Another “cheater” Self Portrait picture this week… cheater in the Wizard of Oz sense. Pay no attention to the girl with the double-chin, look at the cute baby toddler on her lap! Also cheater in the sense that this picture was taken on Friday. But I haven’t showered yet today, and don’t intend to for a few more hours, and my I’ve used up my limit on Flickr for the month anyways (will be upgrading back to a pro account just as soon as I can).

Anyway! I had the little guy for a few hours on Friday afternoon, and he had a blast torturing my cats and begging for cookies. Of course, he didn’t tell me he was hungry until I opened the fridge to get him some water, and he FREAKED out saying “EAT! EAT!” I quickly started some macaroni and cheese, and he spent most of the next 10 minutes between eating some mandarin oranges I found in the fridge, and in hysterics that his dinner wasn’t ready yet. By the time he left, I felt like I’d been beat up, but it was fun to have him. And I only found 2 bruises!

Saturday, I went out to see if I could take advantage of some of the 2-day, 3-day sales and BOY did I! Unfortunately. As you know, if you read my last entry, I was basically done with my Christmas shopping. So while I spent an exorbitant amount of money Saturday morning, most of it GREAT deals, it was mostly things I shouldn’t have been buying at all. So when I finally stopped buying things I shouldn’t have, I came home and spent most of the rest of the day watching movies, and crafting.

This morning, I got up and put the finishing touches on my grocery list, and headed out to the grocery store. So far I’ve only come up with one thing that I forgot too, so I count that as a successful trip to the store. Also making it successful is the fact that I made it back home before it REALLY started snowing. Of course, it’s not snowing at all right now, and it’s all already melted, but that’s beside the point. As for the rest of the day, I’m cooking, watching movies, and continuing with the crafting. If I finish what I’m working on, I might start wrapping Christmas presents, but that’s rather doubtful.

That seems to be the main question I heard all week… are you going shopping on Friday?? My answer? Only if Amazon’s Black Friday deals count! Honestly, I just do not like shopping on Black Friday… I don’t want to get up that early in the morning, and I don’t do well with crowds like that. I DO have my Thanksgiving day paper though, and I’ll look through the ads, but I highly doubt I’ll find a compelling enough deal to get me out of the house. Of course, I had no intention of going out last year, and I did. Last Black Friday, I was at the store, bought what I was after, and was back home in bed before alot of the sales even got going.

This year, I’m glad that a lot of retailers are hopping on board the online sales… every year there seem to be a few more stores that realize there is a whole group of people who would be happy to spend their money with you on Black Friday, they just don’t want to stand in a line of rabid people at 4 in the morning. So I’ll probably be at home, looking at Amazon books, digital cameras, and other online deals.

But the BIGGEST reason I have no intention to go out shopping tomorrow?? Other than a couple small finishing details, I’m already DONE with my Christmas shopping this year. I finished buying everything 2 weeks ago. Woohoo!

Self Portrait Sunday, the laundry maid version. Also known as, no intention of leaving the house, a day of laundry and dishes and being lazy. Also known as reverting back to life as a college student and simply covering up my dirty hair instead of washing it. My apparent inability to shower aside, it’s been a pretty good weekend.

Friday night was pizza, movies and gossip with Sarah. Saturday was much of the same, just without Sarah… I did manage to actually leave the apartment, but totally against my will. If it hadn’t been for the movies that I’d rented for girl’s night, I’d have continued my self-imposed exile from the snow and cold inside my apartment until Monday morning. My diet this weekend has been crappy enough to almost require some Ephedrasil hardcore… or just to get off my ass and do something other than watch movies. I have a tendency to hibernate in the winter. I am not a big fan of winter… if it wasn’t for the fact that ALL of my family is here, I’d be seriously looking at moving someplace where it doesn’t snow twice before Thanksgiving.

Today I did my laundry first thing this morning, and kept having to deal with the lady who lives across the hall from me. Apparently telling time is not a strong suit of hers. I had 3 loads of laundry to do. When I went down to get the first load out of the dryer, switch the 2nd load from the washer to the dryer, and start the third load, her laundry basket was sitting in the little laundry area. The first rule of doing laundry in a building where you are sharing one set of machines with all 8 apartments is don’t relinquish the machine until you’re done! I was honestly hoping to get my laundry switched and get back upstairs before she surfaced, but no such luck. She came down and asked if I had more “wash”. I said I had one more load, and then I’d be done. She wanted me to knock on her door and let her know when I was done. Now, the machines both have timers on the front of them to let you know how much longer they are going to run, and still I heard her leave her apartment about 7 times while I dried two loads of laundry to see if I was done yet. DUDE. If it says 60 minutes on the dryer, go back to your apartment, look at the clock and add 1 hour! Why is it so hard?

