...and it was great! Too quick, but great. It's so nice to have some time with just hubby, and know that the kids are fine at grandma's. We ate great meals, drank great wine, the weather was beautiful. Can't ask for more. (well, maybe another day...).

Today was a pretty cheap day ($.75 spent for breakfast at work, +$1.40 in tolls). That's been it so far. My goal when I'm done here tonight is to do another burst of online Christmas shopping. I have discount gift cards in hand for Amazon, Circuit City, Best Buy, and Target, along with a list of stuff to get for people. So I'm going to go on those sites and cross-check prices to come up with the best combinations. That should allow me to knock a few more off my list. I'm really happy to say that I don't have a lot left. Slow and steady...

Two good pieces of money news today: I received the $100 from DirectTv for my Tivo. I paid $100 at Circuit City about 8 weeks ago, and got the full amount back in a rebate today. The great thing is that I already paid for it, so this seems like found money (which will help offset the cost of my trip). Cool. Also, I'm on my 3rd month of my DirectTv $15 discount that I asked for. Starting next month it drops to $10 for another 3 months. Not bad just for asking.

I need to work in the city tomorrow, which is a bummer. I'm usually home on Tuesdays, which allows me to get a lot of stuff done, but work will be really crazy through the end of the month, so into the city I go. At some point, I need to get to the store to pick up milk and bread, hopefully not much more. I haven't tallied gas and groceries recently, but I'm sure I'm running pretty well under budget. Later in the week I'll reconcile.

It's also time for me to get a few auto insurance quotes. Of course, I love Liberty Mutual and think it absolutely rocks, and every year I go through this effort and find that they're the lowest by far, but I still feel like I need to go through the motion just in case. Hopefully later in the week I'll get to that...