Cptacek's Personal Finance Blog

Got the deposit from half.com for $36.32, and sent it to the card. CC down to $8413.26. I pulled money out of my kickin-around checkbook to pay my rent tomorrow ($50) instead of the account it is supposed to come out of, so when I balance my checkbook this weekend, I'll have to add $50 to the CC from the bills checkbook to be fair, in addition to anything left...though I don't know if there will be much left. Anniversary was nice but a bit expensive.

Found out this weekend that DH's dad took our calves he has in to the sale this week. 8 calves, but don't know the weights or the price, and we only get 1/3 of it. But, I wasn't counting on this money, and it should be more than $1000 for our cut! So, I think that will either go to the credit card or the line of credit. I'm leaning credit card, but I'll have to ask DH what he thinks.

I had been buying computers from a guy that refurbishes them and just selling them for my cost ($75) or giving them as gifts. And they have been flying off the shelves...sister, mom, mom-in-law, grocery store, and sister-in-law's mom all have one now. But, I bought one for $75 and I put it on our local web site and I'm trying to sell it for $115. We'll see. I could make $40 profit for doing nothing other than picking it up and driving it home. And if it doesn't sell, I'll drop the price. It is a very good computer, so it should sell just fine.

Also, this guy I buy them from had someone give him a box of "computer crap" that he didn't want, and I looked through it and there was a Polaroid DVD player in there. He just gave it to me. We didn't know if it worked, but I tried it out, and it did, even though the battery ran out at just the very end of the movie. Picture was crystal clear...perfect! It has a wall plug in battery charger, but not a car charger. I was thinking of buying a car charger for it and then trying to sell that for around $35-$40. Or maybe just say in my ad they might think about getting one? Or not say anything? I don't know. I don't know how much the car charger costs, so I would probably add that on to the cost I'm thinking of.

I looked through the wanted section of this same website and someone wanted a hammock. I don't see myself laying around on my hammock at any point in the future, so I offered it to them. They want me to measure it and then put a price on it, but they seem interested.

Someone else wanted a wedding dress, so I sent a picture of mine, but they didn't write back. I was going to sell it for $100. I might go to woreitonce.com; I've heard good things about that site.

Got most of the stuff done for taxes. Waiting on a tax statement from my mutual fund and a W2 form from the guy who has been help us. And I need to get a print out from the Co-op to make sure that we have all the receipts that we can write off. I taped every receipt to a piece of paper (as many as could fit on one page), scanned them all in and then hole punched them and put them in a three-ring binder. All the papers we need to keep for taxes fill two 1" three ring binders! An impressive pile, there.

I need something else, and I don't remember what, but it is in my little file cabinet here, so I'll just take the entire file cabinet home so I can look for it when I get back to my list of things I need. I think it had to do with selling the house, but I don't remember. (after 15 minutes of typing below...)Oh yeah, how much of the taxes I paid at closing when I sold the house. I will probably just take the box home anyway...no need for it here.

Layoffs are coming to our company in a few short weeks. No one knows (or they aren't talking) how many people it will be, but I think it will be deep. A very, very, very deep gash. I just pray it isn't me. We have a very visible project coming up and three of us are supposed to be working on it. It is converting an access database to a .net program, which none of us have ever done, but we are supposed to get our feet wet here...another group is helping get us set up and already has all the templates, so we are going to have a good start. I already designed the database portion (at least we have a good start on that) and now we need to start laying out the screens...I'll do that tomorrow. One of the guys is really too busy to work on this and the other guy, well, let's just say, I think this project is going to fall on me. Yeah! I get to learn something new, program a simple program in a new language that I want to learn anyway, and provide huge value to the company. This is perfect!

The kid we sold the pickup to is having a ball fixing it up. He sent us some pictures, and a couple emails already. He said he has worked on it every day since he got it, and his dad is helping and his Grandpa is coming over this weekend. That's cool.

Good thing we sold the pickup ($700)! The half.com sales have dried up, and I've only made $37.18 in profit for the month (after commissions, postage, etc.) That isn't $100 for January! I'll see how the above goes, though.

Game:
$ 3.00 - Sale price
+$2.89 - Postage reimbursement
-$0.45 - Commission
-$2.02 - Actual postage
------
$ 3.42 - TOTAL

Book:
$ 3.15 - Sale price
+$2.64 - Postage reimbursement
-$0.47 - Commission
-$2.23 - Actual postage
------
$ 3.09 - TOTAL

Book:
$ 2.50 - Sale price
+$2.64 - Postage reimbursement
-$0.38 - Commission
-$2.23 - Actual postage
------
$ 2.53 - TOTAL

Book:
$ 0.75 - Sale price
+$2.64 - Postage reimbursement
-$0.11 - Commission
-$2.23 - Actual postage
------
$ 2.53 - TOTAL

I'll get $36.32 sometime next week for the first ones I sold. That goes to CC.

Checked on some balance transfers. I have an offer for 0% until 9/13/09 with a 3% fee, and an offer of 4.99%. Still figuring out how to best do it to get the most bang for my buck. Of course, just frickin paying them would be best, but can't do that immediately.

I just watched the first episode of this season's Big Love on the internet. Yeah! I didn't have to subscribe to HBO to see it.

Sold another book: The Rules (you know, the one that was supposed to teach us how to date). An ancient book (I got it in 1997) I've carried through 10 moves in the past 12 years and I'm finally getting rid of it. Only $0.75, though, but the shipping should go in my favor.

Went to Dillard's today to get some more lipstick and eyeliner, and got the free item they were giving away because of the class action law suit they lost over price collusion. I got some lotion I'm going to give to my cousin next year for Christmas...it is a full sized bottle (not a sample) and I'm sure she'll love it.

Ate left over jambalaya for lunch (yummy! The Zatarain's one in a box with little smokies added in) and then a $5 footlong from subway for supper.

Going to the doctor tomorrow to get more Metformin. Hoping to get the PCOS under control and on to baby town.

Called about life insurance for DH a few weeks ago and he has to go get the physical and I have to finish the paperwork. I left it up north, so I can't do that until Friday...but I have to remember to do it this week! If the quote was accurate, it will triple our coverage for him (up to $300,000) AND lower the premium by $30 a month.

Beans went up to $9.26 at our Co-op last Friday, but were back down to $8.98 today. We are waiting for $10 to sell (if we can) so every time it gets close, I watch it like a hawk. I keep thinking about writing a program to download that web page and scrape the price and send myself a text message or an email if it goes over $10. And then I think I should contact that Co-op to see if they would want a service like that so people could subscribe to it and they could get text messages at their own particular price points. That would be an easy little java program to write...I've written programs like that before to tell me if something funky is going on on my computer, so expanding it to have a few database tables to hold email or text addresses would be cake. I know the KCBT prices are on the radio all day so most farmers hear that, but that price is different than what we actually sell it for because the shipping price is built in (I think that is called basis?) AND if you aren't listening to the radio, you could miss it. Just an idea I've been tossing around. I don't know who to approach about it, though.

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Grr, I thought of something slick I could have done in December, but since it is January, it is too late. What with all the expenses and depreciation this year I bet we don't have to pay much, if any at all, in income taxes this year. I should have done a better estimate of the taxes in December (like actually doing them with the best numbers I could get ahold of) and see if we had to pay any. If not, I should have recharacterized some of the IRA to a Roth IRA, just enough to get up to the point where we would have to pay taxes.

For instance, if our tax rate was 0% because we had, say $4000 more in expenses, depreciation, standard deduction, etc than total income, we would have been able to recharacterize $4000 and pay 0% on the conversion. That would have been sweet! But, alas, if I do it now, it will be for 2009 instead of 2008.

BUT, I read that you can recharacterize your IRA to a Roth IRA (say in 2009) and then you can undo it and THEN you can redo it (in 2010, before April 15). So you get three chances to make up your mind. I might do that this year towards the end of the year just to give myself that option when the taxes are figured.

That was just me piecing together information from different web sites. I think it would work, but didn't find any examples where it was ok to do it that way. I did find out you can do a portion of the IRA instead of the whole thing, which puts things in a new perspective.

I HAVE to figure out how depreciation schedules work. If I could do that, I would have figured out my taxes at the end of the year and we could have done some better planning. Need to talk to the CPA about that.

Next Monday is DH and my first anniversary. He is planning on coming down Sunday and staying that night and Monday night and leaving Tuesday morning. I'm going to work on Monday and then we'll go out to eat that night. We'll be staying at a hotel, because even though he can stay where I stay, I don't think he is comfortable with it.

So, we've been married a year. That means for a whole year now, we've been living together for half the week. I keep looking for jobs by where I live, but inevitably they pay half (or less!) of what I make now. I haven't gotten any hits on virtual work from Monster or any of the specific companies I am subscribed to. I have one company interested in me, but they can't hire me until the economy turns around. But I talk to that manager every few months...

I was talking to my sister this morning on the way to work and she pretty much told me she thought I was being selfish and a bad wife for keeping my job this far away from home. That we really aren't experiencing being married because we aren't together every night. And that I might just have to suck it up and take a job for half pay up there. And what if we have kids? Where will day care be? Who will take care of the kid? etc., etc., etc...

I told her, if I get a job paying half, I'll just work half time down here (2 10 hr days) and then I'll have the other 5 days with DH. She told me it would be better to work full time for half the pay so I wouldn't be gone for one night.

I don't think she understands how much we rely on my income. I am floating the farm right now, and to be honest, if I lose my job, we will have to sell everything. Like, within a month or two. My bank hasn't even approved us for a cattle loan for this year. When I told my dad that, he was very surprised and started to worry if we couldn't get a loan then the bank must really be tightening the screws. If we lose my income, we definitely won't be expanding, and paying off what we have now wouldn't be possible. If we go down to half of my income, we'd probably have to sell alot of what we have now.

