Day	Amount	Place	Category
Wednesday	$49.25	Old Spaghetti Factory	Eating Out
Thursday	$142.75	Condo Water Heater	Rental
	$104.00	CostCo	Groceries
Friday	$83.25	Flogging Molly	Allowance
Sunday	$45.75	Safeway	Groceries

It has not been an exciting week, and that’s fine with me. At work, we’re all adapting to our new world and just moving along. At home, we’re enjoying some quiet time before my birthday/the end of the world and Christmas.

We don’t really do Christmas gifts, but I like to have something in the stockings. I’ve decided slippers for everyone this year, but I haven’t actually bought anything. I should also get one or two things for my mom, as she’ll be with us.

The only excitement this week came in dealing with adoption issues. The last background check we ordered from Nevada was supposedly sent to DSHS on November 7. Except the case worker hasn’t seen it. We were able to get the name of the person the state of Nevada sent it attention to, so I’m hoping next week, they’ll have tracked it down and we’ll be able to move forward with getting the foster license.

 

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: 239,870

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $30.56 at the end of November, with $0.11 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

The whole house is now on the healthier kick, with J having joined a gym this week. I didn’t do as much walking as I would have liked this week, but my legs have been really sore. I’m hoping to hot baths with Epsom salts this weekend will have helped that.