Follow up on some posts

I wanted to follow up on some posts I made earlier in the month.

30 Day Water/No Caffeine Challenge

I'm pretty sure I'm on day 11 of this challenge. Things are going decent. I did have one major slip up when I accidently drank a sweet tea with my dinner the other evening. I didn't even realize what I was doing until I was 3/4 finished with my meal. I have had to switch up water with some other non-caffeinated forms of drink on occasion. I've had a Gatorade, A Sierra Mist (Yuck!), and that accidental sweet tea.

I'm feeling better as far as not feeling the effects of the caffeine withdrawl. Those effects only lasted a day or 2. After that I was able to sleep again! I was hoping this would be a good side effect of the no caffeine thing, but much to my dismay, it doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I'm back to my non-sleeping ways. On Friday, I tried getting to bed early, but it was closer to 4:00 a.m. before actually falling asleep and I was up again before 9:00 a.m. I blame this for my sub-par performance in the City Bowling tournament. On Saturday night, more of the same.... finally sleep at 4:00 a.m.... back up before 9:00 a.m. And then the rest of the week has been me trying to catch up. Nothing doing. I suck @ sleeping.

Following the money

I also made a promise to track my expenses this month to see where it all goes. I did this for the first half of the month. It wasn't hard to see where I'm wasting the majority....food! I'm always eating out and it gets expensive... especially when sometimes you eat out 3 times a day. This is bad for my health and my checkbook.

There are other places where I'm leaking money, but this is the most obvious. This month, I'm going to try to challenge myself not to eat out for the entire month. I figure for $50 at the grocery store one week and then an additional $15-20 per week after that to restock on lunch/dinner supplies, I can keep the kitchen stocked up with plenty of stuffs to eat. I love to cook, I just hate grocery shopping.

Another obvious place where I'm leaking money is with snuff. I've never been able to kick this habit. It costs me about $4/day (~$1500/year). I'm going to hold off on this one as it's a difficult habit to kick. To kick this habit will probably require me making some huge prop bet with a friend. Something that will really sting. 1.) I don't have enough cash on hand at this point to make such a bet and 2.) I'm not sure any of my nicotine abusing friends would be willing to make such a wager. I guess I could try hypnosis or a patch or something. I just don't have faith in any of those remedies. Willpower and determination. 2 qualities of which I lack.

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So here's to March being greater than February! I expect it to be a good month financially as I trim expenses in real life and take the first steps to moving my poker game to that next level!