A Bunch of Stuff

1) Yesterday I was finally able to begin testing out a product which I’ll be reviewing here at Cootiehog in a couple weeks. So far – I really like it.

2) I have been the proud owner of “Lego Batman” for the past two days and have yet to play it because CootieBoy has not behaved at daycare. There are three behavior codes – sunny, cloudy and stormy. He was on Stormy on Monday and Cloudy yesterday. I know I could go ahead and open it and play on my own, but he’s so excited about it that I want him to be able to play it the first time it’s opened. He was very upset last night when I told him we couldn’t play because he was on Cloudy. But he understood why. This morning when I dropped him off I told him again that we would ONLY PLAY if he stayed on Sunny. We’ll see how it goes.

3) Denis and I have decided to try budgeting again. We tried it a couple years ago and after a few weeks just stopped. I recently updated the spreadsheet for Mare-Bear, who requested a copy to use. So I updated it again adding even more categories than we had last time. We input our daily expenses and the spreadsheet uses formulas to then calculate our weekly spending as well as our monthly spending in each category. Lastly, it adds up ALL spending for the month so you can see how you did. It’s not fancy, but it works for us. I’ve got it set up to go through January 2010.

4) I’ve been reading a lot about the idea of paying off your credit card on a weekly basis rather than a monthly basis, so that your bank account doesn’t take such a big hit once a month. The theory is also that you can add an extra $10-15 every other week to the payment and actually pay it off just a tiny bit quicker by doing smaller payments more often. It’s an interesting idea and apparently works – I’ve read multiple bloggers talking about it. I’m going to start doing it next month and do it through the end of the year to see if it makes a difference (I’ve already scheduled my payment for this month and don’t feel like changing it).

5) “Pushing Daisies” starts tonight. Yippeee!!!!

6) I’ve been swamped here at work. Mr. BIL has ticked me off a couple times, notably in relation to prioritizing work. But I’m keeping my head down and doing what needs to be done if only to try and clear the clutter off my desk.

7) CootieGirl is doing well in kindergarten. Last night during her bath she told me all about Guatemala, including information about the food, the people, the location, the language and the flag. She’s very cute when she flaunts her newfound knowledge in our faces. She is also learning the foundation of story-telling. Her teacher has the students create four squares on a piece of paper. In each square they draw a picture that represents different parts of a story – the characters, the problem, the solution, and the result. Her pictures are very cute. She did one that had to show The Beginning and The End. In the beginning she drew a big skyscraper and at the end she drew a picture of a farm. I’ll have to scan a couple of them for you to see.