Eventually the farm should pay for itself...it just takes time and expanding hurts the pocketbook.

I am hurt that she thinks I am selfishly keeping my corporate job for glamor or something. It is IT for God's sake. Not a lot of glamor there! I am sacrificing a lot to keep this job. I actually hate it. I like the work, and if I could work at home it would be great. I would love to be home every night. But how the hell would we do that?

If I was selfish and only wanting money and glamor because of my job, I would make DH sell the farm and we would move back to my old job in Texas, and then get a TDY to Washington DC or something. That really brings in the money. But he would hate that (and so would I) and he has said if disaster strikes and we have to sell the farm, he would be a long haul trucker again, and I wouldn't see him any more than now anyway!

I just feel like I am (we are) sacrificing a lot and it hurts me when my family thinks I am doing something wrong and for selfish reasons. It is totally NOT for selfish reasons!

So, give up? Take a job with a $40,000 - $50,000 paycut? Work half time? Or suck it up and keep the same schedule until the farm gets rolling?

Sent off some books on Friday, as shown below, and got three more sales this weekend. I'll send those off on Monday and get the actual postage in a future post.

Book:
$16.00 - Sale price
+$3.07 - Postage reimbursement
-$2.40 - Commission
-$2.58 - Actual postage
------
$14.09 - TOTAL

Game:
$9.00 - Sale price
+$2.89 - Postage reimbursement
-$1.35 - Commission
-$2.19 - Actual postage
------
$8.35 - TOTAL

Got the rebate info ready for the 16GB thumb drive, and that is going to be sent tomorrow as well. That will be $10 at some not too distant future.

I had $363.89 left in my checking account at payday, so all that went to the credit card. Down to $8449.58 on this card (without figuring interest from the ending of the last payment cycle to today).

I also transferred $2000 from one CC to another because I had $2000 open and it was a 0%, 0% transfer fee for 12 months. I'll keep transferring over to that as I free up room due to the monthly payments.

Got the two books from last week to the post office today, and I'll only be making $2.96 on one and $1.69 on the other. I'll put this as pending on my side bar because I haven't gotten the money yet.

$3.00 - Sale price
+$2.64 - Postage reimbursement (paperback)
------
$5.64
-$0.45 - Commission
-$2.23 - Actual postage
------
$2.96 - TOTAL

$1.00 - Sale price
+$3.07 - Postage reimbursement (hardback)
------
$3.64
-$0.15 - Commission
-$2.23 - Actual postage
------
$1.69 - TOTAL

I sold two items today. One book for $16 and a video game for $9. I bought an X-box from a friend of mine years ago for $200, including 20 games and 4 controllers. We play Halo (and sometimes Halo 2) all the time, and I play Buffy the Vampire Slayer and X-Men and another called Prince of Persia, but there were some games I have never played, so I put those on half.com. This one was Deathrow: Underground Team Combat. Never played it.

I won't be back home until Thursday night, so I can't send them until Friday. Should I mark them mailed before I mail them? Like tomorrow? Or wait? If I was the buyer, at least I would know that the seller got my order. But would the buyer check the post office timestamp to see when it was actually sent and complain on my feedback?

Sending the $21.05 I got for exchanging DH's hat and re-buying it with the 33% coupon.

Also, I bought more ink and a thumb drive using that card, so I am paying that right now as well. $26.49 for the thumb drive and $38.83 for the ink. Haven't got either of them yet, but should be coming in the mail. Will get $10 rebate for the thumb drive and I'll send that in when I get that.

Total: $86.37. Rounding up to $100 just because.

$8743.68 left. Die, Chase Visa #1, Die.

Well, I just put 10 books on half.com. We'll see how that goes. I tried it one time before I moved from TX and was disgusted by the low prices, then I sold all of those books to Half Price Books and only got $.25 each for 100 books (mostly only-read-once books). Barf. Now, I'm just giving them away on paperbackswap.com, so even $1 is better than that.

And remind me...next time I go to a bookstore...DO NOT BUY ANYTHING! Look for books you want and then buy them on half.com. I am such an idiot when it comes to that!

I put "the rules", "he's just not that into you" and "the 5 love languages". Hmm, looks like someone had romance problems sometime in the past...

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Just talked to the lady at the company in Iowa that is looking for a job for me at her company. She said that now is not a good time to be changing jobs, as they have had to lay off about 300 people. She said keep my current job and when things start swinging up, or they lose a key person and need someone right away, I'm first on the list. She wants to talk to me in a few months again. But, if I get laid off at my current job, call her right away, because that is a different situation...

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Still trying to get the loan for the cows. Our banker is going over everything with a fine toothed comb. I have to get him the expenses we had on the farm this year, so good thing I went through all that at the end of last year.

I already posted this over on the "what frugal thing did you do today"...but I want to put it here too.

I used my Health Savings Account up today...$61 worth of tylonol, saline, alka-seltzer, day-quil and ny-quil. Got $4 and $5 register coupons back, so I bought throat losenges with the $4 and kept the $5 coupon for later. $65 of medicine for free, plus $5! (well, I already paid for it out of my paycheck, but if I hadn't used it, I would have lost it)

I used a gift card at Bed Bath & Beyond that we got for our wedding to buy 2 Christmas presents. I got 5 presents there this year, so all 5 were free to me!

I went to Shepler's to get DH's present today. DH, if you read this STOP RIGHT NOW! Others, hightlight the following:

I got him a black felt cowboy hat. He had one before I moved into the house, but once we put all my stuff away, we can't find it now...and truth be told, it was a bit small for him, so I thought it looked kind of funny when he wore it Sssshhhh. Don't tell him that I had to take one of his caps he wears all the time and we measured it with a tape measure and got the size off that. Below, first thing = hat, second thing = hat band.

Strangest thing. When I was picking the gift, I look up and see a teammate of mine from college I haven't seen in 10 years. It was good to see her. Exchanged phone numbers, and we'll be going to lunch after Christmas. That will be cool...don't hardly know anyone here, and don't hang out with anyone, so that will be nice.

She doesn't usually shop at Shepler's (she was there with her mom) and when we checked out, she got a buy one get 50% off coupon. She turned around and handed it to me. So, I got the second thing for half price. I was going to go pick something up that was similar in price to the first thing so the discount would be more, but then I realized I could just get the second thing for less.

There was a lady in front of me that was buying two sets of coveralls and paid full price, but then got the coupon as well, after her purchase. I told her under my breath to return both sets of coveralls at customer service, pick up two more sets on the way through the store, walk up to the front and pay 1/2 price for the second pair. Her eyes got big and said "THANKS". Was that ethical of me? It would save her like $50.

DH still needs to get one present for his brother. I handled his sister-in-law and his mom, and his brother/sister-in-law handled his dad, so he gets to pick one gift. Lots of wrapping to do, and I need to install some software on multiple computers in the next week.

Today was a not-productive day at work. My boss said "someone needs to be here to answer phones and take trouble tickets." That's why I had to work 3 days, 3 days, 2 days the past three weeks instead of 2 4 day weeks and have this week off (which meant I had to drive down here 3 times instead of 2 times). So, that's what I did today. Answered phones (2 calls) and took trouble tickets (2 tickets). Doing exactly what she said to do.

We got 1/2 a beef last week. We paid $583.31 to the farmer and $200 to the butcher and got 641 pounds of beef. Our garage freezer is stuffed, our refrigerator freezer is stuffed, and thank goodness it has been 0 degrees lately, because we even have some of it in a cooler in the garage (no heat in there). And this is hamburger, steaks, ribs, hamburger patties, and it is YUMMY! Oh, it is sooo good. Even the hamburger patties. I mean, how good can hamburger patties be? They are AWESOME, especially when DH grills them.

We had property taxes due today...$1,179 for the first half. Not bad at all, considering. That is for the house and 400 acres of land. I forgot to send them in the mail last week, so DH had to take them in himself today. $1273 for protein tubs for the cows will be paid 12/31 with bill pay, and $1229 will be paid to the coop on 12/31 with a check. Was going to wait until January to pay for the protein tubs, but this way we can write it off this year and we will probably need more, so I didn't want to run up too much of a bill with them.

DH also sent in the milo and soybean ledgers (a signed copy of how much we exactly had in the elevators). Apparently since we bought crop insurance, and since the prices were so high this summer and less than half of that now we will get some of the difference. I don't quite know how that works, though. We'll see what we get. We had to sell about $2000 of soybeans and milo to get us through the end of the month. We have about 350 bushels of soybeans left at the elevator and about 300 left on the truck...the roads are too bad to take in right now, and no one needs the truck, so there it sits.

Oh, I never mentioned that I cut the last of the soybeans this year. He had some swathing he wanted to do because he was afraid I would get stuck (he is doing it this month...that guy we are swathing for is crazy for doing it now, but he wants us to). In fact, HE got stuck! I used to run a combine for Dad for about 6 summers through high school and college, but that was for wheat. I've never cut soybeans before, and I've never run his combine before. But, I did it just fine.

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I'm a bit perturbed today. Maybe confused is a little better term? I don't quite know how this happened. DH got a phone call on Saturday about a pickup a friend of his had. It is a 1997 3/4 ton F-250 4 wheel drive diesel. It is really clean, and gets 20 mph, and was $5600. So, on Sunday, DH said let's just go look at it. We went, and long story short, the line of credit is $5600 heavier. I told him we have to sell 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 (! I KNOW !) of the pickups we now have.

One is a junker that won't drive now and would take about $4000 to fix. We have an offer of $1000 for it for parts, but DH called another friend who has a fix-it shop and he is going to come look at it to see if he will offer more. This is the pickup I bought for Dad to use about 5 years ago when Dad had all of my cows so he can feed with it. It is now completely shot...like I said, at least $4000 to fix. Fixing this one was going to be our option before we found the one above.

