Dusty's Frugal Fortnights

dustydigger

Sayschezza wrote: »

I must have remembered it wrong Dusty and it was the Latter Day Saints site I used. Don't recognise theIGI one.

Just checked up and the IGI was indeed prepared by the LDS,and found on their Family Search website.It gave a lot of details. The Free BMD is much less useful.
www.freebmd.org.uk

dustydigger

+reading : At last my assault on my reading targets is showing fruit. I finished book 6 last night,a Hugo winner,which brings my Hugo tally up to 58/66 read.:j
And this morning I finished another SF book.I am doing a mini challenge this month to read 6 SF books,that brings me up to five completed,with about 100 pages left of the last book.

That makes 7 books read this month so far,reasonable I suppose in the circumstance where I rarely read more than a couple of pages all the first week!:)And completed my Alphabet challenge too


Dusty's Alphabet challenge - Amazing,Astounding,Astonishing A
.
1. Read a book where a title word starts with ''A''. Clifford D Simak - All Flesh is Grass

2. Read a book with an author beginning with ''A''. Piers Anthony - A Spell for Chameleon

3. Read a book with an ''A''; item shown on the cover. - an apple.Carrie Vaughn - Discord's Apple

dustydigger

+ savings : Got to the bank yesterday and set up a standing order for my new account for saving up for the US trip.£50 a month.:j:j I did try to transfer a tenner online last night but couldnt get the hang of it at all!Made numerous attempts and failed,so complicated and the notes/FAQs werent a great help either.:(
What a contrast from my nsandi acc,(national savings and investment) where I simply click on the amount I want to transfer from the CA,and the details come up,very very simple.This account is for saving up for Xmas.
So I now pretty much have all the ''pots''in place.:)

dustydigger

+surveys : Grrr!:mad: Apparently Prolific offered me a survey - about midnight last night! It was for £3.35 and was about intercultural relationship.I did one for them on that topic a while ago,I think it was a kind of followup. But of course by time I read the email today, they had filled the slots.Could have done with the dosh!:)

For once I got a YouGov survey yesterday and for 150 points,they usually offer about 50.But at only 1125/5000 points after 5 months its going to take a looooong long time to get that fifty quid!:rotfl:
OnePoll never have any polls available. I have amassed £7.80/£30 over 5 months there. It seems they,like MySurveys, didnt take my being away for a month well either.
Add that I am not now buying anything to get cashback and the sidelines to make a little extra cash are not adding up to much at all :rotfl:

dustydigger

+exercise : still queen of the sloths at the moment. But I did locate my old pedometer in the cupboard,surprised its still working. Used it on my quick trip to the bank yesterday and it clocked up as 2800+ steps,a long way from the recommended 10.000:eek:Will start getting back into walking hopefully net week.Want to bet we will get torrential rain?:rotfl:
Must read up on diets too,as I will be restarting after almost 3 months rest. Put on a lot of weight too! Ouch. I will have an appointment for thyroid blood tests next week and I hope they can help me improve my sluggish metabolism to get me back on track.
I am so confused about what diet regime to follow. I may just put about 5 names in a hat and ask Mr Dusty to pick one for me.:rotfl:

dustydigger

OK.up to date with my diary for now.Easy dinner.chicken wings with a barbecue sauce for Mr D,carrot and swede mash for me.Simple:)
The football will be on at 1 pm....(sigh).......I am going to read. I have another book with less than 80 pages left,so I want to finish that today.That will make 8:T

I also need to update my reads on my SF website Worlds Without End.I havent reviewed a book(well written a couple of sentences) since April on there,very embarrassing considering I am the host of the thread. There are 22 of us doing a reading challenge(do you sense a theme here?) varying through 10,20,40,or 80 SF books read in a year.I have scraped through with 41 so far,which isnt too brilliant!
I think I will at least update my May reads this p.m. and get the June ones up to date by the end of the month.
Think I will do regular email checks for surveys 3 or 4 times a day. I am losing cash because of only checking once a day!

mark55man

Love your reading challenges. I read (and write, and talk) a lot at work, and when I come home I can't face much more - other than a quick skim through my favorite diaries (I'm sorry Dusty there are other diaries in my life) and catch up with OH.

My SF reading is a bit bipolar - either Iain Banks and his culture novels or early 30s american space opera - not much in the middle. As a bit of a board game geek, my most reread SF is "the Player of Games" but without the hobby connection its central theme might not appeal

dustydigger

mark88man wrote: »

Love your reading challenges. I read (and write, and talk) a lot at work, and when I come home I can't face much more - other than a quick skim through my favorite diaries (I'm sorry Dusty there are other diaries in my life) and catch up with OH.

My SF reading is a bit bipolar - either Iain Banks and his culture novels or early 30s american space opera - not much in the middle. As a bit of a board game geek, my most reread SF is "the Player of Games" but without the hobby connection its central theme might not appeal

You go to other diaries?Oh faithless one!:rotfl::rotfl:
Interesting about reading 30s stuff.I personally love the fifties,have read masses of Bob HeinleinArthur C Clarke,Isaac Asimov,Ray Bradbury,Clifford D Simak,Poul Anderson etc etc etc!
My memory is very vague,I think most 30s stuff is short stories? Only novelists I can think of are late stuff by Edgar Rice Burroughs,and perhaps early stuff by E E Doc Smith. But masses of short stories or novellas. Are you familiar with the Wildside Megapacks on Amazon? I have so many of these packs,which sell for less than a pound usually.Its a great way to read the old stuff for ridiculously low prices. Sometimes these old books cost hair raising sums even second hand on Amazon and the like.
I needed a rare Hugo winner and the cheapest Amaz*ncopy was £26!:eek::eek:I got it among a Megapack bundle of the authors work for 57p:j:j:j

After I finish working my way through the Hugo and Nebula awards I am going to spend much more time wallowing in old pulp fiction.
About Banks,I read Player of Games,Consider Phlebas,Excession and Use of Weapons.Next year's reads will be Inversions and Look to Windward,books 7 and 8 in the series. We lost poor Ian far to early.So sad.
I would have said I wasnt into gaming sort of fiction,but I have read Ender's Game,Ready Player One,Charlie Stross's Halting State,and Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash,so I am not completely ignorant. Perhaps I should add Gibson's Neuromancer to the list,same sort of ambience.
Anyhoo,happy reading,whatever you read


And the same to any other avid readers here,you would be most welcome to share what you are reading.
In particular I read science fiction,urban fantasy,YA,classics,and all sorts of crime genres,and am always happy to talk about books.Oddly I havent really come across threads about reading,but there must be a lot of readers around. Pop in and share!
Off now to do the dinner and then brace myself for the hordes.....as I spoke DD1,DGD1 and great grand
daughter have arrived,so bye bye:rotfl::rotfl:

lonelyrat

For someone who has no interest in football I seem to be roped into watching a lot of it.... Everytime I sit down in the living room it's on! OH having the time of his life and I'm grumbling a lot :rotfl:

I'm really interested in everything you find out ancestry wise. It's something I would be keen on looking into in the future. I know little to nothing about any of my family... Maybe I need to take a visit to my gran to pick her brain!

Glad all your pots are in place! Well done on sorting the standing order

dustydigger

lonelyrat wrote: »

For someone who has no interest in football I seem to be roped into watching a lot of it.... Everytime I sit down in the living room it's on! OH having the time of his life and I'm grumbling a lot

Hah! and you are away working a lot of the time,so imagine the agony if you were home all the time like me :rotfl::rotfl: