I hate to say it, but B and I have discussed this and it seems as though our finances are dictating I return to work now. I may be able to reduce hours after all debt is cleared and we are able to stash some in savings, but until then, I must somehow find gainful employment to help us go from barely treading water to basking in the sun.

I was hoping to keep Sophie out of daycare at least until she was out of diapers. I doubt very seriously I'll be able to find somewhere that will be willing to change a cloth diaper (no matter how easy it is). I also know it costs a little more for children Sophie's age. I am not ready to let my baby go to daycare and find that this is the most emotional part of me going back to work. We do hope to find someplace that will encourage her signing as well as other learning, and we don't want it too far from home or too far from work. It will certainly be quite the task.

I don't want to think of what's going to happen to the house (it's not perfectly spotless as it is) and all of my chores when I go back to work. I will have to rearrange chorebuster.net to give B some of the load as well. He'll just love that, I'm sure. The garden next year may wind up being put on hold. I'm not sure we'll have time to devote to it.

While eating dinner Sunday night, I received a phone call and let it go to voice mail. After dinner, I listened to my message and shared it with B as well. Apparently, my monster.com resume had become active and public at some point and I've been having recruiters calling me for the past few months. Sunday night was no different. I spoke with the recruiter Monday morning and he described to me the dream job I was looking for when I left Aloha to go to Dave & Buster's. I haven't received the email confirming this yet, but he said I should plan for a phone interview tomorrow. I need all the prayers and good vibes I can get. :)

Since I don't have daycare lined up yet, and I have plans made randomly between now and the end of the year, it's quite possible if I actually got the job that I wouldn't be able to start until next year, but we'll see. I suppose a lot of what happens hinges on whether or not I can find daycare that pleases me.

*sigh*

This morning, I was in the bathroom about to shower, and all of a sudden I heard a *boom* that made me stop cold. No more than five seconds later, our electricity was off. My first thought was silly (I am a little paranoid at times). I thought someone had done something to the electricity to force the alarm to not work. I dismissed that as quickly as it entered my head. My next thought was of the box outside at the end of the cul de sac. It's come close to being hit before. Perhaps someone finally managed to hit it this time.

I opened the front door to see if I could figure out what was going on to see the Tri-County Electric truck driving off. At that point, I was pretty miffed, because some dolt from the electric company came out here, banged on the box, and caused our electricity to not work. What the hell?

I called B to get the number from TCE and let him know the electricity was out. I then called TCE to discover we had been cut off for non-payment. !!! At this point I was absolutely fuming mad. Nearly every month they to send us late notices because they haven't received payments from our bank. We have no idea why of all the bills we pay with online banking, TCE is always the slowest. For whatever reason, it seems they get the payments well over a week after we make them. I assumed this was what had happened this month, although I don't recall seeing a notice for this month.

B had apparently forgotten to pay the bill on time this month (he can't find record of it at the bank, at least), but TCE has almost no grace period for late payments. Not only did we not receive written notification from them this month (the one month we actually forgot to pay), but we never received a phone call. Ridiculous! To make matters worse, even though Texas has deregulated electricity, we are some of the unfortunate souls who are stuck with a co-op without a choice of which company we want to use. Because of this, they know they've pretty much got us all over a barrel and don't seem to care even just a little about their customer service.

Every other electric company I've ever had (even outside of Texas) has always given a reasonable grace period (at least 30 days) along with written notice and phone calls to make sure the money is paid and the notices/bills aren't lost.

Of course, I'm seriously upset that I was inconvenienced, so I'm probably blowing things out of proportion. I'm tempted to find various news bits like Watch Dog or whatever to see if we can just make the co-ops disappear. I'd rather have Green Mountain Energy back anyhow.

callita623 and rredhead, you both might be interested in doing something like this. Personally, I would love to, but I have no experience.

Actually, aellwynde, you might also be interested.

