I have a vet visit later this afternoon. The visit itself is about $50, I need cat food which for a case is about $50 and I think the cat will need tests.

YIKES

I don't begrudge doing this for my kitty (he's been part of my life for a long long time) but I am scared about what the cost for this visit is actually going to be. I'll be happy if it ends up under $200.

Once again our work was offering on-site flu shots to all employees. They were free but here that's not exactly a feature just a fact. I know I pay huge takes and sometimes have to wait for services. But it is nice that doing things to take care of myself aren't economic decisions.

I went on got my flu shot today. I actually barely felt it go in. The nurse giving it was amazing.

I, of course, had pain i my arm from the shot. Strangely The pain in my arm was where I thought the band-aid was and not where the band-aid actually was. Oh the other important fact about the pain is that it started coming this morning before the shot. I am pretty sure that it is safe to say the the pain wasn't real but psychosomatic.

Crossing my fingers that this stops me getting sick ths winter.

I'm sad. Was to have a weekend with my boyfriend and he's had to cancel because he is sick. We are in a long distance relationship (yeah we met online) and this is the hardest part of it.When one of us has to cancel a visit.

I understand and know he's making the right decision but I'm still sad.

Now to re-juggle my errands and stuff for the next few days. I still have stuff to do to get ready for the big family do we are having this weekend. I'm not holding it but I still have my contributions to sort out and food to make to bring etc.

I'm feeling stressed about the upcoming weekend. Its our big extended family Christmas "do" and I've been assigned a vegetable. The main dish is ham and someone is already doing brocolli and a sweet potato/squash/apple veggie dish.

I'm not a fan of dishes involving a can of campbells soup so the bean casserole dish is out. Glazed carrots perhaps, our family likes brussel sprouts but do they go with ham?

Don't mind me I'll websurf tonight and see if I can figure out a dish that is make ahead and easy to heat up (don't want to add a last minute cooking dish to the mix)and in the vegetable category.

I'll do a relish tray and corn too as those are "no brainers".

Not a very exciting Monday to be honest. Started as many Monday's do with my not wanting to get up (yeah like that's a newsflash).

This past weekend I made a wee quilt for a coworker's daughter - proof it is possible to make a quilt without buying materials - believe it or not! I had made one for her daughter before and it has become her security blanket. She's at daycare now and carrying around a small crib quilt makes her a tripping hazard (insert visual picture of topsy toddlers tripping) So I made this small 13inch square "carry to nursey school" substitute quilt for her.





Unfortunately, my coworker managed to fall on the weekend hurting herself so she wasn't in. She's pretty badly hurt so I was more worried than upset that I had to buy lunch as the original plan was she was taking me to lunch as a thank you for the quilt.

Other than that a quick trip to the grocery store so I could get shake and bake (I need to find a copycat recipe for this and make up a batch) and spinach. I had a strange craving for creamed spinach today. If only I could find the recipe for the creamed spinach made by Morton's steakhouse..that has to be the ultimate creamed spinach. Mine did turn out pretty good though.

With a boyfriend in the US and living in Canada I am quite aware of many of the differences between the US and Canada. Heck I'm in the US at least once a month, have many American friends etc. But every once in a while a difference in culture between the two countries hits me in the face.

Hearing all the US hype about Black Friday just hit me as "weird". Ready, steady, go shop! Here the Xmas season gradually comes upon us once Halloween is over with a Christmas parade (at least in my town) that really gets things ramped up. We just don't have that go nuts and shop day before Christmas. Well, unless you consider that to be Christmas Eve when all the procrastinators are in full panic!

However we do have the go nuts and shop day after Christmas. We don't have Black Friday Sales, we have Boxing Day Sales. Boxing day is the day after Christmas. Its the same thing as Black Friday to the deal happy consumer. The best deals, special sales, line ups, electronic stores with only 3 of that really great deal item, early openings, stampedes and craziness.

I didn't do the black friday shopping not being in the US that day. I think I'll balance that by skipping the boxing day sales too.

No deals, but I'll keep my sanity.



Cartoon from www.statehousereport.com by Bill McLemore

Ever buy something that seems to make sense as a purchase. And then realise that it wasn't that brainy?

I bought some precooked frozen organic rice from Trader Joes. Healthy, and convenient suckered me in. It has 3 packages of rice in there that just needed to be slit and then microwaved for 3 minutes to reheat. We had one and it was good and tasty, and oh so easy.

I saw it in the freezer last night and it dawned on me that I could just make up some rice, portion it out into zip lock bags and freeze it for quite a bit cheaper than I bought that rice for.

I only buy brown rice anyways so that isn't an issue. And I'm sure a bag of organic brown uncooked rice is a much better value than the precooked. And just as easy (its hardly difficult to make rice).

