Drive By

Monday I was downtown so Jasper could have a quick follow-up with the doctor (aka, yet another $20 copay). While in town, we finally deposited the "Change the Baby" jar. Since there were zero guesses on the amount, I guess Jasper gets to keep all $130.43 of it. It was a bit funny that we withdrew our weekly $120 directly after this deposit. Well, it would have been awkward to carry around a change jar while buying groceries.

Like we usually do when we're in town, we did a drive-by through Ladd's Addition to see the old apartment. Something that hasn't happened in years was happening at the old place... the landlord was there! We saw his pickup in the driveway, and he was opening the windows to our old bedroom. We considered stopping to confront the man face-to-face... "where's our money!?" but since Erik had to be at work in just a few minutes, we decided to use that as an excuse an chicken our way out of there.

The next day, the check came in the mail. $600 with a short, handwritten note saying, "The contract said $100 was cleaning fee, but you left it in such great shape so here's the entire $550, plus $50 for your troubles." Not double, but not court either, so that made us both happy. I instantly put $500 toward my loan, and divvied up the remaining $100 for fun options. I would have put it toward our IRA's, but we're planning on traveling to Germany in September... If we have money left over from our trip budget, we can decide then if we'll invest it, or keep a travel budget for other, smaller trips.