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Saving Money
It was a pretty expensive December for us, with Christmas, my truck breaking down, and record snowfalls requiring a snowblower. Thankfully we have a nice chunk of cash is savings.
I think saving money is just as addictive as spending it. Back in my college years I had the problem of spending too much. I got into a little credit card debt. It wasn’t too bad, but bad enough that I learned my lesson. When we wanted to move into a house we couldn’t because of my credit cards. We settled for a mobile home and vowed to knock out the credit cards.
They have been paid off for quite a few years now, and we have been in our house for a year and a half. Now, every payday, I look forward to added more to our savings. It’s a great feeling to know that if something disastrous were to happen, we would probably be ok money wise.
I am not much for New Year’s resolutions, but I do plan of trying to put more money into our savings. I calculated that we put about 15% of our income into savings last year. My goal it to try and put 20-25% into savings this year.
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Happy Holidays
We just got home from celebrating Christmas with my family. I am glad it’s over. I am not a huge fan of Christmas. I think it’s over commercialized, and I really don’t like buy things for people, or receiving things. I feel kinda guilty for all the food and gifts we had for Christmas. I am thankful for all we have, but there are so many less fortunate people out there. I wish I could do more to help them out.
Then there is the whole religion part of Christmas. I am not a big fan of religion. I quit believing in God around the same time that I quit believing in Santa Claus. My Mom would crap her pants if she knew. I just go along with the church thing to make her happy. I feel like I am in the closest or something. I know most Christians are good people, but something really creeps me out about church. Something about being around that many people that believe in supernatural beings.
Traveling is the other thing that kinda sucks about Christmas. You never know what the roads are going to be like. We saw eight cars in the ditch on the way to our parent’s places. One of the accidents was really bad, three dead and one critical; what a way to wreck a family’s Christmas. On the way home we saw four cars in the ditch. I am happy to be home without any travel planned until March probably.
I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season. Ours was all good.
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Weekend of Shoveling and Hacking
What have I done this weekend so far? Let’s see. I shoveled, then I shoveled, after that I shoveled. Since I wont get my snowblower until Tuesday, I need to keep up with the shoveling so it doesn’t get out of hand like last weekend.
I also tried to get my truck started. Last weekend when it got buried with snow the engine got packed full of snow and it hasn’t started since. I got it into the garage and got it warmed up, but it still didn’t start. I should try changing the plugs, but man, they look are to get to, and it’s pretty damn cold out to be doing it. I think I would rather pay someone to get my truck running again. I can’t and it can’t get in until Tuesday, so I will worry about it next week. I wish I could fix cars like I can fix computers.
I did get a chance to work on other people computers last night. Not that I like to do it too often, every once it a while isn’t too bad. Her Aunt had her basement flood a few months back. The computer was up, but the whole surge protector was under water, so they were sure what was working and what wasn’t.
Turns out, everything was working fine. They also finally got cable out in the boonies where they live, so I hooked them up with one of my old wireless routers and got their network setup and running.
They also conveniently forgot their login password for their desktop PC. I never forget my passwords, so I have never really had the opportunity to crack a windows login password. It’s actually pretty easy. What stumped me a little is that it is a little different on XP Pro than it is on XP Home.
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Blizzard of 2008
Things are starting to return to normal around here. You probably heard that we got tons of snow on Sunday.
Sunday night was crazy. I thought I would be able to make it home from work because I have four-wheel drive. The main roads in town weren’t so bad, but when I had to turn off them, that’s when I got into trouble. It was tough going, but I was making it through until I had to turn onto the street we live on. They actually had our street plowed, so there was a hugh bank blocking it. The visibility was so bad I didn’t see it until I hit it. Four-wheel drive is no good when the snow is up to the hood.
I was only a half block from our house, so I just ran home and got a shovel. I started digging the Jeep out and it wasn’t but a couple minutes and I had someone else come over and help, and then a few minutes later someone showed up with a truck to pull the Jeep out. One thing about North Dakotans is that they are pretty nice and willing to help someone out in general.
When I got home, I had to walk through waste deep snow to try and get our front door open. I opened the garage door and the drifts were chest high. I shoveled enough to get the Jeep into the garage. I was pooped and called it a night. I was going to spend all day Monday shoveling.
That evening, one of our neighbors came by with his snowblower, and blew us out. That saved me hours of backbreaking work. We will be investing in a snowblower now. We have just been spoiled. We haven’t had a snow storm like this in quite some time.
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Snow and Cold On Its Way
Just checked the weather report and we got a near 100% chance of snow this weekend. I am not a weather geek and I don’t follow the reports all too often, but I have never seen a “near 100%” chance of anything. So I guess that means there is a good chance at some snow. Actually, they are saying we could possible get up too 16 inches of the white stuff. That should be fun to dig out of.
It’s not going to be a fun weekend, but next week looks worse. The high for Monday is suppose to be -10ยบ. lets just hope it’s not windy. I would much rather have a ton of snow over the sub-zero temps. I would also rather deal with our winters and have nice summers over having super hot summers.
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Wicked Weekend
I finally have some time to post about the weekend. Wicked was pretty good, and had some amazing singers in it. I have seen a handful of musicals in my life, and I have enjoyed every one. Some people think going to musicals might mot be very manly, but they really are pretty cool. It’s not like they are operas or anything. Every musical that I have ever been to has had a great storyline with some amazing singers.
The worst part about the weekend was the driving. We wanted to head down there Friday, but the roads were too icy, and I chickened out and turned around after almost going in the ditch. The drive back was a little better, but not by much. There was a multi-car pile up on the interstate, so we were detoured for twelve miles on some narrow icy road in the middle of nowhere.
We got home pretty late and then I had to work early the next morning. I still feel like I am trying to catch up on sleep.
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I Can Has Feed Reader
A blog isn’t a blog without cat photos, right?
Molly is already a fan of the Google Reader.
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TV Errors
We were watching Mythbusters last night, and I noticed an error. They were seeing if police badges could be bulletproof. They had two batches of badges, both of them with geeky numbers on them. Some had 42, and others had 3.14 on them. At one point they shot at a badge with number 42 on it, and after they shot it, it was a badge with 3.14 on it. I am sure they took many shots at many badges and just didn’t noticed the badge numbers in the editing.
I love looking for errors in TV shows and movies. Sometimes I watch background stuff looking for errors so much that I don’t even know what was going on in the show that I am watching. I am always looking at how they shoot different scenes, rather than watching the actual content. Maybe that’s why most of TV bores me. I just don’t know how to watch it right.
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Do I Talk Funny
So we just watched an episode of Dirty Jobs and they were in Waubun, MN at a leech farm. Waubun is about an hour from here. I actually have family that live in Waubun. The whole time we were watching it we were laughing at how the Minnesotans talked. I have lived in Minnesota since I was six. The past ten years I have been in North Dakota, but I am right on the border, so it is still basically Minnesota. Do we really talk that funny, and why do I notice it on TV and not in real life? Weird.
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New Cat
Ok, no election talk here today. There is plenty of that elsewhere on the net.
Over the weekend the wife brought home another animal.
She doesn’t really have a name yet. The wife has had a different name for her everyday now. I am not really ready to have another cat, but she let me get one of these.
Yes, I got an iPod Touch. Since we can’t get iPhones in North Dakota, it’s the next best thing. It’s pretty cool and worth living with another cat I guess.