A lesson learnt.

A friend and I went to a cookie baking class tonight. It was a hands on class and we made a total of a dozen types of cookies.

Good Points: The instructor/leader was excellent. The recipes were varied and different but variations on old favourites - so nothing too weird. We came away with recipes and with suggestions for adaptions what to make ahead etc. We were taught a method for making dulce de leche that is oh so easy! Staff at the school did all the dishes - yeah, and all ingredients were measured out before we got there

Main Complaint: The equipment was lousy. The oven temperamental, the food processor was in the process of dying from old age and the hand mixer wasn't the greatest. A spatula fell part on us. My equipment at home, while not top of the line, is better than their equipment.

Disappointment: We got some cookies to take home but not as many as I was hoping we would get to take home.

Verdict. A fun three hours. A bit expensive but nice to do. Would definitely take another class by this instructor but would not take it at this cooking school unless they upgrade the equipment.

Wishing all of you in the US a Happy Thanksgiving. It is a regular work day here as we had our Thanksgiving back in October.

So in a few minutes I get myself ready for work and head out! I have a nice evening planned. Rather than make Christmas cookies at home a friend and I signed up for cooking "class" where we go to a professional kitchen and make cookies with other people. Then we bring home a share of what we all made. I'm looking forward to have good cookies without having my kitchen all messed up!

Went out to dinner tonight with one of the sales reps I work with, a client and broker. We went to this wonderful steak house. The food was wonderful and cost the earth. Salads $12, Steaks around $50 (and up), sides extra, and who even knows what dessert cost. The wine I drank was $15 a glass. This is way out of my normal league for restaurants.

With tip the dinner totalled over $700 - for 5 of us!

Wow! Glad I didn't have to pay!

I'm toodling on home today - will be leaving here in an hour or so. I'm going to break up the driving with a healthy dose of shopping.




First on the agenda is my first CVS shopping trip ever. I am not yet up to the extra bucks deals and shenanigans some get up to but they have a couple of deals that look good that I want to nab.

Then I'm thinking of a stop at Joann's or Michaels. I'm knitting a "dish cloth" afgan and eventually I am going to have to go from the gross straight needles I'm using (they are the finest *ugh* quality bright green plastic 1970's vintage needles) to some round needles If the afgan is going to be of any usable size.

Another stop will be at a grocery store in NY to pick up milk and eggs. NY state has even lower milk and egg prices it seems than PA. And so much lower than at home.

Most likely the last stop before home will be at the duty free for some booze. I'll wait til I'm home though to start enjoying.

Its about a 6 hour drive home but with stops and traffic I'm planning on more like 8 hours.

I have been really slow getting into couponing when I've been in the US. I've clipped them in the past but not really used them.

Today I did use some! Yeah!

The first act. Spent $6.14 at Eckerd for about $15.50 worth of groceries. combined a store coupon, a manufacturers coupon and a buy one get one free coupon in order to get 2 items, and got a few other items with just manufacturers coupons.

The second act was at Giant Eagle was combining sale items with a buy X get this item free coupon, and using the we double coupons under $1 to get a free toothbrush. This doubling coupons thing is new to me so that was pretty exciting (I need to get out more I know).

The third act was using a "free coffee coupon" at my favourite coffee place on the way home. A girl has got to celebrate right?



http://www.physlink.com/Fun/McPherson.cfm

We went to a really nice party last night. I had ended up going very simple and made a cheese ball (shredded sharp cheddar mixed with cream cheese) and a black bean dip (black beans, salsa, vegan mayo, Tabasco). Both ended up with rave reviews and were quick and easy to make ahead of time. We are at another party tonight and I have another cheese ball and the rest of the crackers for tonight.

The party was fun though we had more than a few geeks there. Conversation ranged from protractors, to iambic pentameter, monty python, movies, to science fiction from past decades (who wrote better Heinlein, Asimov.. etc).

The only thing about a party is that one gets home way too late. You know you are getting old when staying up late is more of a threat than a promise!

I think K-mart needs to look at how they provide customer service to customers.

The store near here is bright, clean and well staffed. Prices seem good.

Too bad the many staff members they have spend the time being bored and not serving customers.

One till open at 4:30 pm this evening. That is it for the entire store. I line up behind the 10 or so other people in line. The staff member wandering around ambles over to find the missing cashier - they were over in the corner having a chat. Finally a new cash opens up and the line gets a bit smaller.

This new cash that I end at has three staff members manning it. Granted one was new and other other was training. The third person there moping about was going on about being bored. I just looked at her and said "you won't be so bored if you work". She shut up after that and didn't look at me and quickly vanished.

It is pathetic. The store is almost empty and its not so that you are in and out of the cash-out area in like 2 minutes. If I knew Kmart wasn't crowded and had no lines I'd be shopping there more. I hate lines.

