Sunday this and that

Do you hear that sound?? Me neither.....that's because my new dishwasher is sooo much quieter!! I've got it running this morning and it's just a low kind of hum.  It's not a super quiet model, but it sure is WAY quieter than our 24 year old dishwasher we just got rid of. I will have to get used to the fact that the wash cycle's on these new washers take like 2 hours or more. The quietness should help DH out too - for some reason the noisy dishwasher was like fingernails on a chalkboard to him.

I think DH and I might go to Home Depot today. He got a gift card for Christmas to use. It's $25 and I'm sure he could find something he can use, but more than likely whatever he finds will be more than that and I'll be kicking in the difference....sigh......He REALLY needs a new desk chair. He spends so much time sitting in it, on his computer, and the seat cushion has worn down and he's been noticing more back problems lately. He found a nice one on craigslist but the lady had someone coming to look at it and never emailed him back, so it must have sold.  I think when I get paid at the end of the month I'll be buying him a new one at Staples. They always have their chairs on sale and usually there is a 15% off coupon you can also print off their website to take into the store. Right now he's got pillows and blankets folded up to cushion his butt and back, along with his heating pad.

I had to laugh at DD yesterday. She came home from work with her first W-2 form. She opened it up and says "what does this mean? I get back $1900?" I look at it and say "No....you made $1900....you get back $12!".  Too funny.

I chatted online with DS the other day. He was excited that he was getting $600 cash for 3 days of work down in Australia. He's helped a guy out who has a construction business and then worked one day at his house - working a website for the guys wife and showing her how to update it, etc. I told him that before he comes home, check into how much it costs to convert his AU money back into USD, since it was so expensive last time he went down there and came home and transferred what he had left back at his bank. I asked him how much it cost to exchange some of his USD when he got there and he said it cost him nothing - he met another racer at the track who was coming to the US for a visit so they did an even exchange dollar for dollar -  pretty smart, eh?!

The way our small electricity company does their billing is kind of annoying. It makes it kind of hard to compare to the same month last year. I had hoped our bill would go down from December of last year, as we did a bit of insulating and we've had DS gone most of the month. It appeared to be more than last year.  But, our billing cycles are never the same each month. They never end on the same day each month. This month had 34 days in the billing period, last year's same month had 29.  So, on closer look, kw usage/cost per day, we did go down some. Now, next month will probably be a shorter number of days in the billing cycle and I am hoping will be a cheaper month. I wish they'd just end their billing cycle on say same day each month and then each month would be 30 or 31 days, not 28 days some billing and 34 other months.  At least they do have the data available on their website so view daily and average usage, so I can at least see if we are now saving some, it just takes longer to figure out and when you never know how many days will be in the bill that comes, it can be quite a bit higher then expected, especially during the high cost winter months. We've had a pretty cold spell here, below freezing every day, the past 10 days or so, which isn't going to help keep next month's bill down any. I am ready for warmer weather!