I received payment in my paypal account today of $5 for a Pinecone survey I did on Friday night. I transferred it to my CU and when it shows up I will send it to ING to the emergency fund, where all survey checks go until it is up to at least $500. Then I will figure out what to do with survey checks from there.

I did another survey at Your2Cents yesterday and sent for the $5 check, so that should show up in 3 weeks time. They say 3 to 5 weeks but it has never taken more than 3.

Today in the mail I received two checks, one a $6 survey check from Your2Cents and the other a refund from the orthodontist of $246.80. It is all going into the vacation fund.

$134.47 beginning balance
246.89 orthodontist refund
+ 6.00 survey money
--------
$387.27 Ending balance for vacation fund

Today I received:

$10.00 check from NFO MySurvey
$ 5.00 paypal deposit from PineCone
-------
$15.00 total to vacation fund

I also received notification from half.com that I will be getting $5.76 some time in the near future for the book I sold. The postage to mail it was $2.55 and they already took out the commission, so the net profit from that will be $3.21.

Can I just say I love PineCone. I took my first survey with them yesterday and the money for it was in my paypal account today. I don't know how prompt they are about sending out checks, but they are fast with the paypal option. So I transferred that to my vacation savings account.

I am still waiting on, but don't expect to actually see:

$ 9.00 from ReadRevenue
5.00 from Green-Cash
5.00 from DaysLook
5.00 from TinklyCash
-------
$24.00 total owed from PTR's

Today was the day of the survey apparently. I completed surveys from Lightspeed, NDR, GlobalTest Market, Zoomerang, and my very first PineCone survey.

Zoomerang seems to be going very well. I have not reached a point level with them yet to cash out for anything, but it was one of the sites recommended in a book I read months ago, I think it was called The Mom's Guide to Making Money on the Internet, or something like that. Anyway, when I do my first cash out with them I'll blog on it.

Not much else going on, really. I'm watching season 3 of Red Dwarf and working my way through my MyPoints backlog (still). Tomorrow I have cranial sacral therapy, and I'm sending Rose back to school. Her fever broke and her strep test was negative and she's well enough to whine about being bored. If you're well enough to whine, you're well enough to go to school in my book. She won't be able to sing in the concert tomorrow. She hasn't gotten her voice back enough. I think half her probelm is pollen. I know its mine.

Oh, $15 co-pay for doctor's visit today.

The money from DH's auction showed up in our CU account today. It was also the day of the weekly auto deposit of $10 to savings. I sent both off to ING this morning. It is nice to have savings back up over $500 again.

$181.42 auction money
$ 10.00 auto deposit
--------
$191.42 total deposit
$347.53 previous ING balance
--------
$538.95 New ING balance

I made my first sale on half.com today. I'm not sure what the profit will be when all is said and sifted, and apparently they only pay out twice a month, so it'll be a bit before I know. But there will be one.

And today is one of those boring days.

I did not do much today in the vein of saving money. I did take photographs of the three brand name spring sweaters I am going to put on e-bay and will try to download the camera tonight. I am not very good at that as I have only done it once and DH had to hold my hand through it.

I am totally backwards about technology sometimes. Although I have always been able to intuitively figure out any VCR or microwave (or word processing program) I've crossed paths with, the more advanced stuff waylays me. Once I get it I'm good. It's just a question of getting it.

I mean, how hard is it to take the little thingy out of the camera compartment and stick it in the dealy on the printer and let it sort itself out between the CPU and monitor? Doesn't seem like it should be such a challenge. Most of it is automatic. But then again, it took me two years to remember how to look at my photos on the camera without asking DH how do I do it. Sometimes it really is a case of PEBKAC.

And we won't even talk about locking and unlocking my cell phone keyboard so it can be on without accidentally dialing somewhere exotic like Mozambique or Zimbabwe or South Central Los Angeles.

