Good neighbors

I am blessed with kind neighbors. With the real temperature and wind chills ranging between -25 and -40 day and night since the last snowfall I haven't been able to clear my driveway. I could get over it, but the next snowfall would have made a real mess. Yesterday, while we were gone, my neighbor brought a tractor over and cleared my drive completely!

The wind blows

But why is a south wind so cold?

Today I took my son and his girlfriend to town so he could buy jeans, eat chinese, and see Avatar. It was a good (but exhausting) day. This evening I decided to relax with my knitting and watch a movie in the living room. It's on the southwest corner of the house with three south and four west windows. Part way through the dvd I realized the breeze was too distracting so I used the last of the shrink plastic on the south window right next to the couch.

It's supposed to start warming up tomorrow...but it's hard to tell tonight!

Decisions

I've been struggling with the decision of which credit card bill gets the snowball thrown at it next. While I would love to tackle the smallest one and have it finished by April, the part of me in charge of worrying has other plans. In May I will lose 20% of my monthly income. That's not as scary as it would have been a year ago before I started paying off my debt since I now send about 50% of the income on debt payments. So, my snowball will shrink but I'll still be okay. What worries me is that my largest balance is with Chase cc and they raised the minimum payments to 5%. If I was ever late I'd lose the not-so-bad interest rate of 4.9% and find myself with a crippling rate of 29.9%. I feel like the safest option is to pay down Chase as much as possible, that way if I had an emergency that took more than I have in savings, it wouldn't be such a struggle to keep up with the minimums. It's going to feel like a long journey to get them paid off though (estimated October).

Woe is me

Today is definitely one for having a moan. It's bad enough to be feverish and achy but feeling cold all the time drags down my mood. On top of that we've had another 4 or 5 inches of fresh snow and the wind is supposed to blow like crazy tonight and in the morning. With luck, the weatherman will be completely wrong and we won't get a puff of wind at all.

I'm still cold.

Reflecting

I have three pulls in my life: green, frugal, prepared. Sometimes it's easy to work on all three; other times I find myself trying to balance when pulled in different directions. My main focus has probably been on frugal for the last year. I think the results show that it is certainly worth the effort; 42% of my debt paid down in 11 months. The funny thing is, the more I do, the more I want to do. I cancelled Dish tv, I've stopped drinking pop and I keep wondering if there's anything else I can sell that would bring in decent money (the bowflex got picked up today).

woosh

How can a south wind be so bitterly cold? It made my face hurt just bringing the dogs in. I'm glad I got plastic up on my son's windows last week. He is in a southeast room and would be chilly tonight otherwise.

I got another present! The only gift I gave this year was to my friends, Michael and Carrie; they received knitted washcloths. Because I'm a novice knitter these took months to make! But that's partly due to my only knitting when I watch tv and I simply don't spend much time doing that. They gave me a book on green gardening. Two gardening books this year!

I've been watching a show, on my computer, called The 1940s House. I've thought about what it must have been like dealing with wartime rationing but this really brings it to life. The main difference from the show and what I've read is they're not dealing with the queues to get their rations. Still fascinating.

Snow !

As you can see, lots of snow but not much wind. The official tally is 18 inches.