Thirsty Thursday #7

Thirsty Thursday is my own recurring meme whereupon I lift a glass (metaphorically speaking) to celebrate the triumphs I have experienced in the last seven days. They can be big, they can be small, but there has to be something because I believe life is all about looking at the positive. It's simply too short and too unpredictable to focus on the negative. So with that in mind, here is why I'm raising a glass today:

1. In an effort to reduce our costs, the wife and I have embarked on a mission to more effectively use the coupons that come with the Sunday papers and in our mail every week. And by effectively, I mean not just using them because they're available, but coupling them with in-store deals and the like in order to get the best possible deal. With that in mind, we saved about 30% off our purchases this week and loaded up in several items that we won't have to look at replacing for another three months or so... when the next deal for those items rolls around. The hope is that we will reduce how much we spend on groceries by over 50%. This is the perfect thing for my wife to be doing, because she is the list-lady and she loves toying with spreadsheets. Seriously, you should have seen her in our MMO days.

2. Signed up for next term's classes. Introduction to Mobile Computing, and Networking Essentials. Like I've said before, writing is something I want to do, but in the meantime I have to pay the bills, and that's what the degree is about. Now, I really wanted to continue my Java classes, because I've got a good handle on the subject matter and want to push into the more complex stuff, but apparently it's one of those that is only taught every other quarter, and the next quarter isn't one of them. However, the silver lining here is that the book used is the same as the one I'm using now and it's conveniently in e-book form with PDF files for each chapter. Intro to Java is 1 through 8 and Intermediate Java is 9 though 16. So I'll just download the latter and work on that with the other classes since each chapter only takes me about a day to run through. Aside from that, I'm really excited about the next term, but I have to stay focused on finishing out this term.

That's it for this week. Not much, I know, but some weeks there won't be. I'm also being conscious about repeating myself, so there's that as well. There are victories that come every week, but they're not always worth repeating.

Oh, and just to show my homerism here... GO MAVS!