I got a letter from some radio survey thing in my mail today. I think its called Arbitron. They want me to do a neilson type survey of how I listen to the radio. I might sign up for it but
I have to look at their website and see
how much work it is first. Still, it might be fun. Anyway the good thing is that they included a dollar bill in the
letter as a gift.

I'm off monday but not because of it being a holiday. Just cause its my regular day off. But I still get paid for the holiday so that extra days pay will
be very nice. Usually they give me an extra day off so they can save some money.

Well not really the house payment itself. Thats pretty reasonable and at a fixed rate. But taxes and insurance and all those good things that are added to my mortgage are going through the roof.
The amount I pay just got raised for October by about 60 bucks.

Thats going to hurt the budget just a little. But not so bad. I was planning on adding more to my payment anyways so I can pay my house off a lot sooner. So that extra 60 just cuts into my plans a little. Taxes in general are going crazy around here and they always want more. I don't even mind paying taxes really at all. I just want them to be at a reasonable rate and I want to feel like we get our moneys worth from them.

I got a Pinecone check for 3 dollars in the mail today. I haven't been doing very many surveys. I somewhat lost interest a little since they changed the payment from 5 to 3 dollars.

I sort of splurged today. Had to buy some stuff like toothpaste, mouthwash and laundry soap. And bought a bunch of clearanced candles.
Still with as much as I bought it only came up to 17 dollars. I felt like I got a great deal on everything.
Also bought pop at a different store. I really have a terrible pop (Diet Mt. Dew) addiction. I spend way too much on it plus its horrible on my teeth. Tried cutting down for awhile but didn't do too good. I need to cut down again drastically but just ain't ready to.

I'm considering joining a caving club. Its something I'm definately interested in and its not a terribly expensive hobby. But I'm not completely sure about it because most everything I've tried out is focused on weekends. I literally work every weekend. That makes it very hard to
do most social functions. Thats probably one reason I don't date. Although thats a whole other story. I'm going to check further into the caving thing and see what I can do. If they have any events I'm able to go to it will be well worth
joining. But if everything they do is like 500 miles away on Saturdays its not worth my bother.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my nephew thought he was on a verge of a heart attack on Friday night but wouldn't do anything about it. So, when we left the concert he said he would call me to let me know he got home ok. Of course he didn't. And still not hearing from him Saturday I started to panic a little bit. I tried calling him and tried calling everyone that might have made contact with him. I sort of stirred things up and didn't get anywhere. Fortunately, my neice finally got hold of him and he was ok. He still has the chest pains though so thats not good. I'm not so sure its a heart attack anyway, but its still something that needs attention.
I'm just relieved I didn't have to go looking for a body or somthing. That was my fear most of Saturday.

In other not so dramatic news, I had a no spend/no drive (but very productive) day at home a few days ago that I haven't had a chance to mention till now. I rarely if ever have a totally no spend day and usually don't even try. I'm pretty much a low spend day kind of guy all the time as it is. Just staying home and working on projects without spending a penny was a very nice change. I need to try for that more often. The thing is I hate just staying home. I'm somewhat antsy and always want to be somplace else no matter where I am. LOL.
So I'm giving myself a big "THATA BOY!" for succeeding at least one day of just staying home. It felt good but it may be awhile before such a thing happens again.

I was one of the many people in Ohio that was at risk sometime last year when a government laptop was stolen that had information about me on it. The state of Ohio couldn't recover the laptop and because they were not sure if the people's info was safe from identity theft, they provided me with a free year od Debix credit card protection. I didn't do much with the protection but it was nice to have under the circumstances.
It seems to be a good service although normally I would have never even tried it.
Now my year is about up and Debix as a nice gesture provided me with an extra free month. But now they sent me a letter saying I can re-new the service if I want to for about 25 bucks a year.
It seems to be a great service but I don't know if I really need it. Do any of you think its something that would be smart to keep? The price seems very reasonable but I don't know if its best to keep it or not.

Well Friday was my last day of vacation. Not totally true. I have 2 more weeks of vacation that i'm taking in October.
Went to a free concert in Akron. It was an
Aerosmith Tribute band and I thought they were really good. Didn't have the greatest time though. Its so hard in this day in age to have fun anymore. It must be just me but I really don't think anyone knows how to truely enjoy life anymore. Sorry unintentially this post has now turned into a rant of sorts. I went with a friend and my nephew.
They both in truth got on my nerves. My friend instructed me the whole way on how to drive. I was a little too far to the right and a little too far to the left. I should have taken a different route. I drive too fast. I jerked the car. SHEESH.
I was a nervous wreck with his silly backseat driving. Then my nephew who was meeting us there calls and says he is going to the concert but he thinks he might be having a heart attack. He was having pains although I'm hoping its just a muscle cramp or something. Then neither of them were really all that interested in watching the concert. They were really like 5 year olds with short attention spans. And this part is where I really may be in the wrong. But I was also very annoyed by people playing football next to the concert stage. I mean I never see people playing ball in a regular park or their own back yards. But get them inside of a Wal Mart store or a Concert where they can annoy the hell out of people that are trying to enjoy the show and they have to "entertain" us with their athletic prowess.
Despite everything I still liked the show and had a relatively good time. Ok i'm done ranting for now. Kind of makes me feel better anyway.