I will muddle through, I always do, I just wish the learning curve wasn't so high. Then I just have to go into DH's e-bay account and figure out how to post what I want to post, which should fall under the intuitive grasping of knowledge (software) instead of the "darn technology and all its advances that are supposed to make life easier if you have at least the retention of a kitchen sponge," (or hardware).

I am so right-brained, left-brained stuff is just a challenge. So if I learn left-brained stuff in a creative right-brained way, I ought to get it eventually. Right?

I missed a couple of days of blogging but I have a good excuse, honest! In the past 3 days I have driven my husband to the airport, had my son turn seven and celebrate at two sets of grandparents' houses, took cupcakes to school, and a family only (the four of us) birthday dinner out at Billy McHale's restaurant.

I don't have any idea if Billy's is a chain or not. I know of two in Washington state. It is a wonderfully charming place. Full of old things, old signs, weird things, very retro. Like on one wall it has a sign for Glass Bottom Boat rides, an antique telephone, a two-handled lumberjack saw, and gas pump from the 1940's, an advertisement for canned meat, 10 cents a can, old neon gas station signs (of the eat here and get gas variety). It's just very unique and has a certain ambiance you can't get anywhere else. It sounds like it could be tacky, but its not.

Our table had a red light over it (there's a different colored bulb at each table, five or six different colors). But the piece de resistance is an elevated train that you can have Happy Birthday or Anniversary written on cardboard along with the person's name(s) and attatched to the flatbed cars and then it runs around the restaurant. Tobias was in heaven! He's beyond train happy. Plus he got a free dessert and the staff sang to him.

And if that wasn't enough to keep me busy, I went on a writing jag. I wrote 72 pages in three nights. I had insomnia on one of them and I got in that mode where the story starts writing itself. A lot of it, most of it actually is for the second book, not the first one, but I've got a lot of stuff thought out now and can go back to the first one. I am very happy with myself right now.

DH and I also went and tried out laptops. Well, I tried them out and he watched me. I typed on every single one they had on display at Best Buy. It was weird how different keyboards can feel when you are typing 70 words per minute. I settled on the one I liked the best, which turned out to be a $649 Toshiba, not top of the line, but Toshiba's a work horse. And the keyboard felt right to me. So I wrote down all the information and I'm going to save my plasma money for a new laptop when I get back from vacation.

The Toshiba laptop I have now is still functional but it is old. Its a Tecra 8000. It is very heavy, and I got it off e-bay for $150, but then had to spend another $150 because it didn't have a legitimate copy of Windows on it. It had been part of a network, so network software had been used. Not something that was revealed by the seller. But anyway, I've had it almost a year and its okay, but I don't like the size of the keys, they are a little small for my fingers, so cause some stumbling around. I also don't like the placement of the shift key next to the delete key, cause guess which one I hit too often?

I really like the layout of the other keyboard, the keys are a bit bigger and there is no awkwardness at all. DH is all for it. And he'll take over the one I'm using now, because his is really old, running Windows 95. Mine is Windows XP but only cause we upgraded it when we bought the legitimate software. So it isn't as ancient, but...the battery holds no charge and you can't get replacement ones and I would take my computer everywhere to write if I had a functional battery.

Half a dozen places around here offer free wireless access, and we're in the boonies.

Anywho, we made a decision about renting a storage facility for at least six months. We have way too much stuff in the house to ever get it organized so we are going to rent a 10X10 unit and use it to sort in and store until we know what we are getting rid of and what we are keeping. I am so sick of an overstuffed house, I want it to be clean and organized, which is hard when you are tripping over toys all the time. Left over from the affluenza days.

My niece gave me some clothes for Rose to try. She has to upgrade now that she is a teacher so a lot of stuff gets handed down. Rose is allergic to wool and in this bag were 3 wool sweaters that are part cashmere or part angora, one is Gap and the other two are Ralph Lauren. She said she didn't care what I did with them if they didn't fit Rose, so I am going to put them on e-bay. They are lighterweight sweaters, more spring sweaters than a winter ones and are in very good condition. There are also some pants that are cut too low for Rose and some jeans that I may put on e-bay as well.

