Pro-Soup Propaganda

Our new desk!

Well, we are now just over a week into our spending fast. Those of you who pledged to do it with me, how are you all doing? I am finding it easy to do it so far, just not fun. Using the thought, "I currently only have a $40 a week grocery budget" is quite the motivator, though!

As mentioned previously, I said we would still be getting a desk for me to do homework at. This happened, but we had to take $50 out of savings to pay for it. The good part is that I got it used on CraigsList by a family who lived a mile from us. The bad part is that I don't anticipate being able to put that $50 back into savings soon, unless someone buys our old desk, which will help.

I am curious to see how much our internet bill will be for the month. It has been $72 or so for quite awhile, but I recently talked to Comcast and they said they would give us some sort of promotion for six months, and our payment would drop down to somewhere in the $50 range. I don't know why they randomly gave us a promotional discount and I am still not *really* expecting it to be there, but if it is I will be pleasantly happy and that extra $20 will go into savings!

Jonathan and I decided that we would give up beer during weekdays and only enjoy it on the weekend to help save some money. This is a sad, sad decision for me because I think you all know how much I like beer. :o)  But it is only temporary! We do still have some home brew that I made last spring that we aged and are currently working through, so at least we technically have some free/cheap beer.

A friend (you know who you are - THANK YOU!) gave us some coffee, so we're still caffeinated, at least. I was going to be pretty sad if I had to wait until I was at work to have good coffee, but, luckily, I think we'll be okay for a bit yet. Whew!

We are going to have to forgo getting a cat for a little longer, which suuuucks. It makes me sad, but we really don't have the extra money to pay for food, litter, and flea meds for her so we will probably have to wait on the cat, too. Maybe Cat Adoption Team will have another cat sale sometime in the next couple months. :oD

I am thankful that I still had a whole chicken from the last big Whole Foods sale. I'm also thankful for our crockpot. I have been making some yummy and filling soups the past few days.

I decided that I was going to not do a daily shower and use my dry shampoo a few times a week. The first time I used it was the first time the can had been used since last spring and so there was a little explosion of dry shampoo when I used it last week. My hair looked pretty Muppety. I have been doing daily rotations of shower, use dry shampoo the next day, wash hair under tub faucet the next, and then do another day of dry shampoo. That way I'm showering every three days, which is still not *that* bad. It's not like I get really dirty during my usual days! We'll see how long that lasts. I think I am putting too much thought and words into this now and you are bored. Sorry!

I was able to sell a surprising amount of books to Powell's for virtual credit, which I will be buying eBooks with to replace the ones I got rid of. I don't know why I thought it was going to take about $250 to replace my books, because it's really going to be a lot less, but I am also thankful for about $60 in virtual credit to help with that! I finally finished going through my books on Saturday. It feels weird to have so many less books in the apartment, but I think it's a good thing, since SO many were books I hadn't read in ages, if ever. (I used to go through the "literature" section of Waldenbooks in Ketchikan and just buy books for the heck of it. This is why I have Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" - although I do like the stories I've read from the book...that I read in high school - and "Silas Mariner.")

How is everyone else doing now that it's been the first week?