The store I work for gives a 15% discount on ATT cell phone bill.
Unfortunatly they don't really tell you what things you are entitled to so I went a long time without knowing I could get a discount. AND to be very honest when I did find out a couple of months ago I was too lazy to actually sign up for it. BAD me. Think of all the money thats spent (wasted) on laziness sometimes.
Well I finally just signed up for my discount. I think I'll save 5 dollars or so a month. Not a huge amount but its still nice.

Went to ball game and it was a lot of fun.
The traffic wasn't bad at all.
It was a beautiful warm day but not ridiculouly hot. And the Indians won.

Then I went to dinner with some of my family to a nice Mexican restaurant. It was so good. But I don't know what I was thinking. I drank 5 margueritas. Lucky I was able to walk out of the place. I paid for that the rest of the night too.
Good news I woke up happy and feeling pretty good this morning. From now on my limit is 2 drinks.

Well I've had a very long tiring day off.
But the good thing is that my roof is repaired and it didn't cost very much. It was like $94 for the roofing materials and I rounded it up to $200 cause my nephew worked hard. I got off cheap. I think I saved at least 300 if a roofer had done the job.

OK so one more "TO DO " item off my list.

Its a rainy and somewhat cool day here today. We probably need the rain right now cause it hasn't been raining as much as it was a couple of months ago. Anyways, I'm getting a section of my roof repaired on Saturday so I sure hope the rain is done by then. Its a relatively small job so I just want to get it over with as quickly as possible. The good news is that my nephew is doing it so it wont cost very much compared to hiring a roofer. Even paying him I'll save at least a couple hundred dollars.

Then Sunday we are supposed to go to a Cleveland Indians game. I kind of forgot about it till my nephew reminded me today.
He got free tickets from his job or something. I'm kind of excited cause I've never been there before. The only game I've ever been to is the Akron Aeros and on that occasion I was only there because I was doing some volunteer work.

So I have a pretty full weekend ahead of me that will go a lot smoother without rain.

I really do have the travel bug right now and need a scratching post of sorts.
I do have a fairly good travel fund saved but for reasons above and beyond my control I can't use it right now. I'm going to continue saving in it so that I can eventually have a grande vacation somewhere. For now I'm just dreaming a little of far off places.

So I was wondering (as a means of scratching my itch a little) what interesting far off places have you all been too? And most of all where are you saving up to go? What sort of things are you hoping to someday see?
I enjoyed Christina's blog about her trip to Morocco. That kind of fueled my fire a bit along with my "stay at home" vacation coming up this week.

My "DREAM" trip right at the moment would be to go to Antarctica. I've seen some amazing pictures from there.
So far I've been to Egypt,Italy, briefly in Switzerland, Greece, briefly in Turkey,
Uganda, Romania, London and Paris.
I'm not quite as brave as Christina was. I travel mostly in tour groups. There are so many ways to travel and I think everyone has their own preferences of how they feel comfortable. I am traveling a bit more on my own and have been to London for example a number of times on my own. Its probably the easiest to go without a tour group.
I'm looking forward to hearing any adventures or dreams of travel that you all have to share.

I've been encouraged by some recent posts to start writing a bit more. Financially I'm doing ok. I am (have been, am, and will continue to be) debt free except for my mortgage. I don't owe very much for that and I'm quite a bit ahead. Although I'm not much into details so I don't know how far ahead I am on it. I've been thinking a lot lately about making sure its paid off before I turn 50. I think that is a very reasonable goal for right now, but I probably can do even better than that.

My little goals on my sidebar are going good. I actually have a lot more to my goals than what I posted but I made them pretty complicated and I don't think posting them on here would make much sense. Mostly right now I'm trying to save up enough for next years IRA contribution. I want to put $4000 in it for next year. Its coming along somewhat slow but sure.

I'm off for a week from work starting this coming Saturday for vacation. YAY.
I had planned on going to Costa Rica but
there are just too many other priorities.
I love to travel and I put that very high on my list but there are just so many other things that get in the way. So, this
vacation will consist of doing some home repairs, cleaning a little, going to a Mexican restaurant with some family members,maybe a night of camping, and going to a free concert in Akron.
A little bit of everything (work and play) tossed into the pot it seems. :-)
I still have 2 weeks more of vacation that I probably will use in October. But thats going to be similar to this vacation. Next year MAYBE I'll be able to scratch the travel bug with a real trip somewhere.

Thats all I got for now.
Everyone have a goodnight and thanks if you took the time to read this.