One is the pickup we bought last year due to the 4 wheel drive being out on the white pickup. We bought it for $1300 and are hoping to get $1100 from it. The white pickup is up and running now, so it isn't on the chopping block.

One is considered our "fuel wagon". We bought that one for $400 and DH put a bed and a 5th-wheel hitch on it. It needs a clutch now, though.

One is an old 1963 Ford DH wanted to fix up at some point. He doesn't have time, and we took the insurance off it last year because it hasn't made it out of the garage for a year at that point. It hurts DH to let this one go, but I think we need to.

That will leave us with the white 4 wheel drive and this "new" pickup for the farm. Oh, and the one I drive to work. I owe about $4000 on it still, and it will be paid off next October.

-----------------------------

I had $125 left in my gas-and-food-and-Christmas-presents checkbook when I got paid Thursday, so as promised, that, plus $50, went to the credit card. That is the minimum payment for the card, and when I have some left over in two weeks, I'll send that in too. I KNOW I need to pay more than the minimum. Since Christmas presents are done and I'll be home for almost 2 weeks starting tomorrow night (until Jan 5) I should save a lot of money in the next two weeks. Especially since I won't have to buy meat for months.

I need to make some progress on these debts. It seems like all we do is spend money! Granted, most of it is an investment, and either tax deductible or we can depreciate it. But still, money is going out the door faster than I can keep track of it.

Things to look forward to, though...we are selling our calves probably at the beginning of February. We have 42 calves and they are looking to be at least 700-800 pounds. Even at $.75 a pound, that is at least $525 a piece. Last year we sold for $.90 a pound, but I don't think we can get that this year. $525 * 42 = $22,050. We also have about 20 calves with dad. They are a bit smaller, and we only get 1/3 of the price for them (he gets the other 2/3). Let's call that $3000. We'll start calving around then, too, and fattening up the cull cows and sell them at the end of April. My tax refund should be huge, which I know is bad, but we didn't know when we were going to sell the calves (either in December or in 2009) so I didn't know how much of that would we would be taxed on in 2008. We are getting people saying they want us to swath/bale for them next year, and DH has a lot of planting lined up too. We'll see if all that pans out, of course.

-------------------------

So, we are coming up on our year anniversary at the end of January. That is CRAZY! We have been "trying" to have a baby since we got married. By "trying" I mean, you know, having lots of sex. But we aren't charting or anything. I'm going to start charting in February (i.e., using my basal temperature to determine when I am fertile). I'll also start taking the "crazy pills" again. I.e., Metformin, hopefully to control my PCOS. I tried it for two months last summer and it made me go completely crazy. I think it is because I normally have less estrogen in my body because of the PCOS (or is the less estrogen causing the PCOS? No one knows) so I got PMS like you would not believe. I told myself I was being an emotional idiot, but I couldn't control myself. I literally told myself ...outloud... to stop it, but I couldn't listen to myself. That is something to look forward to, huh? Sister thinks maybe I'm finally feeling some of the effects of estrogen other women have had to deal with since they were 14 and I got my first big dose of it at 30, so I would just have to learn to deal with it. Hopefully I'm not so crazy that DH won't move out...that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?

For the first time in my life, I had a birthday party just for me. I didn't have to share it with that Jesus kid.

Ok, that sounds silly. See here for last year's perspective:
http://cptacek.savingadvice.com/2007/12/20/just-me-being-bitter-and-petty_33064/

For the record, I was not on call last week. But something went wrong with our nightly processing last Monday and the guy who was on call called me at 2:30 a.m. and asked me to take a look at it. Well, I didn't know why it broke, but I ran things manually so the reports and things would be right in the morning, and it took until 4:30 a.m. before everything was done. To be fair, this was a very strange problem, so I don't fault him for calling me. In fact, I am GLAD he called me because that means he got the page! (he has been known to keep the pager in his car overnight so if something goes wrong, he doesn't know it) Anyway, I slept in the next morning and called my boss around 10:00 to say I was up working until 4:30 a.m. and was just leaving. She was like "you are coming in, though, right?" and I said, yes. That was strange. She had kind of a different inflection in her voice that I found odd...

Well, I got in and walked straight to this guy's desk and started talking about what had happened the night before...didn't even take my coat off. Talked about what I did to get things running correctly and what I thought was the problem. We talked for about 10 minutes. The lady in the cube next to him kept turning and looking at us, and I thought it was because we were being loud. Well, someone came up behind me and said "Happy Birthday." Huh? I looked around, and right beside me, on the table right beside the guy's chair, was a bunch of food and a cake that said "Happy Birthday (cptacek)". What the heck!?! I was sooo surprised, and the lady who had been turning to look at me laughed and said "I was wondering when you would notice!"

What a day. Lots of people made a point to stop by and say happy birthday. It is silly, I know, for a 30 (almost 31) year old to feel special because people made an effort just for me, but I really felt good. I don't think I'll have "my day" like I talked about in last year's post. We all brought in food the next day for Christmas, so it truly was cptacek's birthday party.

Two weeks ago: I don't like inside animals, I don't like hair all over, and I don't like slobber. Dogs smell. The puppy can't sleep in the house, the puppy can't sit on the seat in the pickup (floorboards or in the back only) and what's the big deal about a dog anyway?

Today: The puppy can eat and sleep in the laundry room, but can't go anywhere else in the house. I still don't like hair all over, I still don't like slobber, but I do wish he would learn to play fetch already, even if I do have to touch up the icky, slobbery, tennis ball. Dogs DO smell. And he is soooo cute. Pickup and sleeping rules still apply. I'm sorry. I just don't like hair all over.

We finally did it. We got a puppy. His name is Bandit. He is about 16 weeks old and is a blue heeler. He is really dark and has two black patches over his eyes. I was going to name him Zorro, but my parents dog is named that, so Bandit was the second choice. We got him from DH's best friends. He is pretty big, already 28 pounds when we got his shots last week. He is quite timid, but the mother and the other puppies in the litter are on their way to being good cow dogs, and that is what we want to train him to do.

We got him last Sunday (over a week ago) and I had to leave for work on Monday morning, so he was with DH all week. I was sure when I got home, he would be running around the whole house and sleeping in my place on the bed, but DH did good...kept him in the laundry room, putting him in the cage we got him at night, and chaining him up outside during the day.

DH took Bandit out with him to feed the calves and cows last week, and the calves scared the bejeezus out of him He rode around in the tractor with DH and when DH was on the 4 wheeler, Bandit was just running around all happy and playful. DH talked about how fun it was all week to have a puppy.

I got home Thursday night and he didn't know me Instant thought: "This is how my kids will be, if we ever finally do get pregnant. I'll be working so far away all week and they won't even know me." Kind of sad.

Well, I took him for a walk on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, he wouldn't cross a sidewalk or anything concrete, and I had to pick him up to cross one side walk and then kind of drag him other times. Not like I dragged him for multiple feet or anything, but sometimes he would get scared and just lay down. It took us 15 minutes to get out of the yard on Saturday! But, then, he started walking good on the leash. We made it about 2 miles and by the time we were back, he was walking good and releasing to my pressure. Sunday was even better. Started making him stay beside me and not just wander back and forth, in front and back, going in circles around me, and if I kept the leash sorta tight, he stayed right beside me. He is scared of bigger dogs, and we had two dogs come running at us barking and making a big fuss, and he dropped to the ground both times...I yelled at the other dogs and they left, and we just kept on walking. By the end of the day on Sunday, he was following me everywhere, except up some steep steps in a gazebo in the park.

At first, when we let him out to do his business, he would go out without his leash and come right back in again. But by Sunday, he was more comfortable out in the yard, and he wouldn't come back in. We need to teach him to come when we call him...don't quite know how to do that, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.

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Money stuff. We got through the month from hell (10/31 - 12/1) and still have over half of the beans left. Oh my, the price of beans has fallen. This summer, they were more than $14 a bushel, now they are $7 something. We sold some for $8.25 a few weeks ago, and it has dropped that much already. We are feeding the milo to the calves and they are really growing. We should have milo left over to sell when we are done, too. We are going to sell the calves sometime in January.

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At the end of my last pay period, I had $32.09 left in the food/gas checkbook and I said that if I had any money left over after every pay period, it would go to the credit card. Well, this pay period (ending last Thursday) $100 went to help pay towards the month from hell and $194 went to buy 3 long sleeved work shirts for DH, overboots and puppy stuff (a cage - I think this was $70 by itself, leash, food, other startup things). I was $15.57 "in the red" - don't worry, no overdraft because of the buffer I have in there, just hurting my pride. Disappointed about that, but right there was $300 in expenses that usually don't come out of this check book.

Good thing I did pay out of this check book, though. DH had to buy $500 of calf medicine/vaccines and that took our farm account down to like $16 and change on Wednesday. I deposited $1650 as my regular paycheck deposit on Thursday, but that was close! There is no buffer in this account!

We have about $1200 for the coop bill due this month, $1300 for the protein blocks this month, and $945 for taxes this month. I told DH this on Sunday, and he said "I suppose you want me to sell something, then?" Well, unless you put some Miracle Gro on the money tree, we have to do something! I know he doesn't want to sell the beans for this low price, but I don't know what else to do.

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I got slapped down a bit for working from home those two days over Thanksgiving. My immediate supervisor apparently was pissed I went to her boss instead of her. Well, you know why I went to her boss? Because her boss likes to be liked, and doing something like this, even if it is against policy, makes her feel good. I played them, sure. But I didn't know my supervisor would be mad. I thought she would be happy for me. Boy, was I wrong. I was planning on taking my last days of vacation/sick leave the week of Christmas so I wouldn't have to drive down here, but the one idiot guy who doesn't know anything has vacation and all I have is sick leave, so I have to work Monday and Tuesday. I was soooo mad.

