My DH will eat anything without complaining or even minding. His mom is a baaaaad cook. I refuse to blame English cooking in general, but her cooking fits the stereotype. DH is happy to eat whatever's put in front of him. He has no qualms about bringing home office leftovers and eating them for dinner.
We don't generally eat leftover office food for dinner, but it's a quality worth cultivating, I think.

My father was a lovely man, but always wanted meat and potatoes and 2 veg for dinner. Anything that smacked of leftovers or thriftiness was scorned.

I do think being willing to challenge your own ideas about all sorts of purchases can really help save.

Remember the old joke?
Define Eternity: two people and a ham. That's how I feel right now. We've been eating ham non-stop since Sunday. I've made lunches, dinners, breakfasts, and we've still got more of that pig than I thought possible. I see bean soup in my future. That's a scary thing when you look in your crystal ball and see bean soup!

Besides my ebay listings for today, I discovered that good ole Walgreen's (aka Al green's) now offers their Easysaver rebates on line! I'm stupidly excited about saving the postage and having their site remember to "send" it for me.

Maybe that's the effect of 5 days of eating ham!

My local grocery is pretty mundane; it has a decent enough produce sections, ok meat, and floral, and bakery. The prices are ok, and the specials good. I stay within budget frequently when I'm there.
But put me in the "upscale" grocery store, and my self-control seems to slip away. The bakery is oooh so tempting, the ready-to eat foods look so appealing, the plants, the wine, the beautiful expensive out-of season produce--I become transported to another lifestyle and spend too much.

Am I alone in this horrible temptation? I've got to stay away from there--even their specials!

My beautiful treasured cup of coffee bit the dust this morning while I was teaching my 8am class. I should know better than to gesture and clutch caffeine at the same time! $1.43 all over the classroom floor!

But my class enjoyed it!

I thought I'd leave it up to all of you to determine a decent metaphor for this winter.

I have the February grumpies again. The Child is ill, so DH and I have been tag-teaming her care. I had to go teach this morning, but came home early, so he could head off to work. Half my students have this same kind of bronchial crud that the Child has.

But the only thing I spend money on lately is parking. It's too cold to walk 6 blocks and then have to pay for frostbite treatment!

I spent the weekend visiting my mom and brought her lots of treats and supplies.
I flew for free with my NWA airmiles, and abstained from the airport food. The plastic-wrapped sandwiches were nearly $7!
Yikes! Someone should do an article on airport food prices. The captive audience thing has gone too far, especially with the no-liquid rule. I usually bring an empty water bottle with me to refill, and boy was I glad. Bottled water was $2.50.
That delicious combo of water and a day-old sandwich would've set me back $10 with the sales tax, Outrageous!

After a brief foray out into the world yesterday for groceries (it always costs double when I bring DD and DH along), gas, and Office Depot, I came home ready to tackle the taxes.

And done they are--with a nice refund to boot! I know it's more sensible to monkey with our withholding, but that nice check is so lovely. I'm eager to get them mailed off. I have to say, Turbotax is a dream for me to use. It truly is tax software for dummies.


My goals for the week are to get the taxes mailed, the returns done, and walk from the free parking to add to both the calorie expenditure and the parking fund.

It continues hectic as heck-tick here, but spring can't be THAT far away, can it?

I took my evening class to the movies last night to see a film version of a book they'd been reading. They cracked me up because they all smuggled in soda and snacks.
Not surprisingly, they're all working adults attending college in the evenings.

I've taken "traditional" college students to the movies before, and have never seen a single one smuggle food in.

Coincidence? Or are my adult students already "smarter?"

My only spending yesterday was on coffee. Not fancy lattes--although I really wanted one--but just coffee at the university spot to get me through the morning classes, and coffee --ugh-- from the machine to get me through the 4+ hour evening class.

Perhaps I should volunteer to make coffee for students? I had one fall asleep the FIRST day of class.

Today's devoted to some freelance editing work and might just turn out to be a NS day.

I'm as happy as can be today because of my cereal bargains. The grocers had a deal on General Mills cereal: buy 6 and get $10 off. I had coupons on all of them, and if you bought all 6, you got milk vouchers worth over $7.
Total spending on 6 boxes? $1.50.

Now why this makes me so pleased is work for a psychologist, but it does. That and the 27 cents found on the ground today. It's very funny, but it feels like some kind of triumph when all you hear is economic horror stories on the news.

Now if Ben Bernanke could perform this sort of feat at the Fed, just think where we'd be....