I think that about covers what I have been doing. Oh, and in my spare(?) time, I am reading Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon (latest in Vatta's War series, excellent military sci-fi) and watching season 5 of 24.

DH's auction ended with a bid of $180.38! That's about $20 or $25 higher than last time. I think we will definitely be using Saturday evenings as an ending time for auctions in the future.

Not bad for something free to us. The money is already in paypal. It will go into savings. I'm not sure if it will be for EF or Schooling, but it can sit in ING until I figure it out.

DH's auction for 2 first class Alaska Airlines upgrades has 2 hours and 18 minutes left. It is up to $154.25 and has 20 watchers. I am hoping for a last minute bidding war. If not, this is pretty close to the amount the last ones went for.

We did make some changes this time. We made the auction for more days than just a week. We made it end on a Saturday when more people are home to be watching it, and we have it ending in the evening at a time that would be after people should be done eating dinner but before they've gone to bed at night.

Those were some tips we had picked up from DH's alternate's husband, who also e-bays. It allows for a bit more exposure.

I had my appointment with the specialist today and had an ultrasound done. He decided to sign me up for another test, so I will go back on March 27 for some kind of scope thingy. It is out-patient and doesn't require drugs. $15 co-pay for that.

Spent $10 to buy a small pizza and a soda from Round Table. I ordered it in the parking lot of the doctor's office, swung by the credit union, and it was ready by the time I got there. It cost $10.23 but for some reason the employee gave me $10.25 back from my twenty dollar bill. I didn't notice this until I got back home and looked at the receipt. I do remember him taking some coins out of the take a penny, leave a penny container. Maybe he didn't want to give me all the ones that $9.77 in change would give me?

Oh, well, so not only did I save 23 cents, I earned 25 cents on top of that. I did call them up and they said not to worry about it. I wasn't worried, but I remember what it was like to have a till off when I was a college student so, I guess that is why I called.

I ate the pizza on the way back home and arrived at the school in time for Tobias' parent/teacher conference. Did that, then went to Rose's. I'm glad that's over for another while.

Now I feel all stone in the stomach though, from eating white flour and drinking white sugar. Bad choice, I know but I haven't had good pizza in so long and I had to grab something or I'd be really hungry as I couldn't eat before the ultrasound. I should have got tacos, at least they are marginally healthy, especially if you get them in the whole wheat tortilla like at Taco Time.

DH finished the pizza off when we got home from conferences. I had eggs and no-sugar bacon and a kohlrabi for dinner. The kids had leftovers of theirs.

I haven't been doing a running log of my novel writing since DH came home. Mostly its because I have less time to myself to write when he's home. But I'm up to page 72 in the story and have 105 pages of other stuff to work in and around the main plot line. And some of it is for the second book, not this one anyhow. But it is coming along.

I got accepted at PineCone and am now just waiting for the surveys to start coming in.

I cashed out at NFO MySurvey today after doing a 200 point survey that put me over the limit, so will have $10 coming in the next 3 to 5 weeks. And still have 150 points in my account. Only 850 more to go to cash out again, LOL.

Still no news from ReadRevenue, TinklyCash or Dayslook on payments.

DH is taking the kids to his mother's house tomorrow. I am not going. I love his parents but they have a cat that is all over the furniture, which is bad enough, because I clog up and have a hard time breathing, but if they run the air cleaner and I sit next to it, I do okay. But his sister will also be there with her kids and their dog, and I'm more allergic to dogs than I am to cats. Badly allergic. And the in-laws let that animal run around inside the house.

Which I would never allow myself, I get irritated with people that think it is okay just to bring the dog in because it is their dog and they don't ask permission, they just do it. (Worse at the grocery store when someone brings in a puppy in a purse which is illegal in a grocery store! Service dogs are of course not the issue at all, they go where they need to.) Which is what SIL did the first time and now they can't say no because they already did it. And I'm "Hello, its your house, of course you can say no to your spoiled youngest child." Sigh.

