No TV tonight or tomorrow. My satellite dish pole got backed up into and bent. The soonest I can get a repair man out here is Saturday Morning.

This is minor. At least it is the TV and not the lights, water, or heat.

This year has been strange. I wasn't certain where I was goiing to have Thanksgiving. I thought for a while I was going out of town,then I thought that I was having a house full of guests.

So I hurriedly cleaned the house and bought almost a 100.00 worth of food. I live alone and rarely have food in the house. This included a 12 lb Turkey

Tonight three of my guests have called and cancelled all with very good reasons I might add. So it is goiing to be me and one other person with a 12 lb Turkey and all of the trimming.

I guess I will join the fun with my own list. I am not sure there is anything interesting about me. I am a pretty boring person. Also it is entirely possible that if someone reads this who knows me they wil recognize me However, that doesn't bother me.


1. I am a Mohawk, member of the bear clan.

2. I am a widow having been married for 9 years until I woke up one morning and found my partner dead of a heart attack at 48. No history of heart disease.

3. I teach at s small midwestern university

4. Even though I am have an Ivy League Ph.D. I prefer teaching to research. Something that occasionally get me into at work,

5. I tend to be a loner and am sometimes very lonely. I do not make friends easily.

6. I am very interested in Social Justice and especially financial social justice. However, I also can't seem to find an outlet for this interest.

7 I live in a small midwestern town which is very uncongenial. I have considered moving, however, I am tenured and you don't walk away form a tenured position.

8. I like computers but have very little formal training in them. I would consider myself semi-computer literate. I use the net and PowerPoint almost everyday.

9. I am extremely stubborn. This has its good and bad points.

10. If there is something I truly dislike about myself. It is that I am a couch potato. However, I do not seem to do anything about it.

11. Financially I earn an income slightly above the median for my state and the nation. However, I ended up extremely in debt for my education.

12. My mother could not read or write.

PSThought of some more things to add

13. I absolutely adore cats. I have two.

14. I hate absolutely categorically hate doing laundry but I do love wearing clothes.

I've been looking at how much I'm spending on cleaning supplies. toiletries, pet supplies and food.I've just calculated that I've spent an average of 318.00 for the last three months. August was my highest month at 383.

This seems high to me. There is just me 2 cats and a dog. I do tend to eat out a lot. I've pretty much stopped cooking since I was widowed but Have been trying to reestablish the habit of cooking.

I think that I will try cutting this back a little at a time until I feel seriously deprived. For the rest of the month (excluding Thanksgiving) I am going to try and stay under $10 a day for food and supplies.

I'm not sure what a reasonable

Yesterday was payday and it got me to thinking about paying bills and finances in general and I realized that there are a few things I really dislike about my job financially.

NO its not the pay itself. I know that I am under the national average in my field by about 10,000 a year. (The uni8on keeps telling me, if nothing else.) I am actually pretty satisfied with my income. Its Okay, not great and certain not what many people on this site make but OK.

No it is the little things I dislike. I am forced to pay 24.00 a month for parking at work.

I also dislike being paid once a month for 9 months. This makes summer budgeting extremely difficult. Even though I work really hard to put away money for the summer. I would really like a 12 month pay plan. The company has so far refued to do this for us. Although there is a group of us who are still working on it. Yes I know this is not in my best interest. It is giving the company free use of my money but it would lower my financial stress.

The other thing I hate is that my income is public. It is on the web for heaven's sake with my name attached to it. Because I am a public employee the infomration is public. They used to put it out in what was called "red books." You had to at least go to a library and look the information up. Now you can simply use ay web browser and go to the company's website. Its annoying.

However I do realize that I am one of the lucky ones. I do love my job. IT has some flexibility in hours and it allows me to do what I love doing. Overall I am pretty fortunate.