Bills

Since the economy is so bad, I've been looking at ways we could cut our bills if we have to. One is the phone. We have call waiting and caller ID. I wanted the call waiting originally in case something happened to A when he was at school. Then later in case Mom had to reach me. Well, A's not in school any more and Mom's here for now. I still like the idea if something would happen that I would still get the call. As far as the caller ID, I think I just wanted that because it was the in thing. I very rarely screen my calls and don't answer the phone. Although I do like to see whose calling before I pick up. If we cut out the call waiting we would save $71.76 a year and the caller ID would be $119.40 a year.

Our cable bill is outrageous. We got hooked into a lot of pay stations with a lower price at first and then they were upped after the initial period. Add the internet and you can imagine how much we pay.

For now, we don't really need to do anything but I feel we are probably wasting money. Has anyone cut back on their services?

Oncologist

Today was my 6 month appointment. Thank goodness, that's over for a while again. Always about a month before I go, without even realizing it, I start getting really antsy and irritable. Then I look on the calendar and realize why. He talked about me only having to come once a year (I'm not sure if he said it would be after my next mammogram or after I'm done with the Arimidex which will be next year). Although he said some people still want to come every six months. As much as I hate going, I have a feeling I will be one of those people that will still go every six months.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentines Day, everyone.

Random thoughts

Does everyone feel poor? I do and we really aren't. Oh, we don't have as much money as we did before all the chaos in the economy but we are a lot better off then some people. I'm really mad, irritated, disappointed (insert other adjectives) with the government, the banks, Wall Street and especially the average people that screwed up.

Thank goodness Ron and I have always had the same philosophy about spending money. Not that we haven't probably frittered some money away over the years (I know we have) on useless things but for the most part we have been pretty good with money. We never bought too much house that we couldn't afford. We always paid our credit card off each month. We were always more homebody's. We never took a lot of vacations, spent a lot of money on restaurants (we did do a lot of fast food), or bought a lot of clothes.

I was always fortunate that Ron had a good job and I was able to stay home all these years. I was never one to worry about money. Now that he's retired and all the economic woes, I worry about money all the time. Even though I don't have to.

I think I watch too much TV and read too much about the economy. I'm obsessed with it.

It irks me though that banks lent money to SOME people that they should have known couldn't afford these homes. Credit card companies gave credit to SOME people they shouldn't have. Most importantly, SOME people took loans and credit that they should have realized they couldn't afford. What were they all thinking?

Snow

Believe it or not, all our snow is mostly gone. Over the weekend, it was in the 50's and the last few days too. Today it was in the 60's and we have only a tiny bit on the tree lawn. Wow, I thought it would take forever to melt. Shows you what I know ;-)

Flatware

I was missing some dinner forks. I had some gift certificates from Christmas so we bought some new flatware. I spent the morning cleaning and washing the silverware holder and going through all the other stuff I had in that drawer.

After putting the new flatware in, I moved onto the drawer that I have a bunch of cooking utensils in. Not to be confused with the utensils that I have in a crock on the counter ;-) I put some of that stuff in the basement. Man, I really have a lot of cooking utensils.

Then I moved to the canisters. I was only really using one for my instant coffee. I don't really use sugar or flour that much so I have them in a cupboard. So three are in the process of being washed and will go down the basement.

There were plenty of other cleaning things I could have done today but this was pretty quick and easy.

Is it ever going to stop??????

The first picture is out the front door. If you click on the pictures you can see some of the snow falling down. Also, how tall the snow pile is at the end of the driveway.

The second picture is out the patio door. At the end of the porch, you can see two garbage cans with lids. It's hard to exactly see but there must be at least 4 or 5 inches of snow on the lids. Ron got up a little after 7 this morning to plow and we must have gotten at least another 2 inches or so.

Tonight is my night out with the dinner friends. It was postponed from last Wednesday when we had the big blizzard. I'm hoping things will calm down so we can still have dinner.

Hopefully by summer all the snow will be melted lol.