I'm set on buying some gold bullion tomorrow. I missed my chance yesterday on my day off, as I have to apparently buy a minimum of five ounces at the local bullion place, and was busy getting tipsy, eating eclairs, walking listening to great music on the iPod and committing acts of moral turpitude.

I am now convinced that working in the US Customs and Immigration Service is a soul-sucking job. Five gummint employees looked at my ID, which has my DoB on it, and none of them wished me a happy birthday. I am however fingerprinted. I go to my fave cafe/bar, and a stranger wishes me a happy birthday AND makes me a drink! on the house! See, I know Americans celebrate birthdays: I know of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream cakes, the greeting card industry, the Amazon.com wishlists -- but if you're a gummint employee I guess you're trained to view 'ferners' as application numbers with DoBs only for matching purposes, not celebratory. I go to my credit union to deposit some funds and the teller says 'Happy Birthday' to me, and I tell her, sincerely, my toes curl from the happiness she's given me. When I came home from the USCIS office, everything was sunshine and rainbows and smiles.

So tomorrow I'll be in Canada, buying gold coins, eating eclairs, walking listening to great music on the iPod, getting tipsy, but not committing acts of moral turpitude.

Also got the book All Your Worth, which I'm liking. Just five more months until the liquidity crunch vanishes! I should ask people, either on the forum here or elsewhere, what it's like to be relieved of a huge financial obligation, be it paying off a credit card balance that took years to eliminate, or a mortgage, or the last year of preschool/daycare.