The Importance of Planned vs Actual

As a financial professional (insert your laugh here) - I am constantly reminded of the importance of planned versus actuals. In work mode that tends to be financially driven numbers. If the actual spend is less than we planned, I'm doing my job right. Since they've kept me around this long and I tend to save my company money - I must be good at comparing planned vs. actuals. Now some may think that this knowledge and experience would shadow over into my personal life. And to those folks I'd say - boy are you wrong.

I tried to reason this into my life with my planning to break up with someone I had been seeing. As I spoke to some of you at cooler caddy - you were aware - others were apparently "Shocked" (see Jackie's post below) - which let me tell you - you are NOT the only one.....

However don't feel bad for Boy X just yet. I gave him plenty of warning signs, he just chose to over look them.

Now as far as how the actual event went let me start by providing the best advice I think I've ever received to date, courtesy of Teri:

• "You need to arrive early....order a dirty martini....slam it down....order another dirty martini....now this next step Sarah is so important - PAY YOUR TAB. You do NOT want to break up with him and THEN have to wait for the Tab to arrive. Trust me!!"
  

When I went home that night I thought about what I was going to say....which obviously lead me to think about how he would react...

Compared to how it ACTUALLY went down.....

For those that are chart illiterate (Tara) - I was left at the bar. To which my immediate response was relief and of course uncontrollable laughter. When I got back into my car George Michael's "Freedom" was playing on my radio (no joke) - and I felt as though that was all the closure I needed...

The sippy cup incident

Tara: Ok - funny story to get you all to love each other again..............
Dinner time is a little hectic with a 2 YR OLD AND 3 YR OLD, a mini horse, a cat and a DB....
Soo tonight we were eating dinner and on my 2nd glass of wine, Maura wanted her sippy cup opened and water put in it from my cup - this particular sippy cup gets stuck (and should be in the garbage but that's another story). Big DB says throw it to me and I'll open it so I back hand it to him (with my left hand and I am a righty) and it goes flying a lot harder than I anticipated, hits him square in the forehead and slams into the glass sliding door (which thank goodness did not break)....soo as I am laughing uncontrollably I go over to apologize to DB and come to find out he is bleeding and within seconds has a huge lump on his forehead.....the kids are screaming why did you hurt Daddy??? The dog is barking, the cat is hissing and I just laugh and drink my wine..........................

No charts for this b/c I suck at charts but I hope you fun bags have a much better start to your weekends than the DB family did...............
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tracy: This story had it all...
it made me laugh.
It made me cry.
It made me cringe.

It was lonely without a chart...
I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of creating one...
I can't help myself.

t.web f-bag