I'm so excited. I got a job offer from the Philadelphia Zoo as Head Pachyderm Keeper. The pay is good, benefits even better: they said I could take all the elephant poop I can fit in my trunk...no pun intended.... for my vegetable garden!

Sorry, I only get to do that once a year, folks. April Fool's!

It was a gorgeous day, sunny, high of 68, I think. Tomorrow will be even warmer.

I hauled another trunk-load of branches to the landfill and spent about $42 at Stop & Shop but I had oodles of coupons. Filled the trunk again with branches but realizing now i can't swing by the landfill on the way home from the medical study tomorrow because it's Good Friday and I think I saw a sign that they'll be closed.

I made a diced cucumber/tomato/onion, chickpea/feta cheese salad with ranch dressing. Yum. Put up some window screens so the cats could enjoy the breeze.

Painted the sun room floor. I got the gloss paint at Ace a few weeks back before realizing that if you want the gloss, it's not gonna be latex paint, but a "polyurethane xxx alyd" something or other. The main thing is, it doesn't clean up with soap and water, and since i hate having turpentine or other chemicals around the house, I bought some cheapy brushes at Xpect Discounts (.69 each) knowing I'd use them once and throw away with trying to clean them.

As expected, the bristles starting coming out as I painted. I just carefully pulled them out like so many fish bones when i saw them coming loose so they wouldn't get painted onto the floor.

I finished painting at 1 pm and checked it for drying several times today. I don't think I really need a 2nd coat, though I have most of the full gallon I'd purchased. It still looks VERY shiny, which I like a lot. But they say don't subject it to "heavy use" for 7 days, light use ok after 2 or 3 days, depending on temps and humidity levels.

They delivered the 4 x 6 bamboo rug I'd ordered for the sun room, but i saw immediately that while it's a good looking rug, it's NOT the one I ordered. What a nuisance. UPS is to pick it up and return to the company, but of course I have no real idea when they'll be here. I'm hoping not to miss them on their first attempt at pick-up.

Today was another trip to Yale for 2 medical research studies. I spent 2 hours at the first place; they took my blood, which is headed for the National Institute of Health. No rinky dink study here!

Happy to say that my careful MapQuesting of New Haven's many one-way streets helped me get from research study #1 to research study #2 with no problems. Even found a parking spot on the street easily.

Answered a bunch of questions to see if I qualified for the 2nd study (I do) and got $10 for doing so. I'll go back for the actual study where they'll do an EEG (electrodes on my head while i play computer games or something) and will earn another $40 for my trouble.

The key for me is trying to schedule 2 of these studies on the same day to make the 45-minute drive more worthwhile.

I have one more trip to make to return to the first study and after completing that last segment of the study, they'll mail me $206.

Felt very tired when i finally got home around 3:30 pm and after driving in the pouring rain on the interstate. But at least i'm learning my way around the big city.

Treated myself to a meatball grinder at Subway on the way home, and made one last stop at Ikea as well.

Personally, i like the new look. The white background somehow adds a lot more air to the screens and makes the site seem more contemporary to me. I agree, though, that I'd like to see room for a longer list of recent blog posts.

I notice, though, that even while I have inserted line breaks between paragraphs, it's all single spaced in the published posts. Nate, if you're reading...

March has turned out to be a great money month for me. In addition to my unemployment, I brought in an extra $1,069, and that wasn't even including the $3,968 from my IRS refund!

I made $815 from freelance work (2 press releases, a blog post and an article), found $1.96, sold something on Craig's List for $15, did some surveys and made a wonderful $200 from a market research focus group (all day) yesterday.

The focus group was very interesting, held at a beautiful hotel that looked more like a retreat. They fed us breakfast and lunch and we got out a little early, plus got paid in cash, so no complaints here!

I can't talk about the particulars, but it involved an actual class action lawsuit. I guess it's big bucks enough that the lawyers for both sides, who each gave us condensed presentations, wanted to see how things would pan out in front of a "mock" jury. In the afternoon our group of 40 was split into 2 separate "juries" to hash things out and i was surprised that only myself and one other person in my group sided with the plaintiffs. Let's just say that I have a big consumer advocacy streak in me, and the other side felt that if a corporation can get away with making more money at the expense of the customer, then that's ok, because Hey! That's the American way. Or so their thinking went.

I'm hoping to drum up a little more freelance work, so am sending out a "15% off, it's no April Fool's joke" flier to 3 key former contacts. Even if i don't get new work now, i was in need of a reason to contact them and remind them I'm still available, so this will accomplish that.

Not doing much this weekend, although I really should go to Staples as my ink cartridge is past done. I found a 15% off coupon for Staples, so that's where i plan to go.

Next week is another very busy week for me:
Monday: 2 different medical research studies. 1 is just the 2nd of 3 planned visits, so won't get paid til the 3rd is done, and the 2nd is a $10 questionnaire to see if I'm eligible for the larger survey. The biggest hassle, i'm guessing, will be finding a parking space in New Haven.

I mapquested everything and will hit Ikea afterwards, as well as the landfill on way home.

Tuesday: My dad is supposed to come up but am guessing we'll have to reschedule due to rain.

Wednesday: Help mom install an art exhibit at library

Thursday: Free day

Friday: A 3rd medical research study, so back to Yale.

i checked out Craig's list again and sure enough, three more studies I could apply for. They all don't pay as much as the one i already started (stress and overeating, 3 sessions, $200), BUT if I can schedule at least one of the new ones for the same day as my third and final session with the stress and overeating session, then it makes sense.

The one i booked has something to do with visual pictures and food and pays just $25 for one two-hour session. It's another Yale study, so its location is nearby the first study.

I'm waiting to hear back on another study (Anxiety/worry, yes i qualify these days) and pays $40 and another one on eating behaviors that pays $20 for 25 minutes of your time.

My dad's coming up next week to help me bring all the brush and tree branch prunings to the landfill. Tomorrow's the other $200 study, this one a market research study, not medical study, on social issues. The hardest part about this is getting there on time; have to leave the house at 6:30 am.

Last night was a free dinner/lecture on estates and wills. Dinner was Swedish meatballs, noodles, broccoli, salad and cookies for dessert. Yum.

Between these lecture dinners and the research studies, my calendar's looking pretty full. I want to squeeze in as many more as i possibly can before early April, when i hope to get a call from the census bureau about some work which i expect will be full time for a period of weeks, so i'll have to drop everything else when/if i start that.

Here at home, I've been so preoccupied by cutting up big branches into smaller branches that will fit into the trunk of my car that i haven't done a thing to ready my vegetable garden for spring planting. I think the peas could go in NOW. I'd better get tilling.

If so, I have $10 gift card I can mail you. PM me. Expires June 2, 2010.

Yesterday I drove into New Haven to participate in a medical research study. It involves three visits, answering a lot of paper questionnaires, 2 blood draws and urine samples. For this I'll earn $200 at a minimum, more if I agree to have my interview with the psychiatrist videotaped or if I win any money in their little gambling games (of the "would you rather have $20 now or $100 next year? variety).

The subject they're researching is the connection between emotions, stress and overeating.

I got a little lost trying to find the place, but this was probably the first time having my cell phone with me really came in handy. As soon as she told me "the big white building," I knew where it was.

Tonight I'm attending a Masonicares talk on estates and wills. I consider it entertainment and it includes a free dinner. It's right here in town.

Friday I'm doing an all-day market research study for which I'll be paid another $200. I tried to get 2 of my friends enrolled in the study, too, but they must've filled up the slots quickly because neither could get in. Unlike the medical study, which pays by check via snail mail several weeks after the fact, the market research study pays in cash before you leave for the day.

Since I opened up the sun room, I started thinking about how to deal with cushioning for the built-in benches. I realized that due to the way they were built, it would not be possible to buy ready-made cushions and it would also be real expensive to get custom-made cushions.



There's a 4-inch piece of wood that separates each window, and that wood extends down and touches the benches. The cushions would have to include a notched section in the middle to accommodate that piece of wood.

So to save money, I decided to buy standard and king-sized pillows for a more casual look, covered in nice shams that look as un-bedroom pillow like as possible.

My first stop was Wal-Mart, where I bought 3 king sized pillows and 2 standards, and on the way home I also stopped at Target, where I ended up buying 5 turquoise shams for those pillows. They have kind of a pebbled quilted look with the opening in the back, not the end, so I thought they'd work well.



When i got them home, i could quickly see that the pillows they were WAY too high and fluffy. I also realized I had 2 extra standard pillows in a closet that were fairly flat, so I decided to return all 5 pillows and not replace the 2 standards.

Then I checked out Target's pillows and decided these were much flatter and better for my needs, though they cost $25 each vs. $17 each at Wal-Mart.

Yesterday, after finishing up with my medical research study session, I stopped at Ikea, which was just around the corner and a place i rarely get to since it's close to an hour's drive. Ikea, I noticed, sold king-sized pillows for $9! Quality doesn't matter so much to me because they're just for sitting on, not for sleeping.

So....you guessed it, this morning I returned the 3 king pillows to Target for the credit and when I return to New Haven for my next session with that medical research study, I'll swing by Ikea and pick up just 2 of the king-sized pillows. (I've decided I don't need every inch of the benches covered in pillows.) It'll save me about $33 on the pillows alone, plus $25 for one returned sham.