Let me back up here. We get the week between Christmas and New Year's off every year. We don't take other holidays like Veteran's Day, Columbus Day, etc and bundle them together so we have a week off at the end of the year. For the past two Christmas breaks in a row, I have had to be on call and work from home to get the financial year end process code written. I had to give away about 16 hours of work each year, plus work on Christmas Eve plus work on New Year's Eve to make sure things were working. This year, one guy switched me so he had Thanksgiving week, the other guy was supposed to have the pager the week of Christmas and I was supposed to have it the week of New Year's. He agreed to that and then, after Thanksgiving, asked "I'm going on vacation to Oklahoma during Christmas, and my mom doesn't have internet. Is that a problem?" Uh, yeah, you idiot. If there is a problem, you can't fix it. So, I have to have it for both weeks. And drive down for two days on the 22nd and the 23rd, which was supposed to be my vacation.

Since I'm not taking those two days, I have 16 hours of sick leave and 4 hours of vacation that I thought I would have to just eat. My supervisor was out today and her boss asked me if I was going to take any vacation with those days I can't use over the 22nd and 23rd, so I said I was going to ask my supervisor if I could take 10 hrs this Thursday and next Thursday. Her boss said I could do that, but I sent an email to my supervisor anyway, just to ask.

So I'm working 3 days this week, 3 days next week and 2 days the week after that. Thank goodness gas is half of what it was this summer...and that I'm salaried.

We were at the bar this weekend, DH talking with friends and me getting my karaoke on and he was talking to our farmer friend about getting a new-to-us 12 row planter. I kind of muttered under my breath "good thing I have a good job" and one of our friends heard me (in fact, the one we got our puppy from, DH's best man). He was like "Really. I mean, why do you even come home? Just stay down there and work overtime and save the gas. Just keep the money coming in." Ha ha. Sometimes it feels like that. To bad I don't get overtime, though!

Saw something on cnn.com today, a woman sold her hair and got like $1200 for it. It looked like she had a LOT of hair, though. I've been growing mine since DH proposed a year and a half ago. I wanted long hair for the wedding, and he likes long hair. I also didn't want to get the "wife cut" you know, the pixie hair cut women get the week after the wedding. So, I thought, I'll just wait a year and then cut it to just above my shoulders (where it was before I started growing it). I've had it trimmed a few times, but other than that, it is all one length, blond and perfectly straight. It is down to the middle of my back...a few inches past where my bra is. It isn't dyed, either. I wonder how much it would be worth. The woman in the picture on cnn.com looks like she had like 2 feet of hair cut off. Mine would be more like 8".

Don't chastise me for not giving it to Locks of Love or something. I read an article somewhere where they throw most of that hair away. Might as well sell it.

Only two more days of work this week. That's cool. I have been eating pb&honey sandwiches for lunch and today I bought a Bertolli shrimp and something pasta dinner that I can cook tomorrow night too, so less than $7 for supper tonight and tomorrow. Had to buy more bread and some chips for lunch, though.

My purse needs new handles. The rest of the purse is great, the handles are falling apart. I got some chain and I'm going to make handles for it. Two chains were $2 a piece and now I just have to get a way to attach them to the purse...I thought about key chain rings, but walmart was out of them. I'll try to find some tomorrow.

My sister is currently a sophomore at a community college here in Kansas. She is playing volleyball and is a Resident Assistant for her dorm. She has an academic scholarship that pays for books and tuition (which, if she didn't have this scholarship, her volleyball would pay for the same thing), her RA position pays her $300 a month to walk the hallways and lock/unlock doors a few times a week, and she gets the full Pell grant because my parents are poor.

She said after applying the Pell grant, she had to write a check for $10 in tuition/fees/room/board for this whole year. She did have to pay $130 in books that were workbooks instead of books that you could sell back, or those would have been included in her scholarship.

There are so many scholarship opportunities out there that most people would be amazed are offered. Sports (and if you are a girl, can walk and chew gum at the same time and WANT to play, there is a college somewhere that wants to give you money to play for them. Guys have a harder time finding these scholarships. Sorry to be politically incorrect, but its true), band, singing, art, cheerleading, drama, athletic training, rodeo, judging (like animal judging or plant identification), debate, etc., etc., etc.

Couple this with work study, and there is no reason you can't knock off at least two years of college with no student loan debts.

For my work study, I did a lot of different things. I worked for the publications office at our school, laying out posters, booklets, pamphlets, the college catalog, etc for print. I also graded papers for our lower level math classes once I got to be a junior and senior, and even taught some classes when the teacher had to leave on an emergency one time. I was a line judge for the volleyball team a few times, and washed our practice jerseys after every practice when I was a senior (I played basketball). I had friends that vacuumed hallways, worked for maintenance painting lines on the football field, worked in the cafeteria (the worst job ever, in my opinion), were office workers in the business office, librarians, ran the scoreboard and stat charts for games, worked in the athletic training room, etc. We got paid minimum wage for these things, but it was easy work, and the RA's were paid more.

These are just scholarships and money the school will give you. There are other, private scholarships as well. 4-H scholarships, community scholarships, church scholarships, Elks, Kiwanis, Lions, etc, they throw money at kids if they are hard working and community orientated.

Anyway, if you are willing to work at it, you can get money for school. Especially if you are poor. I admit, if you have parents that are more wealthy, the work study money might dry up and the Pell grant might dry up too. But the scholarships would still be there, and so would the RA positions.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/supreme_court_upholds_bill

Supreme Court Upholds Bill Of Rights In 5-4 Decision

November 14, 2008
WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled to uphold the Bill of Rights, the very tenets upon which American society is based. "After carefully considering the relevance of the 10 inviolable rights that comprise the ideological foundation on which our nation is built, the court finds that these basic freedoms remain important for the time being, and should not be overturned," read the majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who cast the tie-breaking vote. "Until such time as it can be definitively proven that citizens no longer require the protections provided by the Bill of Rights, it shall remain the principal legal guidance for the United States of America." The Supreme Court's latest decision comes on the heels of last month's 6-3 ruling to abolish the pursuit of happiness from the three inalienable rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence.

Boy, I pulled a slick one today. For those who don't know, I work 4 10 hour days during the week, M-Th. Except, weeks that have a holiday I have to work 8 hour days. Next week, I get Thursday and Friday off. I am taking Wednesday as a vacation day.

So, I sent an IM to my boss's boss asking if I could work at home for those two days so I wouldn't have to drive down for only two days, and she said yes, if I'm not on call. Boo! I'm on call, but thought maybe I could work it out. I got a screen shot of the IM just to record the conversation. Now, I can be on call when I'm not around...I do it all the time (I just have them page my cell phone instead of the pager). But, she said that explicitly. I asked one of the guys I work with if he would CARRY the pager with him and I would still get all the pages on my cell phone and respond to them, but he is a dumb ass and couldn't understand that all I wanted was for the pager to not be sitting on my desk going off if I wasn't there to pick it up. He finally understood, but brought my boss into the conversation, so now she knows I'm "on call" but working at home, which is what her boss told me not to do.

So, I asked the other guy if he would switch weeks with me, and he said he would have to ask his wife, but that probably would work. Hopefully, it will work out so I don't have to drive down for two 8 hour days. That will save about $75 next week!

Wow. Just heard that Boeing is laying off 800 people here in Wichita. That is after Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft have had layoffs already. Case New Holland did too. This downturn is really hitting hard around here.

I don't know how I did this, but I have $125 left in my checking account and payday is tomorrow. And that includes paying $50 for rent that should have come out of another account. I still have to get gas tomorrow (less than $45)and something from Dillon's so that I can contribute to the Thanksgiving dinner at work tomorrow (maybe $15?) and probably stop and get some food and something for mixed drinks on the way home. This is the account that for almost all year now, I should have been overdrawn except I have about a $500 buffer in there in case of emergency. I've gone from about $400 "in the red" every payday (again, no overdraft fee, just red in my spreadsheet) just after the wedding to in the black now. Cool. From now on, whenever I have any left over in this account on payday (excluding the buffer), I am going to send that amount to the credit card, because that debt HAS to go.

This month in Kiplinger's, Janet Bodnar wrote an article about how kids are going to be hearing all the doom and gloom of the financial news and the beginning of the article says that teachers should take this opportunity to teach the kids something about what is going on and why it happened. She says "in econ class, kids could debate the trade-off between recession and inflation.... In high school history classes, they could be discussing how Ben Bernanke & Co. have been greasing the skids with credit in order to avoid the mistakes of the Great Depression, when government sucked money out of the system. Middle school teachers, too, could inject a little financial literacy into social studies by pointing out that many consumers got in over their heads by borrowing easy money to buy houses they couldn't afford. And in math, students could use a compounding calculator (kiplinger.com/links/savings) to learn how it pays for young people, with decades to go before retirement, to buy stocks at today's fire-sale prices."

Stop right there. In MATH class they can learn how to use a COMPOUNDING CALCULATOR on a WEBSITE!?!? (nice plug for your own website, though.) What about teaching kids in math class how compounding works? What the formula is? How to figure different types of interest rates? How to figure different ways loans compound? How about teaching them how to make their own compounding spreadsheet, or amortization spreadsheet? How about teaching them how to THINK instead of how to look up on the internet someone else's solution?

Jeez. I didn't even read the rest of the article. I couldn't get past that comment.

In the last year we bought a swather and a baler. The swather came with an operator's manual and a case to put it in, so it can stay in the cab. The baler didn't come with one, so I had to buy one on ebay. The combine book was eaten by pack rats this summer, and we haven't been able to find another one.

This brought to mind...would it be legal for me to make a copy of the book before DH takes it out to the tractor? Then, if he loses it, it gets dirty/muddy/eaten by pack rats, I have another copy of it I can print out? Is that copyright infringement? Or fair use?

If that is fair use, then would it be ok to scan it in and keep it as a PDF file on my computer? Then, if the pack rat eats it next year too, I can just print off another copy?

