I found this article mildly amusing…

According to this article, when you sing the song all the way through and add up every single one of the times a gift is mentioned, the total cost of Christmas comes up to $78,100.

Personally, I find the holiday a bit overblown in terms of marketing, hype and the whole pressure to go out and buy presents etc… I appreciate the idea of everyone getting together at one time of the year (at once), and appreciating the year and life (although it should be done on a daily basis), but they’ve over commercialized it so much that it makes me a bit queasy sometimes.

It’s like the marketing departments of these stores have to tell us when to gather (Christmas), tell us when to appreciate their mothers and fathers (Mother’s and Father’s Days), tell us when to appreciate our origins and be thankful in general (Thanksgiving day), tell us when to appreciate our husband/wife/significant other (Valentine’s day)… seems a bit much at times.

And then it becomes a contest about who can buy the best present, the most expensive gift, the most luxurious item…. and then if you don’t have a budget and you really blow it this year on Christmas, you’re paying the interest on a fancy toy that someone barely thinks about or uses. Hopefully that isn’t the case, but it happens.

But I really do love the idea of Christmas, with the spirit, the love, the general charitable-ness of everyone and especially the food. But I could certainly do without the marketing.

.. I stopped using special cleansers on it in the morning, or heavy moisturizers.. in fact, no moisturizer at all unless my skin was dry in some areas.. and my pimples have pretty much cleared up.

I still get the odd one here and there, but within a day, they’re gone.

I wonder if washing my face excessively with cleansers (even SpectroGel), and moisturizers was what was making my face oily and breakout-ish…

I’ve also been using less concealer and foundation (light BareMinerals is all now), and even if my skin isn’t perfect, it’s normal now and more natural.

And I’ve even stopped using the Tazorac gel (that really dried out my skin) and taking those pills to inhibit the oil production… We’ll see how it goes for the next week or so, but so far, I’m loving this low maintenance skin!

Just water in the morning to splash on my face, and a light cleanser at night to get off the dirt and grime, no moisturizer….

So now that BF and I are ‘official’ in the sense that I’m not really interested in dating anyone else for the time being, there have been guys popping out of the woodwork at places we go to, at work… all seemingly interested in chatting with me and getting to know me.

It’s like I have a: “HEY I AM SINGLE”… on my forehead. Although I’m not really single now that I think about it.

And I found out that I’m the youngest person working in the company aside from the Customer Service Reps… everyone who I thought was my age, is actually at least 8 years older than me.

It’s kind of nice being the youngest, but as long as people don’t know HOW young I am, it works in my favour. I find that being too young can really work against you, and unless they know what you can do and you’ve proven yourself before they know your age, they assume you’re around your late 20s or older.

So I tend to keep mum about my age until they know me and my work ethic, then I let loose…

A lot of people actually thought I looked about 21, but assumed I was around 33 or 34 because of the nature of my job as not many people get into my line of work at such a young age. Most people tend to have 5-6 years experience in a related field first.

Has anyone gotten this problem at work?

P.S. Found some really sexy party outfits for the holidays on asos.com… but considering I’ll probably be in sweatpants as to be able to fit food into my stomach, I better save my cash for my emergency fund! LOL

Ex doesn’t read the blog. He doesn’t know it exists, none of my friends or family do. Only you readers…

So thanks to everyone for your concerns!!

I’m heading back to my home city in mid-December, and will be without BF for a week, so we’ll see how I feel then. It is just in the first blush of the relationship, so everything is rosy.. that, I am very well aware of.

It’s not until about 6 months to a year before things about the person start surfacing… so I’m just going to take it easy, but I’m also not going to say to someone who may be a potentially perfect match to me: Hey let’s give it 3.5 years for me to recover from my 7 year relationship…. (they say it’s half the time the relationship took. Okay, SATC says that but… SATC is my reference for life…) ..when I feel more relieved and free than pained, and in distress..

So I’m going to enjoy it and see how it goes.

I’m pretty thrilled because I went through the numbers today.. and this entire month (Nov) and part of December is screwed for substantial any debt repayment due to le divorce, but starting in January, I’m back in business to sock away MORE of my income towards debt. I’m still on track to clear at least the gorilla (my huge government student loan) by the end of summer, and to clear the chimpanzee (the bank student loan) by mid 2009… so I’m relieved.

Very relieved.

Plus to rebuild up my emergency fund…. I may start just storing money in my EF, and when I have a large amount like $5000 take $4000 out and throw it right into debt, and rebuild my EF back up to $5000. So instead of continually throwing in small amounts like $100, or $300 here and there and saving a couple of pennies, I have the money in my EF in case anything happens and the option to pay a huge chunk down on my debt once it builds up.