Ho Ho Ho and Peeling Eggs

So, Happy Christmas to everyone, hope you are all having a good day! Mine is rather dull as Keith got home yesterday only to turn around and go back out at 2am today since everyone else laid off for the holiday. He will be spending his Christmas day sleeping in a motel room in Barstow while I am at home by myself. It's not that big of a deal since we didn't really have any plans for the day anyway which is usually how our Christmases go.

We do our family thing in Ventura before Christmas so for us the actual day is kind of an afterthought and basically just another day. We did have a nice day at Linda's house and I won two Bingo prizes this year, yay! We don't exchange gifts but do a white elephant type of thing so everyone goes home with something even if it's something silly.

I wasn't sure if I'd be feeling well enough for the 2 hour trip to Ventura but with a dose of Immodium before leaving I was fine. I'm still not right and will probably go back to the doctor next week, I've called them for the results of the lab tests but nobody ever called me back which kind of annoys me especially since they said I could just call them. I really would like to know what the problem is since I'm still having it only not quite as bad.

I wanted to bring some deviled eggs and sweet potatoes down to the family party but sent Jennifer some money to do the cooking for me, which I really appreciated her doing and actually her eggs are much better than mine, and probably the sweet potatoes too! We were discussing peeling hard boiled eggs (such scintillating dinner conversation!) and which is the best way to peel them to avoid messy eggs and lots of cuss words. Someone said to peel them just after they cool off, don't refrigerate first, and I tried it this morning and it works! So, cook your eggs, cool, then peel and you won't be tempted to throw them against the wall while cussing like a sailor.

With the end of the year coming up I've been thinking about the old New Year's resolutions and all that crap, but I really do want to eat better this year and also save some money. I didn't spend as much this year on gifts or other things like that, but Keith went a little nuts and threw money around like confetti. He went shopping over the Black Friday weekend and bought all kinds of tools and I don't know what all during all the sales. More stuff to put in the garage that he doesn't have time to do anything with, but he worked hard all year and usually doesn't spend much on himself, so...he certainly did this year!

We waste a lot of money on food that doesn't get eaten, I used to always make a meal plan and try to use everything up but with his odd hours and my not liking to cook much, this year we have not eaten a very good diet and ended up buying a lot of things that later ended up in the trash. Meal plans, here we come again and I've already started one for the next week. I do like to eat out, but that can cost quite a bit so we need to limit that to once a week or so.

So, this year is all about getting money into our savings account and not into the trash can by throwing away food!

The End Is Near

So, after Keith sat through yet another meeting at work, it appears that the plant will indeed shut down on Oct 31 and he will get his walking papers and a severance check. Unless he wants to transfer to another facility, that is. Like the one in North Carolina, which wouldn't be too bad but he would still be repairing railcars and he doesn't want to move all the way across the country to do the same old s*#t, so...

Or, he could transfer to North Dakota and live in a man camp trailer. But then there is the issue of the winters in North Dakota, incredibly brutal winters (according to North Dakota natives) that a California boy would probably not survive.

So, severance check in hand, it looks like he will be applying for unemployment on Nov. 1st and I guess I should have taken that early morning stocking job at Michaels after all, but I really didn't want to go to work at 3am. For 8 bucks an hour.

I'm sure we will manage, since he won't have to spend $50 bucks a week on gas to get to work that will save quite a bit right there, and hopefully our refinance will go through, the refinance that we haven't heard a thing about in weeks, and that will save another $200 a month, and what he makes after taxes and insurance and all that is taken out will probably equal out to what unemployment will pay, so we should be okay as long as he can find a job within a few months. The longer you are on unemployment, the harder it is to find a job for some reason.

Yesterday I rolled up all the coins we've been throwing into our big glass coin jar, and it added up to $210.50 that we lugged over to the bank and deposited into our savings account. I think it takes us about a year to save up that much change, but it does add up over time and is a painless way to save.

