Footprints on the Moon

Talk about a wake up call this morning! How does the song go (which I now have stuck in my head, by the way)? “I felt the earth move under my feet…” 5:39 a.m. an earthquake that’s been given a preliminary score of 5.4 on the Richter scale hit about 6 miles out from West Salem, Illinois. I really don’t know any more than that because that’s all the information they’d had on the news this morning before I had to leave for work.

My alarm went off at 5:30, I shut it off, laid there for a minute and turned on the light but didn’t get up. I don’t like to hit the ground running in the morning, so I lay there for a few minutes adjusting to the light and just being awake. But then the bed started shaking. At first, I thought it was Lucy scratching the foot board like she likes to do, but then it got more insistent. So I sat up a little bit, and noticed the cord of my radio on the dresser was moving back and forth as well. The word earthquake flashed through my head, but I dismissed it because NAH! We don’t get earthquakes in this part of the country! Needless to say, I got up pretty quickly after that. And I definitely felt less insane when I turned the morning news on and they were talking about an earthquake. We’re in Northern Indiana, close to the Michigan state line, approximately 5 hours from the epicenter of the earthquake, and we felt it up here. The newscasters were reporting that people were claiming to have felt it further north into Michigan, and her parents in Ohio had also felt the shake.

It’s been interesting talking to people this morning when I got into work about whether or not they felt it. A lot of people didn’t know anything happened… there were some other people who thought they might want to seek some kind of addiction treatment because they felt their chairs shake, but the person sitting right next to them in the same room didn’t notice anything. I know the guards who were on shift didn’t know anything had happened until someone told them. Crazy!! We know what to do during fires and tornadoes, but I’ll have to ask my boss if we have post orders for earthquakes!

I’m not the sort of person who generally gets excited about printers, but we’re getting a new machine at work, and I’m definitely excited about that. That might be kind of sad, but I don’t care. We have an old Xerox machine that has been going steadily downhill for quite some time. For example, even though I reset the date/time on it probably a week ago, the fax machine claims that it is March 14 at 5:06 PM. Finally, the hinge broke off of it, and they decided that it was time to upgrade us to the new HP anyways.

The new all-in-one machine arrives tomorrow, and they’ll be coming by to install it on Monday. I talked them into hooking the new machine up to the network so that we can use it as a printer rather than just a copy/fax machine. Once a week or so, I have a very large print job to do and it would be very nice to be able to use the big machine rather than my small personal printer that eats through ink at an amazing pace! So there you have it. I’m very excited about a piece of office equipment– I just hope the learning curve on the new machine isn’t too high!

Hi. My name is Jennifer, and I have a cardboard problem. (“Hi Jennifer!”) Okay, so I think I’ve figured out what my biggest problem is in my messy chaotic apartment. Yes, I do have too much stuff in a small space, no doubt about that, but I have another problem. Apparently, I hoard boxes. Now, some things you probably should keep the boxes for, at least for awhile, but I’ve taken it to an extreme. The box for the gold anklet you gave me in 7th grade? Yeah, I’ve got that. (Even worse, that means it MOVED with me!) I even have the box from both my GameBoy and my GameBoy Color… I got both of those when they first came out, so just think about how long I’ve held onto those boxes.

Yes, I have a serious cardboard problem. I’ve weeded them out quite a bit at this point, but I cannot tell you how many trips I’ve made out to the recycling dumpster downstairs over the last couple of days. Between trips to the recycling bin and taking garage sale stuff to my car I made 6 trips just today! I can see 3 boxes that need to be taken out just from where I’m sitting.

Do me a favor… next time I buy something, please make sure I don’t keep the box for the next 10 years okay?

I made some progress on the mess that is my apartment (except the bedroom! woot!) today. I went through another box in the living, cleaned out the linen closet, and the counter top in the bathroom. This also included putting all my “designer jewelry” back in the jewelry box, rather than just strewn about on random shelves in the closet. (Or on the floor, if Lucy’s been in the closet lately.)

Unfortunately, my back has been hurting all day today, so I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked. Oh well, slowly but surely, it’s getting done. And I’ve made sure to spend a couple minutes keeping the bedroom clean too. Cause it would sure stink to get the rest of the apartment done only to realize I’ve undone the first victory! I think the first step tomorrow is to organize the storage closet. I have a huge tote in the living room that needs to go in there, and a few more boxes by the time this is all done. Along with that, when I was fetching Christmas stuff, I found at least 2 boxes marked for the garage sale, so those have to come out. Ah the best laid plans, we’ll see how far I actually get.

