The answer is simple, you can make it yourself. I didn’t purchase the latest “Energy Star” model from my local appliance store, in fact I bought it at my local lumber and hardware store. If you haven’t put two and two together yet, I built a clothsline in my back yard.

For about $30 in lumber and hardware, and a bit of manual labor to build and install it, I have a new clothesline that can hold 3 loads of laundry at a time. It costs me nothing in energy to use since it is 100% solar and wind powered, and there are no expensive parts to wear out over time. I could replace the whole thing for less than the average cost of a single part on my traditional dryer.

I sat down and did some estimating the other day and figured my electric clothes dryer is costing $.71 or more per load of laundry. Now our electricity rate is fairly cheap here, but several things factored into this estimate. To start with, here are some facts used for my calculations:

• Electric rates for me are between between $.075 and $.09 per kWh at summer rates with all the taxes and various fees added in. Since I always like to estimate high when figuing out how much an appliance will cost me to run, I’ll use the higher side of the average or $.085.
• A typical dryer is rated for 4400 watts, meaning it will use 4.4 kWh during when used for an hour, or (4.4 x $.085) $.375 per hour
• Our washer has a higher capacity than our dryer, and we rarely remember to take this into account when loading the washer. Therefore it normally takes at least 1.5 drying cycles to fully dry a load. A cycle on the dryer is about an hour, so we average 1.5 hours per load, or (1.5 x $.375) $.56 in electricity per load.
• The less tangible cost (which I’m primarily just guessing at) is the cooling cost for the house in general. The room is noticibly warmer when running the dryer. This tells me a couple of things. First the obvious, the dryer is warming the air around it. Its a big heater in a box. Second, the less obvious, it is taking air I’m paying to cool, warming it up, and shoving it outside. This also means it is pulling warmer air from the outside back into the house. I’m estimating it costs at least $.15 per load or more for this “hidden” cooling cost.

The clothes line cost me about $35 to build between the lumber, hardware, and supplies (clothes pins and a clothes pin bag) to get started. At $.71 per load of laundry, that will take 49 loads to break even. At 7 loads of laundry per week, that is only 7 weeks until it starts leaving money in my pocket. I estimate if I can use it for 6 months out of the year, that $35 investment will return around $110 in savings. For those of you doing the math, you may say “Why not $130?” Well the reason for this is it is only $.71 per load during the hottest summer weeks, typically most of July and August, when we use the air conditioners. When the temperature is under 78 degrees or so, we just leave the windows open at night to cool the house and close it up during the day. The house stays nice and comfortable without any additional cooling except for a couple of fans to keep the air moving around a bit.

My only concern so far is that I used the cheap plastic clothsline cord. It seems to sag a bit under heavy load, and I’ve already had to tighten it once as it has stretched. What I may end up doing is replacing it with the plastic-coated steel cable. It’ll only cost another $5-6 dollars to do so, and I probalby should have used it to start with. I used the plastic cord to start with as it was easier to work with. Just cut it with a knife and tie it to the eye-bolt instead of needing bolt cutters to cut it and special cable clamps to secure it.

I’m considering investigating something to keep the savings (and environmental friendlieness) going in the winter. Essentially this would mean a drying rack or line inside for the passive drying, or venting the electric (never try this with gas!) dryer indoors. The drying rack or line would give the benefit of no extra heat required to dry the clothes, though it would be much much slower due to the lower temperature and less moving air. Venting the dryer indoors (with proper lint capturing measures taken) would still use the extra energy to heat, however that heat would be used indoors, lessening the load on the main heating system as well as eliminating the intake of cold air to replace the hot air being vented outside. Both of these systems however have the disadvantage of adding the extra moisture to the air. This can be good in small quantities, but I’m concerned that it could be too much for my family’s laundry load. While I haven’t weighed a load of laundry pre- and post-drying, I’ve read it can be a gallon of water or more per load! That would be a lot of extra moisture in the air. I have read about “spin dryers” that work like the washer’s spin cycle on steroids and “throws” out most of the water. From there it only takes a little while on a drying rack or under half the time in the traditional dryer. I’ll have to post more as the winter approaches.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Made it. Even though I was sick and watched quite a bit of extra TV, it was all non-trackable according to my goal.

• Knight Rider (0 hr) -Forgot to set this to record on the new satellite receiver.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Caught up on a few episodes, still have a way to go.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – One of the Idaho girls got sent home, I was hoping they’d stick around longer.
• Dirty Jobs (0 hr) – Didn’t air last week.
• Grey’s Anatomy (0 hr) – Didn’t air last week.
• ER (1 hr) – Watched a few episodes to try to get caught up.
• 24 (1 hr) – Watched the rest of the 2-hour episode we started last week, then one more. We’re missing an episode so I’ll have to see if I can get it on Fox’s website.
• Solitary 3.0 (1 hrs) – #7 was the winner much to my surprise, I thought #4 would take it.
• Non-tracked viewing: A bunch of educational shows, and a few movies Hi-Def is simply amazing on nature related shows…

At least 2 books per month -February’s goal met, now working on March.

