Rant and Rave 2: Freaking Food

Rant:

Hi my name is Gwen and I have a prob­lem with food. Not like the tra­di­tion­al prob­lems of eat­ing too much or too lit­tle, or even the prob­lem of eat­ing bad stuff. (Although I could prob­a­bly stand to eat less sugar.)

No, my prob­lem is not mak­ing my own. I ate out WAY too much last week, and I’m not hap­py about it. A cou­ple of movies, and a few lunch­es out at work real­ly add up quick­ly. There was one day when I was just too lazy to make my lunch, and anoth­er day was my 2 year anniver­sary  with the com­pa­ny so of course I had to go out with my cowork­ers and get real­ly amaz­ing food like this bit of deliciousness:

 

I’ve real­ly been strug­gling with mak­ing my din­ner in the evenings on week­days.  When I don’t make my din­ner, I don’t have left­overs, which then forces me to buy my lunch. I have the food to make din­ner, I’m just being lazy. And that’s real­ly dif­fi­cult for me to admit, but it’s true. I have 3 dozen eggs for good­ness’ sake! There’s no need for me to have toast every morn­ing when I could make a batch of easy egg bites and grab one when I need it.

I might have men­tioned this a time or two before, but I’m mov­ing soon. Most of my kitchen sup­plies are going to be wrapped up in box­es at the new place for two weeks before my offi­cial move-in, so I’m going to make big batch­es of food before hand and eat the left­overs while I don’t have access to my pots, pans, and spat­u­las.  This should help lim­it the “well, I don’t have any cook­ware, guess I have to go out!” excus­es. Notice I say lim­it, not elim­i­nate. I know myself too well for that :/

My vow: I’m going to make my din­ner every sin­gle night this week. I was home most of the day on Sun­day, so I was able to cook ahead for some things (break­fast, I’m look­ing at you!) which will make my vow eas­i­er to stick to. I also have a date on Fri­day, so I’m look­ing at that as my reward for behav­ing myself.

Rave:

Two things hap­pened recent­ly that deserve a men­tion. The first item of note was I got the offi­cial HR paper­work for my new posi­tion. Since I’m mov­ing to a big­ger town that’s more attrac­tive and expen­sive to live in, I’m get­ting a raise! Com­bined with my ear­li­er year­ly raise, my salary is now 5.4% high­er this year! We’re only talk­ing an extra ~200 or so a month, but every lit­tle bit will help. Not to men­tion, I need to adjust my pro­jec­tions for the next few years since I was­n’t expect­ing this raise. I’m in the mid­dle of writ­ing an arti­cle on my 10 year plan that will go fur­ther into detail about my pro­jec­tions and where I antic­i­pate being in 10 years.

The oth­er thing that hap­pened is I received my mov­ing allowance. I got one when I start­ed with the com­pa­ny, but it did­n’t arrive in time to be use­ful before I moved. I lit­er­al­ly got that one 2 days before I start­ed work­ing. This time they were much more prompt, thank good­ness. I opt­ed for the lump sum pay­ment, so I got a deposit in my account this morn­ing. I can use this on any­thing and every­thing relat­ed to my move. Uhaul truck, overnight accom­mo­da­tions, food along the way, and even a deposit on my new place. I’ve already paid my deposit, but this will be VERY help­ful for the move. I’ll also get some things reim­bursed after I move, like my mileage on my last dri­ve over there. All in all, the mov­ing allowance is almost ²⁄₃ of a nor­mal mon­th’s pay, so this will be a nice buffer in addi­tion to my nor­mal income. Most of it will go direct­ly into sav­ings, since I don’t antic­i­pate need­ing all of it to move.

How has your life been late­ly? Any big events to hoot and holler over?