05.21.12: P Has a Play Date (or Two)

Dear Friends and Family,

It's Monday and I'm electing to work from home since the traffic today's a game of Russian roulette and I'm just not all that interested in playing Russian roulette.

Saturday, we had a birthday party to go to. P had fun. We had fun. But, I'm not sure if I'll be scheduling regular play dates with the kids from the party. Not to come across as overly critical, which means I will come across as overly critical, but the kids were a run around and wrestle bunch. I'm just not sure it's a good use of precious weekend time.

Sunday, we had a play date with another kid from school. P and Q got to be kids, but at the same time, they had marble races, rode their bikes down the street, got to watch a sprinkler in action, made popcorn, and talk with the grown ups. Play, but with some end in mind - I think it's more up our alley.

Sprinkled throughout our weekend was fixing our hard drive. It started giving warning signals so I tried replacing the drive. We got more warning signals so Mr. mouse tried replacing the memory. It's up and running now, but enough has changed that we're not really sure what caused the problem in the first place.

I replaced the hard drive. Mr. mouse cleaned the casing. It's in a new location. The AC was on all weekend. Mr. mouse replaced the memory and put the old drive back in. In other words, no chance of running a Design of Experiments on this one. The engineers in us are deeply ashamed. But, it's up and running for now so we're not going to go back and try all of the combinations. We'll just see if it continues to go problem free from here.

On the budget front - I made it through the week in one piece. I spent $111 which is $11 over my original goal, but a lot under my typical spend for a week. Where did my $111 go?

1. $54 went towards an eBay purchase to add to P's airport set which she loves
2. $4 went towards Diet Cokes throughout the week
3. $2 went towards French fries for P
4. $16 went towards dinner on Friday night
5. $35 went towards dinner on Sunday

The biggest cost savings was bringing in my lunch each day. Since I overspent the last week by $11, I'm starting off this week with $89. $25 will go towards a manicure and the remaining $64 I'll save for now. I'm sure I'll have other big weeks later on and it'll be nice to build up a cushion.


Cheers!
mouse