Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Tired, tired, tired Part 2

We finished another section of the project at work today.

I'm tired.

:)

Maybe I can think up better blog posts this weekend when I've had a chance to think.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Tired, tired, tired...

This job is wiping me out. I'm not sure why I am so tired but I've been going to bed early every night since Friday.

Today, the two of us labeled 6,000 post cards. That's an increase from both Friday and Monday (5,000 post cards each day). We finished labeling all of those that are Phoenix addresses. We only have two more huge piles that are the size of Phoenix! We'll be busy for awhile...

My working partner has been taking me to lunch every day since I pay for gas and do all the driving. On Friday, we went to Boston Market and I had three sides. It was pretty good. I had thought Boston Market only sold meat. Yesterday, we visited NYPD Pizza. I had one slice of spinach pizza. Today was the best. We visited Wildflower Bread Company. I ate half of a roasted sweet potato sandwich. It sounds kind of odd, but tasted wonderful. All three lunches have been $4.00 or less. It's amazing what you can find for a cheap(er) lunch if you look.

Well, I'm off to bed shortly. I'm hoping for 10 hours of sleep tonight.

Monday, April 27, 2009

I'm here. Just completely wiped. It's 9PM and I'm headed to bed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Good news

My temp job is going to last longer than originally planned. We were scheduled to arrive at 10AM on Friday. After meeting the boss (head of PR) and getting shown around the building, we started work. What's our job? Peeling address labels from the Avery sheets and sticking them to postcards. Fun stuff. :) We finished 5,000 post cards on Friday and have probably close to 15,000 more.

After the post cards are complete, provided the company wants to keep us on for a couple more days, we will be assembling folders with presentation materials. The folder assembly was supposed to be our job but the person in charge said that the mailer took precedence.

At $8/hr, for however many days it takes to finish, I'll take it! My bank account and creditors will thank me.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Job updates

Things are starting to look up around here. Hopefully everything turns out!

Hubby's two hour contract job went really well. He had "homework" to do after they were finished at the client. Hubby had to email the boss some recommendations for the client and it seems the boss was happy with the suggestions. He's called here a couple times today asking Jeff questions. It also sounds like the boss will be setting Jeff up with an email account, so that is definitely promising. Now we just wait until the boss calls/emails with the next contract assignment.

As for me... I have a three day temp job starting tomorrow morning. Several weeks ago, I responded to a Craigslist ad about a temp job assembling folders for a presentation. It won't be the most stimulating assignment, but it's a paycheck. I will be working all day tomorrow and Monday, with a possible day on Tuesday if the project is not yet complete. The best part? The company needed two people so I volunteered a church friend of mine who really needs some exra money this month. Now I'll have someome to talk to all day!

In preparation for working tomorrow, I cleaned today so the house would be ready for Sabbath. I cleaned the kitchen, caught up on all the dishes, vacuumed the apartment, and scrubbed down the bathroom. I'm very content.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Earth Day 2009



Happy Earth Day!!


When I started thinking of ways that hubby and I support green living, I was surprised at how many small changes we've implemented.

  • Use a water filter instead of buying bottled water

  • Bought a reusable water bottle to regulate my daily intake

  • Started walking to the store/bank/post office to minimize driving and gas consumption

  • Reuse plastic shopping bags to clean out the cat box

  • Sometimes ask for paper bags. We store all our recyclables in a paper bag and then throw the entire bag into the recycle bins

  • We've started printing on both sides of paper

This website is a great resource to get involved and learn more. Green Living Tips is another great resource. Sign up for their free e-newsletter and they will plant a new tree.

According to the ecological footprint quiz, I need to reduce my carbon footprint. If everyone lived like me, we would need 3.2 planet earths to provide enough resources. I use 14.3 global acres of land and produce 15.7 tons of carbon dioxide. Looks like I still have some work to do!

Goals
  • Buy locally if possible

  • Visit the farmers market during the summer. They have great homemade salsas!

  • Switch to reusable shopping bags

  • Reduce our dependency on electricity - hand wash dishes as much as possible, use clothes dryer less

  • Eliminate dairy products

  • Recycle more

Hopefully, enough people can make small changes so that we don't require 3 planets to support human life.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Maybe, just maybe...

We sold our last two bookcases today. Our house looks so bare! If God is planning for us to move, He's doing a great job making our packing easier.

