C'mon lotto!

let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the South of France
let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters
and teach them how to dance
let's get rich and build our house on a mountain
making everybody look like ants
from way up there, you and I, you and I, you and I
   --from "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson
....

Winning the lottery takes an astronomical amount of luck and realism.  I know we're probably not going to win the $50 million tonight, nor one of the 50 $1million prizes...but it's always nice to dream.

Love/hate relationship

And the wedding planning begins.  Part of the planning (a big part) is the budgeting.  I already know this wedding is going to put us in the poor house, but what wedding doesn't?  In an attempt to save money now, I've recommited myself to bringing all of my food and drinks to work from home, refraining from having to buy them each day (not that I was always buying food/drinks, but every little bit helps).

The only thing now is that when I have food cravings that aren't for what I've brought with me, I get sad.  :(  But it's all for a good cause - my cause - OUR cause. 
...

Dear Sushi,

Don't you worry - I will devour you another day...when I've saved up enough money to do so.

love,

melody

Mo' money, mo' problems

Our upcoming epic trip is to include 6 different countries with 6 different types of currency, each of them ridiculously foreign to me, having never really traveled to Asia before (Japan conversion was a simple 'divide by 100' at the time I was there). I was lost enough having to deal with British pounds--I gave up trying to count my own change and simply held out palmfuls of coins to the retailers to pick and choose for themselves--now I have to deal with Ringgit, Baht, Dong, Riel, Rupiah, and HK dollars! While booking our itinerary through the countries of choice, we've been trying to stay within budget which requires doing a lot of conversions between the currencies to remain within reason. When we start our planning and budgeting sessions in the early evening, it's not too bad.

Malaysia = RM = Ringgit = divide by 3 for CAD
Thailand = THB = Baht = divide by 30
Vietnam = VND = Dong = divide by 20,919
Cambodia = KHR = Riel = divide by 4,000
Indonesia = IDR = Rupiah = divide by 8,770
Hong Kong = HKD = Hong Kong Dollar = divide by 7.6

But then it gets really late at night and your brain stops working.

Jumping from Baht to Dong can really mess with your head. All the extra zeros that suddenly start to appear can be really daunting, especially when your next flight comes up at over a MILLION Dong.

  "Holy crap, baby! Our flight out of Ho Chi Minh is going to be 1,079,000 VND! That's ridiculous!"
  "What is that in CAD?"
  "It's ridiculous! It's...*divide by 30*...oh, wait...*recalculate and divide by 20,919*...oh, never mind. It's $51.57."

And then reading up on travel tips to avoid getting scammed I learned that scams seemed to be par for the course in certain parts of Vietnam. I was looking up stories about how to get from Da Nang to Hoi An by bus and found that every post in the forum I was in had mentions of scams, overpricing, and drivers that would hike up prices for foreigners on a whim. I was starting to get upset to learn that drivers were demanding 10,000 VND for an hour long bus ride that should only cost 7,000 VND. That's an additional 3,000 VND! How could they demand such insanely high prices, above and beyond what is POSTED for the ride?!

And then I did the calculation.

They're haggling over 15 cents?

This is going to be one epic journey.