When I came home from work Thursday night to a dark house, I noticed a dim light coming from the kitchen. That's odd, I thought. I walked in there and found that the freezer door was wide open! Since i have been over-stuffing the freezer with all kinds of food items from BJs while I have the free 60-day pass (a brand-new BJs just opened in my area), I suspect that what happened is some food item fell off a shelf inside and knocked against the freezer door enough to open it. Perhaps it was only slightly ajar, but I have no doubt that once Luther investigated, he pried the door open even further, because he's a pro with kitchen and bathroom cabinets.

The funny thing was, the fridge was NOT running continuously, and even when I closed the door, it didn't start up again immediately. So perhaps I won't have a high electric bill due to the freezer running constantly.

And then there's the question of, is the food safe to eat? If the door was open when I left, it would have been open for as much as 10 hours before I got home. But I really have no idea.

Some of the small baggies of ground turkey did feel soft when I squeezed them, though still somewhat frozen in the center. Now I have eaten a lot of food that lingered unfrozen or partially thawed from Storm Sandy becus I hate to waste food. And so last night i had pasta with turkey meatballs (from the freezer). I feel fine. So I will continue to eat the food, but do so on days I'm not working, in case something doesn't agree with me.

So, I had some thoughts earlier about re-purposing the 200-odd stories I'd written for a website that folded. (The place that laid me off, sending me a wonderful journey called, Surviving Without a Job.) Getting a few published at other websites, even if for no pay, just to have some fresh hyperlinks around and available to embed in my resume.

I approached womanaroundtown.com this morning, and she liked my story idea, which seems very topical to me. The website's audience is urban women, mostly in the NYC area. I'll have to rejigger a story I'd written on my chosen subject because it was actually done in 2009, so a lot can happen in 4 years, plus I need to gear it to a different audience. Want to make sure it's all still accurate, etc. Now the question is, when will I get around to doing this?

Recycling these old stories will actually take just as much time as writing a new one but they can still serve as a kind of springboard. Still, I definitely can't afford to spend oodles of time on this when I should be focusing on earning income, period.

I still have about 70 pp to go on editing The Author's second book. Beyond that, I can look forward to editing her third book as well, since she asked me what it would cost and I gave her a price. That would make 2013 the third consecutive year I've edited a book for her....

I also have to finish up a condo sales brochure this weekend by interviewing a builder for their bio, and my real estate brokerage contact indicated there'd be another community that needs a brochure too when I finish this one. So... nice to have some money coming in, just as unemployment benefits wrap up.

I'm doing my second load of laundry now, and after that, I'd like to wash the comforter itself. Can't make the bed til FedEx delivers my Amazon shipment, which includes a new mattress cover.

I also hope to bake some banana walnut quick bread with some overripe bananas I've got. (You can freeze the bananas, right? Keep them in the peel?)

I vacuumed both floors already; they really needed it. I am also bleaching a bowl of pinecones I've collected; I did this before, around the holidays. It takes a fair amount of time for them to finally bleach out (better part of a day), but they look very attractive. If you don't like dark brown stuff, they bleach out to a light tan color which I like.

Plan to hit Trader Joe's and BJ's this weekend, though it's Shop Rite where I still have over $100 worth of unused gift cards.

The BJ's membership is actually pretty reasonable, just $40 as compared to Costco, which increased to $55. I am sort of tempted to go for it, but the game plan now is to just stock up like crazy on stuff til my temp free pass lasts, til end of February. I have very limited freezer space, so of course I can't bulk buy a lot of what I like to buy, like the teriyaki frozen chicken breasts, or the 3-packs of soy milk, etc. Or fresh produce. It really comes down to canned or packaged stuff, plus big boxes of cat litter, maybe some TP and facial tissues. I've tried pricing out the toilet paper to compare to prices elsewhere, or maybe at WalMart, but it's so hard to do that because they all contain different sized packages and jumbo rolls vs regular, etc. I swear they do that on purpose.

Oh, this week's big news on the health front is that my left ear is no longer clogged. It had been all plugged up from a cold/virus I got the week before Thanksgiving. So it took about 9 weeks (!!) to resolve. I am still getting lots of clicking in both ears when I swallow, but at least I can fully hear now and no longer live in a muffled world.