Hubby had an interview this afternoon. After 45 minutes, he had a two hour paid contract assignment set up for tomorrow afternoon. If this two hour contract is completed to the satisfaction of the owner, then Jeff will have contract work for the next 30 days. The owner said he will be putting Jeff on a Tuesday, Thursday schedule. The pay rate is really good, the best hourly rate we'll have ever made.

If the two hour assignment tomorrow goes well, and if the month long contract work goes well, Jeff will have a job offer for a full time position. I guess everything rides on tomorrow!

Sunday Exercise Roundup

Tuesday
PUP - 26 total. I'm a bit sore. It feels like my arms never get a break. Yesterday, I didn't do any push ups but I kneaded pizza crust dough for 6 minutes. That feels the same. ;)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Redbox free rental

I have SwagGrabber on my RSS feed. She posts a lot of deals and freebies, some on the internet and others in physical stores. She's been posting about free Redbox rentals for awhile now but Jeff and I had never tried it.

Today we rented City of Ember. The promo code worked and the movie was free. Unfortunately, the movie was disappointing. Based on the preview, I was expecting some grandiose statement about life and about conquering environmental concerns, external conflicts, etc. For a kids/family movie, it was decent. But as an adult looking for content, it fell short. Oh, well. At least we didn't waste any money on it.

If you have Redbox in your area and are interested in a free movie, check SwagGrabber's website. She posts a free rental code once a week.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Lord, you know me.

I saw this text on another blog this week but had to post it here as well. This is such a comforting passage, especially at this time in our lives. I'm so glad Sabbath is almost here.

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it

(Psalms 139:1-6).

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Interview gone bad

Thanks to all who prayed for hubby today. :) He did well, but the interview was a dud.

Hubby drove half an hour to interview with a mortgage company. He meets with the CEO and someone else from the company, plus a surprise guest - the recruiter who scheduled the interview. They all shake hands, exchange business cards, and sit down for the interview. CEO asks hubby to tell about himself. Halfway through hubby's spiel, the CEO interrupts and asks if hubby has such-and-such technology experience or this-or-that technology experience. None of which was listed in the job description. When hubby said no, they shook his hand, thanked him for his time, and ushered him out the door.

Grr. We had to put gas in the car for this interview, using money that was supposed to be for food. The commute took four times longer than the interview.

Guess that was a closed door. :) Hubby is still waiting to hear back on one other interview from last week. I'm waiting to hear if my unemployment claim will be accepted and applying for jobs. I've filled out 17 applications thus far and have received only one emailed response to tell me the position was already filled.

Something will come through. Right. Right?

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Prayer request

If anyone reads this tonight or tomorrow morning, could you pray for my hubby? He has a job interview at 11AM with the CEO of a mortgage company. They are looking to hire someone ASAP and seem to be interested in hubby.

We really really need a job. If you could pray, I'd really appreciate it. :)

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Kitty surprise



Fiona (bottom) realizes she's not alone!

Monday, April 13, 2009

zzzzzzzzzzzzz...

It's been a long day but it hasn't been that busy. Odd how that works.

I woke up pretty late, exercised, and ate breakfast. Hubby moved his desk to the other side of the living room now that we don't have the entertainment center taking up one wall. I spent some time this morning cleaning up all the cat hair that accumulated behind where hubby's desk was. When you don't move the furniture around for three years, there's a lot of cat hair to be vacuumed.

This afternoon, hubby and I took some books back to the library. On the way back, we stopped by a couple geocaches. We located four and couldn't find two. By that time, it was four o'clock and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. After making homemade tortillas and guacamole, we sat down to some yummy burritos.

That was our day! I was ready for bed at six, but knew that I'd be up again in the middle of the night, wide awake. Not sure what's going on with my sleeping schedule. If I actually get a response to the resumes I'm sending out, have an interview, and get chosen from several hundred other applicants (all real hurdles to overcome), I'm going to have a hard time adjusting to normal working hours.

That's it. It was a good day, just tiring.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Sunday Exercise Roundup

Sunday
Week 6, Day 1 of the One Hundred Push ups program. Whew! That's a ton of push ups and the total is still going up!
Running - We walked over to Walmart today (just under a mile). I tried running part of the way back but my legs felt pretty heavy today. Tomorrow is the start of Week 2 for my running program. I hope my legs feel better tomorrow!

