Megan recently wrote in her blog about the difference between her trying not to spend money, and me trying not to spend money.

As you all know, this is Buy Nothing Month. I’ve done VERY well.  I have absolutely nothing to show for my month (I haven’t bought any new clothes, bought any soda or coffee while out, haven’t bought any trinkets, or candy, or gum, or anything like that).  I haven’t even bought new sneakers, which I need to.  I think it’s because I don’t want to go out shopping.  I’m avoiding it.

I did, however, go to that movie, the Secret Life of Bees, last night with my mom.  It was good, and all three of us girls cried.  It was based on the novel of the same name, which we read for book club several years ago.  I think it’s also one of Sally’s favorite books.  It was only $5, and I paid with a $10 dollar bill, so I got a $5 back that I will save!

But Megan is right, I haven’t done as much fun things as she has.  But I have gone to Hooligans twice with friends, and to Destare  twice, once with friends, and once with my dad and friends during a planning meeting of the next beer fest. I also went to the most recent debate with friends.  But I haven’t been to any concerts or gigs or art museums.

And yes, I have a car.  I put $34 of gas into it two weeks ago today, and I’ve driven 111 miles, and still have half a tank left.  I had to drive to Worcester to get my brother which accounts for about 50 miles. I wish that I had taken one of my parents cars, cause that would be more representative of how much I actually use my car.  I also have been driving to the house where I babysit, and that’s in Leominster.  There’s no way I could walk there.  It takes me a full 20 minutes to drive there (sometimes a little more).  I live very close to Destare, and wish I could walk there, but I would be walking to (now with it getting dark so early) and home from work in the dark.  What I should do, is get some friends of mine from FSC to come in every night and stay until I leave, and then we can all walk home together.  But I don’t think that’s really a reasonable thing to have happen.  But Megan is right, if I could walk to work and the grocery store safely, I definitely would.  I walked to the grocery store yesterday after walking to the gym.  I bought milk (in cardboard!), some veggies, and some fruit.  So unless Megan thinks I should start walking home from a bar at 3 in the morning, I think I’m going to continue calling my car a necessity.  Plus, I don’t even think people from work would LET me walk home.  They’re crazy enough about watching us girls to make sure we get into our cars safely.  But I would totally love to live in a city where I can walk everywhere.  I would sell my car in a heartbeat!

Ohh… but I did give my dad $65 for my cell phone this month.  Eekkk…. that’s more than $2 a day!  That’s a lot of money.  But I was paying about $50 for my phone before I got my iPhone, so its really not too bad.  And I had to pay an extra $9 cause I went over on text messages…. by a lot.  But that will not happen this month!  (I have 200 texts for $5, the next up plan is 1500 texts for $15 — $10 more, so I went over $9, which is $1 less than if I had the more expensive plan.)

I think that the main difference between Megan and I, is that she does a lot more fun things than I do.  I don’t really have that many friends that I hang out with, plus, she has a husband that she does things with.  When I had a boyfriend who I hung out with all the time, I did fun things, too!  Lately, I’m trying to take note on when things are happening up at the college, and I’m trying to do them.  Tonight, there is a DJ at Hooligans (a DJ?  at Hooligans?  Why?), but it’d be something to do.  Wednesday is my night to try to do fun stuff.  I have a meeting tonight at the library about fundraising, but other than that, I have no plans.

So I think that Megan needs to weigh doing fun stuff, with spending the money on doing the fun stuff.  Unless you can find tons of stuff to do for free, you’re going to have a hard time trying to do both (fun stuff, and saving money).  Maybe it’s that Megan needs to not do so much, or do more things that don’t cost anything!

And that I need to do more fun things.

I did the most steps I have ever done, and this is amazing for two reasons:
I didn’t work today
I am sick with a cold

But here is the total (and I haven’t even gone upstairs and gotten ready for bed yet… so it’ll be at least 100 steps more than this number –  I’ll update it tomorrow with the REAL total)

18,686 steps. 9.43 miles. 15,700 aerobic steps.

update:  18,909. I had only 90 steps to go to make it 19,000…. but I was tired, and I’m not that crazy.

And it was a nightmare!!!

I had a dream that I was out, and spent $10 on a shirt (or a skirt, or something).  It was a super deal, so I just had to have it, but then after I bought it, I realized “Oh no!!!!  I wasn’t suppose to  buy anything!!!”  And I couldn’t believe it.  I had bought something, and I only have about a week and a half left.  Then, yesterday, I was walking somewhere and was thinking about my challenge, and I thought “Oh crap, but I bought that thing….” and then I remembered that it was a dream!  And all was well with the world.

