EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

savingholmes

Sounds like another productive weekend. Not surprising that you want a rest soon

RosaBernicia

I just checked the website and there's a 14p difference in reported diesel prices here, even in the same small town, and 21p in the nearest city.  Not sure if that's still accurate or because nobody is bothering to report updates to the expensive ones, so will have to look out as I go past! 

EssexHebridean

The Sh3ll petrol station on the way into our town had increased its prices again last night from yesterday morning so it appears to be creeping up again - at least in those places that feel they can get away with it. Rosa I've been trying to make sure I update Petrolpricesdotcom for each place we pass where I'm in a position to do so - at least for the basic U/L & diesel - if we actually pull into one for fuel then I do the premium fuel prices too - it definitely helps people to be able to shop around doesn't it but it's just been so difficult to keep up!  RS it makes me mad when places don't even observe the stuff they are legally meant to like duty cuts - I imagine they use an excuse like "oh it rose again immediately so it just meant we didn't increase the price" and of course that's quite difficult to disprove. SL - 20p difference is ridiculous!

Ha - SH I'm none too sure that "productive" would be most people's description of Saturday at least allowing that we spent all day in the pub but we DID actually get a lot done! 

Made it to the gym last night as planned - and am now trying to plan out visits for the rest of the week as well. It does feel good to know I can just head straight home after work this evening too - I can see the Monday gym thing being a regular occurrence. It occurs to me that sometimes we're so focused on being thrifty with money and resources that we can overlook that being thrifty with our time is also well worth paying attention to. I can work 15 minutes of my lunchbreak for two days to free up the time to leave work half an hour early to head to the gym on a Monday. Those 15 minutes are barely really noticeable even - I still have time to get out for a walk and eat my lunch. I'd be waiting for MrEH after work anyway - he doesn't get back to the car until at least 6.15pm. So I can go to the gym on a Monday in time that I'd be needing to fill otherwise. On a Tuesday as a rule I don't have to wait for him so can leave here at 5pm and head straight home - meaning I get in well over an hour earlier than I would if I went to the gym on the way home. That's time I've freed up to do something of value at home - either purely for myself or something houseworky that needs attention - which can't be a bad thing. potentially doing the same thing with the local-to-work gym on a wednesday evening for a cardio session would be a good way of getting an extra visit in at least sometimes, too - just need to check that Mr Boss doesn't have a problem with it, and of course there will always be times when it doesn't work because he has to leave early etc. 

Banking is all checked and fine - I've made a couple of clearing payments to the CC as well and asked MrEH to transfer some money for a couple of bits he put on there so that should take us back to being just about only food on there which is ideal. Also swept the oddments above a nice round number across to the VSP. I'm finding that from my own perspective having a "spends" and a "budget" account is working really well for me - it definitely helps to keep things separated out a bit.

Surveys:
Prolific has stalled a bit at £6.69 paid/£1.88 pending
OnePoll is trickling along as usual - 1327 points
Ipsos is close to the next reward level - 989 points

Tea tonight is planned - it'll be mince topped jacket potatoes - the mince is a variation on a cottage pie base I made the other week and is already out defrosting. Last night's stir fry used up lots of odds and ends from the veg box - half a bag of very tired spinach, the final clump of spring greens, half a leek, one of the weird pointy peppers, a bunch of spring onions, a slightly bendy carrot and some mushrooms, as well as a BBQ sauce mini-pot I had from when I had a cheeky burger on the way home from Lincoln the other week - very tasty! 

Cheery_Daff

Good work on the gym! Lovely to free up a bit of spare time for yourself too  

EssexHebridean

Thanks Cheery - I've just updated my signature to reflect the progress on the gym cost too!

I really want to focus a bit more on good use of time I think - and particularly on making use of otherwise "dead time". I'd usually do something like a bit of extra distance of cycling in that time, then probably kill the last 15 minutes or so sitting in the car reading, but of course using it for the gym also includes another nearly 6 miles of cycling anyway so I'm not even losing that activity by doing things that way. I think that some of my original justification around the gym membership was that it might work to do Monday/Wednesday closer to work, and Friday or Saturday in the one at home so if tyhat will work out it would be good. 

I've just cashed out Ipsos again - another £10 iTunes voucher coming my way which is useful. The plan there is that it will pay for my monthly iCloud subscription (only 79p but I'd sooner offset it like that!) and will then start going towards my Strava annual subscription cost. If I build up a surplus over and above that then I have two other subscriptions it can pay for - they normally get refunded from joint funds but I could balance something out on that. 

This week's "progressing the hallway works" job is that the handyman Mum & Dad use is heading to us on Friday morning to get an idea of the sort of thing we're looking to get done, and then he'll be able to give us a quote. I'm leaning towards asking him to !!!!!! in the final small bits of prepping too - there's some existing wall to chip away to make a cable sit more flush, and the final bits of skirting to remove as well - and he may well find both of those things far easier than we will. As soon as we have those bits sorted the plasterer can be booked in - then it will REALLY feel as though we're getting somewhere! 

Oh - further thing while I remember it too - I picked up a trial offer for "Wild" deodorant the other week - the deal was that you pay £2.99 postage and get sent three of their little travel/trial size mini stick deodorants. I've used the first one a few times now and I have to say I'm seriously impressed - far more so than I thought I would be. They're not cheap at full size, but so far at least I get the feeling they will last fairly well, they are FAR more environmentally friendly, they are certainly effective and there is quite often a 20% discount offer via various instagram influencers, so I'm leaning towards keeping an eye out for a discount code and ordering a full size one. 