Monday
Week 4, Day 1 of the Two Hundred Sit ups program. I feel like I'm going backwards! Since I had such a hard time last week, I decided to back off and work on building up my core some more. This morning was still difficult even though I backed down to week 4. I really hope it gets easier...
Running - Week 2, Day 1 of the Couch to 5K program. We don't have a stop watch, timer, or any watches with working batteries so we're guessing on the intervals! Today was 5 sets of about 2 minutes running each, followed by 50 minutes of walking. Hubby was using his cell phone (hour and minute display only) and would start us as the minute changed. Then he would have us run until 2 minutes later. Of course, he told me this after our workout was complete. No wonder I felt like I was dying. :)

Tuesday
Week 6, Day 2 of the 100 push up program. Only one more day and then the final test!

Wednesday
Week 4, Day 2 of the sit up program. Another really hard day. I don't know why this is so hard.
Running - Week 2, Day 2. Another day of 5 sets of 2 minutes of running with 2 minutes of walking between. It's hard, but I finish strong.

Thursday
Week 6, Day 3 of push ups. Last workout before the final test! I'm really excited to see if I can do 100 girly push ups in one set.

Friday
Week 4, Day 3 of sit ups. After one set, I quit. I just couldn't do that many sit ups and knew I couldn't finish the work out. I'm going back to week 1 on Monday. :(
Running - Week 2 complete! We took a different route today, heading directly south from our apartment. It was a nice run/walk with lots of houses decorated for Easter! I'm not sure I've ever seen so many Easter decorations. I like this route, as the bike lanes are wider so I don't feel like I'm going to get run over every time a car drives by.

4/12 Weigh-in - 183.6 pounds
1.2 pound weight gain from last week, in spite of all the exercise. Bummer. I think it's due to woman issues, but I'm going to watch my food intake closer this week. I'm going back to logging my food into Nutridiary so I can make sure I'm not eating too much/too little. I will lose weight this week!

Friday, April 10, 2009

God is so good!

We have had a great day financially, if that's possible when both husband and wife have been out of work for 4+ months. :)

This morning, we deposited my husband's check from that 2 week contract job he completed. When the teller handed me the deposit slip, I was surprised to see a $700 account balance. Our checking account hasn't held that much money in quite awhile. When I came home, I logged into the online banking and found out that we did have $700. Between the check, some help from hubby's dad, and a deposit from half.com, we had money to pay several more bills.

We are now paid up through the end of April. Yay! Every single bill has been paid in full, on time, and no credit cards were used. God is very very good. Also, I paid May's car payment and realized that the payment brought our balance below $6,000. I love celebrating the small milestones. When I entered the payment in my spreadsheet, I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have now paid off 25% of our total debt. We are making progress, even though we're both looking for jobs.

God is so good! He provides even when you least expect it. There are still big hurdles ahead, but when I see how God is helping us over the small hurdles, it's much easier to have faith that He will help us over the large.

And my God will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus

(Philippians 4:19, NASB).

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Homemade tortillas

Back to the homemaking topics... ;)

Hubby and I have been on again, off again vegans for our entire marriage. One of these days, we'll make a permanent change in either direction. Maybe. When we eat out, we tend to eat dairy. However, I prefer to cook vegan foods at home.

I found an awesome vegan blog. I've browsed through some of the recipes and found a few I'd like to try. The tortillas were a huge hit. It took me awhile to figure out how to make them round, but they are tasty!

Next on the list are the Vegan Patties. I have yet to try my own patties but these sound delicious.

When hubby or I get a job (whichever comes first), we're going to be eating like kings. We've had such simple, cheap food for the past three months, we're ready for some more complex (IE more expensive) dishes! I think our orange chicken style tofu recipe will be first on the list.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Why?

I had another post planned but changed my mind at the last minute.

Why, oh why, do so many Christian blogs poke fun and/or say nasty things about politicians? I went through a long period right before elections where I would delete blog posts in my RSS feeds because they were just plain mean to the people running. I'm sorry, but even if you don't agree with a politician's views and beliefs, that doesn't give you any right to say mean things about them. I don't agree with President Obama all the time, but he's our President. Period.

While I'm on the topic, why do I have to vote a certain way because I'm a conservative Christian? Why do I have to be anti-Obama because he supports abortion and pro-Palin because she doesn't? Why do some people believe they have the right to dictate how other Christians should vote and look down upon Christians who vote a different way? All political parties have pros and cons; all parties contradict certain moral beliefs of mine. But why make people feel less Christian because they vote for a certain politician?