Of course, there may be others on the list who would be interested as well, so here is a brief description (executive summary, condensed version):

Inque Boutique is looking for experienced and creative scrappers who would be willing to submit photographs of work or actual pages, and it appears as though there might be compensation for at least some of the submissions.

I didn't read the whole thing through because I don't have enough scrapping experience (read: any scrapping experience). I think it would be fun, though. It's something I've always been interested in. Of course, it's yet another crafting hobby that requires I spend money.

*sigh*

As most of you know, I am behind on my f-list. I'm a great deal behind, as a matter of fact. I still haven't even read postsecret for last weekend yet!

In any case, I'm just now catching up with an article I wanted to read that was posted at lifehacker. It's about the perfect days to shop for specific items to get the best deals. I knew there were perfect days for best deals but I can't ever remember when they are. The article covers items from clothing to food to even travel type things such as airfare and hotel rooms. It's certainly worth looking at if you're interested in saving a buck or two doing everyday things you were going to do anyhow. :)

My sister is a mystery shopper. She shops for a specific company (she used to work for the company) and from what I understand, actually manages a small mystery shopping program for the company. If I was living up north, I would be more than happy to join her group of shoppers, but unfortunately I don't, and they don't own any stores down here.

BestMark is a company that offers mystery shopping services to various companies, with many different mystery shopping solutions. I think I'm going to sign up to be a mystery shopper through them. I like the way the website is laid out in that it seems pretty easy to use, but I'll know more after I sign up.

I have a friend who has decided to make some extra money through vending machines. He's been doing it for some time and has made quite a pile of money. If I didn't have Sophie to tote around with me, I might actually consider it, but I don't think it would work out very well for us. Between having to refill the machines, collect the money, and go chasing after her in between, I'm thinking it would actually be a bit nightmarish.

I think vendstar certainly is something to consider, but the startup is really more than we can afford right now. Besides, I would have to go around finding locations willing to take on the machines and most places around here already have them. I'm sure it would work for some people, but I don't think it's what I need right now.

I recently posted this about the crappy deal first wave iPhone buyers received. Well, it seems as though Apple has realized how poorly this made them look and decided to give their loyal customers a little bit of a break. Granted, it's only a store credit, and it's only for $100, but it's better than nothing, I suppose. I still won't be buying one anytime soon.

Smorty! I love that word. It's so silly and really means nothing. However, it's a powerful tool for business owners that can really boost web hits, leading to higher sales in the long run. Continuing with the theme of my mother friends finding ways to make their home business work for them, this is another tool I'll be adding to my list to give them. What better way (and probably less expensive way, to boot) to advertise to the masses than to advertise on blogs?

The other cool feature about Smorty is that people looking to write advertisements on their blog can sign up and get paid for blogging! I have done this, since every little bit helps when it comes to our finances.

I really think blog advertising is the wave of the future. There are so many people who write blogs and so many of their friends who are reading them, people would be silly to ignore this advertising medium. As a blogger, why not get in on the action? Don't expect to get rich, but it's certainly nice to have the extra cash, and why not make money doing something you love?

Coupon Chief is one of the coolest places for online coupons. I actually just used this the other night while shopping online at The Children's Place for new clothes for Sophie (they're having a sale right now, too!).

B and I are in the process of organizing our house, and I've made a few trips out to The Container Store, but I might start doing my shopping there online since I hate packing up Sophie and carting her all the way out there and buying something big like a bulletin board that doesn't fit in the car very easily (yeah, that happened). I'm sure we still have a few things I will be needing from The Container Store, such as another sliding basket for under the bathroom sink. We'll have to see how it looks once the last one is installed, though.

With Christmas coming up soon (I know it's only September, but I have to start thinking about gifts now!), this is the perfect place to start looking for ideas and deals. Every little bit helps when it comes to saving money. :)

This just makes me chuckle. I suppose there is a price to pay for being the cool kid. What *really* makes me laugh about this is there was news this was going to happen even before it was released.

