Earthwatch, money and hardcandies.

I was asked about Earthwatch yesterday. I first mentioned it in my diary entry of March 13th, and I’ve been playing with the idea off and on ever since. They have quite a few one week expeditions to different areas of the world that let you work with scientists who are conducting studies on biology and habitat, helping them collect data while getting a chance to see a specific area of the natural world up close and personal.

I spent last night catching up on bills, reconciling accounts, and playing snood. I live a sad life. I’d have played with ACfH, but evidentally I’m not as much fun as looking for Squirrels. Guess that tells me where I stand in her life. Seems like she has her own little Earthwatch project going at the moment.

Yesterday I attended my department’s Profit Sharing meeting for the year. I’ll admit to being pleasantly surprised. All indications I’d gotten were that this was going to be a poor profit sharing year. Instead, it turned out that last year was the largest profit sharing year ever. I’ll be getting a total of 17.6% of my last year’s salary in total profit sharing contributions. To say I was shocked was an understatement. I have to take 7.6% of that in cash, but that still leaves a 10% contribution to my retirement plan. I’ll dump as much as I can of the cash into a Roth IRA, and give the rest to my broker to invest. (I love saying “give it to my broker”. It’s so freaking pretentious. Not to mention terribly misleading. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to being “upper crust” though, so I’ll play it to the hilt.)

I got new hardcandies for the candy jar on my desk over the weekend. Last night somebody picked all the red ones out again. And most of the purple ones. What’s wrong with yellow and green, I ask you?

“Attack of the Clones” is out in a week. Time to start looking into advance tickets sales.