I also picked up a set of 3 little white shelves I can put knickknacks on without worrying the cats will knock them over. They look really good.


The 3rd shelf is very small, so it may look better in one of the bathrooms.

Finally, I also ordered a 4 x 6 bamboo rug for $68 and spent $22 on a gallon of Ace paint for the floor (taupe).

It seems like I'm spending a lot, but I've decided to indefinitely defer the ceiling fan (with installation probably $400 range) because I'm concerned the box that would have to be built to hold it to the exposed ceiling wouldn't look good. For now, I can run a floor fan anywhere in there or in the family room, blowing through there.

I got my $4,000 IRS refund, so I've maybe spent $230 total on the sun room. I already transferred $3,000 to my online money market account, where I actually have a bigger balance than before I was laid off 6 months ago.

Oh, the large blue glass jar you saw in one of the photos above? I plan to get some white sand, fill it a third of the way, then put some seashells in it. I hate to pay for sand, so I may have to schedule a trip to the shoreline to take some from a public beach!

Not much else new. I spent a part of every day for the past 5 days or so, when the weather was so great, finishing cutting back my forsythia hedges and then cutting their long branches into 3 foot wide sections that will fit in my trunk. I keep the trunk loaded so that anytime I'm going past the dump, I can unload them. I still have more burning bush branches to drag from the yard to the driveway, which is command central for all my pruning leftovers. There's quite a pile.



The crocuses are in bloom...



...and Waldo is enjoying some catnip.

Today's the third and final day of this icky, rainy, damp weather.

I forced myself to tackle the wallpapering again. You know, the downstairs bathroom that's been out of commission for about 2 years now. Considering that even now, not working, I manage to go weeks between wallpapering the bathroom, getting even a few more pieces up there seems like an accomplishment to me. So I got exactly 2 more pieces up there and it took over an hour.

An added incentive is that I know that once the weather warms up, as it will later this week, I'll be hell bent on planting vegetable seeds and expanding my garden bed, or simply finding reasons to spend time outside. Finishing the bathroom wallpapering will be the last thing on my list.

So, here are a few shots of my progress.



Don't look too closely, there are many mistakes.

I spent hours poring over wallpaper designs online, but if I could do it over again, I'd pick the same pattern in a slightly lighter shade. I painted the cabinetry an ivory color that matches, and there's a new window in here (with tinted glass on the lower half for privacy, since it looks out onto my new sunroom). Yeah, it might seem a bit strange to have a window that looks out onto a sunroom (that used to be a screened porch), but it lets natural light in what would otherwise be a very dark bathroom. The fixture in here is also new and replaces some tacky brass sconces that were actually rusting, plus they were placed to the sides of this big mirror and because of the angle always cast a glaring light.



Oh my, look at all the glue i got on the mirror!

I anticipate a lot of trouble trying to cut the wallpaper around the circular base of that light fixture, so i may have to see if i can cut power to the light, disconnect the unit and try to prop it up on some kind of makeshift shelf for it while i wallpaper around it.

Once i finish this project, I shall NEVER wallpaper again. You'd think I'd be pretty good at it, having wallpapered my kitchen about 8 years ago....



This was the only wallpapering job where I had a helper. I love this toile pattern. My kitchen has a black, white and stainless steel color scheme. Here's a photo of it taken 3 years ago when I had it immaculate because I was trying to sell it, before my relationship, and the real estate market, fell apart:



It basically looks the same now except I got a new stainless steel fridge a few years ago.

My second wallpapering project was my upstairs bathroom....



Some visitors have actually thought that was real tile on the wall!


Here's a closeup of the same pattern. That's my mom's artwork.

And my last wallpapering project, before the horrid downstairs bathroom, was my office.





Here's a closeup of the pattern. Pretty, isn't it? I only wallpapered 2 of the walls in the office, but I still haven't gotten around to painting the remaining 2 walls a soft eggshell blue. (I hate white walls.)

The worst thing about wallpapering is that once you wet the paste on the back side, you have only minutes to position it correctly and start scraping out excess glue and bubbles. If you take too long, the paper starts getting tacky dry and can then be really hard to move around, resulting in wrinkles or worse, tears in the paper.

The other pain in the neck about wallpapering is that for it to really look good, you have to watch how often the pattern repeats and make sure you line it up correctly, or you'll see a mismatch from one piece to the next.

I hadn't thought it mattered with my bathroom wallpaper since it's such an abstract design, but yes, you can tell where I started and didn't bother matching up the paper's pattern. Matching the repeating pattern can also mean you'll waste a lot of paper, so that's why I'm already on my 2nd roll of paper for this small bathroom.

I just realized I had the perfect headline for this post, because that's exactly what was going on...I cooked, while the storm raged on.

It was a scrumptious day.

I made a big pot of pea soup which is still cooling on the stove. It's a bit on the watery side now, but it always thickens up nicely after sitting overnight in the fridge. I like to add carrots, parsnip, onion and celery/celery leaves to mine, plus this time I added a small amount of nitrite-free ham pieces.

I topped off my bowl of pea soup with the last of my homemade rice pudding with dried apricot. Heavenly. I mean, really good. I'm a pudding fan, and I'd rather have chocolate, rice, Indian, bread or tapioca pudding over cake or even pie!

I was surprised how well this turned out even while 2.5 of the 3 cups of milk called for in the recipe were skim milk. I had a small amount of 2% milk which also went in. I don't know why I don't make this more often. It was really delectable, and a good way to use my expensive $6.99 per bag of Trader Joe's California slab dried apricots, the best money can buy, in my opinion.

Can't say I did much of anything else today except hunker down during this gosh awful rainstorm.

I often bring up my 40 or so bookmarked gardening blogs and read through them, and I've done this already today.

My money karma is picking up steam lately after I was feeling so....moneyless.

A client sent a check in yesterday for $285. Today, I received a check for $245 from another client, the one I was afraid wasn't going to pay me. After a routine call to a focus group contact, I landed a seat in an unusual, all-day market research gig which pays $200 cash plus breakfast and lunch, and i've encouraged a friend to sign up to so we can drive down together. And I got my IRS tax refund deposited into my checking account, another $3600 odd dollars.

I'm really trying not to spend money, but i was feeling so restless today sitting home that I went grocery shopping just for a social outlet! I didn't need groceries, but perused all the shelves and still managed to spend $15.

Nothing much on the agenda today, but I happened to call one of two market research places in my area and they said come on down. Not sure it was worth it. (Note to self: Ask how much the survey(s) pay first before trekking down there.) I did 2 brief surveys, one of which involved eating Hershey's chocolate, but was paid just $5. Plus I found a $1 bill right on the floor of the Mall where the survey play is located. It took me a hour round-trip to drive down there and back, so I suppose I netted a few bucks after gas.

I suppressed an urge to buy a soft pretzel. It cost $2.39 and I told myself I could buy a loaf of bread with that money, so I was able to exit the Mall without spending the few dollars I'd just made.

On the way back, I stopped at the dump, having had the foresight to load my trunk up with fallen branches from the yard before leaving; I'd cut them up to fit the trunk the day before, so without having done that I wouldn't have had time to load the trunk up before heading for the survey. I have many more branches to bring to the dump, but would rather wait to bring more til i have a reason to head back in that area, saving myself an extra 6 miles of driving.

I have close to 100 miles on the car, more than I thought I'd have 11 days into the Put It in Park challenge for March. And I don't even have a daily commute!

I have about a half tank of gas left and my goal, perhaps unrealistic, is to make it last the rest of the month, or another 20 days.

I sent a late payment notice to a client who hasn't paid or contacted me since the last revision (and 3rd draft) of their project, despite several efforts on my part. I was steeling myself to have to pursue the matter eventually in small claims court. They responded to the email and said they overlooked it and the check was being mailed today, so that would be a very good thing as I can really use that $245.

As soon as I get that check, I will email her back and inquire as to what went wrong. I don't think they were unhappy with my writing, and I did see disagreement between the husband and wife co-owners as to the thrust of the piece, but you'd think after investing that much time they'd want to finish it. I'd like to retain clients at all times if at all possible, though my first concern right now is getting paid.

As for the CIO of the investment advisory firm who I found on Craig's List, I ended up spending about 6 hours editing his 11-screen Powerpoint presentation. Thus far, my worst fear about this dude seem accurate, ie, as soon as I sent my edits, I've heard nothing further from him. Just silence. He was under no obligation to pay me anything but assured me more than once that if he liked my work he would happily pay me, and there'd be future work. I'll just have to chalk that one up.

My cat just knocked over a partially filled pitcher of water. Thanks, Luther! Good thing I was home to wipe it off my wood floor.

I was the randomly selected winner of a contest on a gardening blog I read and I got the prize FedEx'd to me yesterday, a very nice gardening book.

This past Wednesday my mother and I attended a slide lecture by the artist Michael Whelan. I didn't know him before, but he's apparently a very successful fantasy/sci-fi artist who's done 350 book covers for Stephen King, Isaac Asimov and others. It was interesting, though not my personal style. There's a series of these lectures at the state college (free) and I hope we can see at least one more.