Anyways, enough complaining from me I want to get myself some dinner and get back on the couch to continue working on the blanket I’m crocheting. I need to get a picture of it to share now that it finally looks like I’m making progress!

Now that we’ve closed another long week, I’m grateful that I get to spend a weekend not thinking about the state of the economy. That might sound a little strange, but really the days seem so long now. I know I’ve complained about different aspects of my job in the past, but for the most part now, I’m just grateful that I HAVE a job! And I might wish I could make more progress paying off my debts, but it pays the bills. I have shelter, heat, food, and there are a lot of people out there who are having a hard time providing those for their family.

All that being said, I do have a new least favorite thing about my job. Since I’m the one sitting in the lobby when people come in, and I’m the one answering the phone, I’m the one who gets to tell all these desperate people that there are no jobs available. Some people are looking for jobs in business, some for jobs in manufacturing… some people just walk in the door with a haunted look in their eye and ask me to tell them if they’re wasting their time. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I have to do. Like many other companies in the area, ours is starting a lay off.

We live in an area that was greatly affected by the failing RV industry, and that was only the first wave of lay-offs. Every morning on the news, another company announces cutbacks. The jobs section in the classifieds is down to 2 pages, and is mostly jobs in the medical field, or ads for an employment company that charges you to see their job listings. There aren’t part-time jobs to come by, either to get a second income coming in, or just to try and squeak by.

I’m not too worried about my job, but watching the lay offs happening all around me does make me nervous, especially knowing how much debt I have left to pay off, compared to how much money I have in the bank, compared to how much money is required just to eat and keep the heat on every month. It’s definitely changing the way I’m approaching my finances… I’ve gone from paying things in the way that mathematically makes sense to the way that makes me the most comfortable. I’m currently focusing on one of my lowest interest rate debts because it’s the minimum payment I’m least comfortable having to pay. Will it cost me more in interest in the long run? Yes… but I think it’s worth it to have that debt paid off, and not hanging over my head anymore. A couple more months and it will be gone. Then it will be back to doing it the “smart” way.

I had a unique problem this week. Usually, I look at all the pictures that I’ve taken, and all I can think is ugh, I need to find a good green tea fat burner or something, and eventually I choose the picture that I dislike the least. This week, I had a hard time picking a picture to use, but because I actually LIKED more than one picture! It’s a nice change of pace. I’m also liking that I don’t look sick this week. I still have a drippy nose and a cough that won’t give up, but I think that’s more because it’s SO dry than because of whatever Ick I’ve been struggling with for the last week and a half.

Today has been a pretty good day. I finally drug myself out to the grocery store this morning and got some food in the house. Then I cooked up a pot full of Pizza Soup. It was really good, and hopefully I’ll be getting the post up on Jenn Cooks tomorrow, but no promises. Sarah came over and we spent about 5 hours “watching” TV and catching up on all the good gossip we’ve been storing up over the last couple of weeks. It was great. A few minutes ago, I ran out to Martin’s to grab a few things that I didn’t get at the grocery store this morning. Not so happy that it’s snowing like CRAZY, but I’ll survive.

I need to get something for dinner before I head for bed. Think I’m going to put a potato in the microwave and see if there is anything good on TV.

That seems to be the biggest buzzword in TV these days… everyone wants a high-definition television. I saw a side by side comparison of HD and regular TV the other day, which of course I can’t find right now. It was a pretty striking difference, but I can’t say that I really care one way or another about having HD TV. Sometimes I think that’s a good thing! For one, I’m not running around spending a ton of money on a special TV or cable service.

My boss told me the other day to think twice about HD. He just got ATT’s U-verse, and in order to get HD on his TV’s he had to buy a special kind of HDMI cable that cost, get this, $125. EACH. He said he bought one for one television, but he’ll probably never upgrade the other TVs. Can’t say I blame him on that one… $125 per TV is INSANE. Hearing things like that make me glad that I’m perfectly happy with my fuzzy TV reception!

Yeah, you read that right. I’m talking about MBT shoes, have you heard of them? I’ve run across them before, but I just found them again, and I’m intrigued. It’s considered the anti-shoe, and is supposed to be good for the whole body. The shoes are supposed to distribute the weight to your entire foot, and create a “natural instability.” I’m really curious to know if they actually work for people, and frankly, I’d love to see how they look in person. So if the MBT people are reading this, feel free to send me a pair of shoes, I’d love to try them out!