This is, by the way, the pedigree puppy that was bought when SIL and BIL had had their phone turned off, their gas turned off, their cable turned off, their mortgage behind, their car payments behind, and were about to have their electricity shut off and to lose their cell serivce if they didn't come up with a $400 payment. And they can't declare bankruptcy as its only been five years or so since they did that last time. So, I'm also not fond of the dog for that reason, but really it is secondary to my need to breathe.

Plus MIL's cat is scared to death of the dog. I don't want to come across as an animal hater, because I'm not. I love cats, but I just can't have them around much. Not terribly fond of dogs but don't hate them if they are properly mannered and on a leash. I have real issues with ones that are allowed to run around free all day as we have a county leash law as well as it being in our CC&R's for our housing development. A couple of the roamers have attacked children. So, in that respect I am anti-dog. Well, maybe more anti-bad-dog-owner, as dogs, like children, only do what they are allowed to do or have been taught.

So anyway, being in that house tomorrow would mean I would probably end up having to use my inhaler and it wouldn't be enough and I'd end up visiting the ER. So not how I want to spend my Saturday. Instead, I will stay home and do some writing and get caught up on laundry with my lovely new dryer.

I guess if MIL wants me to come to their house she's going to have to make a choice between standing up to her daughter about the dog, or me. And I'm okay if its the dog, I'm perfectly content to have a phone call once a week with her that lasts an hour.

Turned into a bit of a rant there, sorry.

DH put his second set of upgrades on ebay last night. They are now up to $102.50 and the auction doesn't end until Saturday. Doing pretty good.

I suppose I could have done the last several posts in one big one, but I keep forgetting to add one more thing, so it just works out this way today. I think this is my fifth.

I took a survey with Your2Cents today and have a $6 check coming from them in the next 3 to 5 weeks.

The one that arrived today took the whole 5 weeks, though it is generally closer to 3 in the past. It will go in the vacation fund when it arrives.

I deposited:

$ 8.00 check from ACOP survey
$ 5.00 check from Your2Cents survey
$ 5.00 roll of dimes
$ 0.50 roll of pennies
$ 1.00 Sacajawea dollar
------
$19.50 total

Into the vacation fund today.
New total in fund:

$71.97

Not much but it will get $1000 from the tax return.

Yesterday was the day of the auto deposit of $10 to savings. Today I transferred it to checking and then it sent it off to ING. The new total in ING will be $326.53.

I also cashed out $5 at TinklyCash last night, which should show up by Monday latest. They tend to pay within 24 hours but weekends can be iffy.

Both kids seem better today. Tobias woke up feeling pretty good, even ate a little something and was not running a fever so he decided to go to school with the injunction to call me to come get him if he started feeling poorly. Rose seems 100% now, so that is nice.

It's a gorgeous day here today. It's only 42 but the sun is out and its very clear. Both google weather and msn weather say it was supposed to snow. It did yesterday but it was too wet and did not stick except on the shoulders of the foothills. And there are no clouds in the sky, just a very pretty shade of winter blue. I thought about hanging laundry out, but I wasn't sure if it would dry with it being this cold and no wind. It tends to dry faster in the house unless its at least 55 degrees outside.

I spent a little money today at the gas station. Got a large pepperoni pizza and a bag of chips. So totally not a necessary purchase, but I'm still in a very anti-cooking mood right now. I think a couple more good nights of sleeping will help with that immensely.

I wrote 2 pages last night. That puts me to 108, I think. I'll have to go back and check. 14 more pages to go and I am 1/3 of the way to my goal.

I've been working my way through the commentaries of the second season of the new Doctor Who while doing my PTR emails. Lots of interesting info and it gives me something to listen to while I do the mind-numbing pointing and clicking. Last night I was able to cash out $5 with a new one and $3 with an old one. So I should see that show up in my paypal account on Friday at the latest. I'm very close to cashing out on another $5 one and another $3 one. I still have never heard back from ReadRevenue about that lost payment 1/13/07. It's probably a lost cause. I did send them another email about it last night.