A friend told me about a copywriter job with an agency but when i called them, the job had already been filled. She suggested we get together now even though they don't have current openings. I scheduled a meeting with her for this Tuesday, then later decided to cancel it. I just didn't feel like schlepping down there for the dog and pony show, especially since I've never gotten a perm job thru an agency before and i guess i'd rather wait til there's a specific opening before going to interview with the agency. Do i have a bad attitude? Perhaps. Anyway, they've got my resume.

I rather like the ebb and flow of my non-working lifestyle these days. It's probably the closest thing to what it will be like to be retired, except i hope not to be on such a starvation budget then! What i mean by ebb and flow is that I'm never rushed, never have to get up earlier than I like and never have to just give in to a clockwork-like existence dictated by 9 to 5+ working hours. I like the freedom that comes with not having a schedule. Each day is a little different and each day offers new possibilities. Alas, it can't last, I need a paying job and I hope to find one soon.

Oh, yeah, i called my local census office the other day and asked if they're still hiring cus i haven't gotten a call yet. (I took the exam last year.) She said they will be thru early April but they go totally by scores. The higher scoring people get called first. She said the only way i could improve the chances of getting caled is if i wanted to retake the test. (I got an 89.) I don't think i feel like it.

Had a nice, albeit short, birthday lunch for my mom here on Saturday. As it turned out, she couldn't eat the cauliflower/cheddar soup I'd made becus she didn't bring her lactose pills. (I think she made up for it with the chocolate mouse cake.) I sent her home with the soup so she had it later.

I rearranged the front parlor.


The mural was painted by my mother in 2003. The French doors to the right lead to the family room, and from there you can access the sun room. The small rattan backpack on the floor at left was something I bought years on one of my trips to Bar Harbor, Maine. The antique trunk i picked up at an antique show in the area. I had the small table to right of the purple armchair stained to match the colors of the trunk.


This is the other end of the front parlor. The small, red oriental rug is one my mother brought home with her 30 years ago when she went to Morocco. The two wood lamps on the credenza were made by my grandfather, a master woodworker.

See what I mean when I say I don't like clutter? It's maybe a little too spartan and requires a few more items on the credenza with the ship.

I did so to try to accommodate a new upholstered chair I got, but becus the color is more gold than taupe, it doesn't really go well in this room anymore and so it's landed in the family room. Too much trouble to return it. I wrestled it up the basement stairs.

Egg-laying has picked up again and so my mother and i are the lucky recipients of my sister's chicken eggs.



You never know what color will pop out. Maybe someday, I'll get a cobalt blue egg.

Yesterday and today I did just a LITTLE bit of yardwork which mostly consisted of cutting up pine branches that dropped over the winter and dragging them and much lighter branches I pruned from the burning bush to the driveway, where my dad and i will eventually bring them to the dump in his pickup.

But I'm amazed at how sore I am. Either it's age I(I'm 50 now) or umm, I'm really out of shape. Or a little of both.

What's everyone's mileage so far in the "Put it In Park" challenge? I'm pretty sure I'm under 50 miles so far.

It was warm enough today...a high of 55 degrees....that I turned off the heat in the house this afternoon. I opened the front and back doors when the sun was shining on them and let the cats enjoy the view.

I need to get back to wallpapering the bathroom. I PROMISE I'll do it on the next rainy/cloudy day, which looks like it'll be toward Thursday or into the weekend. It's hard to work on it when the weather's nice.

I got my state tax refund a while ago, but am still waiting on my big IRS refund. Where's my refund? feature on IRS website indicates I'll have it by March 31 unless there's a problem. (Let's hope there's no problem.)

Not only are my snowdrops in bloom now, but I see the autumn joy sedums are just breaking the earth's surface, and my daffodils are also popping up, about an inch high now.

Spring is really very nearly here!

Yesterday, I discovered the snowdrops under the big white pine were in bloom. And through the weekend, temps will reach up to close to 50 degrees.

It'll really make me want to get out and do yardwork. I need to drag all the pruned burning bush branches from the middle of the yard to the driveway, where I'm collecting them and counting on my dad to follow up with a visit so we can haul to them to the dump with his pickup soon.

I'm having my mother and sister over for my mom's birthday lunch today. On the menu: cauliflower/cheddar soup garnished with sliced scallions (awesome), some garlic Naan bread, a Trader Joe's appetizer I just pop in the oven and for dessert, a luscious Trader Joe's cake. My sis is bringing a salad.

Yesterday, I responded to a Craig's List job for a contract financial copywriter. I can't tell you how stoked I was when the head of the firm, an investment advisory company that manages portfolios with a minimum $1 million, called me a few hours later.

We (he, mostly) spoke for 5 or 10 minutes and he asked me, as a "test," to edit a draft pitch book he would email me. I said fine. (He's basically looking for a writer who can write the company story in a compelling, passionate way.)

After I got off the phone with him, I perused his website, which didn't look very professional and which was all about him. I didn't see any evidence of other employees and i felt the website, for an investment advisory firm, lacked substance, made claims without backing them up, etc. I then viewed a video he'd made, not on You Tube, but someplace similar. Hate to say it, but he came off as kind of a quack, and again, not much of substance there. RIA firms usually very conservative and seek to provide confidence in their expertise. I can't say he did that for me.

I googled his company and name, and mostly all there was was plenty of yellow pages and similar directory listings, which of course anyone can do. I checked the NYT, WSJ, USA Today and Boston Globe, all papers he said he'd been mentioned in, and not one of them produced his name when I did a search in the paper's archives. Hmmm. It also appeared he's moved around a lot in recent years, from Boston and Maryland to Stamford and New Haven, CT.

To top it off, I haven't received the pitch book he told me he'd email me last night. Perhaps for the best?

When will i catch a break???

Well, it's a beautiful day and I'm going to enjoy it. I'm afraid there will be no wallpapering today.

My "Go to" guy Ralph came over to price out some jobs I want him to do.

Since "discovering" this guy last summer (a friend/co-worker referred me to him) I am SO glad I found him! He does great work at even greater prices!

He's the one who did my sun room. I can't tell you how many guys i've had here over the years who really gouged me on prices. (Like the guy who charged me $1,000 to install a sump pump in the basement. Sigh. Bygones...) I've been mostly ignorant over the years, but I've gotten better about discerning whether it's a fair price or not.

Anyway, first to the maintenance stuff that needs to be done. He priced all this at $300, very reasonable, I thought:

1. Cement in 2 below-grade basement windows. Years back i saw on the outside that the old wood windows were rotting and since i wanted to sell the house at that time, i had those old window frames removed and the hole bricked in, but the guy evidently didn't do a very good job cus i noticed at one point that when i stood in the basement with the lights off, i could see daylight coming from that space! I also felt a lot of cold air coming from a hole in the cement where Ralph said mice could get in too. So all that will be fixed. I just want to have the 2 spaces where basement windows used to be to be uniform cement.

2. Cement in an area of a basement wall that was bricked in and is not at all level. It's on the shared wall between garage and basement. I swear it looks like a car plowed into the wall and it was "repaired" by an amateur.

3. Repair 2 large and long cracks in my front stoop. This is urgent, since letting this go will make it worse.

4. Redirect sump pump outlet from draining out the north side of house to the east side, which is also the front of the house, but the pipe will be largely hidden by all the pachysandra there. The idea is that the water will more readily drain from the front of house where there's a fairly sharp downward slope; the side of the house where it drains now is kind of level and when the sump drains the water out, it tends to pool in an area to the side of the house and only slowly drains away.

I'm not sure why the guy who installed it put it where he did; he probably figured i wouldn't want an ugly pipe visible from front of house. At this point, I'm more concerned about proper drainage and as i said, that pachysandra is really bushy and will easily hide the pipe.

All of these are relatively small repairs of things that always bothered me but i never got around to having them addressed since it can be tough finding someone who will not only do small jobs, but do them well.

Plus, if i ever sell this place, it will mean that many fewer small repairs to do at the last minute. I'd want to have them done becus they're the kind of thing that would give buyers pause and question the integrity of my foundation or something. If and when i sell my house, I'd like to streamline the whole process and do a quick sale, and especially in this market today, you can't expect to do that unless the house is in very good shape to start with.

Plus i take a lot of pride in my house and get so much satisfaction from doing any sort of home improvements. It's quite the expensive hobby.

Ralph's going to get back to me in a few days about the cost of putting stone facade all around my garage, on the ugly concrete part. It's just a 1-car (attached) garage, but it comes to about 170 square feet of stone, which is a lot of material and $$.

It will definitely make the house/garage more attractive as you drive up the driveway. Good for resale value but also for my own enjoyment. So many people who come here say oh, it's like an English country cottage! This will make it even more so, I'm sure. Stone walls galore.

I have no idea what the stone will cost; he said it would be pricey cus it's such a large area to cover. I have some numbers in my head i hope it doesn't go over. His prices have always pleasantly surprised me before, so hopefully, that'll be the case again.

I forgot to ask him, though, and this is a key question since I'm already addressing lots of cracked concrete issues, is how likely the stone wall will develop cracks of it's own over time?

I'd like this to be maintenance-free!

