As previously blogged, I spaced out and put 39 cent stamps on several bills that I mailed out last week, one of which was a past due bill to Cingular/AT&T.

Well, to my great relief, all but one of the checks has cleared the bank. The postal service delivered them anyway - I don't know if they charged the recipient for the two cents postage due, but I don't care. They made it. The only one still outstanding is the water bill, which I'm not worried about. They'll send me another bill if it doesn't make it in a week or two.

In other good news, I got a check for $59.17 from the consignment store for items sold in June. Unfortunately, I've got to put that in the checking account for money to live off for the next ten days.

In yet more good news, my dad called and said he's bringing my nieces up to Atlanta to take them to the zoo and aquarium and wanted to know if we would like to come along to the aquarium as well. I'd been planning to take the boys anyway and it's a bonus that I don't have to pay for the tickets. I'm sure that's saving me at least sixty bucks.

On the non-saving end, the carpet cleaning didn't work so well. I did the landing at the top of the stairs and after much effort, got it marginally cleaner. This carpet cleaner doesn't have a hand-held thing, just a long nozzle, and I thought the stairs would be impossible to do with the long nozzle, so I just gave up. Yeah, I know. But it really wasn't worth the effort. I'll wait until the boys are back in school and then call Stanley Steemer.

Tonight we are getting together with a bunch of friends at another house, potluck style with burgers, dogs & beer. I went to Family Dollar yesterday and bought several packages of glow stick bracelets to hand out to all the kids. At 9:00, we'll walk down to the end of the street to watch the city's fireworks display.

This morning I went to a hot yoga class and the teacher read us two great quotes during savasana:

"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." - Viktor Frankl