I paid my car insurance online today, 3 months @ $185.50. $5 of which was because I split it in two payments instead of paying it in full in December.

DH ordered a pair of size 16W shoes online and spent $40 plus shipping. He put it on the credit card so we will add that amount to our regular payment. DH has a very hard time finding shoes that fit his foot and neither one of us can stand the service at the local Foot Locker. Which is really too bad. The local Lady Foot Locker has excellent service and the guys need to take a lesson from them. And I've told management so after the last time.

Okay, I think that covers all the spending for today.

Today was the auto deposit of $10 to savings so I transferred that to ING along with the $9.86 I received from the auction of the boots and an additional 14 cents to round it to an even $20.

That brings the total in my ING account, which is my EF, to $316.53. I have not transferred the other auction money yet. I may end up having to use it to pay for the CT scan so its just in the CU savings account for now, with its almost invisible interest rate.

I feel much better today, it is amazing what a decent amount of sleep can do for your attitude and your whole general outlook on life.

It's been a busy morning. We mailed off the boots from our second auction, picked up the kids from an overnight with their grandma, and picked up some medication.

Our total in paypal after fees was $9.86, which I transferred to the CU this morning.

I'm going to try to get the dance shoes listed this weekend so we can get moving on those. I have 8 pairs of ballet shoes and 5 pairs of taps and a bunch of mismatched shoes so I know there are some more around the house somewhere. Probably in Rose's room. I also found a pair of those Fisher Price skates that you put on over your kid's tennis shoes. Might be able to get a few dollars for those on e-bay. I'll have to check and see if those sell or not. Otherwise they'll go in the garage sale pile.

We need to get the outdoor play equipment cleaned up and listed on Craig's list. We managed to get the freezer off the porch last night and aired it out over night. DH is going to Kaboom it (multi-purpose cleaner) and then we may bleach clean it as well. Then we will list it on Craig's list for $50.

It is a 33 year old Montgomery Ward freezer. It has some cosmetic damage, but still works great. It's a bit of an energy hog, our power bill dropped $10 a month since we unplugged it. But for someone who doesn't have one, $50 will still be a good bargain for them, I think.

We also have a big old chest freezer that we bought at a garage sale 7 years ago that I think we can get $100 for. It's been outside so its dirty on the outside, but we can put that in our ad. DH might try to Kaboom it, too. If we can only get $50 for it, that would still be fine.

I'm looking around trying to figure out other things that we don't need that we can sell. I want to declutter this house and make as much off it as I can. It is giving me the feeling much like I had when I first started adding money to the EF last year. Finding more and more ways to do it so I can build savings up again. I feel so much more secure having money I can draw on in need.

Oh, I read over the pages I wrote on my night of sleep deprivation and they are good, I'm starting to think I do my best writing when I'm sleep deprived. It used to be when I was on a sugar high, but without much sugar these days I don't get that anymore. I wrote 3 more pages last night before I went to sleep so I am up to 39 pages for the year. Only 326 more to go to reach my goal.

I used DH as a sounding board last night and he can often make suggestions to get me around a block on a throughline, or send me off in a new direction with some random comment. I was having difficulty with the development of a certain character and now I've got her all figured out. She was not a character I could just leave out, she was too important to the plot, I knew who she was and where she needed to end up but not how to get her there and now I do. So yay for me and DH, too. Big breakthrough. Next week when the kids are in school I should really be able to start pounding out some pages.

Mom talked to me last night and she is going to pay for me to go to carnio-sacral therapy for six weeks. Her idea, and she says it has helped her a lot. I'm hoping it will help with some of the ongoing health issues in my life. I'm willing to try anything at this point, nothing has worked in the standard medical field. As much as I love my doctor and think he is a great man, I have mostly given up on Mainstream Medical. I have no faith in the AMA. I know there are good individual doctors out there who want to heal, but I've come to the conclusion that for the most part they want to medicate you, not heal you. Medication keeps you coming back, healing you keeps you and your dollars away.