In other news, Patient Saver is headed for a haircut this afternoon. I'll be stopping at Xpect Discounts for some bird suet and also at Trader Joe's.

Suet prices at Xpect increased this year, from .50 a cake to .59. Still the cheapest game in town, though. Most everywhere else will charge you $1 a cake.

I'm having my mother and sister over this weekend for my mother's birthday. My sis is bringing a salad and I'm doing a cauliflower cheddar soup with a crusty bread and some sort of extravagant Trader Joe's frozen dessert which I'll get today.

I have to start cleaning the house pretty soon cus while it's perfectly fine for me, it's not presentable for public viewing! Cat hair clumps in the corners and that sort of thing.

Someone expressed interest in the punched tin hanging pendant lamp I posted on Craig's List last week. I sold it for $15 today, driving down to a local Starbucks to meet the buyer in a parking lot.

That makes a total of $305 in Craig's List sales since losing my job. Every little bit helps, and I also love "decluttering" my home of things I don't use or need. It'll make my life easier some day if I move. Plus I helped someone else avoid buying something new and kept my lamp from ending up in a landfill for the next hundred years.

I had nearly given up ever selling this item and had posted it 7 times before. But it only take one buyer, the right buyer.

Each time I make a sale it really motivates me to look around the house for other things I could sell, but I'm not one to accumulate stuff, so I don't think there's much.

Selling stuff also makes me hyper-aware of how easy it can be to convert dollars into "stuff," but how hard it can be to convert "stuff" into dollars again. It makes me a much more careful shopper.

All of my buyers have been men. I've never successfully sold "knickknacks" to anyone; most of my stuff has been either practical stuff, like camera equipment or a mini fridge, or specialty stuff that would appeal to someone with an offbeat hobby, like collecting toy cars (a recent $35 sale) or a large drum ($75).

My rollerblades never did sell, and I ended up giving them to GoodWill just to get rid of them. It's a bruising hobby. My hardly used sleeping bag has generated a lot of interest, but has still yet to be sold. It's one of those items that can be quite expensive when bought new. (Same for that hanging lamp, which cost me close to $100.)

In other news, I'm excited cus my builder called me back today and is coming over tomorrow to price out some jobs I have for him. All 4 jobs involve cement. Three are small maintenance jobs, and need to be done, and one is big, but I'm lusting after having it done: stone facade on my ugly garage walls.

I've never been one to search out loose change on the ground, and I'm amazed at how much money you all seem to find. I guess it has to do with actually looking for money instead of going through your day in a distracted daze, like me.

Anyway, i thought i would share with you a place to find spare change that none of you has ever mentioned, surprisingly.

I walked to the supermarket to see if they had Pert Plus for Men with the special "Try Me Free" sticker on it. They did indeed, so I went to purchase a bottle becus they have a free after rebate deal. (Download the form from their website.)

I went to the self check-out line, which I rarely do, but i had only the one item. I fed a $10 bill into the machine and was supposed to get back $6.24 in change, meaning a $5 bill, a $1 bill and .24 in coins. There was actually .96 in coins in the little coin slot; someone else apparently didn't care about getting their change, or forgot.

I kinda felt like I'd just hit the jackpot at a pinball machine.

After that, i walked to the library and read my local paper. Then i met my mother to catch It's Complicated at our $2 movie theater. We loved it, Couldn't decide who I like best, Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin. (I'm thinking Steve, only becus i didn't like what I heard about Alex Baldwin a ways back when he was fighting with his daughter...he sounded disturbed, although i must admit he was very appealing in this movie.)And Meryl Streep is, of course, incomparable. I've never seen an actress who can smile and laugh for as long and as naturally as she can. It was nice to see a type of love story with older actors, for a change.

I had some Trader Joe's pumpkin pancakes for breakfast this morning (yum) and I'm only now starting to get a wee bit hungry, at nearly 4 pm!

I've sold a number of items on Craig's List in the past 5 months, but there were plenty of things that didn't sell. I was feeling particularly discouraged when none of my postings the week before Christmas attracted any interest, but after reading recently of someone's success here after several attempts selling the same items, I posted mine again.

Am pleased to report I sold 2 Made in Russia die-cast toy cars today for $35. I had a Russian penpal for years, and she sent them to me. I really had no use for them and aside from the interesting Russian writing and photos on the boxes, they weren't anything I felt like keeping.

One was a taxi and the other was a rather nondescript family sedan.

They're rather obscure items, but you only need one person with an offbeat hobby to see it, and that's exactly what happened. For my safety, I decided to suggest we meet at a nearby Starbucks; he thought I was simply being helpful when I really didn't want to invite a stranger into my house.

Turns out he's collected both die-
cast toy cars and Pez candy dispensers for years. His license plate says "Pez Man." He has several hundred cars in his collection from all over the world, but these were among the first Russian ones he's gotten as they're hard to find, he explained. When he said I "made his day," I beamed inside.

When I posted these cars before, I listed them at $40. I have a feeling that there's no need to reduce the price in successive ads, because it seems that if someone decides they want it, price isn't really a factor, as long as it's in the realm of reason.

I also find it interesting that most of my sales have all been to men. Who says that women are the shoppers??

So it was gratifying to sell my stuff to someone who really valued the items. He gave me 2 $20 bills and said if i didn't have the change, don't worry about it! (I did.) He even offered twice to buy me a coffee, since we were at Starbucks.

Otherwise, not much new. Was turned down for what would have been a lucrative, steady online freelance job writing on a subject I have a lot of background in. They said they hired someone else. At least they let me know, but I was bummed nonetheless. When will I catch a break?

Raining all day today and will be turning to snow tonight and then won't stop until Saturday. I rescheduled a haircut from tomorrow to Tuesday. Seemed the prudent thing to do.

I had some leftover spinach from another recipe so i went on www.recipezaar.com to look for other recipes using spinach. I decided to try the "comfort soup" with chicken broth, spinach and meatballs. It was not bad, but i would make some changes should i make the recipe again. It's your basic, what do you call it, wedding soup?

A new electric utility company i've signed up with has a website with all sort of shopping discounts, and they give you a free $500 when you switch over to them, so basically, i can get 2 for 1 deals at lots of local delis and fast food joints, among other things, for the next decade or so.

Feeling glum today. Don't see any light at the end of the unemployment tunnel yet and it's getting discouraging.

February has been a great month for surveys. I earned $69. That's $9 from Pinecone and $60 from Greenfield/Toluna.

I've done surveys for several years for both groups, though because I was working, I didn't get to them right away, and being even a few days late in getting to a survey really seemed to increase the chances the survey quota had been met.

Now, being out of work, I usually get to whatever available surveys there are on the same day I receive them. I still get disqualified from a fair number of them, but have managed to earn an average $40 a month from Toluna. So a $69 survey month is something to crow about!

I've earned 21 points for the February home cooking challenge, month to date. (Meaning, I ate out one time this month!)

I got another freelance assignment today, so I'm a happy camper.

I'm still undecided about whether to pursue the AFC certification. It would cost $850, not including CE credits and annual membership fees each year down the road to keep it active. I don't think the test would be terribly hard since I already have some background in this area, however, I'm also not sure this would make a huge difference in the types of jobs I could attract. It certainly wouldn't hurt, and I might just decide to do it because I have an interest in this area. The thing is, jobwise, the type of job I could get with this certification would be, for example, working at a credit counseling bureau. But I have a feeling the salary range in that field, and especially starting out with no work experience, would be quite a bit less than what I'd earning now as a writer. When I'm employed, that is. So, to be honest, I don't have too much motivation to do a career change. This might just be a "career enhancement."

I got up this morning looking forward to attending a half day medical conference about a half hour away.

It's the only "community" where I have an automatic, honorary membership simply because I have a chronic illness. It's a place where I know I'll be welcomed unconditionally with smiles and friendship, although I haven't had much chance to do this over the years since I've always been working.

So I drove down to the Marriott and asked at the desk where the conference was. She seemed puzzled, and spent a few minutes with someone on the phone going over the list of conferences before we both realized my conference was March 20, not February 20.

Duh!!!

Oh, well. I stopped at the bank and picked up some groceries on the way home.

I think I'll vacuum out my car in a while since the weather's so nice.

I was thinking yesterday of studying for the AFC designation. That's Accredited Financial Counselor. I've always had an interest in personal finance and, if nothing else, it would look nice to see those three letters, AFC, following my signature, and on my resume. It should enhance my employability, although it's entirely possible my next writing job will NOT be with a financial services company. I'm not a one trick pony, but this is the field where I have the most experience.

I might even look into a career change into financial counseling with some small firm in my area, who knows. That would be weird to even think about, because i've felt all my life that my only employable skill is writing.

If nothing else, it would give me a good answer to give should some future prospective employer ask what I did with all that time I had while I was unemployed. To be able to say I earned my AFC accreditation would be impressive.

It's a designation i hadn't really been familiar with until reading Fern's interview of a Denver-based financial counselor. She seemed like she had a very interesting job. She speaks to employees at companies about debt management a lot.

I guess the idea was percolating in my head for a while without my really thinking about it consciously.

I began thinking about doing it more after getting a phone call yesterday from someone who was laid off at the same time I was, same company. He found a job.

