gazelles: Some of the extra things that we did spend on probably could save us several months on the debt snowball, but we made the choice to budget for these items and deal with the extra 2 months it would cost us.

- Chris built a new desktop computer system with $1200 from our 2007 tax refund.
- I set aside $800 for the Pink Dumbbells/John Stone Fitness Bahamas cruise in August.
- I threw in $400 for a new mattress and box spring set in February. (The old mattress was sagging badly and made my back hurt every day. I consider this preventive health care. Chris’s mother threw in another $300 toward this as a gift.)
- Chris paid for the roundtrip airfare for us to visit his father in Alabama (~$400) and for his friends’ out of town wedding in June (another $400).
- Chris spent $350 or so on the materials needed to re-pave our small walled courtyard.

Reducing our retirement contributions for 2008 has probably made the biggest difference in our progress, followed by our unspoken agreement to control impulse spending on both lattes and gazingus pins. Although we both budget around $50/month for fun money, neither of us has spent much of our allowances. We’ve decided to really take advantage of the forgotten entertainment and hobby materials we have on hand instead of accumulating more. Chris has been geeking out with D&D and cards (World of Warcraft collectible card game, not poker) at his friends’ houses instead of going out and spending money on movies and dining out. I’ve been outfitting myself and Chris with home-sewn clothes made strictly from my existing stash of fabric, patterns, notions, and oversized free t-shirts. We both check out books and audio books from the library instead of purchasing them from Amazon.com.

I haven’t bought a Wii yet, and Chris hasn’t acquired a new car stereo system. No new fitness gear has appeared in the house since I the Cardio Coach New Year’s deal in January.

And you know what? We haven’t been bored at all.

$31,782 more until financial freedom!

Baby Step	Amount	Target	Complete	Actions
1. $1000 to start emergency fund	~~$1000~~	~~1/25/08~~	~~1/25/08~~	Contributed a combination of wedding gift money, personal savings, and bonus commissions to a shared savings account earning 3.75% APY
2. Pay off all debt (except the home) using a Debt Snowball	$49612	2/1/10		2008 Debt Snowball 2009 Debt Snowball
Maggie Visa	~~$600~~	~~9/1/07~~	~~9/1/07~~	Made two $300 payments to clear the balance, then retired card to safe.
Discover (Leftover wedding expenses)	~~$862~~	~~1/10/08~~	~~1/12/08~~	Paid balance in full in January 2008; card still actively used for gasoline ONLY. Balance paid in full each month going forward.
Chris Visa	~~$1000~~	~~1/15/08~~	~~1/15/08~~	Paid balance in full in January 2008. Card retired to safe.
Amex (travel, Ikea couches…)	~~$1944~~	~~1/21/08~~	~~1/20/08~~	Paid statement balance in full in January 2008. Card still actively used for recurring utility bills, but will be paid in full each month going forward.
HELOC (new A/C in 6/07)	~~$4200~~	~~1/23/08~~	~~1/23/08~~	Chris and I both cut off federal income tax withholding from 9/07 - 12/07 after calculating that we were both overpaying. The excess money in our paychecks was used to make aggressive $1000 payments on the HELOC every month.
Maggie Car Loan	$3490	5/1/08		Remaining amount: $559. Paid extra $1500 from 2007 tax refund and $500 from personal checking account on 4/17/08. Paying one more payment of $559 in May 2008. I already made a large extra payment of $1500 on the car soon after the initial purchase.
Chris Student Loan	$12000	6/1/08		Remaining amount: $6550. Chris was able to contribute an additional $2100 on top of his originally-budgeted payments these past few months, which might allow us to pay off the student loan a month earlier depending on when we receive our economic stimulus check for $1200. Combined payments of $1970-$2420/month until the loan is paid off around 6/2008; under the original loan terms and payments of only $220/month, it would be another 5 years before we would be clear!
2nd Mortgage	$25516	2/1/10		Putting this one on hold until after the $10,000 emergency savings account and 2008 Roth IRAs are fully funded. Regular minimum payments of $205 through 1/2009, then payments of $2006 from 2/2009 until 2/2010
3. 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings	$10000	9/1/08		3 deposits of $2774/month and one deposit of $820
4. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement accounts	15% of gross income	2/1/09 (ongoing)		Fully retroactively fund both household Roth IRAs for 2008 at $5000/each from 10/08-1/09. Reinstate monthly Roth IRA contributions for 2009 @ $454.55/month each from 2/2009-12/2009. Increase 401(k) contribution to 5% (currently at 4%). Regular monthly Roth contributions of $466.66 each starting 1/2010.
5. College funding for children	TBD			…Er…No kids yet. Need to see if an education savings account can be started without actual offspring.
6. Pay off home early	$135880	3/1/16		Research refinance into 15 year fixed rate mortgage and/or set up extra principal only payments of $1400/month to pay off home within 6 years.
7. Build wealth by investing	TBD

eHarmony.ca Commercials

2008-04-24T15:57:33Z

eHarmony has kindly given me permission to post two of the eHarmony.ca commercials now airing in Canada. Chris and I were filmed in Philadelphia this past December for a few of the shots along with two other awesome couples.

