That $13,000+ vinyl siding job pretty much emptied my emergency money market fund.

Not sure if I'll be able to squeak through August without having to cash out a few thousand from a mutual fund to pay bills. It's how I planned to pay for the vinyl siding to start with, but I found that I had just enough in my money market to cover it, combined with a few thousand from my checking account, and it seemed preferable to take it from there before selling part of a mutual fund, which has tax consequences.

I also decided the day after America's credit downgrading was a good time to buy heating oil, though at $3.29 a gallon, it still set me back $600.

My dad stopped by for another surprise visit, and he said my (half) brother might have some editing work for me. My brother and his new Chinese wife just had a baby. I'm not very close to them, although I would like to be. My brother is a biologist and has worked for various drug companies, and he's got something he needs to submit to the FDA which needs to read well. I don't have the science background, but depending on how technical it is, I could likely still clean it up.

So when my dad goes home tomorrow (spending the night at my sister's up here), he'll call with my brother's phone #. They just moved into a new house. Work often comes from places where you least expect it. I don't know, would it be wrong to charge my brother? I know he's making good money, and he knows I'm unemployed, so maybe not! Besides, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be coming out of his pocket.

I started scraping off the wall border on one wall of my spare bedroom, in preparation for painting. I need to repaint there due to some water damage from last winter's ice dams. I'm using paint I got for free, from a promotion Glidden was having. I picked out the color online and i tried to match the curtain I have in there. The color is called Tropicana Blue. I wasn't sure how good a match it would be; if it wasn't, I might also have to repaint the window trim, which is a darker teal.

I opened up the paint today and saw that it was in fact a very nice pale blue,nothing too bright. It's possible I could just get by repainting the one wall and not have to repaint the whole room. The walls are currently a pale yellow and could certainly use a redo. We'll see how ambitious I feel manana.

Today was a really nice weather day, but i sort of wasted it and didn't do too much. i was kind of distracted by things related to my job search and some other stuff

I turned in that editing of a transcription test to the company I told you about yesterday. She said I did great, and could I do another one, this time on a 1 day turnaround, and they would pay this time. So I said sure. I took a lot of time on the first one to make sure it looked decent, but i was wondering how long I should be spending on it, so i asked her how long something like that should take, and she said 30 to 45 minutes, but it should go faster as I do it more. I know I spent over an hour on it. Hmmm. $11 an hour. Better than nothing. She hasn't asked me for my Social Security # yet, and that would be a plus if they didn't issue a 1099. They seem to be a legit company, I checked them out online.

My author is on vacation in South Carolina starting today, so I may just miss the several times daily emails I get from her! I'll start up on the final third of the book editing in mid-September, if all goes according to schedule.

I have a product testing gig lined up in a few weeks, just an hour or so of time. The qualifying criteria was that you had to have 20/20 corrected vision and in generally good health. I have no idea what the product is!