After I hung up with him, I was thinking, why keep waiting around for some employer to "rescue" me from unemployment? Who knows if or when that might happen? I'm tired of depending on others to determine my fate or the next direction my career will take. And try as I might, I couldn't really visualize in my mind the type of company I would want to work for, partly because i dislike office politics and the whole office culture.

That was an exercise the leader of my job networking group had suggested, identifying on paper which companies in my area I'd like to work for. You're supposed to research it, obviously, but I couldn't even say what types of companies really appealed to me. That's an unsettling thought, to realize that you have no idea where the next job might be coming from, and being in a wholly reactionary mode.

I was thinking I might enjoy financial counseling, because while I don't think I'm a strong presence in a group setting, I do much better when I'm working with someone one-on-one. I think I would enjoy taking a personal interest in my clients and advising them on financial matters.

I briefly looked into what's involved with becoming a Certified Financial Planner, but that, apparently, is a 2-day marathon (10-hour exam) with a pass rate of only 49%. It's a little intimidating, and really, I have no interest in advising what investments to purchase; my interest is in looking more holistically and broadly at a client's financial lifestyle.

For these reasons, the AFC designation would seem a more doable venture. I believe the website of the association that administers the designation said it would cost between $1,000 and $2,000, not including the annual license fee and continuing education credits you'd need to earn every 2 years to keep your license active.

Initially, it didn't appear that I would qualify to sit for the exam because one of the requirements is that you have at least 2,000 hours of work under your belt as a financial counselor or educator.

I emailed the group for clarification, and she told me they had recently broadened eligibility requirements so that I could, indeed, sit for the exam because i have worked as a personal finance writer, and that would be considered "educational." So that's great!

I need to spend more time, hopefully today, to see what the coursework would be like and if I felt i could manage it. (Math, you see, is not my strong point, though I can muddle through the basics.)

Now, granted, if i got a job with a financial services firm, they often will pay for your tuition. At one company I worked for, they also paid me bonuses when I studied for and passed the Series 6 and 63 exams. But studying for these exams while working f/t is a little tough. I'd much rather do it now while i have all this free time, even if I have to pay for it myself.

If i got a job before i took the exam, well, I'd just have to manage both. It's a self-study course (they mail you the course materials after you apply and pay upfront) and when you decide you're ready to take the exam, you tell the association what college you want to take the test at and they arrange a professor/proctor to administer the exam to you on their premises. There is a time frame in which you have to take the exam, but they give you plenty of time to do so. I'd opt not to stretch it out but to draw up a study schedule so I could do it in a fairly condensed period of time.

I'm actually very excited about this. It IS a lot of money, so i need to spend some time studying the coursework and other details before committing myself to apply.

Any thoughts?

So, still mulling over, what, if anything, I should do with the $4,100 I expect get back from the IRS.

What I would really like to do is take $2,550 of it and apply it toward my mortgage. That figure, $2,550, would represent 6 months worth of $425 monthly prepayments that I haven't been able to make since losing my job last fall.

Not being able to continue my accelerated mortgage prepayment schedule was one of my biggest regrets about my job loss. Meaning, that it would put me behind schedule in my goal of paying off the whole darn thing in just 6 more years.

Granted, I likely will remain unemployed for longer, but at least this one-time payment would help put me back on my original track.

That would leave me with $1,550 to add to my reserve fund or perhaps think about doing some essential home repairs, like fixing some large cracks that have developed in my front walkway. Leaving it alone would allow the walkway to break up further, and i spent too much money on it maybe 10 years ago to allow that to happen.

Toy Guy, if you're reading this, or anyone for that matter, do you know anything about concrete repairs? I would do it myself but when i did one of these cracks last fall, i tried to reseal the crack with new, fast setting concrete mix and obviously it didn't work at all, since one of the cracks that showed up this winter was the same one i tried to fix last fall.

If you stop by here on occasion, chances are you've heard mention of my recurrent insomnia. Four years ago, I discovered sleeping pills and became dependent on them, but even then, I'd often awaken in the wee hours of the early morning,any time between, say, 3 and 5 am, unable to return to sleep.

Not liking the idea of being dependent on pills, and since they didn't guarantee a good night's sleep anyway, I resolved about a year ago (?) to kick them completely. It wasn't too hard to do, although my sleep cycle was ransacked. I noticed, though, that no matter how crappy a night's sleep I got, I could still get through a day at work. I just pushed through it, night after night.

Then, i don't even remember when, exactly, i started sleeping more restfully. Until now, i honestly didn't even think about it. It's like an ache in some part of your body; while it's there, you're very much aware of it, but once it's gone, you don't even notice its absence.

Surprisingly, my restful sleep even continued through my unemployment of the last 5 months. That is, until 4 or 5 nights ago when i noticed i was waking up early in the a.m. again.

And that's how you find me typing this post at 3:39 a.m. Can't sleep.

Could underlying worry about my job situation finally be catching up with me? Perhaps. I try to push the worry and anxiety away into the recesses of my mind because nothing good can come from worry.

I sure hope this return to fitful sleep isn't here to stay. It makes you tired at odd times during the day, makes you tired early in the evening and generally messes up your day. Even if you have no job to go to.

Home Cooking Challenge points, month-to-date: 14

Several days ago, I noticed a distinct bad smell in my upstairs hallway and office. This happened once before, and the smell was actually rising up through the house from the basement, where I tracked it down to a dead mouse caught in a mousetrap.

However, I've scoured the basement, not to mention my office, just in case, and can't find any dead mouse. Perhaps it died somewhere inaccessible.



It stinks! It's disgusting!! I'm wondering which will come first, spring, when i can at least open the windows for ventilation, or total mummification of the dead mouse.

Yesterday morning i spent several hours adapting a handout someone i met at my job networking group used for my own purposes. I'm pretty happy with the way it looks. It's meant to supplement my resume. While my resume is organized by the job and emphasizes my function at each job, this handout is organized by skills and emphasizes the same skills listed on my resume, but here it leaves out all the company-specific stuff. It's also a lot easier to read and fits on 1 page.

I'm going to bring it to the next job networking group meeting to show them how you can adapt someone else's stuff to suit your own needs. I think they'll be impressed. Now if i could just find an employer to impress....

I had committed to wallpapering the bathroom today, but found myself stalling, so to avoid doing absolutely nothing today, i headed out the door to buy $77 worth of cat food (the 2 boys go through 5 cans daily, so it goes more quickly than you realize), then Costco, where I got 3 gallons of milk (i freeze some) and had some yummy free samples (dark chocolate-covered pomegranate!!) and Petco, where I was able to exchange some Natural Balance that the boys don't like for some dry food and snacks.

Fighting my usual mid-afternoon fatigue, i can either spend the afternoon finishing pruning The World's Largest Burning Bush, OR do some of that wallpapering.

I was in a kind of down mood yesterday, and I wasn't sure I could pinpoint why. I think it had to with the job networking group meeting i attended yesterday morning.

It's a very small group. This is a plus, in that you get a fair amount of individualized attention, but also a disadvantage, since you don't have the benefit of rubbing shoulders with a wide swath of unemployed people.

Everyone else aside from the co-leaders, a husband and wife team, were male and over 45 with fairly senior level job histories.

I usually pick up a few nuggets of useful info at these sessions, even though others' career paths can be radically different from mine.

I think I was feeling disheartened because many of the others that spoke that day seemed to have some activity to report, whether it was coming in second in a job interview process or some impressive consulting work. I had to compare it to my own practically non-existent job search where I've seen no "perfect match" jobs for many weeks. (There was one guy there, a newcomer, who readily admitted that he's done basically no job searching for the past 6 months and had something of a bad attitude. I secretly related to him.)

On top of that, one of the co-leaders said the reason why attendance at these meetings has dropped off lately is becus she believed more people have found jobs. Nothing like that to make you feel like a loser.

I did get a copy of something someone else there used to supplement his resume and which he presented at the job interview. It was a more visual way to organize his work skills, plus a listing of 30-day deliverables and 60- to 90-day deliverables.

It's pretty tough to come up with credible deliverables before you've even gone on the job interview. You have to know to a fairly accurate degree what the job will entail. Still, he said the people he showed it to seemed very impressed, and he felt it helped him stand out compared to other job candidates.

So I'm going to try to adapt his stuff to my own situation. It will use his handout only as a springboard and be mostly different from what he did. I think I can make mine more meaningful.

Basically, I'm going to create a visual chart that organizes my background, not by the job, as my resume does, but by grouping key skill sets in 3 or 4 major categories. It could, perhaps, make the info more readable for someone who dislikes wading through dense resumes like mine. (Some people who may have job-hopped a little too much over the years prefer to do their resume in this way because it camouflages gaps or short-term job stints, although I think most employers prefer the traditional job-by-job format.)

That's not really what the guy at the job meeting did; he worked at the same Fortune 500 for 18 years and simply created 4 ascending vertical columns for each job title at that company, then listed by bullets the different key skills he used. To me, his version was a little redundant with what likely appeared on his resume. It was like a reshuffling of the same info.

It will take me a while to come up with my 3 or 4 key categories, I think, because I'll want to broaden my skill sets as much as possible.