Don’t forget, tomorrow is the deadline for your taxes, yes, but also for $25 free from Revolution Money Exchange. No strings attached. I’d greatly appreciate it if you go through my link and get us both some free cash!

Not the greatest picture of me, but I snapped this before I headed out for the day and I just can’t be bothered to take another one. Besides, I’m so tired at the moment, I’m sure I couldn’t take one that would be an improvement anyways!

I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I originally planned. I did get all of my laundry done, including the sheets and blankets off of my bed. Since I have to haul all my laundry across town (or pay out the bum to do it downstairs), I really don’t wash my bed stuff as often as I ought to. So I’m very excited to go to bed and sleep on fresh sheets– that’s always fabulous. And since I didn’t sleep very well last night, that might be sooner rather than later. I did have interesting dreams last night though– a marriage proposal from a friend, and running from a tornado with my coworkers. In a school bus. That my grandmother was driving. I gotta start watching what I eat before bed! LOL

I had intended to really knock out my living room like I did my bedroom last weekend, but it just didn’t happen. I did make a good amount of progress, but I’d hoped to have it livable by now, and it seems to be more chaotic. I’m just overwhelmed. In the past, my method of cleaning the living room was to start cleaning and putting things away. When I found things I didn’t know what to do with, it got stowed away in the bedroom. That’s not optional this time, so when I find that box of bulk cable from every electronic device I’ve ever owned, I have to actually figure out what to do with it. Since I didn’t know what to do with all these cables, they’re still in a box on my coffee table.

I’m not very good at organizing and I have so much stuff in this small space that I’m just completely overwhelmed. I need someone to come in and tell me “throw that away.” “Sell that in the garage sale.” “Put that in the storage unit.” “You will never need that again!” I’ve purged quite a bit over the last several months, but I’m still a pack rat so there is a long way to go!

For now though, to Midlife Musings to see the rest of the SPS participants, and then BED. Where hopefully the dreams will be less unsettling lol

There’s something that I’ve seen on basically every single personal finance blog lately, so I decided it was something worth looking into. It’s called Revolution Money Exchange. It’s a new service that is kind of like PayPal. You can use it to send and receive money, but without the fees that PayPal charges. I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of being able to send and receive money from people without sacrificing a portion of the total to fees!

For a limited time, if you sign up, you get a no-strings attached $25. The offer ends on April 15th, so if you want some free money, you have to move quickly. I signed up for my account, and it already reflects $25 in my account, ready for me to withdraw as soon as my bank account is verified. Can’t beat that! If you’re thinking about signing up, I’d appreciate it if you went through my button below– I’ll get $10 to add to my emergency fund, and you’ll get a quick $25.

Let me know what you think! Don’t forget, you’ve only got until April 15th to claim some free cash!

Just wanted to pop in really quickly because it’s getting past my bedtime. But I wanted to update you on Miss Lucy, or LUCY NO! as she’s usually called. I switched the litter in one of their boxes on Sunday afternoon. And once they figured out it was litter (yeah, Pudge tried to eat it. Ew.) all has gone well. I did see Lucy pee in the sink twice, but there has not been a single potty on the floor outside the litterbox all week.

The biggest victory came this morning when she used the box. To pee. And got all the way inside instead of walking round the edges. I did a little celebration dance, and trust me, it takes alot to get me to dance before 6am. So fingers crossed that this continues to be a good change for my naughty little redhead.

I put a good amount of time in the last couple of days cleaning my room… and finally, FINALLY I can say “I have a clean bedroom!” This may not seem like a big deal but trust me, this is quite an accomplishment. I’ve lived in this apartment for two years, but I still had some boxes that hadn’t been unpacked more than rifling through them to find something I’m looking for. Most of these boxes ended up in my bedroom because it’s a place I could stow things away, shut the door, and allow the rest of the apartment to be clean for company! No more! See for yourself:

There are still a few things left to do in there, like find a better spot for my laundry baskets. Washing the sheets and ACTUALLY making the bed instead of just pretending for a picture , and I’d like to get my area rug swept up and put back on the floor. As soon as I wrangle some help, I’d like to rearrange the furniture too. Basically putting the bed where the dresser and TV are, and putting all the things on that wall where the bed is right now. That can wait for awhile though… I still have the REST of my apartment to reclaim.