• New Moon by Stephenie Meyer – Finished!
• Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer – Finished! Took less than a week!
• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer – About 1/4 of the way in already.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – I wrote 2 entries but haven’t published them yet. I did just finish up and publish a page I had written over the last week though.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – These last couple of weeks have been so busy and so stressful I haven’t been paying as close attention as I should to my diet. I also missed going to the gym most of last week, and have not been getting up early enough to go this week. I’ve been getting to bed slightly later than I intend (the dangers of reading a good book!) which has made me pretty tired in the mornings.

Budget – I’m happy with where we’re at this week.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Made it.

• Knight Rider (1 hr) – I’m liking how they’re changing the show, I think there are many more places they can take the show now.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Falling further behind in watching.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – I can’t believe the records some of the contestents are breaking.  Only 9 weeks into the season and several of them have already hit some major milestones.
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – Normally I hate recap episodes, but when Dirty Jobs runs them, they show more of the behind the scenes information that makes it worthwhile.
• Grey’s Anatomy (0 hr) – Didn’t air last week.
• ER (1 hr) – Didn’t watch this.
• 24 (1 hr) – Starting to get caught up. We’ve watched  the first 2 hour episode, and half of the 2nd 2 hour episode.
• Solitary 3.0 (1 hrs) -Down to the final 3.
• Non-tracked viewing: Other than some evening news, I’ve watched a few episodes of The Dave Ramsey Show and a couple of episodes in the background of Cops-type shows while working on other things.

At least 2 books per month -February’s goal met, now working on March.

• Twilight by Stephenie Myers – Finished!
• The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying by Suze Orman -Finished!
• New Moon by Stephenie Meyer – About 2/3 of the way through this one already.  I don’t think I’m going to have a problem with this goal.  Now I just need to decide on a non-fiction book to read this month.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – I had 2 posts this week, and honestly it felt good just writing a couple of posts as I wanted to rather than feeling pressured into making a 3rd one.  I still don’t want to drop this goal, but I haven’t decided how to re-write it to meet the spirit of my goal in the first place.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – Up 2.3 direct, also up 2 on the averaged trend. These last couple of weeks have been so busy and so stressful I haven’t been paying as close attention as I should to my diet.  I also missed going to the gym most of last week, and have not been getting up early enough to go this week.  I’ve been getting to bed slightly later than I intend (the dangers of reading a good book!) which has made me pretty tired in the mornings.

Budget – I’m happy with where we’re at this week.

Maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a kid.  If you look at the very basic foundation of their society, they don’t work for a paycheck and go home at the end of the day and try to forget about what they do during the day.  They all work at a job that is enjoyable to them and is a challenge to them, and in exchange they are provided with all of their “needs” and their reasonable “wants.”  Look at the crew in Engineering.  Sure there are days where things break and things don’t go according to plan, but the overwhelming majority of their time is divided between general upkeep of the systems, and research into bettering those very systems.  They figure out a way to attach the sensor array to the warp drive to exponentially increase the range and accuracy of those sensors.  Sure that attracted an alien race from another dimension that wanted to experiment on crew members, but the point is they were working to better the equipment so they could increase the learning efficiency and potential for their society.  They don’t go home at night wondering if what they did is going to make a difference, and by the same token they don’t expect get rewarded with physical items for major accomplishments.  The drive is in the pride of the work they perform.

The unfortunate reasons that our society can not support true socialism at this point is primarily because of two main points, the first being corruption.  When you get leadership (or even middlemen) that find ways to cheat the system and siphon off their own resources, that creates a drain on the society.  As they gain more and more resources, their power to drain even more grows and creates a vicious cycle.  The rich get richer, and the society gets poorer.  This also applies to literary works.  Copyright was originally designed to allow a performer or author to sell their works without competition for the first (approximately) decade, after that their work would move into the public domain so that the entire society would be able to benefit.  Unfortunately we have corrupt leadership in place that has taken the intent of copyright and extended it to allow a media cartel to run the show.  No longer can a budding author take a book from 10 years ago and change key elements in the story and re-write it into a new work based on the original.  This is a prime example of taking a socialist idea and killing it with corruption.