I still haven’t bought anything, but I’m planning on going to a movie tonight with my mom and her friend.  It’s cheap movie night, and tickets are only $5.  I’m sick again, so I don’t even know if I’m up for going.

Oh, and it’s been a whole week since I’ve had a diet soda.  And to answer Megan’s question, I’ve stopped drinking Crystal Light too.

Walked to the gym again, and got a lot of the trash I had missed. There was also, unfortunately, a lot of trash in places that I KNEW that I had gotten all of the trash.  24 hours later, there was trash again.

At the gym, I’ve been doing interval training. One minute jogging at 5mph and one minute running at 8mph. It’s fun, and Eric said it’s the best way to burn fat. I also enjoy walking  to the gym cause it’s a good mile each way!

I walked to the gym, and on my way home I picked up trash. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t get all that I could

have, had I had time to slowly walk down the street.

Fat.

That’s the obvious answer.
What else could it be?

Made her lactose intolerant?
Made her get brain freeze?

Any others?

Those guys who left me a note back in September are back at it again!  They left that first one with the hearts a while ago.  They drew the hearts on the credit card receipt that I had to turn in at the end of the night, so I took a picture of it.

Then they came in Thursday night, and again, tried to get me to sell them alcohol (they’re all under 21). This one says “Bye!  You should totally serve us alcohol next time.” They also wrote that on the back of the credit card recipt, so I had to pass that in at the end of the night, too!

My mom bought this “eco” Palmolive dishwasher detergent.  It’s nice that she’s trying to be better at saving the environment… but I’m not sure how “green” this really is. They say it doesn’t contain phosphates.  I don’t even know what phosphates are (a salt of phosphoric acid)!  There are no ingredients listed on the bottle.  That’s a BAD sign. Let’s look into it.  *Does a quick google search*

Not so green.  It contains bleach.  According to this article, which was posted back in March (if only we had read it then!), it’s no good!  They recommend Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent which contains neither phosphates nor chlorine (but I’m not sure if it can be bought at our local store).

My mom tries hard, but she’s not such a good green shopper. We have Seventh Generation toilet paper and paper towels at Market Basket (our local, most inexpensive grocery store),  and she doesn’t buy either.  I complained about the bread she bought today (I think it was bread), and she said “Maybe you should do all the shopping!”  I gladly said “Ok.”  She doesn’t really mean it though.  But seriously, I’d do a good job at doing the grocery shopping.  I look into things like whole grains, fiber, calories, healthy stuff like that.

Update:  I told my mom, and she got really upset.  She thought she was buying something that was good for the environment.  It hasn’t been used, so I’m going to return it, and look for the Seventh Generation one.

I was in the shower the other day, and I was looking at all the different things I had in the shower, and all the different recycling numbers they had on them.  Each bottle had a different number!  So then I started to think “Which numbers am I suppose to avoid again?”  I know there are certain numbers that are worse than others.  Today, in my RSS feed, I got my question answered from Green Daily!  Here’s the breakdown:  The safer plastics are #1, 2, 4, and 5. Try to avoid 3, 6, and most plastics labeled with number 7.  For a complete list of all the plastics, and what the numbers mean, see Plastics 101!  And remember, never microwave with plastic (use flass instead), and use wax paper or paper towels (even better, use a cloth napkin or cloth towel, because that won’t lead to trash).

So remember, avoid plastics 3,6, and 7!

I went to the grocery store today for stuff for dinner, and decided to take a little walk around to see the kind of stuff I could find that was plastic free.  Here’s what I found:

These are my two options for peanut butter.  Reduced Fat Smuckers (Yum!  Reduced Fat!) or Teddie All Natural (so it separates and other great things like that.)

I took a little stroll down the juice aisle, and this is my ONLY option.  But it’s pomegranate juice, so that’s good, cause it’s good for you!  But it’s $2.99, and it looks like it’s only a liter.  So that blows.

And again, the ONLY thing down the “snack” aisle.  Iced Oatmeal Crackers, or Ginger Snaps.  These were wrapped in paper.  No thanks. Luckily, if I want cookies, I would make them homemade. Oatmeal raisin cookies can be made entirely without plastic. Which is awesome.

Two options for bar soap, so that’s good.  Caress is my favorite brand of shower gel, so I have high hopes for their bar soap.  This Yardley one is from England!

I was down the bread aisle, and I don’t really eat bread.  I do, however, eat these Multi Grain English muffins.  They only have 100 calories, but they have 8 grams of fiber!!! But they’re wrapped in plastic! Ack! What do I do!!!?? They’re good, and good for me! Dilemma. If I do want regular bread, we have a fantastic bread maker that we got for my special LID cancer diet. It makes fantastic bread.