I updated the progress in my sidebars over the weekend, but never came back to explain how things changed this month.

My CitiCard remained paid off. Obviously I don’t need to point that out, but since it’s the only debt completely paid off, I enjoy claiming it.

Car Loan went from 70.67% to 73.66%
WaMu card went from 9.91% to 11.34%
Capital One card went from 15.80% to 16.95%
Discover card 5.19% to 5.34%
Perkins loan went from 9.13% to 10.12%
Nelnet loan went from 3.15% to 3.81%
And the grand total of debt went from 11.08% paid off to 12.04% paid off.

With the exception of the car loan, all of those changes are accounted for simply from minimum payments. The car loan doesn’t have a minimum payment (long story about a standing financial arrangement), so that change is accounted for with a bit of snowflaking. Also this month, I mailed off the check for my December 1st car insurance payment.

The totals for this month will probably not change a whole lot from where they are right now. It will be another month of minimum payments across the board. All of my “extra” cash this month is being funneled into Christmas presents. I’ve actually started shopping, and the first present arrived on my doorstep today! As far as the rest of the shopping goes, I’m probably going to put it on credit. Before you panic, the money IS in the budget, and I have no plans to spend more than I have available for Christmas shopping. I know technically the smartest thing to do would be to wait until I have the cash on hand, but since some of it won’t get here until a mere 6 days before Christmas, I’m really not comfortable waiting that long. I’d rather purchase the things now and pay back the credit card 6 days before Christmas. If I’m going to buy someone rc helicopters (I’m not but you never know who is reading, and I don’t want anyone to know what they ARE getting), I might do that online, and I don’t want to worry about things being sold out, or not arriving in time. In past years, the gatherings have started a week or two before Christmas, so I just don’t want to take the chance.

So my Capital One card will slide backwards for the next month and half or so, but will be right back on track in January. Maybe not the best decision ever, will cost me a few dollars in interest, but it’s the one I feel most comfortable with.

Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder where some of these people come from, and whose job it is to do the employment screening because they’re obviously not doing a very good job! We’ve had quite a few decent people get hired, but the crazy ones sure do seem to outnumber them. My boss spent several hours doing new hire training and paperwork on Friday for an employee that was starting to work at another account across town. By the time this person left, we all were kind of breathing a sigh of relief that they weren’t hiring on at our location, but I was still surprised to hear this morning that they’d already been asked to leave.

Yeah, I thought they were weird, but man… 3 days? That’s such a waste of time and company resources.

The I worked for 4 hours this morning edition. I took this picture just before I left at 6:30 this morning. I’m not sure whether this shows you that I’m still a bit sick, still tired, or just that the cold meds hadn’t kicked in yet. I’ve gotta say, I’d rather have worked a full shift today, but I’m not going to complain about the half shift I got this morning. I’m an overpacker, and getting ready for working a shift in the guardhouse is no exception… Book? Check. Magazines? Check. Breakfast? Check. Cough Drops? Check. Callaway irons? Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea… today I read a good bit of my book, but other than the cough drops I didn’t touch anything else that I brought with me.

I did the round for the 4 hours that I was there, checked my email, and then played a prank on my friend Amy. When I picked up those third shifts a couple months ago, I stopped by her desk on my way around the building and left notes on her computer. The last one I left said that she didn’t have enough pictures hanging up in her cubicle, but I could offer her a couple pictures of me if she needed them. I joked that if I picked up some more overtime, I was going to decorate her office. So today when I finished my round, I printed off 9-10 of my SPS pictures and went up and taped them up in her office. I put a post-it note with a smaller picture of me on her computer screen that said, “Guess who got some overtime?” Hehehe, totally worth working 4 hours on Sunday morning for! I can’t wait until she gets to work tomorrow!!

For now I’m trying to motivate myself to leave the house again. I need to go to the grocery store, at least to get stuff for breakfast tomorrow (and lunch/dinner today) if nothing else. Other than that, I don’t plan to do much else today. Although my apartment desperately needs cleaning, I really want to get as much rest as possible. I’m slowly getting over this head cold (or whatever it is I’ve been dealing with), but I want to facilitate further healing and that’s not going to happen by pushing myself to get stuff done today. I was already gone most of the day yesterday, so as soon as I get back home, I plan on spending a good bit of time under a blanket on the couch.