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Monday, March 29, 2010

Fantastic weekend comes to an end

What a great weekend. MG and I house sat while my folks went to visit the sister in New Mexico. Friday I worked and hung out with MG and the BFF. Saturday I cleaned out some of my junk in the storage room so I can make room for my big move home this summer. One huge bag to GoodWill, one huge bag to the trash! Definitely still more to do but it's a good start. I got off work early Saturday evening so I thought I'd surprise Matt and not tell him I was on my way home. Come to find out, he was trying to surprise me by getting my watch engraved so he wasn't even there when I got home! He gave me this watch back in September but hadn't found a good engraving place until he found one close to my folks house-taking my watch without me noticing and getting it engraved without me realizing you're gone is not an easy task so I understood it'd take some planning. I do love the end result though! One of the links says 9/18, which is when we started dating and he has a nice message on the inside of it. Yay

We decided that since MG had a gift card to Marcus Theaters and the closest one to us is in my hometown (close to my parents house) so we finally saw Alice and Wonderland. His gift card even had enough on it for popcorn! It was kind of a trippy movie, but what else should I have expected with Tim Burton? Afterwards, we came home to play a game and whoever won had to get Little Ceaser's. I won! So we made a fun trip to get our $5 and fell asleep watching "The Invention of Lying".

Sunday I had a group project and normally when I have to get up early and hike somewhere, I like to stop at Caribou or Starbucks. Although I hadn't had breakfast, I stopped myself from spending the money and luckily, one of our group members offered coffee to everyone so problem solved! We even got finished a little early! My mom had grilled some chicken breasts for MG and I so we had those for lunch. YUM! We tried to make rice to go with it but it was really soggy and not cooked well so we made chicken wraps instead. Double YUM! I headed off to work again and realized I didn't have to close like I expected. I also found someone to work for me on Sat. if I switched for her Friday afternoon shift. YES! We can go to Wisconsin after all!

Sunday night we had a nice spahgetti dinner and actually stayed awake through "The Invention of Lying", cleaned/packed up the house and tried to head to bed early for our too-early commute in the morning.

I did also make a few purchases at Express...but let me explain. On Sat. I had a $30 gift card for racking up points with my Express card. I bought shorts and fancier flip flops. THEN on Sunday, sweaters were %40 off, which means with my discount they're 70% off! You can never have too many cardigan sweaters-so I got 3...overkill, I know but I did pick colors I don't have a lot of (or any) clothes in and I can dress them up for a professional setting or wear them casually and still look nice. Lastly, two of their editor dress pants, the grey and mocha colored ones, are being discontinued. I have always intended on buying them for when I have a real job but that's not going to happen anytime soon so I have to get them now anyways. Since they're being discontinued, they're 30% off, meaning %60 with my discount. How can I pass these deals up? My Express card had a balance of $0 and although I shouldn't be spending my money on this when I stress about it all the time, these deals won't last forever. Once this gets paid off, I've decided I'm going to put allowance aside every paycheck for Express. I can't afford to keep splurging unexpectedly like this and yet I still do. So if I have the money saved up for when we get an extra 15%off, I can physically see how long it took me to get that money and a-I might not be so tempted to spend it all/waste it all and b-I will be prepared for any purchases I do make with that money.

I will also be starting to put money aside for Country USA, which is a concert over my birthday weekend that lasts for about 4 days and it's really such a fun week. Campsites shouldn't be that much split between everyone, I think only $30-40 and we get discount tickets for the concert part for only $40 so if I do $10-$20/paycheck, I'll be fine by the time June comes.

So with all this spending I'm doing, I have found ways to cut back. I once again avoided Starbucks this morning even though it was SO early and it's attached to my office building! I brought my lunch of left over spaghetti and diet coke but then I got a coupon for a free Punch Pizza! YUM! So I'm saving the spaghetti in the fridge at work so I will be prepared for the rest of the week's meals and not have to eat out at all! I just need to make some more muffins tonight for breakfasts at work and I'm set.

Last, but certainly not least since this is kind of big news....my school job in the accounting office has asked me to stay for the summer. As a student employee, I'm supposed to be terminated come May 31st but they found a loophole and want to keep me through the summer since I'm already trained and can really help them with account closings this summer. It's the same pay but 40 hours/week for about 10 weeks. The biggest downfall is that I'll be living in Lakeville this summer rather than on campus so the commute just got a whole lot suckier but if it means a decent paycheck, I'll take it. I have no other options at this point so it's important. I feel a little better knowing I will have two jobs for sure this summer and after doing some math this morning, I'm thinking I can save about $4000-$2000 to save and $2000 towards loans. That would help!

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