Don’t blink, or you might miss me and Chris in our little happy couple cameos!

(And just so you know, our teeth were chattering like crazy during the slow-mo shot on the doorstep.)

NROLFW P1W3D3: Project progress reports

2008-04-23T21:03:42Z

Veggie Garden - Lots of baby tomatoes are appearing on my plants. The peppers and eggplants are slower to mature, but one, the Fairy Tale hybrid, is loaded with cute purple flowers. Radishes, mesclun salad mix, pak choi, and beans are all taking off. Mostly I am just watering every 2-3 days now that the heavy work is completed and wait for stuff to be ready to pick. I do have some baby transplants I started from seed on February 28 that need to be repotted or moved to the main garden soon, though. The transplanted Vardaman sweet potato vines have all survived their move and are thriving. All four of my fig trees have started to leaf out again, the baby pineapple is slowly gaining size, and my daylilies have come back to life.

I’m trying not to succumb to green thumb envy since one of the producers in my company with whom I talk about dirt and tomatoes just brought in a huge, beautiful head of broccoli from his own garden today to show off.

On the bright side, my garden is no longer the rattiest in our cluster.

Total Money Makeover/Debt Snowball - Only $6500 left on DH’s student loan (down from a start of over $12k) and $558 left on my car.

I went to the credit union during lunch today and plunked down $2000 toward the principal on my car loan and felt SO much lighter afterwards. One more month and the Camry will be mine free and clear, and I will free up another $354/mo for the debt snowball. DH’s student loan should be paid off in June or July, too, and then we can start padding the emergency fund (need $9000 more) and Roth IRAs (need $9666 more) for 2008 before tackling the second mortgage (~$25k) in 2009.

I found it interesting that dropping $2000 in one go to pay down my car loan left me feeling jubilant and not at all sick, while plunking down $750 for wedding flowers last year made me want to vomit–immediately and for several days afterwards. THAT is how you can tell if you’ve made a good financial decision, folks–the internal Vomit-Meter.

For those of you interested in seeing how Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step #2, the Debt Snowball, can knock out your existing debts in much less time than you think, try out this spiffy Excel debt snowball calculator spreadsheet I ran across this week.

Projected debt-free (except for the primary mortgage) date: February 1, 2010.

Home Office Organization - Er. Yes. Must finish this.

There is a 9″ stack of papers that needs to be shredded, and my craft/sewing/drawing station is still untidy. Also, after some thought, we have decided to move the household finance stuff out of the home office and into the gap between the kitchen and the dining room. On the way home tonight, I’m picking up the final missing component for the IKEA Ivar desk/bill/menu-planning station we are putting together for it. I wind up doing the bills in the living room or dining room table most of the the time anyway since the shredder and mail pile are both on the kitchen counter nearby, and I find it hard to concentrate on math and money counting when Chris is on the other side of the room playing Warcrack and chattering away on Teamspeak with the lights off.

This new workstation will have room for the bill-paying computer, finance-related files and storage, a shelf for my cookbooks, and a tidy set of paper trays. I realize that it would be tidier to keep it all in the home office, but one of the tenets of the organization audio books I listened to was that working with the actual patterns and habits you’ve already established instead of forcing yourself to modify ingrained behaviors would be a lot more successful in the long run.

Moving the office shredder to the kitchen where the junk mail always lands first has already cut down on our old piles of unwanted credit card solicitations and unneeded statements and bills. Moving the actual filing system for the papers we DO want to keep to the same area should take care of the rest of the piles which mostly consist of “stuff to be filed”.

And I’ll be able to watch CSI and DWTS while I fiddle with Microsoft Money. What joy!

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Wii and DS trailer

2008-04-16T19:08:19Z

Call me cheesy, but I still get a thrill at seeing something I had a part in making (in this case, the Nintendo DS version of The Force Unleashed) show up on gaming sites and store shelves.

And the Wii version looks pretty dang fun, too.

NROLFW P1W2D3: Back in the groove

2008-04-16T19:03:20Z

I’m happy to announce that I got myself up this morning and did my scheduled NROLFW 1B workout AND followed up with 30 minutes of steady-state on the recumbent bike even though DH opted to sleep in today instead of coming with me, the lazy $#$@#.

