Returning to MFW, my elusive unicorn!

Grogged

We like the German supermarkets, find lid1 better for baked goods, ald1 doesn't bake fesh. About 90% of our shopping is done there and the remainder at morry's and tesc0 as there's just some things you can't get.
If it's on the special section (like dishwasher salt, cleaner, etc.) then buy 6 months worth. They're only there a few times a year.

How are you finding Picard? We're enjoying it, but seems to be missing something that we can't quite put our finger on...

coldcazzie

Does L1dl take AMEX do you know,  @Grogged ? That's a factor in my decision making because everything goes on the AMEX card and we clear it each month. If they don't take it, we tend not to shop there. Ald1 have recently started taking it, but their not taking it was one of the reasons I've never switched before.

I am enjoying Picard, certainly more than I enjoyed Discovery. (I liked the concept of Discovery but think they would have been better not putting it into the Star Trek universe. Also I've never been a fan of the Mirror Universe plots, so that kinda ruined it. Haven't watched S2.) I'm not making any big judgements until the season has finished and I've rewatched it again, but so far my biggest gripe is them fridging Icheb, and that has kind of eclipsed any smaller gripes! I have ongoing questions, of course, and we'll see if they're answered satisfactorily.

Found a lego set in my cupboard which I bought as a present and promptly forgot about have stuck it on ebay this aft and it already has 2 bids! It's a 7 day listing, so it may end up going for more than I bought it for! The money will go in the OP pot will be putting some more outgrown clothes on ebay tomorrow aft - won't be starting with this new client for a few days at least so need to fill my time (aside from household stuff and educating the kids) usefully.

Grogged

@coldcazzie (didn't know about the @'s!) I belive so - https://www.finder.com/uk/does-aldi-accept-credit-cards, it's listed as doing so on here and other google sites.

Know what you mean about Discovery.  We decided to just treat it as general Sci-Fi... 😥 Not seen S2 either.
We're keeping an open mind as well.!

coldcazzie

That's Ald1 in that link, not L1dl  

coldcazzie

However, a quick mooch on Google reveals that L1dl do apparently take AMEX, as of 8th April last year. Good to know!

Grogged

@coldcazzie Oops! sorry about that, looked up on my tablet but had to use PC to post the link. Original one had every super that accepted Amex.
:doh!:

coldcazzie

coldcazzie said:

Found a lego set in my cupboard which I bought as a present and promptly forgot about have stuck it on ebay this aft and it already has 2 bids! It's a 7 day listing, so it may end up going for more than I bought it for! The money will go in the OP pot will be putting some more outgrown clothes on ebay tomorrow aft - won't be starting with this new client for a few days at least so need to fill my time (aside from household stuff and educating the kids) usefully.

Just wrote a long post, and lost it

Sold a piece of clothing on a fb group, popped it in the post today and have added the money from the sale to the OP pot.

The lego set had a flurry of bids and is now sitting at more than I paid for it with 5½ days to go. Yay!

I did not list more items on ebay this aft; instead I spoke with a dear friend who gave me some clarity over that issue that has been bothering me and causing me to lose sleep, and then I sat down and wrote a sharp letter, like the truly British soul that I am

Big Small had her final tooth out this morning, so contacting the orthodontist is on my To Do list for tomorrow, along with meal planning, the weekly shop and part of a practice exam paper for Big Small, who is prepping to sit an IGCSE as an external candidate in June. Also Tuesday evening stuff - dance classes for the kids and pilates for me. Tuesdays are busy.

There are a small handful of things to pay for in the next 10 days, but they are all budgeted for, so it looks like smooth sailing until payday and the end of the month!

Bennettxoxo

Hooray for your roof being fixed!!! 🎉🎉

And great news about your eBay bids too! 

coldcazzie

Thanks Bennettxoxo! Happy hump day everyone!

Getting 4-5 eggs a day now, which means all the girls are back in lay now Mary doesn't lay anymore - she's not particularly old but it seems she ran out of eggs quite young. Hadn't ever thought about it before she stopped laying a couple of years ago but they only have a finite number of eggs in them. She was our dark egg layer and I miss having the dark eggs in the boxes (we currently have 4x cream and 1x green eggs). May consider hatching another dark egg layer when their new accommodation is built (one of our plans for this year - upgrade the chicken coop and run). I know 4-5 eggs a day sounds like a lot of eggs, but they're all bantams which means their eggs are all diddy lol. The biggest one we get is 49g (small eggs are 53g and under). The two youngest are called Freida and Betty; they were hatched last year and laid 17g and 20g eggs the first time they laid - the size of a jumbo quail egg their eggs are around 38-40g now. Makes for some interesting egg maths when the recipe says "3 large eggs" and I have to get the scales out to work out how many of my dinky eggs I need to use to get that much egg  

[Speaking of scales - I noticed my electric kitchen scales were suddenly being ridiculously inaccurate. Now I could have tried switching out the batteries, but they are 11 years old (we worked it out), and I've had a set of vintage scales on the top of the cupboards for yonks (bought them for a bargain price off fb) so I fetched them down, gave them a clean, and now I'm having a happy squee every time I walk in the kitchen and see them on the counter. I may have also had a small finger slip and bought some vintage metric scale weights off ebay Suffice it to say, I'm probably not replacing the batteries in the electric ones!]

Apparently there was a news story the other day about how people should choose to buy white eggs because they come from white hens, and not brown egg because those come from brown hens who are more aggressive and have to have their beaks clipped and beak clipping is a horrible practice and therefore we can help the hens by choosing to buy the eggs from docile birds... just in case you thought that sounded like b0||0ck$, it is! it's different breeds that lay different coloured eggs, and many breeds come in multiple colours. There's no connection between feather colour and egg colour. Commercial hen aggression comes from the way commercial chicken keeping is practiced - cramming hens in together with no room to escape each other or display natural behaviours. I'd peck nearby people too in that situation! This is why I don't read the news; wilful ignorance irritates me (I only found out because everyone in the local chicken group was losing their collective $h%t lol). Half an hour of research by that journalist would have proven this theory wrong so how did it even get published? The mind boggles.

Still playing with our potential new budget; I'm rather fed up of saying "I think this month will be fine" and then at the end of the month being confused as to why we don't have as much money as I think we should have. I am certain it's because I've not categorised everything properly, and my mental budgets don't match up to the reality of what we've been spending, or I'm missing some of them out completely.

I have spent rather a lot of time since the new year going over the accounts since July/August time, and trying to work out what our actual expenditure for various categories. Obviously a new spreadsheet was involved. It's not easy to do retrospectively because I don't keep the receipts after they've been plugged into the spreadsheets, and because some companies don't take AMEX which means the payments are split over our joint account and the AMEX card. I'm also adding new categories which I've not tracked before (eg, cleaning products), which makes it tricky. There's lots of scrolling up and down and scowling going on However, I think I'm making progress.

I have also semi-coerced Himself into opening a Starling account, and I have one too (which I was coerced into opening as a prerequisite to opening a business account with them, but I actually think I quite like it), and we'll be using them for our own spending money. Not that we have any of that right now, but we feel like we should and that is part of the budget planning as pretty much all of our "miscellaneous" items are things that we would then pay with out of our own money (eg, new houseplants, new books, supporting someone on Patreon etc).

I'm going to end my ramble there, and crack on with the day!

Grogged

This is what I love about MSE, you learn about such interesting things. I now feel like Neo in the matrix - I now know about eggs! 😎