Senior management there need to spend less time hiring consultants and more time getting back to the nuts and bolts of how to run a successful retail operation. It isn't rocket science. Just make it easy for me to spend my money.

I was at aldi this afternoon to pick up a few groceries. Got the stuff I needed. Didn't go crazy - the total was $15.80. But I only had about $14.50 in my wallet. You know that frantic few minutes you get to spend searching for money while the line to check out grows?

I had the most amazing cashier. He finally said he would cover it. Can you believe that. I shamefacedly got my groceries packed and bundled and out to the car. Then went back in - I always have change in the car and brought him the money I owed him back. But he wasn't at the cash then so I gave it to one of the other cashiers to give to him. She made a fuss of it and told the other cashier so I'm pretty sure he will get him money back.

Got up this morning early and dropped Mao off at the kennel. He really likes this kennel - the woman who owns it is real animal lover. He was eating and drinking before I left and was checking out the "facilities" when I left - this after being there about 10 minutes. I'm blessed to have found a place for him to stay he is so comfortable in. Right now he's in a room on his own (they aren't very busy) so his cage is open and he can roam around which is nice for him. At 23 and being blind he doesn't do much roaming but its nice he can if he decides too.

Went into work for half a day after this. Okay, so it was planned as half a day - it ended up being longer. My director called my team leader and I into a meeting that ended up being 2 hours. Which meant I had to stay later than planned. One of our sales team deciding to say an insurance product had a certain feature it didn't, didn't help either. I got to be ms bee-itch, and say "undo what you did cause its not in the contract". Even if I was ms nice I couldn't help because the client negotiated this coverage for their employees - so if we deviate we aren't payed for it. Insurance companies hate paying out money they aren't reimbursed for. We'll see how this plays out. Hopefully our sales people will fix it.

Anyways, the title of this post. I had planned to leave at noon. I didn't. My wallet (mistakenly) was in a bag in the car so I didn't have it at the office. So I borrowed $10 from a coworker for lunch.

I'll repay it back on Tuesday when I'm next in the office. I'll have to bring her a little something as an interest payment. I'll keep my eye out for something unique this weekend to bring as a thank you.

Slept really well again last night. Two nights in a row! This is unusual for me. I bought Melatonin on the weekend. Seems to be doing something.

While rested I'm still going to get my vat of coffee to take to work. I'm also going to take a larger lunch than I did yesterday so the bright shiney signs of the drive through are not so alluring.

Todays plans include sending off some coupon trains, more on the insurance paperwork I have, a massage (scheduled) and getting the oil in my car changed.

I don't know what got into me tonight.

Oh hang on. Yes I do know what got into me.




Calories and spending that is not getting me to my goals. Sigh.

I think, now I am trying to analyse it is that I didn't eat enough at lunch, and I didn't have a snack in the afternoon. So I stopped on the way home and again for slice of pizza after I did my civic duty tonight. I was hungry.

I'll bring bigger lunch tomorrow and see what that does to my willpower.

*not sure where the kitty picture is from (which is what I see when I go to the all blogs page) but it is cute. Its is not the picture I see on my entry page, however its pre-coffee and the is no way I'm going to win the cat is determined*

Heading to work in a few minutes. It will be interesting to see what mess is left on my desk after a very busy few weeks of working on a panic project.

A few odds and ends on my personal agenda too. We vote today for municipal candidates. So I need to do that as there is a candidate or two I prefer and a couple that I don't want to win too!

The other odds and ends are buying stamps, and some deposits to make (didn't get done on the weekend). Nothing too difficult.

I'm not fully on my frugal game (sleeping in won, LOL) so its off to the Timmies for a cuppa and some breakfast - I do have a lunch so I'm not doing too badly.

I hope this won't apply to any of us.

Another saturday! Woo Hoo!

I have number of plans today most of them involve spending some money.

* slow wind up with coffee (I love just being able to relax). This part is free, woo hoo!

*sign up for the Missus Smarty Pants service. I need clothes, I want stuff that looks nice but these days I get into the clothing store and freeze. Hopefully a $10 investment will pay off into some better purchases.

*Lunch out with friends.

*Buy Christmas gifts for some people on my list. Stores I want to go to are in a power centre mall beside each other.

*Deposit 2 cheques.

*put together chili to cook in the slow cooker

*relax and maybe do some quilting.

A doable list. Now I'm off to catch up on my blog reading

I went into the grocery store today for one thing. A special on the last day of sale that I had coupons for. Of course it was no where to be found. One of the "meat guys" looked for me - even looked in the back. None! He went above and beyond.

I go to customer service to get a raincheck. The young lady at the desk was friendly and polite enough but seems their policy is that they have to call the department to see how many rain checks they are supposed to give you. I asked if I could get 4 on raincheck. That's not so greedy. But no she couldn't write me out one without checking.