I'm jaded here, I know, but I've been in the medical system since I was twelve years old and I ended up diagnosing myself with my original condition based on my own research and than forcing the doctor I was seeing at the time to test me for it and I was right. I have had to be forcibly proactive with my health for all of my adult life, to keep insisting that there was more going on than they believed and I have always been right to keep pushing even when called a hypochondriac to my face. So you can understand why I am jaded here.

Okay, this entry started about something and totally turned into something else about 3 times along the way. Oh, well, that's me when I get going. It's time to leave for basketball so I'll wrap it up for now.

Well, our second auction went to buy it now so we got payment of $10 today, plus shipping, so we will ship it out tomorrow morning. That will go to the Emergency Fund.

I have someone with a strong interest in doing a buy it now on the boots I put on e-bay, sent her a message with an answer to all her questions, and I am hoping that she will go ahead and buy them. The buy it now is set at $10.

I went through one of the bags of kids dance shoes and matched up several pairs and took photos so I will be posting those soon. Most of them are Spotlights, originally $15 or so, but I have a couple of pairs of boy style Bloch tap shoes, which run around $35 new, that I might be able to get more than a few dollars for.

Final auction total after all the bits were taken out is $154.03, its gone through paypal and is on the way to our main CU, then I'll have to physically take it out and move it to the other CU so I can send it off to ING. Hmm, or maybe I should just add that CU to ING. I don't know. I don't really want to attatch an electronic bank to the main CU account we use for almost everything.

DH has changed things around so any future e-bay payments will go to the paypal addy that conncects to the CU that connects to ING.

Well, our first e-bay auction ended at $164.50. Not bad. I don't know how much e-bay gets yet, but all in all it was a pretty successful foray into the selling side of things.

I have already taken a picture of a nice pair of size 8 women's suede, brown boots that my daughter has outgrown and uploaded it to the computer. DH and I will do the write up and get it listed tomorrow. They were originally $35 and are still in very good shape so I am hoping for about $10.

I also have various pairs of ballet slippers, tap shoes, boys tap shoes, and jazz shoes that the kids have outgrown and some soccer cleats, too that we will be listing this week as well. I don't expect the ballet slippers to sell for much over $1, the jazz shoes for maybe $3, the tap shoes for $4-$5, and the boys tap shoes for maybe a dollar or two more. The soccer cleats may go for $3 or $4, maybe. I'm not trying to get a ton of money out of them, just more than I would at a garage sale.

Anyway, the auction profit will go into the Emergency Fund.

I did my first payout with Dayslook today. Just waiting to see if it shows up next week to paypal. If it does, that's another $5 for the month.

Our auction has moved up slightly by $5, so it is at $159.50 now. Just $40.50 to get to where I'd like it to sell at the least. 4 days and less than an hour left.

Our auction on ebay is now up to $154! And it doesn't close until midnight Sunday. Three people are bidding and four people are watching. Pretty good first time experience, I think. Just $48 to go until we hit the amount I was hoping to bring in with these upgrades.

Well, as promised, Lightspeed had the money in my paypal account by the end of the next business day. I transferred it to my CU so it should show up on Friday. That is $18 received so far this month for my vacation fund.

Pending:
$5 from Your2Cents
$3 from ReadRevenue

I'm about 2 days out from cashing out at Dayslook. It'll be my first time cashing out with them so hopefully everything goes fine. It's a $5 cash out. I'm also 2 days out from cashing out at ReadRevenue again, although I don't think I will cash out until I find out what is going on with their system. I'll just keep building it up for awhile.

Boy, I'm just a busy little posting beaver today, aren't I?

DH held off on putting his 2 Alaska Airlines first class upgrades on ebay until last night. I thought he was going to do it sooner, but this way the auction can run for a week, end on Sunday and be mailed out quickly the next day.

It's doing pretty well. It's already up to $102.50 with six days to go. We're hoping to get $200 for it, but being guarranteed slightly over $100 already is pretty darn good. DH has seen them go for as high as $250 for a pair.