If that is fair use, then would it be ok to provide this service to others? They send me their books, I scan them in, send them a CD of the images and send the books back? They would pay me to provide them with a back up of their books. Books they currently own, and are just wanting to back up, but are too lazy/don't know how to scan them themselves?

Or is this whole thing going to get the copyright police knocking on my door?

...fatalistic mood ahead...
My brother wrote me a text message today asking "so what do we do now? Stock up on guns and ammo?" DH and I actually were talking about what we would need to do if Obama was elected, and that was one thing we had talked about.

Energy prices are going to skyrocket. That we know for sure. Obama said in the past that he didn't mind the $4 gas, it was just a shame that it was so quick in getting there because we didn't have time to "adjust" to it. He also said he is going to bankrupt the coal industry, which means electricity is going to be much higher. I love how when gas prices are high, everyone says "just walk or ride a bike." Really? Sure, I can ride a bike 160 miles to work. I can pull the planter or drill with an ox team. I can cut the wheat with a scythe. Great idea. Now, how about be a little practical and remember not everyone lives in the middle of a city.

I told my brother that stocking up might be a good idea, and another one is pay off your debts and start saving money in case you get laid off.

Layoffs are coming. They are hitting around here hard. My company is laying off 5% now and probably 5% in 90 days. I didn't know this, but there is some kind of law that if you lay off more than 5% of your workforce, you have to give the employees a 60 day notice and pay the employees the whole time. If you wait 90 days, you can do 5% now, 5% later and it can be immediate (like, you don't know it's coming until you try to log into your computer and your login is disabled, so you call the helpdesk and they say "you need to talk to your manager"). Another airplane company is laying off workers (same...5% now, 5% later), and another has shortened their day to 3 day shifts. The lady I rent a room from said that if she gets laid off she's selling the house and moving in with her mom (both are single, and my room-lord takes care of her quite a bit) but her mom has a 3 bedroom house so I could rent from her as long as I don't get laid off too

Here comes card check, too. No more secret ballot for seeing if you want to be in a union. Instead, intimidation will be the rule.

After that, every single abortion-restricting law in the country will be struck down. Including allowing underage girls to get them without parental notification, and no consequences for whoever got her pregnant, even though that is statutory rape. Including partial-birth abortion (Barbara Boxer actually said in a debate on the Congressional floor that the line of when babies should have the right to live should be when the parents are putting the baby in the car seat for the ride home. Don't believe me? Look it up.)

The Supreme Court could take a hard, hard turn to the left, and instead of actually looking at the Constitution, they could just fly by the seat of their pants and decide these cases based on fuzzy feelings and what "feels right" not if the law they are considering constitutional.

I am going to send my senator the book "War and Peace" and some throat lozenges so he can get his filibuster on. At least we still have that. I think. Or did Al Franken get elected? Makes sense if he did. Congress is a bad joke right now anyway.

Oh, and I just wanted to ask...has the price of bread gone down 25% since this summer? Because the price of wheat has. Remember that when you blame the price of the commodity for the food going up. There is hardly any correlation, just a good excuse to blame those darned farmers. They have such an easy job, don't you think they get paid too much?

Someone told me today "you had to have Jimmy Carter before you could have Ronald Reagan." Hopefully either the Republican party pulls their head out of their ass and gets back to being fiscally conservative instead of don't-tax,-but-spend-anyway idiots or a viable third party knocks them out of the way.

Funny how we had the worst post-election day plunge in the markets ever. Perhaps the market can see what is coming?
/fatalistic mood

Now, as for personal stuff...

I haven't really posted since we cut the beans. We got 35 bushels / acre...that was pretty much what we were shooting for. DH wanted more, I was just trying to be practical. At least we got them cut and they aren't on the ground like the wheat was after that hail storm! When we took those fields over this spring they were cockle burr patches, so this was pretty good for our first crop off of it.

Sold the wheat the other day. We got $4.90 a bushel for it. It was up to $14 or so this spring. We sold the first of it for $8.04 in July, and hoped that after harvest was over and we got to fall it would go back up to those levels. Great plan, huh?

We should be weaning the calves here any day now. I hope this weekend, but we've been saying that for about a month now. We'll feed them out for 2-2.5 months and sell them in January. Wow. I just thought about that. We should have done it last month so we could sell them this year while these tax rules are still in place. We don't know what will happen next year.

A friend of mine at work takes old cast off computers and refurbishes them, installs Windows XP and sells them for really cheap ($75 for the computer and monitor). The computer shells may have stickers or scratches on them, but they are better computers than we have at work on our desks, and almost as good as the one I have at home right now. Not a good "gamer" computer but it would do anything else you want it to do. He sells the computer itself for $65 and $10 for the monitor (a CRT, not a flat screen) We got one for my MIL, my mom bought one, the grocery store downtown bought one, and my sister got one. They paid me for them, except the one for MIL is a present. Mom, I don't think you read this, but if you do, don't highlight the next two sentences:
We got mom a laptop. All of us went in on it, and it was only $200.

We are going to try to get my dad a seat for his tractor. The one he has doesn't have any padding and it doesn't have any spring left in it. Think about how it is when your shocks on your car are shot...that is the same, but much worse (the fields are bumpier than roads).

As for money. Good news...we haven't had to use the credit card or the line of credit since August. We had a large coop bill due on October 31 and got that paid off (fuel for 600 gal. diesel tank, plus 2 115 gal oil and hydrolic oil tanks, plus normal pickup fuel, etc. = $6000), we have the tractor/baler payment due November 15 ($4767) and the farm insurance payment due November 24 ($1050). I got the other half of the CRP payments October 22, so that helped. Right now, we are about $2000 short for all of this, but, we have soybeans and milo to sell, and we have people who owe us for swathing/baling for them. We just have to get them to pay us by then. And we have some farm payments still coming our way. The first land payment of $9900 is due December 1, and that money is saved from when we sold the house in September. Too bad we don't have a few more houses to sell!!!

Indeterminant news...still waiting on the credit card transfer offer. Someone had applied for a credit card in my name and I had to put a block on my credit, so it is taking a lot longer to get this through than I thought. They needed a copy of my social security card and my address before they could process it, and I sent that in last week. Hopefully when I get back home, the approval letter will be there. Because if it isn't we are going to really be hurting (I have a lot on 0% cards and hopefully I can roll that over for another year).

Bad news...the house that is on the land we bought would take about $20,000 just to make it livable before we could even move in. We would have to do new windows and doors, a new roof and fix the foundation. before we could move in. After that, fixing it up to a house we would like to live in would be lots, lots, lots more. We think it will be better to just put in a basement somewhere else on the property and get a modular home, maybe a used one, maybe a foreclosed one, and move it there. That will be long term, though.

The land we bought is signed up for CRP (Conservation Reserve Program). You know, the government paying farmers not to farm. It was signed up before we bought it and we can't get out of the contract until it expires. One will expire 2009 and one will expire 2010. We'll fence it in and use it for pasture as soon as it expires.

Checks come out in October. After we had signed all the papers to buy the place, DH had gone to the FSA office to change things and sign papers there. The guy there said that I didn't have to sign anything...only DH had to. That was a few months ago. Well, I called to see when those checks would come in. They said that there was a problem...I needed to sign some papers before they would cut my checks. ??? The guy had told DH that we didn't need to do anything else.

So, I drove in to town and signed a few papers. They then explained to me that there were three different contracts on the ground, so each of those have to be paid separately and because there are two of us on the contract each of us would be getting three checks. So, they wasted their time and our tax money to send us 6 checks instead of 1. And all in separate envelopes too!

I have been thinking awhile about opening a store on Cafe Press. That is a web site where you can upload sayings and images and they put them on t-shirts, hats, mugs, etc, and people can buy them. There is a base price and you can add a little (or a lot) to the price and that is how you make your money. For instance, the cheapest t-shirt is $8.99, and you can add a dollar or two to that price and if anyone buys that t-shirt you get that money.

I have 8 ideas right now, mostly just saying that I think are cute or funny. I made two of them and loaded them up to Cafe Press. You can have a "free" store, but you can only have one image on each item for that, or you can pay $7.00 a month and have any image on any number of items (for instance, for free, I can only have one type of $8.99 t-shirt, but if I have the $7.00 per month subscription, I can have any of them on the $8.99 t-shirt).

Has anyone made any money on cafe press? Do you think it is worth it to pay $7.00 a month?

We are cutting our soybeans today. Send good thoughts and prayers our way for high yield, no breakdowns, and a safe harvest!

I don't know...the election must be getting to me....

I read in the paper yesterday that the state of Kansas was thinking about changing the interstate speed limit from 70 mpg to 65 mph. This was the Kansas Energy Council that was proposing it, and they had other things they were pushing as well. They were having a public forum today from 9:00 to 12:00 to allow the public to comment on it.

The reason they wanted to change it is to reduce "greenhouse gases" and gas consumption. They also wanted to increase speeding fines by 50%, lower the "fudge factor" to 5 mph instead of 10 mph and be able to report to insurance companies speeding over 5 mph instead of having to wait for you to be 10 mph over for the same reasons.

I asked my boss if I could go on my lunch hour, and she said sure. I left around 11:00 and showed up by 11:15. It was already over! I had written up my little speech I was going to give, and so the lady there that was putting everything away said I could put my name and address on it and she would take it back, because if you didn't show up at the public forum you could send in your comments in writing.

When I left, there was a TV reporter outside interviewing someone. I didn't want to walk through the background, so I just waited for them to be done. When they were done, I kinda yelled out, "Hey, you can interview me too." She came over and asked if I was for it or against it. I said against it, and she said "I think we have enough coverage of people against it. There were a lot of people in there against it. The lieutenant governor pretty much said it wouldn't pass."

