So close, we can smell mortgage freedom!

Suffolk_lass

Don't forget you can easily make more blackcurrant bushes by sticking a pruning branch in the ground (and a gooseberry by layering a low hanging branch with a brick over it until it roots.

I've ordered two dessert gooseberries (Leveller) for delivery in November for when we make our new fruit cage. Having lost about 5k of gooseberries and literally every redcurrant except 6 individual berries this year.

themadvix

Afternoon all,

Thanks Jessy and SH re the 5km - it did feel like an achievement! Not quite sure that it's sunk in that I have to do it again this weekend! Had a lovely day on Sunday with my family for Fathers' Day and Mr MV also did a couple of DIY jobs for my mum, which she was very grateful for.

Monday we went to Wimbledon with Mr MV's work. So we ate and drank some lovely food and had a great time (vastly improved by a last-minute drop out whose replacements are the son of the company owner and his girlfriend who we know well from London to Brighton). We stayed in a hotel in Battersea, which we ended up walking back to from Wimbledon as everyone else had gone before us and we couldn't get an Uber or a real cab to pick us up! I was bizarrely cross with London as a whole as footsore and exhausted we finally made it back to the hotel at 11pm. Had to leave early yesterday to get back home for a hospital appointment at 10.20. Mum picked me up from the station and took me to the appointment, so I bought her lunch at the tapas bar - had been meaning to take her there for a while in any case. Really good sized portions for £9.99 a head at lunchtime  - Mum took the leftovers (mainly chicken) home for her tea!

This morning I have been to my friend's funeral. Just so sad and so unfair. Really feel for his wife. However, it was lovely to see my evening class teacher in person for the first time since the pandemic. We will all meet up later in the summer too. 

Now just waiting for a meeting about the Cambridge work - I'm hoping all is OK there. Deadline is looming, but I know I will get the work done in time - they may just be panicking (or it might be about something completely different).

I am now the proud owner of a Barclaycard Avios Plus credit card - there's an offer on at the moment that if you spend £3k in three months you get 50,000 Avios points (at worst, equivalent to £450 in Argos via Nectar, but in reality will be used for flights). I've added Mr MV as a supplementary cardholder and the plan is to put all our spending on it. I need to buy a new laptop and some new trainers and I may buy my e-bike too, so we should reach the spending limit (Mr MV has some other bits he needs to get too).

MS things:
* Cat sitting
* Clicks done
* Caught up on surveys last night - 1P, YG, MM, Populous

Gratitudes:
* Fab time at Wimbledon
* Lovely impromptu lunch with Mum yesterday
* Today's service went as well as could be expected and it was nice to see teacher and friend, even if the circumstances were not good.

Have a good afternoon all - remember life is full of unknowns and you should live it to the full - don't put it all off (as we are all prone to here) for a tomorrow that may not come (sadly, this is exactly what my friend had done).

savingholmes

My condolences 

Karmacat

Condolences from me too ... it's a powerful reminder that saving for the future at the complete expense of the present can be terrible  

Getting to Wimbledon sounds good!

themadvix

Morning all,

Thanks both. Worse still, I discovered when I spoke to my Dad later that he'd been at the same crem two hours later for his neighbour's funeral - only 55 and cancer again (they actually died the same (Jubilee) weekend too). Life is so precious!

I finally made it to the allotment last night and put 5 of my edamame beans in (limited space, so will have to find somewhere else for my other 6... maybe I'll stick a couple in my raised bed and give the others away?). Gave everything a good water as my other beans were not looking too happy and picked a large lock and lock box of pink currants... these need processing and freezing today... but freezer is looking rather full (and there's more on the bush and more blackcurrants too)! This morning I've picked and open frozen another batch of raspberries (and decanted yesterday's into the container). Still enough ripe on the canes for dessert tonight Have also picked a good lot of salad leaves from three plants - the other three need picking too, but don't want them to go to waste, so will have to eat some first. And picked sage and Vietnamese coriander to dry too (also all now in kitchen ready for processing!).

Have finally sorted mess with American client's payment system (external) - I haven't been able to get it to send a password reset email for the last couple of days, but it finally worked this morning, so hopefully payment will be made later today.

Cambridge meeting was just a catch up and all is good there. Thought I'd be paid today, but then remembered that timesheets weren't signed off until beginning of this week, so that'll be next week now.

MS things:
* Clicks done - won 54p on HW, first win in ages! VB is at payout, so hoping to see that money soon.
* 1P surveys done - at £20 there, so not far to go again.
* Lots of lovely free food from the garden/allotment 

Gratitudes:
* Baby courgettes are appearing! And flowers on the peas at last too!
* Cambridge are already finding me more jobs to do (deadline for current project is Monday)
* Mr MV has had some recognition at work (only an email from two levels up, but appreciation/recognition has been very thin on the ground lately and he is utterly fed up (but also massively overworked and has no time to be looking elsewhere - if he moves, he'd like to stay with the organisation and part of the problem is that he loves what he does (which would be difficult to replicate elsewhere in the company), but not his boss/department - boss is a real problem). The recognition and the possibility of sideways recruitment of an extra employee for him are both definite positives.

Have a good day all!

Cheery_Daff

Sounds like it was a moving service for your friend, but yes, how awful, and a timely reminder for all of us. 

Good news for Mr MV. The wrong person, especially the boss, can really ruin things xx

themadvix

Morning all,

Thanks Cheery. Yes, Mr MV's boss has always been pretty dire at standing up for his team (he's not horrible, just useless, and for the sole woman, a chauvinist and a bit creepy), but his previous boss's boss was excellent and Mr MV worked closely with him. There's been a restructure and a change of the boss's boss (with an extra layer added in too) over the last couple of years and this has not been good for Mr MV. He's arranged a meeting with a (sideways and up, IYSWIM) colleague today to have a chat - he may be able to help and there's a couple of other options too - Mr MV just needs to have the energy act on them. Other people in the team are thinking of moving on too because of the boss, so this will shake things up in any case.

We are having an isolator switch fitted today for our solar panels which is exciting (panels not due until the autumn at the earliest sadly due to high demand and supply issues 🙄). I've done an Olio collection this morning (swapped with someone so I didn't have to manage that on Wednesday too) - not a lot, but have kept a couple of packs of rolls and some cinnamon buns.

I have a meeting later about the Cambridge work (I asked for it) and that should be finished today (until the next bit next week and hopefully more after that too). It's very novel having meetings! If I have time later, I'll be doing my invoicing and money shuffles. At some point I really ought to do my tax return too (so I can put money in pension and buy while the market is low... right? It's got to go up again at some point! 😬)

We had loads of rain last night, which will have been good for the allotment and the garden (saved me watering in any case).

Lunch today will be leftovers from dinner (oven-pasta bake) and some more leaves from the garden, followed by a cinnamon bun, I imagine. Undecided on dinner at the moment - I do have a couple of sweet potatoes to use, so maybe some sort of curry. I processed the pink currants last night - just need to dig out a recipe and make some jelly with them. Also cleaned up and hung up the herbs to dry.

Plan for the weekend is park run (I am actually looking forward to this - I'm assuming it's going to get easier each time... this may be a fallacy!), tidying garden, emptying (tiny garden) shed and sorting it out, and shifting some soil to the dump. Mr MV is going to investigate the noise my car has been making for months and take a look at a friend's car. His parents are away now, so we might give the other mini a miss this weekend - tbh there's rather a lot of housework and other stuff to do here anyway. Oh, and I need to finish making a birthday present for my friend - it's half done, so won't take me long, but need to buy some fabric!

MS things:
* Food from the garden
* 1P surveys done
* PA survey done
* Leftovers for lunch
* Work (will make sure I submit a timesheet before the 3pm deadline so I get paid something next week!)

