Tag: me

Today was the last day of my summer reading volunteer stint. It was a great volunteer gig. I showed up for two hours every Monday afternoon and assisted children 0-18 participating in the program. This involved stamping their summer reading passport and letting them select a prize depending on what level they had achieved. This took about 15 minutes total of every two hour shift. The rest of the time I caught up on my own summer reading, watched the patrons in the library and absorbed the varying hubbub that is my popular neighborhood library branch. It was a good way to end my Monday workdays.

Have you thought about volunteering for Summer Reading? They will need you next summer, so I encourage you to sign up. Just like my friend Kelly encouraged me to sign up. You won’t be sorry. And you get a t-shirt!

Eight classes completed. Approximately $8000.00 spent to earn my Graduate Certificate in Middle School Math. The certificate arrived today. It’s not so much a certificate as an approved form.

Matt and I have been reading Pride and Prejudice where one of the general items of gossip is how many pounds various gentlemen have per year. Mr. Bingley is a good catch with four of five thousand pounds per year. Then Mr. Darcy enters the scene and is said to have ten thousand pounds per year. This circa 1800, so four or five thousand pounds will take you pretty far, but ten thousand? Wow.

I’ve been putting money into a savings account to fund an emergency fund of three months of living expenses for more than 10 years. The emergency fund has been depleted time and again over the years, mostly because of emergencies. There have also been periods of employment where I could only save $25.00 per month. When you are shooting for $5100 in savings, depositing $25.00 per month can be particularly disheartening.

Still I persisted. And this month, I’m proud to say that I have reached my emergency fund’s first goal. Yip-yip-yipee! My next goal will be to have six months of living expenses in the bank.

What should I do to celebrate? Perhaps buy a pony?

Kidding. I’ll probably read another personal finance book.

Take the Quiz here!

For my class this quarter, Problem Solving for Middle School Math Teachers, we did not have to buy a textbook, but we did have to bring a Rubik’s Cube to class. The teacher guaranteed that we would solve the cube by the end of class and voila! I did it! Now I just have to figure out how to do it again.

I very rarely have problems getting out of bed in the morning. Most of the time, I wake up before my alarm and I get up and go about my day. Even on the weekends I don’t tend to linger in bed in the morning. But the afternoon? That’s an entirely different story. When not working, I tend to get sleepy after lunch and I lay down “for just a little bit.” Getting up after that “little bit” is a Herculean task and the bit sometimes stretches to a good two hours or so. I nap and read and generally do anything possible to avoid getting up. “Just five more minutes” I plead to myself.

In that ideal life, which I think I can find by locating the city on the hill, I would not need a nap. But in this life, I do.

Back in November of 1974, someone was excited about my birth and bought me a $25.00 savings bond. I’m 35 now, and that savings bond matured some time ago. It is worth about $130.00, which is a lot, but that weird amount, where I don’t want to cash it and spend it on something like groceries, but also it needs to be spent on something special, so I can point to it and say, “my savings bond bought that.” I’ve been hemming and hawing for years as to what to use it for.

It has finally come to me: I’m going to use it to renew my teaching license. The total cost is around $200 dollars, so I will supplement the savings bond with some birthday money. But I think I finally hit on a fitting reason to cash this bond.

In late 2004, I had lost interest in daily writing of my journal, which I had done pretty regularly since seventh grade. I didn’t miss daily journaling–my life seemed to have calmed down enough that I didn’t have to process so many things–but I did find myself thinking, “How did I spend last Memorial Day?” and “Did I make rolls last year for Thanksgiving?” I also needed a place to keep track of books read and movies watched.

I needed something to record daily life on a regular basis, but not in an excessive manner. I thought instantly of “My Dairy.” My Dairy was a small, red-bound book with a lock and a key and when you opened it, had a page for each day of the year. Each page was further divided into five sections of about four lines each, so that you could note things daily for five years. Small, compact, perfect. Exactly what I needed.

Could I find such thing? Nope. I found a few five-year diaries. But they weren’t quite right in some way or other. I didn’t really need a lock and key, or the years were already entered into the dairy pages, so that I would have to start a dairy part-way through its existence. None of them quite worked for me.

So, like any woman raised on a steady diet of books set on the frontier filled with spunky, make-do, clever women, I made my own five year dairy. I started by purchasing this standard dairy from an office supply store.
Before I bought it, I counted all the lines for each day to make sure that there were enough for five lines per day per year. There were. Then I simply wrote in the year, an initial for the day and drew a line under that. Voila! Five year diary.

After I finished the triathlon, I kept my race bib as a marker. It turns out race bibs make great markers. Bright, made of some plastic paper that doesn’t tear, just the right size.

The standard diary had extra pages which gave me ample room to keep track of books and movies. Most of the pre-made 5-year diaries didn’t have any extra pages.
I didn’t write in it every day, but most days. Friday and Saturday are notorious for not having anything written. Sometimes, if I miss a few days, I’ll jot a sentence or two as to what was going on. The fun really starts after the first year, when you can compare and contrast what was going on one (or two, three or four) year(s) previous. It’s also fun because you can email your friends with things like: Did you know that two years and three days ago we were celebrating your un-bachlorette party? Your friends will be astonished and amazed at your powers of memory.

I’m so happy with how this turned out, I’ve gotten myself another standard diary for 2010 and will begin the process over again. Look for another post at the beginning of 2015.