Cherry takes the reins

Cherryfudge

A fairly lazy Saturday - for me, at least. DH was his usual buzz of activity. He's been fighting a further battle with dry lining as there is a small area near some encased wire where he left the original cement in place. Now he thinks he might have to try to get it out - and it's a tricky position but it's the place that isn't drying out properly.

We had our usual chips for lunch, but bought fish at the supermarket to save cost and calories. It made a nice change - sole with a lemon coating. In the afternoon we went for a walk, probably about five miles along a country road towards a nearby village. We turned round short of the village as there's a path through woodland which was slippery, and it's as well we did because the light was going as we got home. It was nice in spite of being cold.

This evening we had a short walk out to L!dl to take advantage of the discount on pastries after 7pm. I'd just had banana and custard for tea, having seen it mentioned on the forum and having both to use up, but it meant I wanted more later. In the backwards order of things, I had cheese and crackers for supper. Not conventional, but it's what I fancied.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £15.14

Honeysucklelou2

Banana and custard is a fab combination. DD3 was requesting it for dessert this week!!

Cherryfudge

I had banana and custard again today. It's a treat disguised as using up the ingredients.  

This morning I helped with the little ones at church, then DH and I had the rest of the curry for a midday meal and DH had a moderately long walk in the afternoon. I decided not to go, but got myself out for a local walk as I've really not had enough exercise since he weather turned cold.

This evening was the final of 'Handmade' (the woodworking program) so we watched that and I updated my spreadsheet a bit. I was delighted that I remembered to how to format cells but got the giggles when I accidentally formatted the dates as currency and had a column of £43,000 figures. I don't know what it thought I wanted but I'm not spending that kind of money.

Cherryfudge

We had heavy rain last night - I could hear it when I woke up despite double glazing, roller blind and lined curtains. Since mid-morning it's been sunshine and showers, and I've promised myself another walk as I need to take care of my health when the weather tries to talk me out of it.

My laptop is due to be delivered later! That's exciting but also daunting as it'll be mine to set up and make secure, as well as loading the Microsoft 365 which for some reason was delivered separately though from the same place.

Some financial things have been moved forward today: I've got the 'giving' category to the point where any other choices are down to DH. I will help if he wants, but he's reached brain overload point so he's not making any more decisions today. I sympathise: it's very different when the pressure to decide comes from outside oneself. 

Other than that, I've paid £100 off my cc so it doesn't build up too much, and moved the laptop money to the account from which I will pay it off. That came out of inheritance, so no pressure on day to day money.

A small bit of decluttering has happened: I used up one of four jellies and a tin of mandarins which have been around far too long, and a cardigan and a book have gone to the charity shop.

The broadband payment has gone out: we still need to look at whether we can improve on it. It's £40.95 a month for the package we have which isn't quite fast enough, but we're using it to stream TV things as our satellite dish seems to have packed in. I don't understand all the ins and outs of it, but it's something along the lines of the ancient satellite dish - we stopped Skye about 15 years ago - has been acting as an aerial, but that doesn't work any more so we get TV via internet and it buffers a lot. It doesn't really bother me as I generally have enough bandwidth not to notice a problem on my gadgets, and I don't watch much TV.

My favourite online learning place has just waved a very enticing package at me... Black Friday deal of half price for a year. For that I could do any of their courses and get the certificates at the end. I've done a few before and had a subscription before, but at that point I had to put a lot of my spare time into emptying Mum's old house so I only got one course as far as certificate level which financially was about a 300% loss. Many courses are free, but the proof of doing it - the final test and qualification - are what you pay for.

Reasons to subscribe:
I think this is the best rate they offer, though they do Christmas discounts too.
It's evidence of ongoing learning, which is useful for jobs.
I study better if I have some sort of deadline.
I enjoy it.
It will help shape the days I'm not working - which is quite a few at the moment.
I may be able to use knowledge gained, in the workplace or elsewhere.
I have the money.
Knowledge and qualifications gained could help bolster my ability to earn past retirement (I have no intention, at present, of stopping earning entirely. Of course, things crop up, but this might be a door I can leave propped open).

Reasons against:
I would enjoy it whether I pay for the courses or not.
I might not do enough courses (on average, 3) to make it financially worth while.
I'd not planned to do it, though I have planned study elsewhere.
I have ADHD anti-starting important things syndrome. Probable ADHD, anyway. It's so hard to get started on things, though once I'm into them, I often get immersed and do more than average.
Money would have to come out of my inherited money.

I've just spotted a course in teaching adults with dyslexia on there. That's a real magnet as I hope to be able to support adults with dyslexia as part of my relief job.

I'm going to go out for my walk while the weather holds and come back to this later.

Floss

Ooh, what's the learning resource? That sounds really interesting.

Cherryfudge

Floss said:

Ooh, what's the learning resource? That sounds really interesting.

It's FutureLearn - I've done quite a  few of their courses before and they have a wide range. I know there are other providers but admittedly I only got as far as this one, having read about it on this forum, and liked what I found. Courses are from various institutions around the world.

Cherryfudge

The new laptop arrived as I was hurrying round putting shopping away before tea, so the poor thing is sitting there unopened.  I want to be wideawake with a clear head before I investigate - but that could be too long to wait, so I'll open it tomorrow! Truth be told, I'm quite fond of this one, but it's really not at its peak any longer (there are ten typos due to the uneven keyboard action so far in this post), (oops, eleven).

