would love to be mortgage free!

coldcazzie

Woken up to 4 inches of snow this morning :eek: manwife is commuting by bus to the nearest office - no biking along the M62 in this! The kids and I were going to go to a group meet this morning, but it's quite a long way and frankly I don't want to do an hour's journey on various busses in the snow. Think we'll stay home and do some crafty things instead Kind of glad I don't have any seedlings planted out yet...

This afternoon we have a fella coming to look at our kitchen ceiling to give us a quote on the work needing doing. He's done work for a couple of friends of ours and comes highly recommended so hopefully it'll be sorted fairly quickly, and we can crack on with the bathroom

coldcazzie

So, today the kids will be spending some time at my parents so I can get some work done. This morning I'm going to get some housework done, then once the kids go I'll crack on with some studying. Would like to get a big chunk of my next TMA written up. Cross fingers I don't find something "more important" to do.

Still waiting on the ISA I want opening again so I can put money into it. Today is the last day 11/12 ISAs can be opened in branch so I guess it'll open next week - the bank holidays mess everything up.

I looked at FD offset mortgages yesterday, just for curiosity, and they require individual income of at least £30k pa, so that rules us out. I guess it was worth looking to find that out. Technically we can start looking for a new mortgage deal now - we are just inside the 6 month threshold. Not sure how the whole remortgaging thing works tbh.

DawnW

Good luck with the TMA - I used to be an OU tutor - and still miss it

coldcazzie

DawnW wrote: »

Good luck with the TMA - I used to be an OU tutor - and still miss it

Thankyou Dawn

This course is proving to be a real nightmare. The course materials themselves are not very well written - difficult to understand, little to no signposting between topics... clunky I think is the term I would use.

OU are in the process of moving much of their resources online (to save costs I suppose) and have also changed the course slightly in the past couple of years which means that a lot of the hard-copy materials and online materials don't match up, and some things are very hard to find on the website, so there's a lot of confusion about what we are and aren't supposed to be doing and how we are supposed to be doing them.

For some reason, they decided this year to withdraw the course-wide online forum and only have regional forums, which substantially reduces the number of other students you can talk to. The only course-wide forum is a troubleshooting forum for a piece of software we are supposed to use for this TMA. Unfortunately because of the previously mentioned issues with the materials being difficult to access and confusing when you do eventually access them, people are using this troubleshooting forum as their place to vent and try to find out information and access materials and as a result the mods are getting irritated, which is understandable. However, they're also being quite unprofessional in the way they are dealing with these issues, flaming students and deleting posts and generally making a bad situation worse.

The whole thing is a bit of a shambles to be honest, and I'm really disappointed, especially after being a student for so long so knowing how well it can work if it is organised properly. We're already into official complaint territory (only 2 months into the course) - several students have already put in complaints, and I'm not far behind them. It's a real shame.

Ooh that ended up being a bit long! Sorry, lol. Thank you for your well wishes. At this stage I think it can only go up - I only got 69% for my first one so I'm really trying to do better on this next one. Managed to get my first draft of the introduction done, so with methods already done I've just got results and discussion to write up.

coldcazzie

The website has opened again for ISA applications so I'm off to fill mine in now. Fingers crossed I can persuade my printer to work so I can print it out.

We are considering buying a food slicer - does anyone have one that they would recommend? We want one that will be good for slicing both meat joints and homemade bread. I know someone on here has one - can't remember who though... shall have to go searching for their journal.

Have a friend coming round for lunch today. Going to offer her a choice of soups from the freezer and have our first batch of bread from the breadmaker we got off freecycle :j:j

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

Hi Caz, looking forward to hearing about the meat slicer. A friend of mine had one years ago and she used it every single day. She lived in Germany and often had large hams, sausages, salami etc to slice. She left it on the work surface with a clean T towel draped over it - brings back happy memories of too much wine, glorious food and a patchwork quilt style T towel

I will definitely be checking to see what's recommended Tilly x

coldcazzie

I've done a bit of research Tilly, and ruled some models out because they're not good at both meat and bread, or they can't do adjustable thickness. Still trying to persuade manwife that it's a good idea - I really like the idea of having one on the worktop like you describe and using it regularly. I sent my mum back to Morrisons for me to pick up 2 more of the giant gammon joints they had on offer.

The bread was a bit of a flop - apparently the yeast is a bit old so it didn't rise much. Cue rather dense and heavy bread, although apart from that it was yummy, so tomorrow we will try again with more yeast in the hopes that it rises more. Made some fish soup - there's a portion left so will stick that in the freezer for another day.

My friend posted my ISA application on her way home, so that's off now. Hopefully it should reach them on Tuesday. Pesky bank holidays!

coldcazzie

Yesterday was a good day - we attended a birthday party for a friend's son and the kids really enjoyed themselves. It was nice to see several of our friends there.

Today is 2 days before our new credit card (and therefore grocery shopping) month starts. We're really scraping the barrel for fresh foods, and have almost run out of some cereals. While we're not struggling, I am finding it interesting to see which foods we're eating more of and running out of faster. I'm really looking forward to using my new spreadsheet and seeing more precise figures on each category of spending. Manwife doesn't agree with the way I do things. He thinks we should spend as much as we need to because "obviously we need to spend it". I understand what he means by that but that's the start of a slippery slope to complacency and I don't want to be there, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, April has 2 birthdays in it, 1 of which requires a present. Must get thinking on what I can give. Last year it was a pashmina, perhaps earrings this year?

Peonie

I agree that you should wait as it means the food the family eats less of will get used up before it goes out of date, and I've found my cooking becomes more creative when there's less in the cupboards.

coldcazzie

Trying again with bread today. Should be ready in about an hour. I'm going to try to work out the cost of a loaf of bread done in the breadmaker, to compare to sm bread.

Currently we are watching Wallace and Gromit but once it's finished I plan to do some more work on my assignment. Tomorrow will be banking day, plus I've a Tesco delivery coming and a washer repair guy coming to see why my washer thinks the door isn't closed when it is.

Hope everyone is having a lovely Easter break