Monday Quiz About Me

Another Monday, and I'm back again with Heather and Wayne for Monday Quiz About Me! If you aren't familiar with their weekly meme, they give us four questions to answer and then ask us to come up with our own 5th question. It's always a lot of fun!

So, here are the questions for today:

1. Are you good about going to the doctor? Most of the time, I am. I know that it's what I need to be healthy.  But, oddly, when I'm feeling worse I actually am less likely to want to go to the doctor.  I'm worried that I'm not as sick as I think I am so I worry that the doctor will wonder why the hell I'm doing there.
2. What do you think about the practice of restaurants adding automatic tips for large groups or specific events? I'm really torn.  On the one hand, I know how easy it is for the tip to be forgotten when you have a big group.  Everyone thinks that someone else has taken care of it. And when the waitstaff's pay is made up mostly of those tips, I hate to see them screwed over.  But on the other hand, I don't like having the ability to choose whether to undertip for bad service taken out of my hands.  Generally, we tip 20%, with sometimes more if we're given exemplary service.  But we have had occasions where the wait staff has practically ignored us from the time we entered the restaurant, treated us rudely, and just made the experience bad all the way around.  I don't care how large the party is, that's never called for.  And the fact that they'll be automatically getting 18% just bothers me.
3. When was the last time you went out for dinner? Dinner's been awhile.  Before Christmas, I think.  But we did go out for lunch to T.G.I. Friday's on Saturday.

Teddy's chicken and oranges

4. What is your best budget saving tip for recovering from an unexpected expense or planning for one? I'm really not good at this at all.  I should be better, I know.  Particularly when we have had so many unexpected expenses lately.  But I never seem to get on top of it.  About the only thing I can think of that I do regularly is putting at least half of the money we get back from our taxes each year into our ING account. That helps us have money set aside for the big things.
5. Do you have any podcasts that you listen to regularly?  How did you find them?  What do you like about them? I used to listen to a lot of podcasts.  It was what helped get me through the night at my old job before I was able to start downloading audio books.  But I got out of listening to them when I started listening to audio books instead.  I do have one that I listen to now though - SF Signal Podcast.  I started listening to it because a good friend of mine, Paul Weimer of Blog, Jvstin Style, is a regular contributor to the podcast.  I listen to it, even the weeks he's not a part of it, because it's a SF/Fantasy podcast that is a lot of fun.  The topics are always something that interest me and the guests that they have are just great.