(Actually, he only plans to hit the gym every other day, so I cut him some slack today. However, if he tries to bail out of tomorrow morning, I will have to bring out the Wifely Sneer.)

I was worried about the deadlifts in the workout, but it turned out that not running yesterday or this morning as a warm up left me in pretty good shape to perform the exercise. I still stayed VERY light at only 65 lbs for 15 reps, but I should be able to increase the weight to something more like my old numbers soon.

I also downloaded the Abs Diet Personal Trainer audio workout guide from Audible.com yesterday for DH to use at the gym. He’s not very motivated by the barebones Turbulence Training manuals with their basic workout log sheets, but he should have an easier time just following along with the guided strength workouts in the download and the guided cardio workouts from Cardio Coach. It’s a quick and easy way to get right into a routine without wasting time wandering around the gym wondering what to do next. The Abs Diet audio includes 12 workouts designed to be performed on M/W/F/Sa and divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.

On the nutrition front, I tried two new cleanish dishes that I sort of made up on my own–Creole sesame-crusted tilapia for dinner last night (fabulous!) and a breakfast crepe roll up this morning made with two eggs, 1/2 c. ground and quick oats, 1/4 c. light soy milk, a splash of water, and some roast beef and wilted spinach as filler (very filling). I love oats, but I was getting sick of my morning oats and raisins with egg whites, so this crepe thingie is a nice alternative now that I have more calories to play with.

This weekend I will attempt to come up with a more formalized 1700-2000 calorie bulk-prepare-and-freeze menu using only dishes I love.

NROLFW P1W2D2: Back pain and spring cleaning

2008-04-15T16:07:00Z

I unwittingly got in the first of my outdoor bonus activities yesterday for the Pink Dumbbells 2008 Spring into Summer challenge (Sign ups are still open if you want to join up and get some daily motivation as you get ready for summer!) with a HIIT run around my neighborhood. We are having some freakishly cold (Temperatures in the 50s count as cold down here.) weather this week, so Monday morning was perfect for an outdoor run. I think I hit around 2.5 miles overall between jogging and sprinting.

I felt fine yesterday, but this morning I had some lower back pain and stiffness when I was doing my NROLFW workout. The first exercise was squats, and my lower back was pinging me every time I dropped down even though I was only using 100 lbs on the barbell. The rest of the workout was fine, but I’m a little concerned about the lower back pain. I think that running outdoors definitely contributes to it the next day when I need to perform lifts like squats and deadlifts that focus on posterior chain muscles. Like Kyra, I’ve been noticing more back issues these days, so I think it’s time for me to finally choose a primary care physician I trust and have a full physical work up done to let me know where I stand medically.

For the time being, I’m nixing all outdoor runs and sticking to low-impact activities outside like cycling, walking, swimming, and skating. If I get the urge to run, I’ll limit myself to the bouncy treadmills at the gym. I’m also going to integrate 15-20 minutes of yoga into my cardio-only days. I may also have to move my lifting workouts to the evenings. My back is just not warmed up enough in the mornings now to handle the big compound lifts anymore.

I didn’t do any formal exercise this weekend since DH and I were literally buried under paperwork as we decluttered, purged, and finally organized our home office into some semblance of efficiency. I checked out two audio books on organization and decluttering from the library a few weeks ago, and both of us were fired up to get our home in order for spring. We tossed out 6 big trash bags of stuff from just the one room (mostly unneeded paper), and have a big pile of video games, books, computer hardware, and other random things to sell at a garage sale. I did do quite a lot of ladder climbing (step ups?) and lifting, though, so it was more active than my usual work day.

Anyway, I’m two days behind on workouts due to my impromptu Clean Sweep weekend, so I am modifying my schedule a bit this week as follows to bring myself back on schedule for next week:

M: HIIT run (make up for Saturday)
T: Phase 1 Workout A (make up for Sunday); Hip Hop Abs Fat Burning Cardio + Yoga (regularly scheduled cardio workout)
W: Phase 1 Workout B
Th: Intervals + Yoga
F: Phase 1 Workout A
Sa: Intervals + Yoga
Su: Phase 1 Workout B

Food…needs work. I’ve been more or less on track for maintenance, but I need to get back into the habit of cooking actual entrees with flavor instead of just tossing together nuked veggies, roast chicken, and fruit or I’ll snap at some point and dive into some serious junk. In the meanwhile, I’m stuck with nuked asparagus, leftover veggie stir-fry in oyster sauce, quick oats, apples, banana, strawberry whey isolate powder, and roast chicken today at the office.