My 'walk' turned into a trip to Asd@ for cheap tins, but I also picked up a nice calendar for a present. I got rained on, on the way there, and over-bought so my arms will ache tomorrow, but I remembered they have the best offer on a Christmas soft drink so I bought three bottles. Dinner was fishcakes. DH did the shopping and found these on yellow sticker, and also some mackerel for tomorrow.

It's been an expensive evening as I bought the subscription to the courses: it will be even more if I invest in proofreading training but when I looked, that doesn't take as long as I'd thought, or at least the early stages don't take too long. The digital skills course is  probably free if I get a place, but depending how it's assessed, I may have to pay. I've had an email to say my query about preliminary courses has been sent for assessment.

Good news today: a former colleague who left this summer has an offer of a job, so to some extent or other, all those of us who left this year are now in work elsewhere. 

Tomorrow we are going out for lunch with H, the children and her parents before they head off home. I don't yet know if my friend will feel well enough to meet tomorrow evening, so that's still up in the air.

Expenditure:
Hobbies (I suppose you'd call learning for fun a hobby?) £124.99
Gift £5
Internet £40.35
Housekeeping £8.25 plus whatever DH spent.

MS: I sorted out a couple of shelves in the kitchen and found a few things to use up so some are used or planned for.
Wearing extra layers (leggings under jeans) is working out well for sitting down at the computer as well as for going out of doors. Steps are taken to reduce regular standing order and avoid cc charges.

badmemory

Enjoy your new laptop.  As for bananas & custard I used to be a massive fan.  We had it for school dinners & I used to eat all eight provided someone always ate my semolina sago tapioca etc.  You get the picture.  I haven't thought of it for years.  I may make DS suffer.

Cherryfudge

Believe it or not, I've still not unboxed my laptop! I know that when I do, I won't be able to play with it properly till I have a security program and some other stuff installed, and I like the playing side of thing - besides which I have a million things on this, my old laptop, so a million digital decisions to make. Many things I can just search for as usual, so, provided I have my passwords, I'm in (not always guaranteed, for instance I can only get online access to the doctor's because this computer remembers my login. Personally, I've no idea.

I have a huge amount of old documents, most of which I expect I can just delete: that sounds like a big job. Then there are ones to keep - maybe a memory stick? I've no idea what's the optimum, and a lot is on some sort of external storage anyway, but that also includes digital clutter so I don't want to move it to the new laptop en masse.

And then there's a game DS2 bought me - I have online access but I'll have to check I can still log in...

Other than that, I got two loads of laundry done and it got mostly dry on the line. DH decided it was far too cold to exercise outside so he did an online warmup and ended up going for a run, looking very hardy in shorts with the temperature too cold for grass to grow! I'm inspired at least to do a proper warm up/stretch as I've lost some flexibility through not working out. My exercise today was opting to walk home from the shops after being dropped off - about 10 minutes.

We met H and her girls and her parents for lunch. DH paid - £30-something. Afterwards H took her parents to the station so we looked after DGD1 for an hour or so. Good to have some time with them all. I also remembered I had a voucher for a freebie Christmas gift from a selection at the garden centre where we had lunch. I handed it over to DGD1 who chose something that looked like a cross between a gingerbread animal and a reindeer.

Dinner was mackerel, and we watched the Bake-off final. My Tuesday group decided not to meet this week but at least we WhatsApped each other.

I'll sort out spending in the morning: I've spent this evening's energy on the dyslexia course I started yesterday, which is quite interesting. It's in four weekly sections but I can take it at my own pace and I'm part way through week two already! I think weeks are really a couple of hours so it's not all that remarkable really.

Cherryfudge

Freezing cold outside today: frosty grass for the first time this autumn, and it stayed cold all day. It was sunny, though, so I got the bedding and towels washed and half-dried on the line. Many places have had snow, but not here.

Once again, no progress on the laptop as I got caught up in a game this morning. At least I got the laundry done, then cleaned the fridge.  Unfortunately I had to throw a few bits out which I don't like having to do. On a more positive note, I used chicken from the freezer and some sweet potatoes that were cluttering up the fridge, together with the remains of a bag of rice that one of the children abandoned when they lived here and a curry sauce mix that was a present from J and L, and made a big curry for dinner. The only things I had to buy for it were tinned tomatoes and some peppers, and L!dl had nets of 9 pepper for under £2, so there are 7 left for something else.

I'm pleased to say the shelves in the kitchen are actually getting less crowded. It was so cold I didn't go to the market and I think some of the traders were packing up as I went past, so no bargains from there today!

I bought a litre of milk for 19p yesterday and made it into yogurt today, so that's now in the fridge, as is some quinoa I cooked for lunch but made a double batch.

A small amount of progress has been made on the course. I have a fairly academic article to read - 13 pages of it if you don't count the bibliography. I'm determined not to print it out and underline because that's a waste of printing ink, but it's a pdf so I can't copy it into Word. Not being able to underline is a hitch but not an insurmountable one.

Time I got to bed.

Expenditure:
Housekeeping £8.82