The meat guy - likely the one who helped me said okay.

Did they know how tired I was? How I just wanted to get home? Do they realise how not fun it is to stand around while an employee of a huge chain decides to call to see if they can give you 2 or 3 or 4 as the number of items you are allowed to purchase with your raincheck? Do they have to make it this difficult to get a good deal?

The big project (our companies response to a request for proposal) that I've been working on got sent out today. So its done. It might come back - with questions and the like. Worst (or perhaps best case) we might actually sell it.

I'm totally wiped. A coworker had a huge project similar to mine due out today also, and she reminded me of the necessary way to deal with the completion of these sorts of projects.

We grabbed our boss and another coworker and headed out to for a late lunch. A few beers were consumed. I had some delicious chicken wings. And we were good - we did headed back to the office and made an appearance before we left for the day.

I have ton of stuff at work but that will wait for me until Monday. Not like any "work elves" are going to rush in this weekend and do it for me.

A lazy evening is planned - well what is left of it. Tomorrow is soon enough to sit down and make some preliminary decisions with respect to Christmas Shopping. My goal is to have most of it done by the beginning of December. I say this every year, LOL.

Dumping the two cold cups of coffee at your desk into one cup so you can go to the microwave to heat it up.

True motivation was not frugalness. Rather the knowledge that there is no fresh hot coffee to be had in this building. The cafeteria closes at 5 and the vending machines dispense a beverage called coffee that really does not resemble any coffee you have ever had (other than perhaps from a vending machine at your place of employement or a hospital). My nuked reheated coffee is better than that stuff.

The real motivation was that I need to stay to work and if I leave I'm not coming back here tonight.

Lets not go into why I'm blogging rather than working, okay?

I slept horribly last night. I think, even though I did go in to work yesterday to get caught up enough to be "totally behind" rather than "totally and hopelessly behind", that I have too much work to do! Duh eh?

I just had breakfast, and have my lunch to take to work (and a cuppa coffee for the drive!). My planned spending is a cup of coffee (I'll likely need another one at some point today) and a tank full of gas.

There is nothing nicer than waking up after a good long sleep, and enjoying a cup (or more) of coffee and some of your favourite blogs.




When I blog out I'll move to checking the flyers for deals so I can plan an economical shopping run. Also on the agenda is tossing something easy into the slow cooker that will transform itself, almost like magic into wonderful meals for next week. That will give me a nice start for next week - nutritious delicious calorie sensible food to take to work!

Says something about my life doesn't it?

My plan was to work late tonight. My body and mind disagreed with that plan and decided that I needed a nothing night. I'm too tired to do anything and don't want to sleep now or I won't tonight. So I'm blogging.



I'll likely do some work at home tomorrow or go in for a few hours. Would be smarter to go in I think - so that tangible progress can be made. Work will be nuts next week. Totally nuts. It has been a while since it has been this crazy.

Had egg and chips for dinner, bought the chips, cooked the eggs. Very easy quick and filling. I need to do some cooking ahead this week too, so I eat properly next week. After this I'll likely go ebsurf an easy to raheat casserole or two for my lunches and dinners next week.

Today was a really long day at work. I made some progress yes, but at 8:30 tonight, while still at work I had to concede that I had to cancel my plans for this weekend.



I had planned to see my boyfriend, but I will instead have to work late tomorrow night, be in early on Monday and likely have to take some work home or go in (or stay most of friday evening - which is likely the best alternative now I think about it.

The good news. - Only spending today was on a coffee (and the lottery pool I'm in but that is planned spending). No darn way I want to be the only person left at the office if they win the lottery.

I'm not exactly happy about this. Having one that is. I'd prefer to have my Mom. Sigh.

Anyways, Dad called me tonight. Both my bother and I signed over our money from the will to my Dad so he'd not have to take a mortgage on the house. Long story, but Mom's will didn't reflect their current finances. We did the right thing rather than get all "entitlement oriented".

Anyways, while we did Dad is splitting the money from Mom's account between my brother and I. He is sending us a cheque each. That is very sweet of him.

What to do with it. To put it aside in case it is needed for for my Dad at some point - though he does have the house as an asset. Or invest? Or buy something? I would love a high end sewing machine. One that does everything including vacuum the sewing room afterwards. Bernina is my brand of choice They have some nice features for quilting.

That isn't sensible. I need money towards a car at some point and I could use it for retirement. But the dream is nice.

Today has been a very bad day at work. My accomplishment, so far today, has been not telling them all to "go fly a kite" and walk out. I keep reminding myself that would be a huge step back financially to be out of a job.


I'm going to do some OT, then head home. Hopefully things will be better tomorrow.