The big question which I face all the time is, should i make this focus on my financial services, real estate and Internet marketing background primarily, or should i broaden it to include marketing in general, in case I get an interview with a non-financial services or real estate company? My work experience is rather heavily concentrated in financial services and real estate, which is helpful in establishing me as an "expert," but it also narrows the field.

I suppose once i get one version of this done, it would be easier to adapt it to specific jobs, just as i do now, to a certain extent, with my resume.

These long days of winter pass by effortlessly for some...


...who spend their days mock-fighting,


...even though they're best buds now.


Note the long tufts of fur growing between Luther's toes. He could survive in the arctic!


Which end is up? I'm not sure, but Luther loves to wrestle.

Home Cooking Challenge points, mtd: 10.

Lots of the white stuff expected. It's going to snow all day today. I guess I'll get out there sometime this afternoon to clear some of it with the snow blower before it gets too high to use it.

In the meantime, I'm still sitting here at the computer in my red jammies.

I had a hard workout Tuesday at the gym and burned 300 calories doing cardio. The workout was hard because it came right after my Monday workout. I wasn't supposed to have another workout until today, but because of the expected snow storm, my trainer rescheduled that workout for yesterday.

My final workout (the last of the 3 free weeks) is this Friday, when we'll do the "weigh in" and see if I've lost any body fat. I'm very upset that not only haven't i lost any weight, but i gained 4 pounds in these past 3 weeks, part of a gradual increase in weight I haven't been able to control! My trainer said it was probably weight gain due to muscle gain. I hope we can find that out for sure on Friday becus, never having been really heavy in my life, it's very distressing to me.

I know the trainer is going to try to get me to sign up for membership at the Friday weigh-in and I've already decided that much as I would LOVE to do so, I don't feel I can justify spending $35 a month while I'm not working. (I have already decided that I WILL spend $18 every six weeks to maintain my new (short) haircut, so I guess it's all about choices.) I hope she doesn't try to pressure me too much. It's ironic, because right now, I have the time to do it but not the money; if i got a job, I'd have the money but probably not the time!

Yesterday, I also arranged to bring my neighbor to the surgical center for her knee surgery. It was orthoscopic, but we were both surprised by how good she felt, with no pain, not only immediately after the surgery but also later that night, when i called to check up on her.

After this one heals completely, she has to have knee replacement surgery done on the other knee, and that will be a longer recovery period. It's essential that she does it, though, because she's in danger of becoming an invalid without it, having more and more trouble walking, etc.

When I dropped her off at the surgical center around 11:30 a.m. yesterday, she said I could pick her up around 2:30 or 3 pm. I figured that was too long a gap in between to find ways to kill time in that city, so I decided to just do my grocery shopping at the nearby Shop Rite and then go home.

I had picked my neighbor up right from the gym and I was very tired from that workout. After each workout, I go home and usually end up collapsed on the bed for at least an hour, feeling utterly tired and sore. It's been a while since I had this much exercise, but I DO need it and am glad to take advantage of the chance to do so.

But anyway, I dropped H. off, fought the mob at Shop Rite (everyone stocking up before the storm) and then got home, looking forward to resting from that workout. I walked in the door just in time to get a phone call from the surgical center saying I could pick H. up now. Grrr.

I make an effort to help her out, partly because she's estranged from her own daughter and wouldn't have too many other people to ask, and partly because, should i ever need a similar helping hand, i want to feel comfortable asking her for help. One hand washes the other, as my dear
grandmother used to say.

Eagerly waiting for my $4,000+ tax refund, but it'll be a few weeks at least. Still wondering what, if anything I should do with that money. The smart thing would be to simply sit on it in the event i need it to pay for living expenses during my extended unemployment.

By living very simply (something I do anyway) I've been able to get through 5 months of unemployment using my unemployment benefits plus a relatively small amount of freelance and survey work so I haven't spent any of my savings.

Between my checking account and an online money market, I have about $10,000 in liquid money, if I should need to tap that, but I think it would help to bank the tax refund money too. I have to think about painting the house again this summer as the lousy job the painters did 4 years ago is really showing. (My small claims case against them last year came to naught as the guy left the country and went back to his native Brazil.)

I know i shouldn't be thinking of this, but there's one home improvement project I've been LONGING to do, although it's completely cosmetic and not cheap.

The builder who did my sun room did such a nice job of putting a stone facade on the exterior of the sun room that i had the brilliant idea of having him extend the stone on the 2 walls of my attached 1 car garage. Stone walls already surround the driveway and i have a lovely set of stone stairs leading to the backyard. (My "Stairway to Heaven.") I get comments from people already that my place looks like an English country house, and stone around the garage, which is the first thing you see when you come up the driveway, would really enhance that look.


The Stairway to Heaven

My builder said last summer he could do it but that it'd be fairly expensive due to the cost of materials. (It would include the side of the garage, but there's a door and a large window on the side that take up space, and then of course, the front of the garage, but the garage door takes up most of that space. It would also include a small concrete wall to the right of the garage door.)

I don't really know (at all) how much we're talking, so I'm tempted to have Ralph come over and price it out for me so at least I know what I'm dealing with. If I had to guess, I'd say between $2500 and $3,000 tops, but i don't really know. I thought Ralph was pretty reasonably priced when it came to the sun room, so maybe it'd be less.

Would it be smart to spend that kind of cash when I'm not working full-time? No, i guess not, but I am a gal addicted to beautifying her home. There are other smaller projects I'd love to do this year: 1. install a ceiling fan in the newly done sun room; it gets stifling hot there in the heat of summer. 2. have a plumber fix the downstairs toilet. Now that i've started wallpapering in there, it could become a functioning bathroom again, which it should be, since i already spent money putting in a new window and new lighting and 3. aforementioned painting of house exterior.

There was a time i talked a lot about selling this place and buying a condo that didn't require all the outdoor maintenance, but if i do home improvements like the stone facade, i kind of commit myself to staying here for as much as another 10 years, so as to enjoy those improvements! While I like the maintenance-free aspects of condo life, every time I think about having to give up 1. my vegetable garden, 2. my clothesline and 3. my bird feeding, I don't know how I'd ever adjust to a condo.

Maybe what i should really do is move to a smaller, more manageable house with a smaller, more manageable yard (one-third acre would be fine.) But then i think, would it be worth the trouble of moving for just a slightly smaller home and property, especially when I'd probably feel compelled to make all sorts of updates to a new home and considering that I have many/most of the things I want right here in this house?

It's an old debate I've had with myself for years. I'll probably end up staying here a good while longer since chances are that if i moved, it would put me further away from area job centers, not closer. It would make sense to defer any move until I'm ready to retire. That's still 10 years away.

I feel like I've wasted a lot of time, but not entirely. Here's how I've spent the past 5 months of unemployment.

Jobwise:
I applied for a bunch of jobs, both permanent f/t and p/t, started attending a job networking group, created Job Alerts at about a dozen job boards, enhanced both my resume and Linked In profile, took advantage of career counseling which was part of my severance package, met other laid off colleagues a few times, met with a recruiting agency, and took the census exam in hopes of being hired as a temporary worker this spring. I also contacted all my old freelance contacts and told them I was "open for business." I had just 1 job interview.

Budgeting:
Pared down all expenses to bare minimum. Cancelled Netflix, let all subscriptions expire without renewal, started getting DVDs from the library and reading my weekly paper there. Stopped mortgage prepayments.Avoided getting sick so no doctor's visits these past 5 months.

In addition to unemployment benefits, I earned $1,035 from freelance work, plus about $170 from surveys. I made about $255 selling stuff on Craig's List. Sold a gold necklace for another $225. All of this has allowed me to live and pay the bills without spending anything from savings.

Personal:
I visited my dad out-of-state both Thanksgiving and Xmas; I wouldn't have been able to do both had I been working.

I cut my hair for the first time in 10 years, short.

I gained weight and joined a gym, but only for 3 weeks (free). Did a lot of walking.

A friend helped me install a new wall sconce in my bedroom, and I've started wallpapering the bathroom.

I read 4 books.

I did a lot of much-needed winter pruning, with a lot more to go. (Waiting for a good weather day.)

I maintained my blogs with at least twice weekly posts.

Attended 3 health-related lectures that included a free dinner.

Saw 2 or 3 $2 matinees.

Helping Others:

Was able to take both my mother and neighbor to appointments they had for surgery.

Did some volunteer work for 2 local environmental groups.

That's about the extent of it. After reading Fern's latest post on how others have used their time, I hope to do a better job of spending my time productively instead of vegging out.

I am oh-so-thrilled to 1) have finished my federal and state tax return and 2) have learned that, combined, I'll be getting back $4,100!!!!!!!

That's probably a record for me, made possible by a combination of factors, including having a much lower income from having been laid off, $900 in tax credits from installing energy-efficient windows, having a portion of my unemployment benefits be tax-free and the Make Work Pay tax credit.

Although my brokerage gives me free Turbo Tax each year, I prefer to do mine the old-fashioned way, using the IRS maze-like instructions ("Is the amount on Line 17 lower than the amount on Line 18? If so, skip to question 20; if not, fill out the worksheet on page 59....")and a sharpened pencil. I'll be mailing it off tomorrow; the state return i filed electronically, cus it was free.