Champion $19.99 Spring Sports Bra Sale

2008-04-10T17:50:03Z

It’s time for Champion’s $19.99 semi-annual sports bra sale again for those of you lucky enough to *need* new sports bras (maybe you’ve lost some pounds since New Year’s and noticed that the gals are now a bit too free in your old ones, or perhaps you’ve been so diligent in working out daily that you’ve simply worn out your old sports bras?).

ALL of their sports bras are on sale for $19.99, including their long-line bras and wicking sport tanks with built-in bras, so take a look and reward your hard work in the gym with something both cute AND useful.

My only complaint about Champion’s sports bras is that they are so well-constructed that the ones I bought 3 years ago are still in such fantastic shape that I have no excuse to buy new ones.

Sigh. Well, maybe when my year-long hiatus from purchasing new clothing is over, I will get one or two of their scoop back sports bras.

Oh, and you can try coupon code XC18BB to get free shipping, too!

April Happenings

2008-04-07T21:14:01Z

I’m not ready to go into another challenge just yet, so I’ll just be chilling this month and working on getting into a maintenance groove. After the TT challenge (still need to take pics, but my digicam decided to die on me last week) and office competition (which my team won, by the way!), I am in need of a breather. The last month has been more stressful than it should have been because I was having some minor freakouts about the two challenges, and I am flat out tired of feeling that kind of self-inflicted pressure. I was becoming neurotic AND rebellious at the same time towards the end, which is not fun.

I don’t want to do anything more OCD related to fitness and nutrition than lifting 3x/week, doing cardio/intervals 3x/week, and eating tasty, healthier meals that don’t all have to be 100% clean.

As far as workouts go, I’m moving away from Turbulence Training for the rest of the year and using The New Rules of Lifting for Women and workouts from Jason Ferruggia through December. The weather is starting to change for the worse for inline skating (too hot, too muggy, too much rain that makes the roads slick in the mornings when I normally work out), so I’ll also have to find another form of cardio that I enjoy to supplement my usual treadmill running. DH and I don’t start swimming until June.

Nutrition-wise…I’m going to give the plan from NROLFW a try and also attempt to rediscover my love of cooking yummy stuff by trying out one new recipe a week from my collection of various healthy eats cookbooks.

In other news, I finished my raised bed square foot veggie garden this weekend by filling it with 14 cu. ft. of quality organic top soil and another cubic foot of composted cow doings. Hurray for dirt! So far I’ve planted 40 squares total of veggies, including tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, pak choy, sugar snap peas, chives, and Swiss chard plus the sweet potato patch behind the main vegetable garden. I also plugged in 18 marigold transplants around the veggie bed and in other parts of the garden for some color and moved about 2 dozen seedlings I had started on 2/28 outside to bigger flats.

Then I went inside and used Xara Xtreme (a vector drawing package similar to Illustrator) to make totally obsessive compulsive Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter layouts for my veggie patch showing what would be planted at what time, complete with color coding. I also drafted up a layout of the south garden/sweet potato area with a long black Bezier curve to show where I’d buried the soaker hose. Talk about the best of two worlds–I got to make some brilliantly nitpicky diagrams AND teach myself how to use a new software package–whee! I capped off my weekend gardening binge by printing out the above and about 30 pages of Florida gardening publications from the local extension office.

The de-cluttering effort is continuing as well. So far the living room, dining room, pantry, hall closet, handbag/purse collection, and bedroom have been done. Clearing out all of the old papers, receipts, expired coupons, hair pins, Lactaid wrappers, and other random odds and ends that have accumulated in the 4-5 bags between I regularly rotate took forever. I felt wonderfully organized and light afterwards, though. Next I will tackle the kitchen cabinets (eek) and the home office/craft room (eeeeeeeeeeeek!).

And finally, Friday night Chris and I met up with some friends at Rising Star, the live band karaoke club at Universal Citywalk that I mentioned a few weeks ago. It was the final night of their Top 10 Karaoke Challenge where the 10 best performers who filled out entry forms over the 4 nights of competition would win 2-park annual passes to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure and get to perform at the official VIP grand opening party for the club on April 11. I figured that I might as well enter since I was there (and the entry form was mercifully short) and belted out Bryan Adams’s Summer of 69 and Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot. (Yes, again–not my fault. One of the judges asked me to do it after the Bryan Adams song.)

This afternoon I got a call from a Universal rep telling me that I’d made it into the top 10 (Free annual pass! Yay!) and would get to sing at the media/VIP party this Friday. W00t!

The best part of the whole thing was getting verbal kudos from the band members themselves after I sang. They have to play these songs 5 nights a week for 45 singers each night, so when the guitarist, bass player, and backup singers tell you that you totally rocked a song, it’s pretty darn awesome.

I tell you, it’s a good thing that I didn’t discover my inner rock star when I was younger or I would have flunked out of high school and shamed my parents for eternity.