Whatever we end up with is going to go straight into building the Emergency Fund back up.

I did a 300 point and a 200 point survey today at Lightspeed that put me over the top on my points, so I was able to cash out for a $10 check, sent to paypal, supposedly by the end of tomorrow's business day. We'll see. The last time I had enough points to cash out there they sent a check in the mail.

I am still waiting on ReadRevenue, which is driving me crazy. At least when TinklyCash went on the fritz, they told us why. Sigh. If I hadn't had such a good exerpience with ReadRevenue, I would have given up on them after this. If I haven't gotten my money by 2/13, which will make it a month, then I will no longer use it anymore.

Yesterday was game day and as usual, Rose's team got trounced. It just is hard to get any rebounds when 4 out 5 players on the opposing team are a head taller than the tallest player on your team.

I emailed the head coach last night and I told him that next year they need to divide the teams up more evenly between ages and grades and experience and lack of experience and height because when you have one team from your school that is beating everyone by 30 points or more and the other one has barely managed to win 1 game all season, there is a huge inequality and it makes the losing team very dispirited every week. I don't know if he will do anything about it, but I'll be a big pain about it at the start of next season to at least be heard on the issue.

Rose got fouled on badly and got pushed into another player who's elbow went right into her temple. She was hurting too bad to even take her free throws and she's good at those, almost always makes them in practice. Another girl got slammed in the face and her tooth cut through her lip and was bleeding. She couldn't take her free throws either but also had to have a sub. Same person fouled them both. She got pulled two fouls later, thank goodness.

We packed our own snacks yesterday so no money was spent at the vending machines. The kids left the game with my parents and I came home to rest. Which I did do some, but then I got to writing and 26 pages later it was 3 a.m. That's really good for my health. But when stuff starts writing itself, I tend to go with it, because you never know when the muse is going to leave.

I made a promise to myself that I was going to write 365 pages this year, whether it was good or not, the habit needs to be gotten back into. And blogging doesn't count! And neither do outlines. That doesn't mean I have to write a page a day, I just need to hit my page count by year's end.

I went back and read the stuff over this afternoon and corrected all the typos and grammatical errors that weren't intentional, and I was really pleased with it, as sometimes middle of the night writing turns out to be less coherent than other times. In any case, its going in the "write" direction. Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.

Today I went in and picked up my kids and got gas. I used $30 of my gas money. It was down to $2.55 a gallon. I didn't go to Costco where it might have been cheaper because I can't find my Costco card and I didn't really want to go all the way across town, either. My card expires at the end of this month anyway and I'm not sure I will renew it. It's a hard decision, especially since they raised the fee.

Mom got me some eggs from the organic egg farm when she went out to get some for herself, so I have four dozen fresh eggs in my fridge. She cleaned them out between us. So that cost $6.

I got really fed up with a rude person today, and kind of let them have it in my own understated way. I always try to be polite, even when what I really want to do is be less than polite, to put it politely. Some folks are clueless and no matter what you do or say, they shall remain clueless. But such is life when you are dealing with people who don't have an ounce of common sense or consideration for others.

I'm going to try to see the doctor tomorrow if I can drag myself out of bed. Or more accurately not fall back into bed once I get the kids off to school. Or at least make an appointment for Tuesday if necessary. I am tired of being tired and not well.

I did a survey this morning and have a $5 check coming from Your2Cents. I also took a prequalifying survey for ACOP but I don't know if I'll get it as they asked about what type of TV service we have and we don't, so that's probably a no. I didn't make the one with the product trial I wanted as it was supposed to have started the 24th. Oh, well, these things are hit and miss. I've gotten two offers this month from Vindale but I just don't know if I want to do those anymore.

I'm still waiting on ReadRevenue to pay out from the 1/13 cash out. I'm not sure what is wrong but I heard from another one of the PTR places that they were having problems connecting with paypal due to an earthquake and dislocated cables, and since both are Asian Island based that's probably what the deal is. So it will most likely get straightened out eventually.