I just received my new e-statement for Duke Energy. I dropped the bill another $12 to $54, but I still think I can get below $50. The gas usage dropped from 21ccfs to 14ccfs, and the electric usage dropped from 192kWh to 168kWh. This is the second lowest bill I’ve gotten since I’ve been here, and the lowest was for a whopping 2 or 3 days and cost about $9.

I filled up on gas on Tuesday. I spent the last tank of gas trying to get the best MPG I could. I want to get 37 MPG out of my car. I don’t know how achievable it is. I removed some excess stuff from my car (including completely emptying out the trunk, removing the back seat, and some other stuff.) and I managed to get an extra 2 days out of one tank of gas. I went about 400 miles on less than 13 gallons of gas… I think the MPG I calculated was 33MPG and some change. It’s going to be rough adding a whole 4 MPG, but I’m also considering that the first tank of gas included a trip to Franklin with 4 people in the car and a trip to Aunt Maria’s (where there are tons of hills.) So ideally, if I keep up the methods I’m using, I think I can go 3 weeks on this tank of gas.

Mike has been with me for 2 months now. He’s starting to consider if he wants to get a place of his own or if he wants to just hang with me for a little while longer. He actually is checking out a place today, but he wasn’t very excited by the location of it. It looked decent in pictures but pictures can’t tell everything. It could be awesome. It could totally suck. I don’t think he has the intention of moving in either way, I think he just wants to get an idea of what his options are. In any case, he’s welcome as long as he wants. He started working at Meijer a few weeks ago… just doing general work… a few days in to it, someone suggested that he apply to be part of the inventory crew. He had an interview for that recently and will be starting next Wednesday. The best part is that the job is only Monday through Thursday, so with that in mind, he got a second job for a valet service that his friend works for and seems to be pretty excited about having 2 paychecks.

I still really want a second job. Now that Mike is going to be working some evenings leaving me home alone, I might just go ahead and get some secondary job for a little extra income. My big concern is that I’m not sure who needs a guy that can only work a few hours in the evening a little bit on the weekends.

Work has been so-so. I’m not too fond of the stuff I’ve been working on lately. I’m learning new things with it, which is good… but at the same time a lot of the work is a bit mindless. The majority of the trouble is the fact that there is a lot of work, not that it’s particularly complicated. It’s really a “lather, rinse, repeat” deal.  I pick up other jobs when I get the chance, but needless to say I can’t really be a part of any big projects for other departments.  We had a lot of layoffs about a month or two ago.  There have been a few since “Black Friday”, but I’d like to think that I shouldn’t be worrying.  Even still, the mood around here has been a bit on the bitter side.  We’re all fairly worried about what could happen, and it doesn’t help that we’re supposed to have a company-wide review next month in which some overdue raises will be determined… makes it pretty hard to negotiate for more money when the company lost a chunk of business and had to let people go, ya know?  If my goal is to be making $40,000 by 2010, I’m in a bad place right now to still be wondering how I’m going to do that.  Maybe this is where the second job comes in.

Anyway, I’m probably going to be giving the site a quick makeover soon.  I just don’t know how I want to go about it… or exactly what I want to do.

See ya.