Gratitudes:
* Flexible and friendly colleagues (I had to rearrange meeting when I realised Octopus engineers would need to turn power off!)
* Payment from American client came through
* Caught Katie Boulter's win yesterday afternoon

Have a good day all!

Suffolk_lass

Re processing your allotment produce - if your freezer is filling (as mine did) a collection of large ziplock bags that pre-frozen fruit can be stored in flatter than a box is well employed here, as is bottling of fruit (especially berries, plums and apples) - I invested in some kilner screw-top jars and the smaller ones (half litre) are perfect for our own chopped tomatoes, and bottled fruit.

Thing 2 Wimbledon - I was brought up in South West London and I can recommend a short walk to the Wimbledon train station and  4 stops to Kingston where accommodation is cheaper than London and near the train station. In my view it is worth considering as an alternative. 

themadvix

Morning all,

Thanks SL - not sure I'm brave enough for bottling yet, but maybe I'll get there one day. The main issues with the freezer are too much bread and too many batch-cooked meals! I've got a limited R'ford delivery coming this week so we can eat some of the meals and other stuff in the freezer and find a bit more space. Wimbledon - we were guests of a supplier, so had no say in hotel (which was both fancy and rather odd) - it was probably a package.

A productive weekend - beat my PB by a minute at parkrun (and beginning to be scarily evangelical about it! 😳), cleared loads of stuff onto ebay/freegle/olio (and a lot went quickly), listed the soil on FB marketplace and it has now all gone - no dump trips required! Hooray! Have reclaimed patio as a result. Mr MV and his friend confirmed that my car needs a new gearbox - about £200. As car prices are still going up and share prices are still going down, I'm going to have to go with that as there's little prospect of a new car in the short term - money will come from car maintenance pot (as Mr MV pointed out, a new-to-me gearbox is still less than he pays for a service for his car). Also made some pink currant jelly, which dealt with the pink currants, and a rhubarb and blackcurrant clafoutis for dessert (dealing with some rhubarb and blackcurrants!).

Yesterday I paid myself and did invoicing. All credit cards completely paid off (i.e. including not statemented stuff yet) except my new (as yet unstatemented) Avios card, which is all I'll be spending on until I've hit the spending goal (while I love the Amex points, it's going to be so lovely to just have one cc on the go!). I also posted various items (and returns) and visited Curry's to have a look at keyboard layouts (money for laptop has been allocated from the bumper income month). Money moved to savings too, and I'll put some in my ISA from my pay on Thursday from Cambridge.

MS things: 
* PC survey - £3 and a tasty-sounding product to try coming!
* 1P surveys done
* 60p HW win and clicks done
* Dinner last night used up various bits and pieces (and resulted in a batch of naans in the freezer...whoops!)
* Eon man came for solar technical survey 
* TCB earned on sister's bday present 
* Cards made for sis's and friend's birthdays
* Received invite for main postal survey
* Set up N3ctar to convert automatically to Avios - should get a 1,200 point bonus for doing this (and can manually convert back at any time)
* Registered new Avios card for airtime rewards (too late for the bits in Wilko yesterday, but at least it's done now)
* 2 items posted from ebay where I've converted stamps into cash
* Whole batch of comps entered

Gratitudes:
* Mum has covid (which I am not grateful about), but seems to be OK with cold and flu medicine
* Making plans to see Olio friends on Friday evening
* The tonne of soil has gone from the patio and it didn't cost me anything (not technically true - bought some rubble bags to bag it up to entice people, but actually only used a few and a man came and took the rest himself)! Very grateful to friends who suggested this!
* As mum is ill, I'm on niece collection duties on Thursday  
* All the rain is helping to grow the courgettes (Everything else is coming on too, just more slowly!)

Now really must get on with work which I have totally procrastinated about so far this morning - it's not even anything tricky!

Karmacat

I hope your mum's getting through it okay - everything else sounds fine, even the £200 gearbox (though those costings I did the other day are illuminated by your experience!).