The second reason is there are way too many people in our current society that are more than happy to freeload off of whomever they can, and do the least amount of work they can to get by.  Why work when they can get whatever they want anyway?  Our society even encourages this behavior right now, with government “assistance” programs designed to take the benefits away if a person even tries to get ahead and get off of the program.  A person receiving a disability (or SSI) payment every month will lose that money if they try to work extra in order to get ahead.  Even worse, they are not allowed to save any money.  The SSI payments are designed to help with basic living and medical expenses.  If the person were allowed to save up $5-10K, they would be able to afford the medical expenses out of their own pocket and would no longer need SSI every month to play catchup on the medical debt.  Instead, they are told they have to spend every dime they make or they will lose the assistance.  It is no longer an assistance program to help a person get ahead, it is a full time job designed to keep them from getting ahead.

Capitalism isn’t all bad either.  When people work hard and save their money, ideally they are able to use that money to help society by donating to charities, building community centers, and things along those lines.  The problem is too many people don’t understand this and hold onto their money so tightly that it doesn’t do anybody (including themselves) any good.  For a good example of the way to do it, take a look at Bill Gates.  This man has more money than anyone could ever possibly need.  He set up a non-profit organization (Gates Foundation) that he funnels his money through to do amazing things to help the citizens of our little planet.  Even though the company that made him his money has a reputation for being money grubbing and heavy handed, he still chooses to take his own share and use it for good.

There are so many problems in this world today, but rather than working together to solve them as a group, we tend to pick our own little slice and try to make sure it is given the priority.  Until we all learn to work towards a common goal as a society and move all of our actions in line with that goal, we will never progress beyond where we are now.  Unfortunately we spend too much effort on propping up the failures rather than emphasizing the successes.  All I can do is raise my children to work at something they enjoy and to be proud of the work they do, and maybe someday we’ll be ready to become a true socialist society.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Made it.

• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Didn’t watch yet.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Falling further behind in watching.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs)  -Go Green, well now Black!
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) -  Haven’t watched yet
• Grey’s Anatomy (1 hr) – Got caught up on this one, it was another combined episode with Private Practice below.  It was actually a pretty good storyline.
• Private Practice (1 hr) – See above…
• ER (1 hr) – Didn’t watch this either.  I think I saw the Finale is this week, so I can reclaim this hour.
• 24 (1 hr) – We’re kind of holding off until we get our new TV to watch this now, but it will be nice to watch several at once.
• Solitary 3.0 (1 hrs) – The solitary confinement is starting to make a couple of them crack I think.
• Non-tracked viewing: Other than some evening news, I’ve watched a few episodes of The Dave Ramsey Show and I’ve watched some shows on the Science channel.  I also watched Obama’s speech last night too.

At least 2 books per month -January’s goal met, on track for February.

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer- Finished.  This was surprisingly good for being a book targeted more towards late teens/early adult.  I finished it Monday night, though I didn’t plan to.  I planned to read for about an hour, but when that hour came and went, I ended up reading another hour and completed the book.  There was that point of no return where it got really good and I couldn’t put it down since I was “almost done” anyway.  Will be starting the second book in the series as soon as I finish “9 Steps”.
• The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying by Suze Orman – Couple dozen more pages and this is done.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – I wrote 2 posts but did not get them polished up and published.  I’m considering modifying this goal, not because I’m having trouble meeting the goal, but because I don’t think the goal is meeting the intent.  I’ve been thinking “I need to hurry up and get this out” or “I need to find something to write about” when I’d rather be thinking “This would be something great to write about” or “I’m going to hold off a couple days on posting this to make sure it is polished.”  I don’t know how I am going to change it yet, but I don’t want to eliminate it altogether.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – Up 4 pounds this week, Yikes!  I was not careful over my birthday weekend but I did not go overboard either. 0.09 pounds down on the averaged trend. At this point I have to assume it is water weight, so next week’s weigh-in should be great.  Even though I may not have hit my weekly goal I have to remember I’m still down 10 lbs from the start of the year, which is still progress towards this goal, and there is plenty of time.

Budget – Our tax refund did not arrive yet and it was supposed to be here last Friday.  This changed our planned budget but it is not going to break us.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Made it.

• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Didn’t watch yet.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Falling further behind in watching.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) -Go Green!
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – This week’s episode did in fact have Mike visiting Boise, ID!  I had to work late last night so I’ll be watching this one tonight.
• Grey’s Anatomy (1 hr) – Haven’t watched it yet.
• Private Practice (1 hr) – Tied in with Grey’s Anatomy episode from above, so need to see it to get the entire story.
• ER (1 hr) – Didn’t watch this either.
• 24 (1 hr) – Still lagging here.  The first 2 episoded were 2 hours each, and it has been hard to find time for us to both watch it together  If we can make it pas the initial hurdle I think we’ll be able to get caught up rather quickly.
• Solitary 3.0 (1 hrs) – The solitary confinement is starting to make a couple of them crack I think.
• Non-tracked viewing: Other than some evening news, I’ve watched a few episodes of The Dave Ramsey Show and I’ve watched some shows on the Science channel.

At least 2 books per month -January’s goal met, on track for February.

