MEMORANDUM

1.Hello Glorious Fall, Goodbye Pesky Tourists

Pull up your calendars and start planning. It's time to get back out there and enjoy this vibrant city that we live in.

MUAHAHAHA...The Holidays Are Coming!

click here to learn how to make this wreath

Before you close your calendar, do you have all these dates recorded?

Rosh Hashanah starts Wednesday, 9/24, and ends Friday, 9/26

Yom Kippur starts Friday, 10/3, and ends Saturday, 10/4

Halloween, Friday, 10/31

Yom Kippur starts Friday, 10/3, and ends Saturday, 10/4

Halloween, Friday, 10/31

Daylight Savings Time ends, Sunday, 11/2

Thanksgiving, Thursday, 11/27

Hanukkah starts Tuesday, 12/16, and ends Wednesday, 12/24

Christmas Eve, Wednesday, 12/24

Christmas Day, Thursday, 12/25

New Years Eve, Wednesday, 12/31

Waze It Up As You Go Go


As you prepare to follow Your Personal Assistant's advice and enjoy the season, I also suggest you upload the free Waze app if you don't have it. Waze is a community-based traffic and navigation app that provides real time traffic and road information. I have only been using Waze a short time and it's my new favorite verb.


Read Monica Guzman's article, "Why I'm Hooked on Waze, and What It Says About the Future of Humans and Machines" on GeekWire for a great explanation.


Enough Playing Around Town, Time to Tackle the Closet!

Being the kind and generous person you are, you typically donate your rejected clothing to a charity -- but have you considered being a little selfish and getting some bang for your buck? I won't tell anyone!


Your Personal Assistant recently tested out LikeTwice.com, an online secondhand shop that buys women's clothing and handbags up front. It's like a consignment shop, without the wait. Their policy is threefold: the items can't be older than five years, the items must be labeled with an accepted brand found on their approval list, and every item should be freshly laundered and damage-free.


About a week after registering here, I received a "free selling bag" that came with a pre-paid shipping label. I went through my closet and found 9 items that I was ready to "discard": 7 articles of clothing and 2 handbags. I put all pieces in the selling bag, along with my claim card, and took it to the post offifce as it was too large and heavy to fit in a mailbox. The postage was free and according to their website, insured for $100.


On their website, I found an interactive screen that allowed me to enter the number of "Classic" category items I was sending in, which indicated I could expect to "earn up to $22 to $54 for 9 items" with a disclaimer: Please note that these payout ranges are estimates and your actual payout may vary.


After seven days, I received an email "offer" of $94, payable by check of Paypal, or a credit of $117.50 to their store. (Given how much I actually spent on those items, I will admit the offer amount hurt a tiny bit, but I wouldn't have received anything but a tax receipt if I'd gone the way of the Salvation Army.) I chose to accept the check and I received it within a week. The alternative would have been to "reject" their offer and pay $4.95 for them to return the items to me.