That's good news. But, just because I didn't get to have my say in front of a crowd, I'm going to post here what I was going to say:

My name is *** *** and I live in ***, KS. That is about 20 miles north of Interstate 70 between Salina and Hays. I work in IT at *** here in Wichita. My husband, ***, farms around ***, and so cannot move closer to Wichita. My company does not have a telecommuting policy, but they have allowed me to work 4 10 hour days, so every Monday morning, I drive 165 miles to work, stay here in the Wichita area for three nights so I can work my 4 10's and after work on Thursday I drive 165 miles back home.

I can make it to work, if my vehicle is gassed up the night before and there are no other stops along the way, in 2 hours and 15 minutes. The effect of decreasing the interstate speed limit from 70 to 65 would increase my drive time on Monday mornings and Thursday evenings about 30 minutes. My commute on those days would now be closer to 3 hours, with a 10 hour work day on top of that.

Instead of impacting my drive time and family time like this in order to cut down on gas usage across the state, I submit to you that it would be more effective to encourage businesses, for instance, with tax incentives, to come up with a telecommuting policy for their workers that are able to do their jobs in a home office setting. In normal circumstances, if an employer would allow their workers to work 1 day a week at home, that would be an automatic 20% savings in gas for those workers. If my employer, for instance, would allow me to work a week a month at home, I would save over 25 gallons of fuel, 25% of what I use during the month just for my commute. This amount of gas savings is not trivial, and actually would be more of a savings than dropping the speed limit by 5 miles per hour.

Thank you.

I found the credit card offer I was talking about yesterday. It was a Capital One card and it was 0% interest until November 2009, no balance transfer fee, no annual fee and up to $30,000. I applied to transfer my balances over there...they couldn't give me the "60 second answer" so they will send me something in the mail.

Hope this goes through. I haven't had any other offers lately...

Oh, just remembered...the mortgage company owes me about $700 for the escrow. Wonder when they are going to pay me that? I tried to call them, but it was too late. I'll call them tomorrow...

First of all, if I offended anyone over on the forums, I am sorry. I was trying to defend someone and went too far. I am glad that Jeffrey cleaned up that messy series of posts.

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Now that that is out of the way, let's get updated. Like I mentioned, I got my house sold a few weeks ago. I sold it for about $1500 more than I bought it for, but I paid $4000 in closing costs, paid 6% for the real estate agent and sprayed for termites, so I ended up walking away with about $13,000. I put down $17,000, so I lost $4000 from when I bought it 2 years ago. But, that is only $166 a month, pretty cheap rent Let's look on the sunny side of this!

$9900 of it is earmarked for the land payment at the first of December. I transferred it to our online savings account so I won't be tempted to spend it on other stuff before then.

Before, I was allocating $900 every two weeks for bills between the two houses, and now, including the $25 a week rent I am paying for my room (yep, only $25 a week! I get cable, internet, a bathroom to myself and a place to do the three s's (shit, shower and shave) for that) is only $410 every two weeks.

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Because of all the extra time I put in last weekend and last week, my boss let me take my normal day off on Friday and let me stay home on Monday and come in at noon on Tuesday. Awesome! That is a nice way to recognize someone's work.

So, I told DH that, and he said "great! I have lots of swathing for you to do." Hee hee. He also liked that I would be around for longer I got home Thursday night and then spent 4 days in the swather. We got a lot done...we figured I did over 200 acres and he was baling at the same time. We are charging $10 an acre and $8 per bale, so I alone brought in $2000 this weekend! I don't know how much he did...our bale counter over counts sometimes, so we have to wait until we move them to count them. We probably put in $400 worth of fuel for the swather, though.

That is what we should have been able to do this whole summer. But the rain has stopped us from doing that. We probably lost a month and a half where we couldn't get in the fields because it was too muddy. What a year. It would have been a lot different had the wheat not gotten hailed out and if we could have had even $1000 weekends all summer.

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I ended up getting reimbursed for the mileage for when I went to the java class. I accidentally paid for the rental car on my credit card instead of the company card, so they had to reimburse me for that. Got reimbursed a total of $632.58 to me, with $434.42 the rental car, so almost $200 for the mileage. It all went to the credit card.

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I had an offer in the mail about a 0% interest 0% balance transfer credit card for an entire year, but I can't find the offer now. My two 0% offers end in December, and I need to get them transferred over here pretty soon so we don't have to pay interest on them. It is bad enough I haven't paid off my normal working credit card for a few months now. I kick myself every time I think about it, but I don't know how else to hold this ship together for now.

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Ok, why is Living Almost Large trying to pick another fight? On the "Do you NEED 2 incomes" thread, she posted this:

Question, do people when considering staying at home for a child, make a non-gender based decision? Meaning that person staying at home has the lesser income whether or not they are the husband or wife? Or is it decided by gender?

I have to wonder why people on a financial board typically tell a woman to stay at home if her income doesn't cover daycare. But if it's the man who earns a lot less, rarely is it force your husband to stay at home.

Well, I'm going to respond here, but I'm not touching that in the forums with a 10 foot pole. The following are stereotypes, but sometimes, stereotypes become stereotypes in the first place because they are true.

First, they are called boobs. Babies do best with breastmilk, and men can't make that. If you can give your child breastmilk for a year after birth, that puts them on the best track for the rest of their lives. The simplist way to deliver said breastmilk is for the mom to be there holding the baby. What a pain to pump and freeze and defrost and warm up and wash bottles, etc. Not that a family can't choose to do it that way. Go ahead! But it is undeniably easier to pull down your bra and let the little bugger go at it.

Second, "maternal instinct" is not some myth or some way to keep women in their place. It is real. Women tend to WANT to stay home with their children. And, babies/children tend to want to be with their moms. Again, if someone chooses to do it differently, fine. But if the mom wants to stay home, why is that bad and the husband in that relationship automatically labeled a woman-hater or a pig?

I am not a feminist. That much is probably pretty clear. But, I think any woman is capable of, and should, do what she can do. Some women can do a lot. Some, not so much. Same as men.

Each family should let the person that does that job best do it. But THEY should decide, regardless of political leanings.

It seems like to acknowledge your femininity and natural predilections and tendencies offend some people. Like biology, culture and personal preference has no say...to be a "new" woman you have to forsake all womanly characteristics and emasculate your men (or not have one at all) to prove something.

And any woman can decide for herself and each family can decide for themselves, what is best for them. Because a woman decides to stay home does not mean she was forced to.

It is sooo funny that someone called me a misogynist. Dude, do you know me? I grew up on a farm, doing actual farm work, not just living there. Working in the field on a tractor by myself by the time I was 10. Rode horses, worked cattle, harvest, all of it. In high school, I worked for my uncle and dad roofing. We had 6 girls in high school (two cousins and me and my 3 sisters) on that roof, and lots of people came by just to see us working up there...they had never seen anything like it before. Played 3 sports in high school. Played basketball against the guys almost every Sunday night at the open gym. There would be 15 guys and 3 girls playing (my two best friends and me) and we just shot free throws to determine teams and no one complained when we were on their team. I played two sports in college. Majored in math and physics and got a 4.0 GPA. Got a math masters degree in theoretical algebra. Now I work in IT and farm with my husband. I got an award a few years ago called the "Women who soar" award from work because of my leadership and I just get crap done. I didn't get married until I was 30 because I wouldn't settle, and I did just fine on my own, thank you very much. I like to hunt with my husband and his friends, play video games and hate cleaning the house. I am the definition of an empowered woman.

But I don't lean left at all, so I will not be called a feminist. It is too bad that in order to be a feminist, you have to be willing to kill babies before they are born, want special treatment for women on the job, want all gender roles flipped upside down and reject God because he is the ultimate patriarch.

Wait a second, maybe I'm a "Sarah Palin Feminist." We have to come up with some other term for that, to get the F word out of there. No wonder I want to vote for her.

Grr. I just blogged for about 45 minutes and then hit submit and forgot my VPN was on for work and lost everything. I can't do that again.

But, we got the house sold, I got moved into a new place I am renting from a friend for $25 a week, farming is good, boss likes the work I'm doing and she is giving me a day and a half off next week because of all the time I've been putting in this week.

Sorry! That's all I can recreate. I'm going to bed!

A good result of that terrible co-worker incident I blogged about a while ago was that my supervisor's boss got pissed off and told me to find a training class anywhere in the country and get my butt to it. That was 2 weeks ago tomorrow and I started the class in Chicago on Monday! It is a good class. I am learning Java (YEAH) which is awesome. I've never done any object oriented programming before, and I've tried to teach myself from books a few times and I just didn't get it. Now I'm getting it!

So, the company is paying for airfare, hotel, rental car, food, and I think mileage. Here is the mileage policy:
Mileage to and from the airport will not be reimbursed unless it is above the normal mileage an employee travels to work.

I looked on Google maps for the travel distance between our north house and work and our north house and the airport. It is 165 miles to work and 168 miles to the airport. I am going to submit 336 miles (roundtrip) and see if they pay it. I think that is what the policy says...what do you think? 336 miles? Or 6 (the difference between the two roundtrip)?

Good news is, if that is paid for, I just got a free week! I've only been spending money on gas and food recently, so if they pay for those things, this will help get me back on track.

Ok, as for the house. They did the inspection and found a few things that needed fixed...asked me to fix the 220 outlet behind the stove (I have a gas stove in there now) and a few plumbing things. Electrician came over and checked the outlet...and it already works (?). So, he is going to send something about that fact and I get to pay him $60 for it I had a cousin of my dad's come over and look at the plumbing (he is a licensed plumber in the area) and he kinda laughed about the things they were asking for, but said that other things that weren't up to code would have cost more to fix than what they asked for, so we just agreed to do it. He said it would cost $250 to do it (I think he was going to just charge me parts...what a great guy!) But, we had it lined up for him to go over last Saturday and do it, and my RE agent called Friday and said the buyer doesn't want the stuff fixed...they think that they can get their family to do it and save all of us money. Awesome!

