Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Mr Minx has taken the dog down to the beach in search of a suitably battered washed-up fish crate to stick on the back for her to sit in

My to-do list today looks like this:

• Muck out field
• Go for a run
• Clean the house
• Do the ironing
• Pack up orders
• Do proofreading

It's 9.10 and I'm still on the sofa in my dressing-gown, putting off getting dressed by writing to-do lists on MSE so I suppose I'd better shift my backside and get started.

cazmanian_minx

Cleaning and ironing got missed, but Mr Minx had enough clean shirts for his business trip, so all was well Took him to the airport this morning, had a quick wander around Tesco, came back (discovering on the way that attempting to eat a RFQS custard slice whilst driving gets VERY messy!), packed orders, had some lunch about half past two and then decided to give myself the rest of the day off, what was left of it. So the dog and I are on the sofa watching the end of True Blood and then I'm either going to start season two of the Blacklist or play some Assassin's Creed

The Halifax has sent me a letter to say they're increasing the credit limit on my card to £7,500 and have also sent me a 0% money transfer offer. I did think about transferring up to the limit to pay a bit more off the business account overdraft, but I don't think it's the right thing to do - if I transferred £1500 over, the fee is something like 3%, or £45, but I can pay off £1500 from the overdraft in about 10 weeks, which is only £18.75 in interest. However, I've still got over £6,000 to shift, which is about 40 weeks, so the last £1500 of that I'll have paid £75-ish on, except it's not quite that clear-cut because because of the timing of cashflow in and out.

Anyway, I now have access to a quite ridiculous amount of credit, given my income. Current credit limits are as follows:

Halifax: £7,500
Nationwide: £3,400
Barclaycard-that-was-an-Egg: £7,000
Original Barclaycard: £12,000
Business overdraft: £10,000

Total: £39,900

That's enough to buy two flats in many parts of Scotland!

cazmanian_minx

Yuck, found my rug pile was full of mice droppings and husks of poisoned grain, so I'm putting all the lightweights, fleeces and fly sheets through the washing machine on a hot wash and will keep them all up in the annexe for winter (the mediums and heavyweights will have to make do with a hose and the broom!). I may be back on here later asking for help in how to get horse hair out of a washing machine....

I've been catching up with a bit of spreadsheeting, bead sales currently 30-50% down on last year Definitely time to get something else up and running.

DebtFree2012

I've been reading but not so much time to reply atm. Wanted to check in though Bl00dy annoying re the Nav's diff. Can you not link it back to the accident or use insurance or something some how? They aren't cheap to replace

Love the thought of your dog riding on the back of it, and it'll make shifting muck from the futhest field point easier That's one thing DH would love when we get our farm!

It's the day for washing rugs - I'm doing mine tonight bar the heavy as you say lol. Also doing a hair filled numnah which I have the same hair worries about.....! Obviously I'll take as much as possible off but she is short haired so they stick like pins.

cazmanian_minx

Unfortunately not, too long ago and he's been off-road in it a few times in the interim, so it would be blamed on that.

Only 20 orders to send out today, so I got some more stock marked down and did some transcription for one of my private clients. No proofreading came in, but I have four files assigned for tomorrow morning, full PR jobs which means I get paid to sit and listen to the whole thing, reading it through against the text.

Half the ironing is done, I've cleaned the living room and now I have a pizza in the oven, the fire on and The Blacklist on the telly, though I'm really annoyed that I didn't manage to watch the second and third episodes before they got deleted off Catch-up (they were on while we were Skyless).

cazmanian_minx

Ha! Have triumphed over the cell spacing in the pricing tables on my transcription website (something in the style sheet was over-riding even an inline class) without having to resort to either redoing them as jpegs or asking someone for help.

Website looking a lot better, so have posted my first tweet on the linked Twitter account this evening. Time to start trying to get some people to look at it.

*goes off to wrestle with Google Analytics*

DebtFree2012

:T:T:T:T Wahoo well done, it's the "little" things (even though they don't feel little!)

cazmanian_minx

Just saved about £500 by not buying tickets for the Foo Fighters in Edinburgh We had a long chat about whether we should go or not over the weekend and although we'd both love to see them again, it would be £143 for two category one tickets (which still aren't great seats), plus over £100 for a hotel plus either 11 hours of driving or about 15 hours on the train or around £250 for two flights, which is probably the option we'd have gone for, given it's a weekday - just to watch them on a big screen and see five match-stick-sized figures jumping up and down on a stage.

We'll go and see them again when either I get lucky on tickets for one of their small, secret gigs or we can afford the hospitality package which comes with right-up-front Golden Circle tickets (£220 each for Edinburgh!).

DebtFree2012

Good call - go eat some chocolate cake to make you feel better x

cazmanian_minx

It's been a skin-of-the-teeth kind of day. Mr Minx was flying back from Manchester today, his flight was delayed by nearly an hour, which left him very, very tight to make the connecting flight to Wick - but the pilot put his foot down, knocked 20 minutes off the flight time and he caught the plane home. I went to collect him with my car showing a remaining range of 67 miles, the airport is 43 miles away - by the time I pulled into the Tesco by the airport, the range was down to 10. Then we called in at the garage on the way home to collect the Navara and although the diff looks like it's had some serious heat in it, it doesn't seem damaged and hopefully won't need replacing, as the oil level was fine.

Ah yes, the diff. It's turned out nearly to be the most expensive 'Read The Flipping Manual' lesson Mr Minx has ever had. He thought that because he was towing two tons of old stock trailer that he needed to be in 4WD to get up the really steep braes, so just drove it in 4WD whenever he was towing. When he mentioned this to the guys at the garage, they frowned and said, 'Well, neither of us have a 4WD vehicle, but we're pretty sure you should only put it in 4WD in ice or snow or when you're off-road. Has it got a manual?' So we got the pristine, unread manual out of the glove compartment, turned to the 'Driving' section and the first thing under 'Four Wheel Drive' in very big black letters was 'DO NOT ENGAGE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE ON DRY PAVED ROADS'. :o:o:o:o Lesson learned!

Bead sales still pants, but have a load of proofreading through for tomorrow at least.