The Bible says that we are to respect our leaders, that our leaders were God appointed. I don't respond to blog posts that bash politicians because I know it will just cause disagreement and bad feelings to any involved, as well as start flame wars. But why can't Christians just focus on the positives? For whatever reason, God saw fit to allow President Obama to be in office.

First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth
(1 Timothy 2:1-4, NASB).

Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king
(1 Peter 2:17, NASB).

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God
(Romans 13:1, NASB).

We are to pray for ALL men, honor ALL men, love ALL men, be thankful for ALL men. We are all children of God and He wants to see all of us in heaven with Him.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Pasta salad!

My developing frugality skills finally paid off. hehe

Over the weekend, my brother bought this really nasty Fry's brand imitation cheese. Sorry Josh, but it was nasty. I looked on the website, and Fry's has a satisfaction guarantee on all of their store brands. This morning, I took two packages of the "cheese" back to Fry's and asked for a refund or store credit. Even though I didn't have the receipt, they offered me a cash refund. Yay!

Fry's has their Fry's brand "real" cheese on sale right now, so we bought a block of that instead. Walmart had pasta salad noodles discounted and combined with the ingredients we have been saving at home, we're having pasta salad for dinner! It's been ages (well, several months) since we've had pasta salad and we've been scraping the bottom of the cupboards for food to eat the past couple days. The pasta salad cost us a few minutes of time to return the icky cheese and $2.25 for the noodles. The olives, frozen peas, and salad dressing was being saved for this day.

Hurray for yummy dinners! This will be so much better than hot cereal or canned chili...

Monday, April 6, 2009

Today was a great day!

Today was a great day. We woke up early, exercised, and ate a good breakfast (haystacks!). We spent most of the day job searching, posting stuff to sell online, and cleaning up the apartment.

We sold another couple video games today. We only have a couple left. Everything is posted online for sale and we're hoping the rest will sell in the next couple weeks. I also posted our bookshelves for sale on Craigslist, as well as my SLR camera. It kind of hurts selling off your belongings, but I am so thankful that we are still able to pay the bills. Each item sold helps pay another bill. No late payments yet!

Hubby and I also had our devotional time in the morning. Usually, we read the Bible together in the evenings, but I'd like to switch to mornings if hubby is agreeable. I find that my day goes smoother when I read God's word earlier. Almost as if I have advice and encouragement to remember all day long instead of looking back on the day to see how things could be done differently.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Sunday Exercise Roundup

It seems that the only really interesting thing I've been doing lately is exercising. :) Hubby and I have been exercising almost every day for the past five weeks. Here was the run down for last week:

Sunday
Week 5, Day 1 of the One Hundred Push ups program. I can't do full push ups, so I've been doing girls push ups for this program.
Running - Week 1, Day 1 of the Couch to 5K program. Not too difficult, but feeling it. First time running in awhile. I can tell I've trained before, but it's still hard.

Monday
Week 5, Day 1 of the Two Hundred Sit ups program.

Tuesday
Week 5, Day 2 of the One Hundred Push ups program.
Running - Week 1, Day 2 of the Couch to 5K program.

Wednesday
Week 5, Day 2 of the Two Hundred Sit ups program. I almost died during this training day. I don't know why it was so hard today. I barely finished the workout and I was crying during the last set.

Thursday
Week 5, Day 3 of the One Hundred Push ups program. I have to say, I was really pushing out these push ups. On my last set, I did 40 of them without stopping. I've never done so many in my life!
Running - Week 1, Day 3 of the Couch to 5K program.

Sabbath
Rest Day

I weighed myself on New Years - 187.2 pounds. This is my heaviest weight ever. Since New Years, I have tried to get involved in various exercise plans, portioned eating, etc. But I kept failing. My weight would go down 3 or 4 pounds and then go back up to where I started. Thankfully, I never exceeded 187.2 pounds.

For the past 6 weeks, hubby and I have been actively following the 200 sit ups and 100 push up plans. Unfortunately, that's not enough exercise to lose weight. Last week, I decided it was time to run again. In one week, I lost 3.8 pounds. I'm praying it's not a fluke. But as noted above, I exercised 5 days last week. I've been drinking lots of water, exercising, and attempting portion control. It looks like it might be paying off.

My goal is to lose 40 pounds and run a 5K without stopping for a walk break. I know I can accomplish my goals. I just need to stick with the plan. Lots of water, adequate rest, plenty of exercise, and eating fewer calories than I burn. I can do this.

For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength
(Philippians 4:13, NLT)