Bad part is that the house has termites. I think that all houses in Kansas either has had termites or will get termites. You just have to treat it and go on. So, that is going to be around $500. We budgeted $200 in our estimate of repairs, so we'll be getting a little less than we thought, but still, I am so ready to sell this house!

I have to get serious about packing stuff up and ready to move. I think DH and his mom are coming down the weekend after Labor Day to help, so I need to go through a lot of the stuff to see if I need it and if it will fit in the north house. We are closing Sept 11.

Mom and Dad sold some of my cows last week because they were getting out and a brand new 5' barbed wire fence couldn't hold them. We don't need those kind of cows around. But, the sale barn misspelled my new last name. I am going to have to call them tomorrow and see if they can cut new checks and make it out to DH so he can go pick them up and deposit them...we have a big co-op bill this month (ok, who am I kidding. We have a normal co-op bill this month, but it is a lot of money) and if we don't pay off last month's bill before the end of the month they charge 18% interest! So, like a really really bad credit card. This was unexpected income, so it will go to the co-op bill and if there is any left over, pay off some of the line of credit.

I can't wait for this house to sell. That will free up about $1000 a month!

Yeah! Got an offer on the house and a verbal agreement (signing the contract tomorrow). I bought the house for $87,000 two years ago. The final offer that we have verbally agreed on is $88,400, but I am paying up to $4000 on their closing costs. After everything else, (RE agent fee, document processing crap, etc) I'll get about $12,000 plus some back from the escrow.

When I sold my Texas house, I got $23,700 equity out of it. I paid off some credit cards and loans that I had used to fix up that house and had $17,500 left to put towards the second mortgage on this house. That paid off the second mortgage the month after I got that loan. I've been paying on the first mortgage for two years now.

A little disappointed with only walking away with $12,000. And that is if he doesn't ask for any repairs on the house...well, $200 in repairs is figured in on that amount. But if anything is wrong, I doubt $200 will fix much of anything.

We are supposed to close September 4. We now have to figure out how much of this stuff will fit in the up north house and how much we're going to have to get rid of (or how much stuff up north we will have to get rid of).

$9900 is earmarked for the land payment in December. So, $2000 to help pay some bills right away, plus the escrow back from the mortgage company.

Also, I'll be getting rid of the following budget items per month:
$750 mortgage payment
$100 phone/internet
$150 natural gas
$050 electricity
$075 home owner's insurance
$050 water/sewer/trash
----
$1175 per month

The first few months without this payment will be paying down credit card and line of credit (since the wheat hailed out, I haven't been able to pay off the credit card. That is the first thing to tackle. Then the line of credit - $3000 on it right now.)

I'll be adding $100 per month to my budget for "rent" to a friend of mine at work. She is going to rent me a room for the three nights I am down here for $25 a week.

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Had a tough time with the cows this weekend. It rained a LOT this weekend (my parents 6 miles south of us had 5" on Friday night) and some of the ditches became rivers. It took out some fences, so we were out trying to fix up a fence that would keep them off the road, but because the ground was so soggy, we couldn't put any posts in the ground. Finally got that set of cows so they wouldn't bother that corner, and went to check another set. 18 pairs plus the bull were gone! Finally found them over 2 miles away, so DH chased them on foot while I was in the pickup. The bull wasn't with the cows, but we found him in another guy's pasture just to the south of us. Couldn't get him in on foot or 4-wheeler (he is BIG...like 4000 lbs!) This picture isn't our bull, but ours is big like this:


Fixed the fence so the cows wouldn't get out again, and called Dad and he brought over two horses the next morning to get him in. After a couple of hours of hard riding, we finally coaxed him out the gate and into our pasture. (I have to say, I'm proud of myself...chasing a bull is not an easy thing to do, and even though Dad was coaching me I did pretty good and we did get it done. Those big boys are used to getting their way, so sometimes you have to leave them alone for a while and try another day if they get too obstinate).

After that, we were putting the 4-wheeler away and DH asked if I wanted to go look at the soybeans with him. Ah, yes, the farm date. Actually, it was nice. Nice to see good beans and nice to be riding around together thinking about our future. I've been seeing the beans by the road and most of them are over knee high, maybe up to mid-thigh high on some of them (I'm 5'6", so mid-thigh high on me, for a reference). The ones he went and took me to see on Saturday were up past my hips! And bean pods all up and down the stalks. AND more flowers indicating that they are going to be getting even taller. Yeah!

Time for a little prayer: Oh, God, please, let us have a good soybean crop this year!

DH says that these beans would probably be ready to cut by the end of September. We have other beans that were planted into the wheat stubble after that disaster of a harvest we had and those won't be ready until the end of October. Hope we keep getting good rain, and then it warms up so the beans and milo can finish maturing!

The rain has been hurting our haying this year. We have lost almost a full month because of the rain. Hard to pay off the equipment when we can't do the work to pay it off. So, cuss the rain for haying, like the rain for crops. Good thing I'm an optimist!

Warning. This post will contain many, many cusswords. If you don't like cusswords, don't continue reading.
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So, I don't know how to code in Java. I'm supposed to be going to a class so I can learn it, but my company hasn't found one for me yet. The application that I am in charge of has an API interface that uses java to initiate it, so we have to have someone in another group write that part for us.

He has written about 10 before now. So, he needed to write another one, and sent me an email saying it was done and in a particular folder. It was in a different folder than the rest of the 10 were in. I wrote him back to ask, "can we move that to the folder everything else is in?" He would have to change the code to use the other folder, but nothing terrible, I don't think. He wrote back "no." that's it. that was his only response.

Think of it like this. You have all your tools in the garage. Except, randomly, the hammer. It goes in the drawer by the kitchen sink. You know this...you might forget, but after searching in the garage for 10 minutes, you will remember again. But if someone else has to use the hammer, they will look and look for it in the garage and not find it. If you are on vacation, the hammer will never be found.

All the code should be in the same place and implemented the same way so if someone has to modify it, they will know where to look. Or, if there is a reason that it needs to be somewhere else, you should document it so someone else will know why.

So, since he is only one cube row away from me, I went to ask him why.
Him: That is how the code is written and I'm not going to change it.
Me: Can you tell me why?
Him: No
Me: Why not?
Him: If you want to change it, you change it. I am done. It has to go in that folder.
Me: Is there a technical Java reason it has to go there
Him: Yes and no
Me: Why?
Him: I'm not telling
(yes, he says that. I'm not telling. What are you, 3?)
Me: I need to know so I can document it.
Him: The code is done. I'm not touching it.
...argue, argue, argue...
Me: You are unbelievable. I can't believe you won't tell me why.
Him: (turns around and ignores me)

I go into my boss's office and say "JW is an ass". She asks what is wrong, and I tell her the little exchange we just had.

She takes me to his boss's office and explains the situation. He laughs. Not at me, but at the situation. He tries to explain that this guy is an ass, that he has always been an ass, and that we won't be able to change his attitude.

I don't give a fuck what his attitude is. He can cuss me the whole time he is fixing it. But there is the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things. The way he has it set up is wrong, and the way I want to do things is right. I think so, my boss thinks so and his boss thinks so. Common sense and prior implementation thinks so too.

His boss says he goes on these power trips and gets obstinate and makes a huge fucking deal about this shit when it will take 5 minutes and less typing than this sentence to fix it. Fine. Be an ass. Just fix my code.

Oh, and because I don't think my users should be punished because some guy is measuring his dick, I did try to implement it the way he said to. Here's the kicker...IT DOESN'T WORK. I made sure to let all parties involved know that one. I also tried to fix it so it would work, and I couldn't.

Ok, for the past few weeks I've been gathering all the farm receipts, sorting them, categorizing them, taping them to paper and scanning them in. I am current up to last weekend. The numbers are truly frightening:

Accounting (if we didn't have the farm, we would do our own taxes): $290
Business meetings (ok, suppers out. But we did talk about plans for the farm at every one of them): $272.79
Chemicals (herbicide, fungicide, etc for crops): $367.09
Custom Hire: $660.41
Feed (for cattle, including grain for cull cows/calves, mineral, salt blocks, etc): $3429.37
Fertilizer: $1447.84
Fuel: $5947.79
Insurance: $940.52
Pasture Rent: $1050.42
Repairs: $8950.10
Supplies: $4017.03
Taxes (land): $243.47
Travel Expenses: $230.54
Utilities: $161.88
Vet: $420.08

Total: $28,429.34.

This doesn't include cell phone bills, mileage on my vehicle, some of the insurance that isn't included yet, interest on loans, 3 bulls and a cow, and depreciation on equipment. We bought a $57,000 swather this year that we are going to depreciate over a few years,a $3000 4 wheeler this year, along with the cows, tractor and baler that we have gotten in years past.

I'll be able to write off my house mortgage interest, maybe his house interest, and maybe student loan interest, and probably half the internet because it is required for my job. Other than that, no other personal deductions.

There will be farm income to offset those expenses, but I haven't figured that up yet.

I can't believe Repairs are so much. The next step is to go through all the repairs and see if they are general maintenance type repairs or if they are a sign of equipment that needs to be someone else's headache.

I did expect Fuel to be that high. That is all farm fuel, for pickups, tractors, swathers, 4 wheeler, combine, etc.

One of the first things people in the forums suggest when someone asks for budget help is "do you need a cell phone?" and "do you need a land line?" If the answer is yes, the next question is "can you get a better rate?"

Yes, we both need cell phones. I drive so much I don't want to be stranded if something should happen (and I really don't know many people in Wichita if I did have trouble...), and he is always on some tractor or something, so I would never be able to get ahold of him any other way. Also, he uses it to call dealerships and stuff to make sure the parts are there before he goes to pick them up. So yes, we need the cell phones.

