My friend left for Florida early this a.m. for a week so I'm on my own this weekend.

I feel like I accomplished some cool stuff, aside from the usual chores.

I stopped in at a church fair and saw that one of the items in the silent auction was a (used) thingamajig that converts your regular bicycle to an indoor stationery bicycle.

I have really been wanting to avoid the usual winter weight gain this year and had been pricing these items online to the tune of $150 or so.

Now if you know how silent auctions work, it's pretty easy to get what you want. You can just place your bid toward the end of the auction, which is what I did, for $22. Then because it was just another half hour before they gave away the auctioned items, I sort of hung around and kept my eagle eye on that particular item. Cus if someone else signed up to bid, I could just bid again...they only required that subsequent bids be in at least $2 increments higher. But no one else bid after me, so I got it and I even got it working after dragging my bike up from the basement to the spare bedroom upstairs. It seems pretty sturdy; I hope it doesn't damage my bike in any way. So i saved quite a bit of $$ on that thing.

Now I have to use it!!!!!

After getting my big ladder out last week to caulk a leaky window, it appears to have held through a recent rainstorm. But I awoke early one a.m. last week during that rainstorm and i thought to myself, gee, that rain sounds like it's IN the house. And in fact, it was dripping through another window, this one in my bedroom.

So this a.m. i caulked up the 2nd leaky window. I've done this many times, altho it's usually the other window in my office. The caulk seems to hold for a few years, and then it leaks again. But anyway,the bedroom window was MUCh easier to deal with becus i was able to climb out my bedroom window onto the relatively flat roof over the family room to do the work. No ladders.

I also filled up the gas tank (weekend ritual), got a large, interesting bluish glass vase at Home Goods and groceries at Shop Rite. I treated myself to a big piece of wild sockeye salmon, which i'll share with the cats tonight.

I interviewed with HR at the company I'm doing the contract work with, for the perm job. It wasn't much of an interview, he only asked me 1 or 2 questions, so i'm hoping that's becus he knows they want me.

It's still a little unnerving becus they interviewed several people from the outside for the 2 positions. I hope it's not for the one I want. Still in "wait" mode, as in, I'm waiting for an offer sometime this month or next.

Does anyone have experience doing temporary contract work and then negotiating for the perm position? What I don't know is how much higher or (likely) lower the perm salary may be compared to the temp job? I'm making $104K now. How much would you advise I ask for?

Since starting the temp work in mid-September, I've been nearly doubling my mortgage payments and have started to save money on top of that, altho only $500 a month and I think I can increase that amount.

I'm not sure where my mortgage balance is now, but the goal is still to get that thing paid off ASAP so i can fully concentrate on retirement saving, the ultimate goal being to retire well BEFORE age 60. Like age 55 would be great, but I would have to really ramp up the savings to do that, and not sure it's at all possible.

I am taking Tgiving and the friday after off and am really looking forward to the first time off since starting the job, but it will also mean the paycheck after the next one will be substantially smaller as that will just be a 24-hour week, not 40.

If I end up getting the job, it won't really matter, but it will matter a lot if i don't becus i'll be impoverished again and need every penny.

I spoke to my friend Ron briefly today while i was waiting to collect on the silent auction thing...we may go for a little road trip on Friday after Turkey day to visit one of his nieces, who has a baby now. i haven't seen her for many years; she was just a young girl when i was dating ron....she probably has only memories of me and him always arguing. That's something i regret. Ron and i are opposites in many ways, but he's a good friend now, albeit one i seldom see these days.