RelievedSheff

Noticed this morning that the expensive petrol station we drive past has finally dropped the price of diesel by 4ppl to 181.4ppl. Not the full amount but at least it is some reduction.

Not sure why people still insist on using that one. There is another expensive one literally within eye sight that is a few pence per litre cheaper and a mile or so up the road there are a few supermarket ones that are all around the 170ppl mark!

RosaBernicia

RelievedSheff said:

Noticed this morning that the expensive petrol station we drive past has finally dropped the price of diesel by 4ppl to 181.4ppl. Not the full amount but at least it is some reduction.

Not sure why people still insist on using that one. There is another expensive one literally within eye sight that is a few pence per litre cheaper and a mile or so up the road there are a few supermarket ones that are all around the 170ppl mark!

I don't get it either, but apparently some people believe the petrol quality is different.  I've actually been googling this due to a relative who insists they've been told by someone who was told by a mechanic that supermarket petrol kills your car [eyeroll... ].  No evidence as all petrol has to conform to a BSI standard - most useful summary I found was this Which? article. 

EssexHebridean

Interesting link Rosa. I've had SO many conversations with people over the years on that very subject! I'm with you RS on wondering why people use the pricey ones but judging by the numbers on the forecourt at the BP one we pass on the way to work they certainly do. I wonder if a lot are company car users who don't pay for their fuel AND need somewhere that will accept their fuel card perhaps? In fairness, when I had a company car for a bit some years ago I never shopped around particularly! 

Well morning all - another grey miserable one here - and chilly too. I checked the forecast last night with a view to what the heating needed to do over the next few days - I was hoping to be able to turn it off but instead ended up turning it UP which was a bit depressing! Oh well - can't be helped allowing that we're going to have overnight temperatures of down around freezing again over the next few nights. 

I'm in that odd financial limbo leading up the payday at the moment. Everything has come out of the account, but I'm always reluctant to clear out the surplus until after more money has gone in just in case MrEH needs an Oyster top-up that I don't know about, for example. We're definitely starting to see the difference now with more commuting costs again - MrEH was in the office 4 days last week, 3 the week before, and may yet be doing 3 again this week as he's making a decision today about going in tomorrow. there IS still a surplus, and we have already transferred an amount across to PBs as well,  but still, the "spare" money is definitely less than it was. 

Need to remember to take the meter readings tomorrow - Electricity can realistically be at any stage through the day but I want MrEH to go out and get the gas one AFTER we've cooked dinner - that seems to make sense. I do wonder whether there will be issues around getting them through to the suppliers as well - it's going to be a busy day for it and I suspect their systems may struggle to cope. We'll see. I'll probably make sure we get photos of both anyway so I have "proof" of what they were down the line if needed.

Decided against the gym tonight firstly as I have a slightly tight hamstring - it "pinged" slightly while I was doing my session the other night, and still feels a little awkward now - and secondly because the weather forecast for later looks a bit grim and if it IS raining I'm not going to fancy the cycle there and back, and would rather have the option to head straight to the car I think. If it's better than expected I'll fit in a longer cycle though - I fancy doing some exploring of the Olympic Park so might head in that direction - it's not much further on than the gym so might be a nice place to go and explore. I've only been round there a handful of times since 2012 but it's a lovely place, and so many great memories of all the Olympic excitement! (Hard to believe that was all TEN YEARS ago! Talk about time flying!)

Food tonight is a "not quite a roast" - the last tub of the pork from that massive piece we got some time go, along with a tub of its meat juices got pulled out of the freezer this morning to defrost, along with a tub of mixed root mash. I'll do some veg with it as well - probably the last of our home grown runner beans if I can extract them from the freezer tonight, plus something else from the "frozen veg drawer". Tomorrow is couscous and "something" - I'll have a think about what, but if it's going to be roasted veg then as MrEH is planning to make a batch of rolls for lunches this evening, if I can get organised enough it might make sense to shove the veg in at the same time then it just needs reheating tomorrow. 

Only other definite plan for today is that I have a Teams meeting tonight for the beer festival - it's going to be a slightly uncomfortable one I think, but we'll see how it goes. Beyond that we could ideally do with squeezing in a bit more work on our area of the festival, and I'd really like to get a bit more of my crochet done - I'm loving being back to crocheting and am keen to learn some more stitches now! I'm also debating whether my planned "scarf" is actually going to turn into a "strip" to join to some others and create a hotch-potch blanket as some of the yarn I'm using is actual wool and I rarely get on with wool right next to my skin - I find it itchy. That would also mean I could potentially use up even more of the bag of oddments of yarn too. Hmmm....

Cheery_Daff

Lots of things going on in there! 

I did our meter reading this morning - had an email reminder through so I've done it - I'lmve set an alarm reminder to do it tomorrow, but we'll be at Mr Cheery's dad's for the day so if I end up forgetting at least they've had one from today rather than going off the one I did at the end of January.

Grey and chilly here too. Not got the heating on yet today (I've been experimenting with timer settings and got rid of the morning hour last week but may have to reinstate it!)

Might follow your good example and get a bit of meal planning done...

EssexHebridean

Cheery I had literally just turned ours to the lowest level possible for the "on" period in the mornings - we get some warmth from the overnight charging period but not so much from the newer (high heat retention) heater. 

I need another freezer audit before I meal plan next I think - I discovered a tub of cooked sausages I'd forgotten we had this morning!