Day Thirty-six: Listening for good reading

When I woke up this morning at close to my normal 6:00 AM time, I realized that I'm really enjoying not working, at least not working for someone else. The only problem is that so far I haven't found a way to get money for it. I am revising downward the amount of money I need. Less is truly more--time, in this Life after Layoff.

My wife really got into audio books in the last few years, one of the reasons I got her an iPod with the inscription: "Marilyn, the JOY of my life." As I reported on my long ride down to Pasadena, I was listening to that iPod and an audio book that she recommended to me, The Secret. Well, I finally finished that particular listening today in my driving around to buy things.

And buy things I did. In fact, I've been buying the whole month of August, so far. I'm always buying food, but when I made the chocolate cupcakes, I discovered that my Hershey's Dutch Processed Special Dark cocoa was running so low that I probably wouldn't have enough to make another batch. The three grocery stores I've stopped in so far haven't had any "Dutch Processed" cocoa.

Today though, I have spent the most money in one day since I bought the shed. I won't say how much I spent, but what I spent it on is as follows:

A new suit and alterations on the two suits that are now too large for me.
A new blue blazer and a couple of shirts and ties.
A soap dish so I don't have to use the soap out of travel case.
A set of those push up grips. (Yes, I was intrigued by the television ads but got them at Bed Bath and Beyond with a 20% discount.)

Four hundred business cards for handing out on the Marilyn Westbrook Fund.




And a photographic print cartridge to print quality pictures of Marilyn for a poster I need to make for the International NLN Conference coming up the end of August. (The conference is the reason I bought the suit and blazer. The alterations were really for my son's wedding on September 13th.)

I've scanned more slides today but the scanner locked up when I tried to delete the 72 I had just moved to my hard drive. Then it was time for a meal. I'm not trying to be so skimpy on the calories any more but do want to continue keeping the fat calorie percentage at 10%. The day before I decided to undertake this renewed body fuel consciousness, I bought a couple containers of hummus. The commercial hummus has a tremendous amount of fat content. Beyond that, the serving size is just two tablespoons, hardly enough to spread on one half of a 300 calorie bagel.