Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$14.73	Safeway	Groceries
	$26.00	Nails	Allowance
Wednesday	$10.00	Admin Day	Allowance
	$67.00	Admin Day	Allowance
	$16.83	Safeway	Groceries
Friday	$105.00	Legal Fee	MIL
	$112.00	Buca di Beppo	Eating Out
	$7.81	Cafeteria	Allowance
	$59.00	Gas	Car
Saturday	$111.00	CostCo	Groceries
	$28.00	Home Depot	House
Sunday	$13.00	Target	Allowance
	$8.00	PetsMart	Pets

So while we didn’t spend as much this week as we did last week, it was not a low spending week.

The legal fee was for posting a notice to creditors in a court approved publication for the MIL’s estate.

Wednesday was Admin Professionals day, and as the Administrative Programs manager, I felt it important that I do something for my admin as well as other admins in the department. That comes out of my allowance.

Wednesday, C & J also finished building our new garden shed. The timing was perfect as that evening, we had a 10 minute typhoon. It was actually bad enough that we did have some water come up in the basement, right in the elbow of the drainage pipe we had laid. But it wasn’t much, and it’s in an area where no damage can be done, so I’ okay with that.

On Saturday, we bought some more plants for our container garden. I’m pretty excited about having my own tomatoes and bell peppers this year to go along with our basil and rosemary.

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 1 acceptance

I have the galleys for the piece I had accepted sitting in my inbox. I need to review and make sure there are not mistakes, and then I also need to read the other entries and vote for a “Contributor’s Favorite”. I’m actually really excited about this, and you can bet you will all know when the anthology is published.

I also finally got a new post up over at The Prose Passage, about the value I got out of my critique at NorWesCon.

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now. However, I did have a chance to talk with the artist I want to work with on Friday, and her life has settled down, so there’s a good chance we can start work on this sometime in May. (When my life settles down a bit.)

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

I have no idea what my current allowance balance is at.

Plane ticket prices have gone up, so right now, with credit card points, it would cost about $50 out of pocket for me to buy my ticket to FonCon. However, we’re still putting quite a bit on the card each month, and I don’t expect prices will go up much from where they are, and might even go back down again. (Sweet spot for prices out of Seattle tends to be around 4-6 weeks before the flight.) So for now, I’m still holding off on booking the plane ticket.

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

I plan to be a member of Epsilon class when the application goes up in August. I do need to make sure I’m still connecting with new challengers, though, because a lot of the challengers on my list this last time will be Yakezie Delta class members.

In order to develop relationships with new challengers, I have decided that each edition of What I’m Reading on Saturdays will now include a new challenger.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $21.94 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.) Views on this blog (and all my blogs) have been going down lately, and I know that’s because I haven’t been as active on twitter or commenting in the last few months. As I pick up my activity I expect activity here will pick up and my AdSense income will pick up, at least a few cents or so.

6)      Be healthier

Monday I had an appointment for an ultrasound on my thyroid. It turns out I have two thyroid nodules, one on each side. There is very little chance they are malignant, but I have to go back for an ultrasound assisted biopsy in mid-May. Fun, fun, fun.

My memory of what we ate most of the week is sketchy. I’m pretty sure there were lots of leftovers. We are trying to cut down on our prepackaged food (mostly eaten for weekend lunches) and therefore specifically did not by any of our favorites at CostCo this weekend. We had pot stickers for lunch on Saturday and Mac & Cheese today. We also bought organic spinach and more of their fruit and nut mix to have for snacking around the house.

I know I didn’t eat healthy for lunch on Wednesday, as I took my admin to Cheesecake Factory for lunch, and on Friday we ate at Buca di Beppo for all of the March and April birthdays in our group.

Exercise wise, I didn’t do much this week. This weekend was a different story, though. On Saturday we took the dogs to the dog park and I mowed the front and back yards. Today, Larry dog and I joined some friends on a 90 minute hike along the Hobart Ridge trail.