Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$150.00	Car Service	Car
Thursday	$80.00	Gas	Car
Friday	$275.00	CostCo	Groceries
Sunday	$7.00	Starbucks	Allowance
	$90.00	Fred Meyer	Groceries
	$12.50	Safeway	Groceries

A little over $600 this week. The car service will come out of the car account, and the gas wasn’t just filling up the car but also three of our reserve tanks as well.

$110 of the CostCo spending was renewing our membership. In a few weeks we’ll have our rebate check and then have $105 off of our next CostCo trip, so in the end, we made $5 on our 2011 CostCo membership (it was $100 last year).

So spending wasn’t that out of control.

Howie is settling in nicely, and otherwise things have been pretty quiet here at the house. We did have his vet appointment on Friday. The vet places his age at 10-12, probably closer to 12. Still, he’s getting more pep and even did a little playing (okay, had a play stance, but didn’t actually play) with our dogs last night. We’re hoping to get some weight on him over the next few weeks and see if he starts getting more active.

The MIL was released from the hospital and moved to a new SNF. The speech and physical therapists we’ve talked to seem very engaged in her care, and tonight when we were there, she was mentally more with it than she’s been in a while. She still went in and out on us, but she was able to answer some questions and spoke in sentences, so that’s progress at least.

 

 

I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 2

Responses: 1 rejection (this was for a contest. Almost 240 entries, only 10 chosen)

I did some looking at submission requests this week and there wasn’t anything out there for what I have already written. I did get some ideas for other things to write, though, so hopefully this number will go up, soon.

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

I haven’t contacted the artist I plan to work with because of the weather. Nor have I started compiling the pet pictures I want for a book. Hopefully I’ll have time to work on it this week. (This hasn’t changed since last week.)

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

Still no accurate number. However, instead of paying taxes this year like we’d expected, we’re getting a return of over $3k. C has decided that he’d rather not take the trip to Austin in March, so I think I can count this paid for. I still want to try and save up the money, though, so I will keep tracking- once I actually get the nerve to look at my numbers.

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

My Alexa ranking continues to drop. I’m under 140k now. I plan on applying again for Epsilon class later in the year.

Delta class got their emails tonight. I don’t know about others, but make sure you swing by Daily Money Shot and congratulate Jana for making it through the trial period and becoming a full-fledged member of Yakezie.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $18.40 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

I know we had quickie jambalaya one night, steak on Wednesday, CostCo pizza on Friday, and J made General’s chicken last night. Tonight was burgers and fries. (I did have fire roasted peppers on mine- does that count as veggies?)

Lunch today was homemade wonton soup, so that’s a little healthy.

We dog parked twice, though one of those times we stayed in the shy/small dog area (allows Howie to be off-leash), so did not walk too much.

For the sake of our emotional health, we’ve working on instituting family nights here at the house. We’re trying to eat dinner together in the living room (instead of each of us in front of our computers) and maybe watching a tv show together once or twice a week. And yesterday we played a board game and then watched a movie. It’s so nice to live with people whose company you honestly enjoy.