Day	Amount	Place	Category
Tuesday	$80.75	CostCo	Groceries
	$12.00	Safeway	Groceries
Wednesday	$23.00	Safeway	Groceries
	$15.75	Qdoba	Eating Out
Saturday	$61.00	Gas	Car

It was a quiet week, mostly because I was sick and didn’t have the energy to do much this week. Thanksgiving at our house on Thursday went quite well, and Saturkeyday at my friend EB’s house was a lot of fun. C made a creole cornbread stuffing for that (because I volunteered us for the gluten free stuffing), which everyone thought was tasty, but C thought could have been better. But we think we will try it again. The cornbread was a little dense as it was made only with cornmeal (no flour- see the gluten free comment) and I replaced the melted butter in the recipe with applesauce. (In this case it was because we’d cleared the microwave from the kitchen for more counter space and it wasn’t back yet when I was making the cornbread.)

I did work half a day on Friday, and then went to have my 6 month follow up thyroid ultrasound. I should know more about that next week.

Beyond that, Howie has been more cuddly this week (yay) but Junebug is having tummy troubles again (not yay). And that’s pretty much been the week.

 

We are almost done with 2012. I revised some of my goals because life took some turns I wasn’t quite planning on when I came up with them.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 4

Responses: 2 rejections 1 acceptance, 1 pending

The anthology I had a piece accepted to is now available to buy on Amazon. It’s called Conquest Through Determination.

2)      Pay All Adoption Expenses in Cash & Still Pay for C’s College Out of Pocket

We’re doing good here. This was helped tremendously by getting 3x as much in life insurance from the MIL than expected. Our savings is still growing, and we’re in really good shape.

We still haven’t gotten the background check back from the state of NV. With the holiday season fast approaching. I now figure we’ll be lucky to have our license by the end of the year.

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

FinCon was awesome. Not all of the money came from allowance/side projects, but it was still easily affordable, so I’m calling this a win.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

I am not certain this is still the right goal for me to be going after. I love what the Yakezie network stands for, but I don’t care that much about getting my Alexa under 200k. It’s pretty stable around the 275k mark. Maybe I can convince Sam to create a Friend of Yakezie badge/category, for those of us who don’t feel like being permanent challengers.

Anyway, it’s something I’m pondering.

Current ranking: 233,184

Going down slowly but surely

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $30.15 at the end of October, with $0.32 made so far this month. (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.)

Amazon earnings: $0.00

One of the things that FinCon really brought home for me is that I’m not actually in this for the money. For now, I’m leaving the AdSense blocks up, but they’re getting moved further down the page. I’ll keep tracking, but making money isn’t why I blog.

6)      Be healthier

On both Thursday and Saturday, I didn’t count calories. And I’m fine with that. There will are always going to be some days on which I just want to be able to enjoy yummy food and not worry too much about it. I am in the habit of eating smaller portions, though, so I don’t think I ate as much as I have in years past.

In addition, I did no exercising this week besides walking at the dog park. Between the vertigo and coughing fits, it just wasn’t going to happen. I do intend to be on the exercise bike in the morning, though.

Despite all that, I am down in weight this week and am still quite happy with my progress.