I also entered an essay contest a local hearth and home type store is holding to give away a brand new fireplace installed, or, if you already have one, an updated fireplace, value up to $5,000.

The selection of the winner is March 5.

My house is unusual in that it doesn't have a fireplace and I always thought a stove or fireplace would go far in improving my ability to enjoy the first floor during the winter. As it stands now, I mostly live in the upstairs, save for time spent cooking and cleaning up in the kitchen.

I learned, with some sadness, that K. is moving out from my dad's house after 4 years there and buying her own home in the area. It stems from relationship issues they're having that have to do with my two half brothers. I think their relationship will continue afterwards, perhaps even improve, but things will be different, to be sure. I always had some peace of mind knowing they were together, should either one, both of whom have had their share of health problems, fall ill. Now, each will be on their own.

Home Cooking Challenge, MTD: 7 points!

I've had both my homeowners and car insurance policies with MetLife for 14 years now. In all that time, I've maintained a clean driving record and have never filed a claim on either policy. I figure they've made a lot of money off me for basically shuffling some papers around and issuing me a bill every now and then.


So, after paying for my car insurance last month, I was surprised to receive what looked like another bill from them today. It was a bill for a $5 "processing fee."

Now if you know anything about me, you know i can't stand nickel and dime processing fees. Most poor saps don't have the time or energy to challenge them, and so banks, credit card companies and yes, insurance companies, reap millions in petty fees, most with no legitimate reason.

Like most insurance companies, MetLife offers you a choice: you can either pay for the next 6 months of insurance in full, or you can pay in four smaller, equal installments. If you choose the installments, though, a $5 processing fee will be tacked on to each payment, effectively increasing your premium by $40 over the course of the year.

In other words, those people who can least afford it get victimized with additional fees.

But back to my case. Why, I wondered, were they trying to charge me an extra $5 when I paid my car insurance in full last month, as I have done for the past 14 years?

I got on the phone and argued with a customer service rep with a funny accent who didn't offer much insight but kept insisting I must pay the processing fee.

It was only after I escalated it to her supervisor that I got to the bottom of it. You see, I always take MetLife's safe driver discount course. Once you pass, you get 10% off your car insurance for 3 consecutive years. When those 3 years are up, you can repeat the exam and continue to enjoy the discount.

So when I got my bill for the car insurance last December, I quickly saw that the amount was higher than what I was used to paying, and I realized that was becus my 3 years of discounted insurance due to the safe driver course had passed. Since the bill wasn't due for another 4 weeks, I quickly called to order the safe driver course ($25), which is sold by another company that works with MetLife to administer the exam. The booklet came in the mail, I took the exam that day and mailed it in immediately. About a week later, I received a certificate in the mail saying I'd passed the course.

I then called Met Life to doublecheck what the amount of my premium would be after the safe driver discount was applied. She confirmed it for me, even though MetLife had increased my premium, and the premiums for all those who live in my state, despite my perfect driving record. (Grit teeth here.) I then said, is it ok if i mail in a copy of the certificate along with my payment for the car insurance? She said, do you have a fax machine, cus you can fax it. I said no, I don't have a fax machine. She said, OK, then you can mail it with your check.

It wasn't until speaking with MetLife's conflict resolution specialist today that I learned that the reason for the $5 processing fee was becus the safe driver certificate needs to go to one place for processing, while my payment for the insurance went to another location. That's why they assessed the $5 processing fee.

(She also gave me some baloney about my account having the option of installment payments checked off, despite my never having used that option, or being asked whether I wanted that option. I'm sure it's the software program's default option.)

I argued with the conflict resolution specialist further, becus fact is, when i spoke with the MetLife rep back in December, she didn't say it was necessary to mail the safe driver discount certificate to a different location. She said it was fine to mail it with my check.

So becus of the stink I raised and my threat to sever my relationship with them over a stupid $5 fee, the conflict resolution specialist said she'd remove the $5 processing fee.

I guess they figure that 90% of customers would never bother to dispute a $5 extra fee, and even if the 10% who do like me cause a big headache for the unfortunate rep being paid a low salary and who has to deal with them, the corporation is still making big profits on those who let it slide and continues to reward its upper echelon executives with fat bonuses, you know, those people who never have to deal with an angry customer/

That's corporate America for you. The kind of thing that burns me up. The whole paperwork thing was all automatically computer-generated, I'm sure, and a thinking human being didn't actually look at the situation to consider whether it was fair or correct to charge this customer a $5 fee, so i had to stress myself out to win that small battle.

I decided to open a SEP-IRA finally. Anyone who has any kind of income from self-employment can do it. If you're a "sole proprietor" like me, you can contribute up to 20% of your profit before self-employment tax and overhead is deducted. (Correct me if I'm wrong MonkeyMama, I know you're reading this.)

It's not that i make that much from freelance; this past year, for instance, I only grossed about $1,000, so that means I can contribute $221 for the entire year of 2009. Still, if I had gotten around to doing this 10 years ago, i would've had a tidy little nest egg by now. There was at least one year when i grossed about $5,000. The more money you can put in a tax-deferred account like this, the better. That way, it's not taxed every single freakin' year, plus it reduces your taxable income in the year that you make the contribution.

So I filled out all the paperwork and am mailing it off tomorrow, with my little check.

I was fairly busy with freelance work today, 1 press release after a phone consult with the client (let's hope 3rd time's the charm) and then got a signoff on a blog post i wrote for another client and got go-ahead to start work on the next 2 assignments for that same client for February and March. So this keeps me happy cus I feel like I'm EARNING Money (i say this as i type by flashlight.)

I also am feeling especially accomplished today becus LO AND BEHOLD, I started wallpapering my downstairs bathroom!!!! You know, the project that's been on hold for roughly 2 years becus mid-project i suddenly appeared to have lost all taste for messy wallpapering jobs. (That hasn't changed, I can assure you.)

So i did about one quarter of the bathroom (it's pretty small) in about 2.5 hours. There's measuring involved, which I'm not good at, and once you wet the wallpaper backing, it's quite slippery to handle and glue gets everywhere, and you have to work fairly quickly or the backing gets tacky and it won't stick, and you have to make sure to smooth all the bubbles out. OMG. What I got up on the wall is by no means perfect, but it'll do. I hadn't bothered to line up the pattern when laying side by side paper becus the pattern is a stone-look design and i didn't think I'd need to, but i do see that yes, i need to. Depending on how often the pattern repeats, you can waste a lot of wallpaper that way, so I'll have to be careful to maximize every inch of that wallpaper. I bought is several years ago and if it ends up i need another roll, for all i know it could have been discontinued, which seems to happen a lot in the wallpaper world.

The most difficult parts are yet to come, namely, behind the toilet, The tank actually touches the wall, so i HAVE to remove the tank to do the wallpaper. I've had the water turned off for a while now becus there was/is a leak that i haven't wanted to spend money to have a plumber over to fix, so i think at least the tank is empty. I just have to see if you just lift the tank off, or what. Does anyone know?

The other hard part will be around the mirror and new light fixture above the mirror. I'm not going to take either one down so am hoping the wallpaper will slide in under both. The light fixture has a round base that attaches to the wall; i will most surely mess that part up. (wish me luck)

I skipped going to the gym in order to start on the bathroom. It was worth it; i can't go to the gym every day like i did last week.

I went over to my mom's for lunch yesterday. (I really enjoy the unemployed lifestyle, that is, if it weren't for the lack of money) She made my favorite dish, soft as butter Brussels sprouts in the pressure cooker, and cream of broccoli soup and very good bread.

I agreed to help her install her next art show at a local library 3/31, assuming I'm still out of work.

I called the census bureau today to find out if they'll be calling me soon to offer me a temporary job since i took their exam back in November and scored 89. Responding to my questions, she said yes, they usually have more applicants than they have a need for, but that with my score of 89, I should be hired, altho she didn't say that in those very terms, that was the gist of it. She said to expect a call late February/early March. So that would be great to have several weeks of f/t employment.

So last week i worked out at the gym and spent about a half hour each time on the stair stepper, burning between 200 and 310 calories each time. I had hoped that would be enough to tip the scale (down) but i was very discouraged to see my scale did not agree with me. I haven't lost anything.

So since this is week 2 of my 3 free weeks at the gym, i had already decided to kick it up a notch and work out on the stair stepper 45 minutes each time I'm there. It really is a sweat inducing workout and i get my heart rate up to about 90% of maximum capacity, which is roughly 150 beats a minute.

Then, of course, my mother had to tell me about her neighbor's son, my age, who had a heart attack and died while working out at the gym 3 years ago. Sort of got me nervous. How do I know how much plaque i might have built up in my arteries?

I did some laundry the other day and let the clothes dry indoors, which worked fine.

I have earned 2 points for the Feb. home cooking challenge MTD.

Next week i'm driving my neighbor to the doctor's to have the first of 2 knee replacement surgeries. I told her take advantage of my free time while I'm still not working! So she scheduled it quickly cus i don't know who else she would have called.

That's about it.