I also need land lines in both houses (yes, yuck). I have DSL in both houses so I can be on call for work. If I couldn't be on call, I couldn't come back home on the weekends I have the pager.

The good news is that we can write off both cell phones and probably half of the internet charges at both houses (because it is required for work) and probably one of the home phones...have to check with the CPA on that, but I think that will work.

The bad news is that it is EXPENSIVE!

We have home phone + cable + internet bundled at the north house. That is $100 a month. Any cheaper cable is just local channels. Maybe that is a luxury, but not something I want to give up yet.

We had home phone + Dish network + internet bundled at the south house. It used to be $120 a month for that, but I recently dropped dish network, so the last bill was $90.70, and $7 of that was the prorated part of the Dish network bill. So that will go down a little more.

We also had 2 lines on Alltel (the only cell phone that works at the north house...but it doesn't work at the south house...another reason I have to have home phone at the south house), 1400 minutes a month, 10 "my circle" minutes and 300 text messages (again so I can use my cell phone as a pager for work instead of using the actual pager...which doesn't work at the north house anyway). You can call nights and weekends and mobile to mobile (i.e., alltel to alltel) for unlimited minutes. That was costing us $115 a month! $89.99 for the base plan, $9.99 for the second line and $5.99 for the text message plan. Then all the taxes and fees.

I looked at our bill, and we use 5 of the my circle minutes a lot. He calls the south house home phone every night I am there (sometimes I call him on the home phone and just let it ring a few times and then he calls me back, because my number is in my circle and I don't have to use long distance that way). The other numbers we call a lot are my work, his parents, my parents and the north house phone. So, we could get by with 5 my circle minutes. The other calls are about 350 minutes a month. So, we are waaay overkill on our minutes.

I looked up different plans, and one was $49.99 for 750 minutes and 5 my circle numbers, but it cost $20 to put a second phone on. Another one was $59.99 for 900 minutes and 10 my circle numbers, and only cost $9.99 to put the second phone on. That is the one we went with...same price for more minutes.

Long story short, we'll save $30 a month. I also may drop the text message plan. At $.15 / text, we would have to send and receive 40 text messages every month for that to be worth it. I need to log in and look at past months to see how many pages I am getting every month, but I doubt it is that many.

Oh yeah, and why didn't I look at this before? I have no idea. What a doofus.

Funny story. When I called in to change the plan, the operator on the other end suggested I wait until start of the next billing cycle to make the change, because, as she said "the proration will make your bill higher." I asked "what do you mean" and again, word for word, "the proration will make the bill higher on the next bill." Just like that. Obviously, she didn't know what the work "prorated" means. I said, "um, no, we are dropping the price, so it should be lower." She kept me on hold for a while while she was frantically typing and then said "but you'll only have 400 minutes until the next billing cycle." Ok, we only use 350. Do it. Poor girl. Doesn't even know the meaning of prorated.

You could probably tell that I was a bit stressed out in my last post. I have calmed down quite a bit.

We got the wheat cut a few days after my last post. It only brought in 16 bushels / acre. Before the hail storm, when we counted heads and counted berries in the head, it looked like we were going to get around 40, so that sucked. But, the 16 got us our contract ($4005) and we have about 250 bushels left over. We got the check for that and the check from the hail insurance (only $2353...coverage is going up next year!) and were able to make the land payment and the line of credit payment on time.

Line of credit is now at $0 and we only owe about $14,000 on this piece of land. (This is 80 acres of farm land he bought about 5 years ago.) We both agree that if we ever get ahead and have money left over to throw at some debt, that is the one to throw it at. To actually own the whole piece of land...how awesome! And, it is the highest interest rate at 7%, because all of our other debt we can deduct from our taxes, or is just low, so the effective interest rate on everything else is ~ 5.5%.

Baler got fixed from the last post, and even though I had been swathing for 6 days with him basically sitting still, he got caught up with me last week. Of course, the baler broke again. This time it will be a $600 part which they had to order from Canada, so he was working on that this week. He got the baling done last week before the rain came in...just in time. But, he wanted to get the beans planted last week and didn't get it done before the rain. We got 2.5" on Thursday night, so that put the stops to my swathing for him last weekend.

Now, for south house news. I called my mommy (I'm making fun of myself here) about the same time as my last post, and just about cried. I had been working 10 hour days and staying up until 2 in the morning to work on the house and I wasn't getting much done, in my eyes, and then going back home and swathing for 3 days in a row and then coming back and starting over. The house work was slow and steady, but it felt slooooooooooooow and jerky. Well, she volunteered to come help me! I met her and my sister (who will be a 7th grader this upcoming year) and drove down here on Sunday morning, and I thought all we would do is paint the window sills and finish the bathroom. That was my goal. Well, let me tell you, they did SOO much more than that. I worked with them all day Sunday, and we did get the windows sills done in all the rooms, and the bathroom was recaulked and that stuff looked great! But, when we were taking off the last bit of tape in the office late Sunday night, it pulled the wallpaper off below the window. After cussing (and getting reprimanded for exposing my little sister to that) we decided that we could just texture it.

Well, that meant painting the whole room, which needed it anyway. We were going to go to home depot to get the paint, but you know what is cheaper than buying paint? Finding the paint that the previous owner used on a shelf in the garage! Yep, that turned out great. I went to work the next day (and the next day, and the next day...they ended up staying until Thursday night) and my sister textured the wall and they painted the whole room. The office was some kind of funky almost translucent white wall paper that had an ugly border on it, so the paint in here really helped. They spackled the 2nd bedroom nail holes and used the old paint to cover that up, and it looks like they repainted the whole room! Yes, a fresh coat of paint really brightens up the room, but it turns out, just getting rid of the nail holes does the same thing.

They worked all day and when I got home from work I helped. We painted the trim in the hallway and painted the hallway the same color as two of the bedrooms. My air conditioner had an ugly piece of plywood that had a 19" x 38" hole cut out of it so the air could get through it, and we painted the wood the hallway color and got two 20" white vents and covered that up. The kitchen had a similar thing for the water heater, and we covered those vents up with 16"x16" vents. We spackeled the master bedroom, pulled off the border and painted that with left over paint, and also painted all of the trim in that room. I got some plants from Loew's and mom planted them in the little garden in the front, with some pretty red ones right by the door.

Last thing we did was make curtains for the master bedroom. There are two windows that sit side by side on one wall and another window on another wall. We had looked at walmart for some curtains, but it would have been $25-$35 per window had we gone that route. We found some twin sheet sets with a pretty pattern for $9 a piece and bought 4 of them. These made all the window covers, and had the 4 pillowcases and the fitted sheets left over. I gave mom the fitted sheets and put the pillowcases on the pillows on the bed, so that all matches. We finally left late (like 11:00 p.m.) Thursday night.

Oh, thank you, thank you, mom and sister! It just looks awesome in here now. Some day I'll fix up a house and actually live in it for a while! And paint it so I like it, not so it is generic (but, I actually do like some shades of beige...) I did spend a bit of money. Buying the plants, buying the vents, buying more kilz, buying some hardware. But, holy cow, it was worth it. Probably $200, but the only thing left to do is paint some trim if I want to (it doesn't look bad as it is, but it MIGHT look better if I painted it) and get a gate for the back yard fence. One of DH's friends is a contractor and he is working on that part, so after that, I don't have to spend any more money on this house.

Of course, my sister didn't want to eat home cooked meals at all (she kind of thought of it as a vacation, even though she worked SO HARD, at least it wasn't outside in the heat), so mom took her to McDonald's every lunch and I brought home some KFC and Pizza Hut every night. And she got her ears pierced (in my family, we are supposed to have to wait until we are 13 to get our ears pierced, but she is 12 and doesn't turn 13 until December. Mom and Dad made her call all 6 of her older sisters to see if it was ok with us...we all said yes).

New real estate agent brought her entire office here yesterday, and they ALL liked it. One of them brought a client back tonight, and even though she didn't give us an offer, she did say, if someone else offers, let her know. No one is complaining about the window sills anymore, no one is complaining about the ugly hole by the air conditioner, no one is complaining about the hallway, or the borders, or anything. I can't say it enough, thank you mom and sister!

Now, let's just get this house sold!

One last bit of good news. I had a skiing accident a year ago in February...about a year and a half ago. I slipped on some ice and basically did a cartwheel down the mountain and the back of the ski on my left leg hit the mountain and did mucho damage to my knee. ACL, MCL, and meniscus. I had surgery on it March 2007. Well, ever since then, even after therapy, it has hurt, and my hip hurt. I told the surgeon and the therapist, but they didn't do anything about it. I just thought that that was the way it would be the rest of my life. I did something to my back a few weeks ago and needed to go to the chiropractor (for the first time since the accident), so while I was there, I asked him if maybe it had something to do with my hips. I mean, as hard as that ski hit and as much torque it put on my body, physics says that all that impact wasn't absorbed by my knee. He felt the inside of the knee and asked "does that hurt?" YES! Stop pushing on it! He felt the back of my knee and said it was swollen. So, he popped my hips back in place, and I DON'T HURT ANYMORE!!! It is amazing! I have been walking around with my hips out of place for a year and a half now, and my knee has been constantly in pain, and now, nothing. I can finally start exercising and not hurt and maybe stick with it cause I'm not in pain! Yeah!

Final thing. We signed the papers at the title office on Friday for the 320 acres we are buying from his cousin. Another $750 for closing costs, but now it is OURS! We now have 400 acres. His dad paid for some of the planting we did for him (about $550), and he gave us $200 just for the heck of it, so that covered that! I am sooo excited. Of course, that means we own 3 houses now (the south house which I am selling, the north house we live in, and the farm house that had druggies living in it up till about 3 years ago and so it needs to either be fixed up or tore down). Now we can work on getting water to the place and a fence around it so we can put cattle there. Exciting stuff.