Easy come, easy go... a reminder.

 Back in January ...  I got an extra check deposited into my checking account from work.

On the one hand, I thought, "someone has made a mistake."  At first I thought it was my first month's payment and it was wrong.  It was short like $600.  I was irritated that I was going to have to tell someone that they forgot to pay me (I have two jobs in one location that both pay me through this one check).

Then I went to look (online) at the pay stub.  It is kind of ridiculous to call it a pay stub anymore since it is not a stub and it is not connected in reality to the payment.  Whatever.  The pay stub site, not the actual stub, indicated this was "back pay" for December -- an adjustment is what they call it.

So, before I got excited, I thought, "someone has made a mistake."  I waited to see if two days later, as scheduled, I got my regular January paycheck. 

Low and behold, I did.

Now I was certain, "someone had made a mistake." 

I worried, a little tiny bit, if I should ask someone where the extra money came from, what it was for, etc... then I realized that if someone had indeed made a mistake, they would figure it out and take it back in due time. 

Like any other rational person, I put it in my savings account (so as not to spend it) and waited.

A couple of weeks later the person who does accounting for one of my jobs asked if I had gotten paid for December -- as in for break.  I said, YES.  And I had gotten paid for January ... she said that someone else thought it was a mistake, but she intended to pay me for break. 

It seemed like an odd thing and an odd amount, but whatever. 

I had, indeed, worked over break -- just a few hours here and there -- but no big deal.  They do consistently ask me for an hour or two before each contract session, but, again, no big deal.  No need to pay me extra -- it all works out in the end.

Then, yesterday, she called me to her office to ask me if I had been paid twice for December. I explained to her how I understood the contracts to work; that it isn't hourly work, really, that they just take your full contract amount and divide it by 5 months (Aug-Dec and then Jan-May) and pay you that same amount each month.  She had been worried that they weren't going to pay me for December, so she had put in an adjustment to pay me for that time between Dec-Jan when we are technically outside of contract time.

I told her I thought it might have been a mistake, so I was holding the money if she needed it back.  Easy come, easy go... right?!

She and the other accounting person were so mortified to ask for the money back that they decided to let me keep it.

Hoorah... I was already thinking about how much closer I was to my goal of Italy for writing when I took my car to get the oil changed that same afternoon.

I prepaid the oil changes and I have two left.  So, this visit was supposed to cost me $0.

But, my little green car has been faltering a little lately -- so I told them it might be a good idea to check that out.  Maybe all it needed was a new spark plug to go with the fresh oil and air filter?

The guy, the one I actually enjoy dealing with!, looked at my car's dr. visit record and said I had never done the 90K mile service (that was nearly 20K miles ago).  Mind you, I have replaced NOTHING but a side mirror I broke and tires on this car in twelve years (hear me knocking on wood?). 

I cringed as I waited for him to tell me the price ticket on the 90K mile service... $539... yeah, easy come, easy go.

Well, it wasn't just that ... the fuel injectors were also dirty, plugged up, never been cleaned in almost 120K miles.  That would be another $160.

Easy come, easy go... the silver lining is that I didn't have to actually dip into the Italy money to do the car sprucing. 

So several hours after having received a windfall, I have spent nearly half of it on the little green car.  But it sounded much happier on the way home.

The rest of the windfall will probably be spent on taxes, but, again, it won't dip into the Italy fund.