Monday Musings

Just a few random updates and thoughts to begin my week.

• Nice, quiet weekend at home, with lots of baseball (both boys had games on Saturday) and not much money spent.
• Bullet #1 is directly related to bullet #2: we attended our first of 13 meetings of a Dave Ramsey class (DVD of Dave Ramsey, then group discussion afterward), with a group of 25-30 people. We are attending the program at another Methodist church in town, and then we are going to help facilitate the DVD series at our own church in January or February. We're ahead of most of those in the group, since we are already several steps into the program, but I am excited about meeting with all of these other people for the next 13 weeks. It is kind of the financial version of Weight Watchers and their weekly meetings -- sure, you can do it on your own, but having a support system can be very helpful.
• I'm becoming an expert at grocery shopping on a budget. I have a handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet and can pretty much guess (rounding up to the nearest dollar) how much each item will cost. Then as I check each off my list, I have the "actual cost" column and figure up my total on that. I'm more thrifty than I used to be on buying name-brand; I've never had to have all name brand, but now I'm even less picky. Found a great detergent that is $3 less than the Tide that I usually buy, and works just as well. I manage to get everything we need for the week (including enough food for lunches, etc) on my weekly cash of $100. I'm sure some of you are great coupon clippers, but that's one realm I haven't yet entered. I don't know that I have the patience; plus, it seems like I never find coupons for what I use, only for those things I wasn't planning on buying anyway, so how does that save me money?
• As a treat, we bought ice cream on Saturday night - a couple of $3 gallons from the store rather than dropping $20+ at Andy's (frozen custard) like we used to do. The downside to that is we still had ice cream (and oreos, which I love to crush up for topping) on Sunday, so we had ice cream AGAIN on Sunday night. This morning I put the rest of the ice cream down the drain. Wasteful, I know, but it is just the two of us until Wednesday, and we will continue to eat that ice cream (and oreos, really, that is what I love, not just the plain ice cream) if it is in the house. But I did keep the oreos, because without the ice cream I won't be tempted to eat them. That way Jace can still enjoy them later this week.
• On the work front, I'm one of the breakout session speakers at a symposium on Friday, and I'm not yet ready. It won't be difficult, and I have all the data compiled, but just haven't put it all in order. I don't mind talking in front of people, and part of my job is planning educational events and other fun stuff for women. But to actually be the one that is giving the meat of the presentation, I don't like doing that nearly as well. I know what I'll be doing the next few evenings.
• I should be hitting the gym over the next few evenings too, since I only made it there twice last week. And then with the ice cream indulgence, I probably reversed any gains I made. So that's on my list too.
• One highlight this week is lunch on Wednesday with friend Shana; we usually try to do happy hour once every couple of months. However she suggested lunch since she's ripe with baby #3, so I've given her carte blanche on restaurant choice, in case she has a craving.
• My last thought is that I know I'm not gonna like the looks of today's post when I hit "Publish", because I can NOT figure out how to get a space between each of the bulleted paragraphs. I am not HTML saavy, and I'm sure it is not a huge thing to fix if I WERE saavy. But I'm not, so you will just have to muddle through this and pretend it is appropriately spaced to give each paragraph its own importance. Enjoy!

Happy Monday to all; lunch is over and I'm back to the grindstone!