Tomorrow I'm going to the dump and will be able to get rid of some items i culled during the January Purge 30 in 30 challenge. An old electric sander, a non-working cordless drill, a rusting toilet snake. Since they all have metal parts, I'll put in the metal section where they can recycle some of it. I'll put a note on the sander, "Take me, I work fine." Offered it on CL but no takers. The drill's lithium batteries I'll hold to drop off at the Household Hazardous Waste pickup day in May.

I'm stumped. I've been really focused on cutting back on expenses. So why, oh why, did my electric bill come to $87 this past month, more than it's been seen March 2007?? I know the days are short, but still....

And why was my January grocery bill equally high, at $266?? I've been trying to keep it under $200.

I'm hoping my "Use-the-Flashlight-at Night" mantra, for moving from room to room, will help with the electric bill. While I'm home most days now, I don't use lights during the day, just the computer and TV.

As for food, I see that in January I shopped at the following grocery outlets:

Costco: twice ($79)
Shop Rite: once ($44)
Stop & Shop: twice ($63)
Xpect Discounts: once ($43)
Trader Joe's: once ($13)
Unknown: once ($23)

That's 8 trips in the month! Seems like a lot, but often if I'm in the area of a supermarket for another reason, I'll stop at the supermarket for a "few things" while I'm there, to save gas.

Ono top of that, I rarely buy red meat (beef, pork or lamb) and only once in a great while I buy chicken. The pricier items I do buy include things like maple syrup, dried fruits, nuts and good cheeses. I try to aim for cheap protein sources, like chicken livers, which I actually like, or canned tuna or chicken, eggs, beans or Lean Cuisines on sale at $2.50.

I'm really going to have to rein in the groceries. I honestly don't know how I could have spent so much. I do try to use up what I have, don't waste much and I do still have plenty of frozen tilapia on hand. I don't buy fresh produce out of season and in fact only shop for what's on sale that week.

The good news is, since I did my January expense statement a few days early, that I earned $99 more than I spent. Which is pretty good, considering I'm living on unemployment benefits and a very small amount of freelance income ($225 for this month) and $148 I got in other ways, including $100 from my dad as late Xmas present (thanks, Dad!) and $48 from doing a focus group ($25) and a few surveys.

Here's just a sampling of the crazy things I do to save money:

I continue to enter and leave my house, not through the front door, but down the basement stairs into the garage, so as not to let a blast of cold air into the main part of the living area each time.

As mentioned above, I will now always use my flashlight when traipsing from room to room for brief periods of time if it's still dark in the a.m. when i get up and at dusk, before settling in at computer or TV. I find myself constantly turning lights on and off after just a few minutes in a room, which wears out CFL bulbs more quickly. So unless I'm in the kitchen for a while, making dinner, for example, or reading a book, I'll use the flashlight.

For a long time I used to follow the rather gross habit of "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown...." but my toilet got disgusting stains that were hard to remove, so those days are over. I found that if I had unexpected guests who wanted to use the bathroom, that damn dirty toilet was the first thing i thought of and I'd have to race to clean it first.

Of course, I'm still consolidating driving trips as I have for some time.

The heat remains on at a higher daytime temp (64) than any other year since I've lived here, but it was my bad luck to lose my job as cold weather approached, and since I don't want to be tempted to spend much, I usually stay home. I can only layer on so much clothing before it becomes bulky and uncomfortable, so i usually pad around here in sweatpants, a turtleneck and a sweatshirt. Also, one of my newer cats has short hair and gets chilled as he's less active than the 1-year-old.

I rarely use my big oven and have successfully used my smaller toaster-oven style appliance for everything from roasting vegetables and fish to baking a quick bread. Once in a while I pull the slow cooker out, too.

Because of continued concerns about the health hazards of eating foods contained in bisphenol-lined cans, I'm avoiding as many canned food items as I can. So like last night, I had a recipe calling for 2 cans of chickpeas. I bought the dried variety, saving myself some money, but then they had to simmer on the stove top for over an hour, causing me to use more energy. (Always a trade-off.)

I also have been wearing the same clothes, day in and day out, when I know I'm not going out anywhere, or only running an errand. Unless they smell or get some kind of food stain, I could wear the same clothes for 5 days in a row, no biggie.

Same goes for showering. My hair actually looks better if i don't wash it daily becus washing strips all the natural oils away, so I also skip showers for 3 days or so. Sorry if i gross you out, but it's saving me on my water bill and toiletries.

(I realize many of you don't share my unemployed situation and so must go out into the world daily and look "presentable.")

I don't often launder towels, since when you step out of the shower to dry yourself, you're already clean! Exception would be in the summer when they start smelling mildewy. Same for bedsheets. It's only me, living alone, so I don't think I'm offending anyone.

I always line-dry my clothes in summer, but I'm also now going to start drying my clothes indoors in winter, since even with the relatively cooler indoor temp of 64, it's enough dry heat to do the job over the course of a day. Plus, the damp clothes help humidify my home, which, with its forced hot air system, is exceptionally dry in the winter. I can always tell how dry it is by looking at the cats' dry, staticy, lackluster fur.

I still have a huge inventory of old stationery I nabbed from my office 2 jobs ago when the office was closing. It would have been thrown out otherwise, so I'm sure I have several years worth of paper for my printer as well as envelopes.

I also have enough shampoos, body washes, deodorant and hand lotions to cover a naked mastodon. All those freebies and Walgreen's free-after-rebates were really worth the effort.

When I start feeling "deprived," I make a point to attend an MS conference and physician lecture sponsored by the pharmaceutical company. It's a free dinner and free tote bag, pens and chap sticks, too. The Masonicare in my town also periodically offers free lectures with free dinner and I did one of those, too, with a friend.

I have dropped all subscriptions, and actually enjoy reading my local weekly paper at the library now in their nice reading room. It's too cold to walk there now, but it's just a mile from my house.

When I fill up my tea cup to heat in the microwave, I used to be in the habit of letting the water run cold first before filling the cup becus I'd read that the cold water makes it unlikely any old iron in the pipes would leach into the water. Instead of wasting that water now, I keep a pitcher on the counter to capture it, and i use that water to water my houseplants. I do the same with the previously wasted water from the shower when I waited for the water to heat up. I have a bucket in the shower that captures, some, though not all of it.

Just a few of the many little habits I've adopted, and I doubt I'd stop doing many of them even if I hit the lottery tomorrow. What are some of your secret frugal habits?

I have seen a few people here are still going to extreme lengths to save on their heating bills this winter.

I haven't done that this year, mainly on account of one of my 2 new cats who seems to get chilled easily (don't laugh, it's true, and yes my heat bill will be higher), but I've been focusing more on my electric bill.

Despite the best of intentions, i got the bill today and it was pretty high...$84. That, despite walking around in the a.m. and at dusk half in the dark, going down the stairs in the dark, etc.

I turn an awful lot of lights on for very short periods of time, mostly going from one room to another. I know that's not good for my CFLs (it shortens their lifespan) and so now, becus that big bill proved I wasn't doing the good job I thought I'd been doing, my next trick is to learn to carry the flashlight around with me in the evening. It's a rechargeable battery and I'm guessing will be cheaper than flicking lights on and off all the time, not to mention safer than stumbling around in the dark.

Getting back to the heat situation, looks like I'll need a 3rd fill-up around 1st or 2nd week of February. Ordinarily, due to my willingness to freeze in a chilled house, i get through the entire winter with just 2 fill-ups. But since I'm not working and home all the time, since I don't want to be tempted to spend much, I find myself home sitting at the computer or TV a lot, and I get cold myself. So this winter i've "splurged" on relatively balmy indoor temps of 64 during the day and 63 at night.

I did a month ago change electrical suppliers; here in CT, electric rates are high and the state has been trying for years to deregulate and make prices come down. My switch to a different supplier just went into effect earlier this week, so we'll see if that helps. Their kilowatt rate appeared to be lower than what I had before.

I worked out at the gym today, 4th day in a row; when i got there around mid-day, just a couple of guys were there and no staff in sight. About 15 minutes later, the guys left and i was the only person there!

I'm really not happy with the way this gym operates. When they do have staff there, it's just one person, the personal trainer, and then when they're working with you, they have to go running to the door to let someone in every 5 minutes. Unless you're a full-fledged member, you don't get a card key. My town is pretty safe so i don't know what's with all the heightened security. It causes the trainer to be distracted and my whole session is disjointed becus they're constantly interrupted by either people waiting at the door to be let in, or others who need to be directed to fill out paperwork at the desk or the phone ringing.

I'm more concerned with my OWN security when there is no staff person on the premises. I don't know that i'll be signing up when my 3 weeks are up after all.

What i do like about this gym is that most of the people who work out there are over 40, and some are well over 40, in their 60s. It just makes me feel comfortable not to have to measure myself against a bunch of svelte bodies.

After 4 consecutive days of working out, though, with or without my trainer, I am getting a little tired of that trip to the gym. I had told myself i wanted to take maximum advantage of my 3 free weeks, especially if i end up not joining, but it does wear on you a little to go every day, so i am looking forward to the weekend off from there. My goal was/is to go 5 days a week, just for these 3 weeks.

I got some more freelance work from my "old faithful" #1 client. So it should keep me busy tomorrow and/or over the weekend. I have one other project up in the air waiting for client revisions.