Of course, the price drop doesn't mean I'll be running out to buy an iPhone, old OR new.

I finally signed up for PayPerPost. I should have done it when I signed up for various other programs like this, but somehow I missed it. I know at least one or two other people who've been using PPP for a while but never bothered to sign up with them. It wasn't until I started reading posts by kikifitz that I decided I wanted to start doing PPP as well. She writes a PPP entry every day (actually, I think she does two a day now).

I am no stranger to blog advertising. PayPerPost is a little different than other sites I've used, but I like that bloggers are given the ability to pick their posts. There seems to be a much greater sense of community at PPP than other blog advertising programs, which I think is pretty cool. So far, I'm liking what I see. I just wish LiveJournal allowed javascript.

I'm looking forward to learning about some of the customers for whom I'll be blogging. I've learned some pretty cool information in the past and found some very useful links (Coupon Chief, anyone?). I'm sure with the opportunities at PPP, I'll be able to feed the addiction I have for more information and make a little money as a bonus.

I know I have promised a WAH post, and it will be up soon. Really. I'm just trying to get a few things in order first. :)

The following is an email I received through one of my Yahoo! groups. I requested permission to post this here so all my friends could benefit from her words of wisdom. Enjoy.

( Long email follows... )

I have been trying to get a healthy list of work at home opportunities compiled. I'm really trying to get a list of reliable links together to pass around to my friends and family who are looking to stay home with their children. I have a few links here and would love to add others. If anyone who reads this blog would please comment (anonymous or not, I don't care) and share any favorite WAH links, I think I'll compile a list and then post it here somewhere so I can just point people to the entry.

This does not include anything that requires leaving the house. While I know plenty of people who make great money selling Mary Kay or Pampered Chef or other such things, these are not the types of opportunities I'm trying to gather. Please, no selling or MLM or pyramid schemes, etc. I am looking more for virtual assistant type jobs, medical transcription/billing, proofreading, article writing, blog writing, etc. If you have experience doing such things, please comment to share.

Also, if you can think of anything else you do at home to make/save money such as babysitting, sewing, tutoring or music lessons, or similar, please share that as well.

Hopefully I'll actually be able to get to this soon. I might just wind up posting links without descriptions, though. Meh.

I found an interesting site the other day. I don't remember how I stumbled upon it, but I think I'm going to be glad I did. Blogsvertise will actually pay me to discuss a website's services and/or products. I'm not quite sure what the catch is, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to register and find out for myself. Blogsvertise appears to be legitimate. I just need to make sure I can find the time to complete the tasks assigned.

Blogsvertise - check it out.

Today will finish up my first week at Dave and Buster's. So far, I think it will be a great place. There's a lot to learn, so it will certainly be a challenge. I think I'm game.

Last night we went to dinner with some friends at Two Rows in Dallas.



We had a good time, and the food wasn't half bad. My Long Beach iced tea wasn't as good as I've had at other places, and certainly wasn't worth $6.50, but it also wasn't the worst I had. I think the worst part about last night was the fact that all the waitresses were wearing shorts and black t-shirts, but they didn't seem to meet in the middle. Unfortunately, some of these girls had a little more middle than others, and the views were not very pretty.

*shudder*

On a completely unrelated note, I received my last pay check from Ibertech (Initech?)/Alohaha/Radiant/Iberalodiant today. I was paid short of 40 hours for my last week (only 24, which really pisses me off since I put in 40, the assholes), but I was also given roughly 150 hours worth of vacation pay. I'm not going to bother bitching about the missing 16 hours, even though I should. It's just not worth it to me. It shows what sort of company Radiant is and that's the sort of company with which I am trying to break all ties (can you say "Chase" all over again?).

This means I should be able to pay off the company AmEx now instead of waiting for my expense checks (which take forever), and when my expense checks finally do come in, I can apply all that money to my Citi card, which will be half paid at that point. I am so excited I can barely contain myself!