Yesterday:

Meal One:

Salad

Grilled Chicken Sandwich

Meal Two:

Fries

Today:

Meal One:

Salad

Grilled Chicken Sandwich

Meal Two:

Reeses' Milkshake (so dang good, but so many calories... gah.)

Meal Three

I promise I'm actually going to eat dinner today!  Probably fish and rice.  That sounds really good. 

So, yeah, I start out pretty good, with about the healthiest stuff available at the snack bar.  And then by the time I go home, I'm so tired and hungry and blah that I don't even care.  Until I get home and realize just what I was eating...  Oh well.  It's not a permanent job, and as soon as I start fall semester, I'll go back to one meal a day and hiking the hill at least once a day.  Probably twice, since the only place I can find parking is way up at the top of the hill near the math building.  And my math classes are in the middle of my schedule, I think, so I'll go down the hill for some classes, up for math, and then back down for other classes and finally up again to go home.  Gah.

Work today was hilarious.  I was working with the two high school girls.  I've worked with them both before, but not together.  Well, they got bored and started deep frying random stuff.  Like pickles.  And a lime.  Of course, they had to try all of their creations.  Apparently, the lime was the worse.  One of them said, "Words cannot describe that hell."  Then the tomato, the fried pickle, and the grilled pickle was the most tasteful of the lot.  And then one of them got the idea to fry a dead moth that had been sitting in the window track for probably years.

And then she ate it.

She said it was better than the lime, but she felt like it was crawling around in her throat, even though it had been dead for who knows how long, then dipped in hot oil.

I just stood back and laughed at them so hard...

We got our new phone, finally!  We found a VoIP service that's lots cheaper than our verizon, and it's so much better for us, cause neither of us like people being able to call us anywhere, anytime.  The only time a cell's useful is when I tell Loren when he needs to come pick me up from school, and the school has free public phones for just that reason.  We will be keeping our cells, though, just on the most basic, cheap plan, which is $20 a month per phone, rather than $55.  With the VoIP, we get unlimited local and long distance for only $25 a month, which adds up to a savings of almost $50 a month.  And we probably won't renew our contract when it comes due.  Then it'll be a savings of almost $90 a month.  I can't believe we stuck with verizon for so long.  The only reason we did was because the cancelation fees were so much.  They'll do anything to keep you there.

In an effort to avoid the massive balloon-effect that the free, greasy food at my job will undoubtably give me, I'm going back to what I made this blog for in the first place, that is, recording my eating.  I have to admit, it's been really embarressing.  I don't have a scale, so I don't really know how much I've gained already, but I can tell I have.  Loren says I look fine, but he'd say I look fine if I was bald and wearing a potato sack.  He's just sweet like that.

So, for today:

Breakfast  (if you can call it that after noon):

Toast

Crystal Light lemonaide

Lunch:

BBQ Chicken sandwich

Pasta salad

Cookie

Dinner:

Split pea soup

More lemonaide

Oh, yeah!  I found something in our rental agreement that might let us get a pet!  We both want a cat so bad.  So we're going to talk to the manager about it when we go to turn in the new agreement.  I hope we can, and that it's not just for seeing eye dogs and the like.  I miss having a cat!  I would really have to work harder to keep the house clean, because Loren's slightly allergic, but I think if I vacuum regularly and if the cat isn't allowed in our bedroom, it would work.  I hope so!

Things have reached a new low, financially.  We mapped out our income and bills for the next two weeks, and they are pretty much equal.  That's not including food.  So tonight I opened up the food storage we got for our wedding (thank you, grandparents!) and I'm pretty much going to be putting beans/rice/wheat in everything for a while, and making bread for as long as the flour lasts.  After that, I'm out of ideas.

Loren has applied at Qwest, which, according to our brother in law who just got a job with them, is hiring and has amazing benefits, especially for a job that only requires a high school diploma.  We are praying he gets it.

Our credit card, which is how we've been paying for rent, is about to run out.  We have about another month or two of credit left.  With my job being unreliable, and Loren's boss being senile and paranoid, that job with Qwest is pretty much our only hope.

Registration for fall semester started on the first of the month, and I should have registered then, but since I owed the school about $300 for insurance I could have lived without, I couldn't.  I applied for a private grant.  Guess what they told me.  I have to do verification again.  Remember how my Stafford loans were about two months late last year?  Yeah, I have to go through that stupid process again.  At least it's just Loren and my tax stuff this year.  My parents won't have to come into it at all.  I was told that I would have to wait one to two weeks for the government to get back to the school with the okay.  At this point, I'm pretty much in breakdown mode.  It's my senior year for heaven's sake!  I have to get these classes if I want even the hope of graduation only a semester late.  Two weeks from now is after the new freshmen and after the off track students get a crack at the classes. 

We are pretty much at the end of our rope.  So we fasted yesterday.  Probably the most sincere fast I've ever done.  Possibly second to the time my mom was in the hospital and I thought she was dying, but I don't remember- I was only in middle school and I don't even remember why she was sick now.  Possible but not likely.

About ten o'clock last night, while Loren was at work, doing one of his two shifts this week, I checked my email, hoping against logic that there would be some good news.

And there was.

They gave me $600 to cover the debt I have right now, plus $1,000 extra for the school year.  I only had to do a few things like write a thank you letter to the man who gave the grant, which I bawled almost the whole time I was writing, and watch a few hours of money management videos.  I can handle that.  It's like getting paid $200 an hour.  I'm okay with that.

We're still praying hard for Loren to get that job, but this grant will help this month, and maybe help us from being in the same situation next summer.  I'll probably get the maximum amount of Pell grants, since I'm now married and not a dependent of my parents, and that should keep me from getting more student loans this year.  I want to avoid as much student debt as possible.  Contrary to what it may seem, I really do know how to manage money.  I would give anything (almost.  I'm keeping Loren.  But pretty much anything else.) to be completely out of debt, but the fact remains that our income is less than our bills.  Which really sucks.

Pray for us.  We need another miracle.

So greedy I sound.  I should be happy with just this grant.

I've just noticed that I've been all doom and gloom about our finances a lot recently.  I'm sorry!  I'll do my best to find something else to complain about for the next month!  

I get free food at my job.  It's a lot of greasy stuff- hamburgers, fries, other deep fried stuff- or sugary stuff- ice-cream, soda, candy.  It's going to be bad, I can tell that already.  I've had more soda and candy in the last week than I had in probably three months.  Uh-oh.  Loren mentioned that I need to be really careful what I eat at work, and I though, "This from the guy who will eat half a cake in one day.  It's none of his business anyway."  But he's right.  It might just be a mental thing so far, but I feel like I'm putting on a bit more fat around the middle.  I should start doing sit ups.  Or stop snagging a fry every time I walk by the tray.  That would probably work too.  It would take less self control, too.