I also spent yesterday cleaning the whole house because I've been rather lax this week and haven't been following my schedule of events because I just didn't feel like it. But now everything is dusted and vacuumed and I even cleaned the shower. Which I really hate cleaning because of those glass shower doors that you can never get really clean because they overlap each other and you can't get into the overlap to clean that part out. So, it's like there is a 4" wide strip of clouded dirty glass on each door. Oh, well.

I'm going to stock up on food stuffs this month while we still have an income and make sure we have enough cat food for a few months, and then we'll just have to get back into that austerity budget and it's a good thing that the new TV season has started so we at least have new shows to watch on our boring evenings at home after eating a budget dinner!

A Penny Saved

For years now Keith has tossed any change out of his pockets into a big jar each day. Every year or so we roll up the change and take it to the bank. I was kind of bored on Friday and the jar was almost full up to the top (and it's a big big jar) so I sorted out the coins and rolled them up and we took $176.00 to the bank and put it in our savings account. It just about paid for the barbecue that we took money out of the savings to buy the weekend before.

So, save your change. It does add up after a while.

And, speaking of our new Patio Bistro barbecue, we've used it like 5 times already, doing some swordfish and some chicken and some steaks and some pork chops and something else that I can't even remember. It's wonderful and so easy what with just plugging it in and turning it on.

Now that the weather is getting warmer (HOT!) here is a handy chart to make sure that you are staying hydrated that Keith got at his safety meeting at work last week.


According to this chart, everything coming out of you should be almost clear if you are drinking enough water, if it's yellow, drink more 'appropriate' fluids. Appropriate does not mean beer. If it's way dark, get your ass to a doctor!

We finally used two of our movie passes (thanks, Jennifer!) yesterday morning to go see Super 8, which we both enjoyed. If you are going to go to the movies on the weekend, go to the 10:30 am show on Sunday morning because everybody else is either still sleeping or in Church. There were maybe 6 other people in the theatre with us.

We also watched Gnomeo and Juliet last night which is a fun movie.

Keith took naps on both Saturday and Sunday and other than that didn't get much of anything done. Another lazy weekend.

The Electric Bill

We got the electric bill yesterday and I have been not so breathlessly waiting for it to see if our efforts to save a little money on it have worked or not. PG&E did raise their rates this year (of COURSE they did) but with our new blinds in the living room and the new dark screens on the windows, and setting the thermostat at 80 instead of 78 and keeping said blinds closed and all, I was hoping we had saved a few dollars and used a little less energy. And whaddya know, we did use less energy this past month than last year. Same number of days in the billing cycle but we used 926 kwh this year and 1106 last year for an average daily savings of 5.7 kwh. Not bad. I am kind of wondering if the savings was just because it hasn't been as hot this year so far, but the other stuff we've been doing has to help some too, right?

But, then I got to thinking that the blinds cost us about $135.00 and the new screens around $80.00, so the $25.00 or so that we saved on our electric bill this month wasn't really saving much after all, but we did need the new blinds because the old ones were just awful, and the screens were so full of holes that not just mosquitoes were getting in the house but full on gigantic moths and other bugs could just walk right in through the screens, so...the new screens were well worth it.

I'm taking a few days off from etsyland. I've been getting so discouraged and depressed what with constantly listing new things in the shop and checking views and not seeing much in the way of sales that I just need to take a break and either quit all together or just give it a rest for a little while. It gets so obsessive because in order to be seen on Etsy you have to list a lot to stay up front in the search, but there are just so many other shops now and so much in the jewelry category, like millions of items, and so much plain old junk and cheap imports that your little Etsy shop gets buried under the mire in about a minute.

I took another look at Zibbet yesterday to see if anything is happening there. They are rolling out a new front page soon that looks a WHOLE lot better than the current front page, and I do have a free for life shop there, but it still looks like nobody is buying. I checked the site ranking on Alexa, and Zibbet is down around 300000. Etsy is at like 328 or something, so...yep, nobody is shopping on Zibbet and no matter how pretty you make it look, don't think it's going to be much competition for Etsy any time soon. Even Artfire ranks like 28000, way higher, and there isn't much going on in the way of sales over there, either.