To give you some small idea of where I started, you can check out the “before” picture below. This picture was actually taken in November, and you’ll just have to trust me when I say it ended up being much, much worse than this when I finally started digging it out. Wow, this is embarrassing to even think about sharing lol

Right now I’m trying to make a decision. As you all know (because I won’t let you forget!), I’m trying to get on top of my finances and pay down some of this debt that I have. That’s what is helping this decision be so difficult for me to make. See, there’s this conference happening in Florida in September, and I REALLY want to go. In an almost desperate sort of way. I want to go and hang out with friends, meet new friends, and finally meet some new friends in person for the first time. Not to mention, it’d just be all around a great experience. I’ve spent a bunch of time crunching the numbers, and in August I should have the money to pay cash for the trip and not have to put myself further in debt (like I did for Vegas last November, oops) in order to go, especially if I manage to find some vacation deals, which I’m hoping I will. Rooming with friends would bring down the cost of the hotel stay considerably, and as soon as Allegiant schedules their September flights, I’ll be able to see if I can get any good deals there.

So what’s the problem? It’s this whole debt repayment thing! I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey– reading the Total Money Makeover, and listening to his radio show has been a huge catalyst in getting me moving, and finally making progress in the financial arena. And I know what he would say about taking a vacation…. so even though I could go, and pay cash, there’s a big part of me that knows I “should” be putting all that cash towards my debt snowball and making more progress forward. The rest of me is saying hey wait a minute! I’ll have the cash to do it, and don’t I deserve it? Oh yeah… never mind the fact that I deserved myself right into credit card debt in the first place. I know it’s going to take me awhile to get out of debt completely, and I am just not “gazelle intense” enough to deny myself absolutely everything for the several years it’s probably going to take. I was reading an article on somebody’s blog the other day (but of course I can’t find it now) where they were talking about sacrificing a little bit of repayment intensity for the sake of making memories, and that’s the direction I’m leaning. Yes, I want to get out of debt, and yes I’d like it to happen as quickly as possible. But at the same time, I don’t want to deny myself every great opportunity that comes along to make it happen a month or two faster either.

I’m really leaning towards making this trip as long as I can pay cash for it, so I’ve started a special savings in my ING account called Florida to start putting small amounts of money in. Even so, I won’t know for sure for another month or two. It’s kind of strange how my mindset has changed… before I never would have questioned it. I’d be going whether I could afford it or not, and I’d make it happen. I never thought I could live within my means like this, and that I’d be so committed to make sure it stays that way.

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope it’s as gorgeous where you are as it is in Indiana this afternoon! It’s still a bit on the chilly side, but the sun is out! As long as you have a jacket or sweatshirt on, it’s just beautiful out there. These are the days that make you take a deep breath and say ahhhh… Spring is finally starting to win out over Winter. Thank goodness!!

You might be wondering about the chart by my head in this picture. I thought I’d let you see my motivation on this debt pay-off journey. This is actually one of the first things I did. This is a chart of all my debt (there’s another one at the bottom that got cut out of the picture), plus the baby emergency fund I’m trying to start with. When I sat down to do this in the beginning of February, I got online and found the current balances of all my debts. That’s on the very left. Then, each bar is divided into 10 blocks. So each block is 10% of that total debt. The right hand side is 0. So when the bars are solidly filled in, that debt is paid off.

It’s surprisingly motivating. I like seeing the whole picture right there. It was definitely necessary for getting started. It’s on the back of my front door, and you can see it from anywhere in the living room. I LIKE getting paid, and paying my bills now because it’s very satisfying to go over there with my highlighter and start coloring. It’s also good incentive to keep spending only within my income because I’m not sure I could handle going over there with white-out instead of my pink highlighter!

I need to get back to cleaning in my bedroom and change out some litter boxes, so I can take things out to the dumpster, and recycling bin while it’s so nice to do it. I’m finally making good progress on my bedroom, I’m so excited! If I had some quarters, I’d wash my bedding too… but that’s okay. The sheets will survive another week unwashed Make sure you check out Midlife Musings to see what everyone else is up to today!