January mini goal wrap up

Following the inspiring leads of many others, I decided to set myself a few mini goals for January to get the ball rolling and make that New Year's momentum keep rolling.

Let's see how I did:

Snowflake - $100. Either from change or skimming off leftover weekly jar money. This money I will put towards my Back to School goal of $500

So I flaked $62 from my Christmas lottery scratchers. That gave me a  healthy start to my goal. It was added to my 'back to school goal' earlier this month. I did four noon hour supervisions. deductions take about half of the 'earnings' but that brought me in about $40.  thank goodness for these two since rolled change was zip this month.

track my points

I would say I was 90% successful with this. Being away with the curling team for a couple weekends threw things off a bit. Rink food is hard to resist even with a few healthy snacks. I also learned my old phone won't take the new upgrade for WW

Lose 3 lbs

Success. Wheeee

Treadmill 6 out of 7 days per week

This was 95% successful. The weekends I was up at 6 AM and didn't get home til 10 PM threw this off a bit. Add to that a couple migraine days where breathing made me cry.

Read 1 fiction and 1 non fiction book

I read my fiction book. My non fiction was on recipes for colitis.

Do one outside the box thing this month

Well originally I planned to go see Gail Vaz Oxlade in Saskatoon. That would have been awesome. It ended up that we had to take our curling team out of town that Tuesday, so it was a no go. I did end up going to a presentation by the Muslim community. I hadn't been to anything like this before.


I would have to say that overall, my mini goals were successful and it gave me a different way of framing things as I looked ahead for the month.

It takes....

So today is four weeks of WW and treadmill.


Do I see my body changing? 

Well there is a small difference on the scale.
I have a bit more energy at night.
I am able to do more time on the treadmill in one shot.
I do feel more 'at peace' ie: less stressed

My big barometer was 'will I be able to do the bottom button up on my winter coat and will it hang properly and not pull.'

Answer - not yet

so...
Keep going I shall

It's payday!!

It's been a LONG time since my last payday before Christmas. It feels like one of the longest pay waits of the year.

Traditionally, January is what I call my 'pure check'. It's a full cheque, WITH all those darn deductions so I can actually see the difference if we have had a raise. Last year, however, we still didn't have our two year late agreement on a contract from 2013, so I can't use my January to January.

The retro pay was added onto a cheque last spring so I can't really see the net increase without trying to figure out what deductions were for the reg cheque and which were for the retro part.

If we do noon supervision, that is added to the cheque and then deductions come off that too. Having the noon supervision throws everything off figuring things out :-)

But I can compare gross monthly wage to gross monthly wage.  The gross dollar difference is a raise of $137 per month.

It looks like I will bring home a net of $70 per month. 

Time to figure out where to add that to my budget.

La Loche

I had a few emails and messages from folk inside the blogging world and outside, making sure I was ok. thank you.

Today in our province there was a community/school shooting that has made international news. It was a few hours from me, but I teach with folk who have taught there and know the people involved. It is quite a bit north and a community that has  had much tragedy, suicide and mental illness.


Two young men were killed in their home. The shooter then went to the school and killed a young, 21 year old teacher assistant and one 35 year old teacher in his first year there, as well as injuring several others. The suspect is in police custody.

Such incredibly sad news.

First snowflakes

Literally, Wednesday night and Thursday, we had one of our bigger snowfalls this winter. It looked pretty falling down yesterday morning against the lights of the school as I trudged into work at 7:45 AM.

I finally had time after school while the banks were still open, to take in my first snowflakes. They came in from the lottery scratchers I got over Christmas. I had a decent set. Not a $10 000 set, but I will take the $62 I won, and appreciate them  I put the toonie in my money jar, and put the $60 towards my first 'snowflake' goal, which is my Back to School Jar. That jar balance is now at $230.

I am trying something different and seeing if the cash snowflakes can take care of that planned spending goal, before it becomes to my next target on the budget. (First Target is Summer 2016).