And, then again, it could be that nobody has any money to spend on frivolous crap from Etsy. Sigh...

Saving Money

As I'm sure everyone knows by now we have been on a rather tight budget ever since the Great Economy Crash of '08 and we have learned many ways to stretch that buck. Although it still seems that the money trickles away sometimes and I'm not quite sure where it all goes. I do know that this weekend some of it went for assorted herbicides for the grass to get rid of the bad grass that is making our yard look all funky and making our homeowner's association put us on the 'Bad Homeowners and Let's Harass Them Because Their Yard Looks Like Crap' list. That was about $30.00 right there, and then there was the two trips to Walmart to get a new watchband for Keith's watch, the first watchband not fitting right resulting in having to return it and get another one which still doesn't fit right, and then there was having to put gas in the car so he could get to work this week.

Anyway, this morning I had to go to Walmart to get a big mailing envelope for a big order of sale stuff from my shop, a trip that I didn't mind in the least because IT WAS A BIG ORDER-YAY! and as I was walking to the checkouts I glanced at the magazine rack and was drawn to the drama that was on the cover of this week's People magazine. I used to buy People every single week, not so much for the celebrity gossip, because, really, who gives a crap about that stupid Bachelorette anyway, but for the movie and book reviews and the stories about real people. Although it is fun to read about things like Lindsay Lohan going to jail. But, anyway, I stopped buying People magazine after The Great Economy Crash because we were trying to save money and People magazine just no longer fit into our budget. And thinking about how I no longer buy People magazine made me wonder just how much money I've saved by not buying it every week.

So, let's see. Not spending $3.99 a week is a total savings of $207.48 over the course of one year. That's a couple of weeks worth of groceries right there. I probably should have put the actual cash saved in a jar somewhere though. Because I'm thinking that $3.99 a week got frittered away on something else.

A Few Bucks Saved

Our house is not worth what we owe on it anymore, in fact we owe about $50000 more than we could possibly sell it for right now. A few years ago it was worth $100000 more than what we owe on it, but, things happened and the housing market rightfully crashed and now houses are once again 'affordable' and are worth a more realistic amount. And since we have no plans to sell this house any time soon, it's not all bad that we'll have to ride it out and hope that eventually once again this house will be worth more than what we owe on it. Since housing values have plummeted, property taxes have also plummeted, which is bad for the State of California but good for us since we don't have to pay as much in property tax.

We have the type of mortgage where your property tax and homeowner's insurance bills become part of the mortgage payment and the dollars are put into an escrow account until said bills come due. Since the property tax bill was lower than estimated, our house payment has dropped by $27.00 each month. Not a huge earth shaking amount, but hey, $27.00 is $27.00, right? In our penny pinching lives, it's kind of a big deal.

I also finally took a good look at our phone bill yesterday and called to have some services that we really don't need canceled. Years ago I had gotten call waiting put on the phone because it rang a lot more back then and kids were at home and this was before cell phones were in everyone's hands and you kind of needed call waiting because someone was always on the phone and if you ever wanted to be able to get any of your phone calls, you really needed call waiting. And I kind of forgot call waiting was even on my phone plan and kind of forgot that I was paying for it each month. We don't use the phone that much and really don't need call waiting and while it's only $6.50 a month, hey, $6.50 is $6.50.

And what the heck is this WirePro for $7.00 a month? So that I don't have to pay for a service call if the phone wires in my house ever need repairing? Have I ever ever had anyone come to repair the phone wires in the all the years that I've had a phone? No! So, cancel that and save another $7.00 a month and now we're up to $13.50 saved.

Then, the person that I was talking to said that we could cut the basic rate for long distance by $1.00 and cut our internet fees by $5.00 so now we're talking, and we're up to $19.50 a month saved.

So, the $19.50 on the phone and the $27.00 on the house and we've got an extra $46.50 each month, which is $558.00 a year, which is not exactly chump change now is it?

Of course after all these savings that I discovered yesterday, we went over to Coco's for dinner and spent it all, but there was nothing in the house that even came close to sounding good, and after all that hard work of saving money I deserved a night out!