• Twilight -about 1/3 through it now.  This one is a fast read.
• The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying by Suze Orman -Almost done.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Only one post this week, but there’s been a lot going on.  Its kind of a catch-22 in that when I have a lot going on, it makes things I can blog about, but it consequently takes time I could use to write the blog entries.  I could sacrifice some more TV time, but I’m already down to watching a few specific shows and outside of educational programming I never just watch something to be watching something anymore.  I have to have some form of passive entertainment.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – Down 6.3 pounds direct weight this week!  1.87 pounds down on the averaged trend. I’m tracking ever so slightly above my goal, literally by 66 calories per day.  I need to be a little more diligent about getting up in the morning so I can squeeze in an extra 15 minutes at the gym, and/or I need to try to cut about a hundred calories per day average from my diet.  That is such a small number but it really adds up over the long term.

Budget – Back to using cash.  It’s too easy to let it slip and overspend when using plastic, even when its just a debit card.

What we’re looking at doing is getting something in the 36″ to 47″ range.  Originally we were thinking 32″, but it isn’t really any larger than our existing TV since the widescreen format changes how they’re measured.  Since part of our desire to upgrade is to be able to read the smaller text on the screen from across the room, sticking to something that doesn’t give us any additional size is kind of a waste.  Over the last few days I’ve been looking at the local stores and it seems our best bang for the buck right now will be a 42″ LCD screen.  I’ve also looked at a size chart and it seems 42″ is the right size for our room too.  That being said, it says a 27″ standard TV is about the right size for our room, and I think a 32″ would be much better.  The price difference from 42″ to 47″ seems to be a little steep right now though.

What I’m deciding now is whether it is worth the small price difference to go from 720p up to 1080p.  While the broadcasts currently aren’t at 1080p (according to local TV salesmen for what it is worth) they could be in the future, and we would also see that if we picked up a Blueray player.  Since I don’t anticipate doing that any time soon, I don’t think that is a very big deal.  The only HD input we’ll have for now is the Xbox 360, and we may decide to upgrade satellite receivers sometime down the road but that won’t be on the table for a while anyway.  Also in some research I’ve done, Dish (which is who we use) seems to have the best HDTV quality but its still not full 1080p.  I am noticing however that there doesn’t seem to be much difference at all price wise, it just depends on what models the store currently has.

The thing that is hard to keep in mind is that we may notice a difference when looking at the TV models side by side in the store, but at the end of the day when we get it home it is going to look thousands of times better than what we currently have.  Because of that little fact right there, I’m concentrating on getting the best value in the size range we want, and I am hopeful that this purchase will last us another 9 and a half years.  I guess worst case in a few years if we want to upgrade again, this would make a heck of an improvement for a TV in our bedroom…

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Over the limit, but was home sick yesterday and consequently watched more TV than normal.  If I had not watched the extra episodes of Solitary I would be well under.

• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Didn’t watch yet.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Watched one episode, still several behind.  I can’t imagine the feelings people would go through to strive for this perfect solution to literally all of their problems, only to find out that solution was only a dream and failed to produce.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – Finally got rid of the Silver team!  Yay!  I felt bad for Carla as she worked her butt off just to have Joelle throw it all away for her, but that’s the breaks and they chose to be together as a team.  And then when they met afterward for Joelle to keep saying she tried when it was very obvious she didn’t was beyond annoying.  She has some issues with personal responsibility for sure.  It was too bad to see the black team get split up too, but I was glad to see the brown team got to stay for another week with a phenominal loss!
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – Was pretty gunny watching Mike separate out dirty diapers from last week’s episode.  Went to watch this week’s but the wife was too freaked out about watching anything to do with spiders right before bed.
• Grey’s Anatomy (1 hr) – Haven’t watched it yet.
• ER (1 hr) – Didn’t watch this either.
• 24 (1 hr) – Still behind on this, but I can’t wait to get started. Marathon didn’t happen yet.  I did notice the DVR was missing one episode so we’ll have to catch that one on Hulu if its there.
• Solitary 3.0 (5 hrs recorded) -  What a crazy show!  It is amazing how far these contestants will push themselves for $50K.  I have not watched all of the episodes I’ve recorded yet, but I have watched 3 of them.
• Non-tracked viewing: Other than some evening news, I’ve watched a few episodes of The Dave Ramsey Show.  Dish finally added Fox Business to their lineup, though I had to increase my programming package in order to get it.  It may seem odd to spend more money ($10 per month) to watch a show where the primary theme is saving money but I get more than that in motivation over a period of a month, plus there are several more channels (like the Science Channel and Discovery Kids) that we will enjoy too.

At least 2 books per month -January’s goal met, on track for February.

• Twilight – Finally started reading this.  I’m not too far in but so far it seems to be well written and should be a fast read once I get going.  Cristi read it in a few days, and if she can read a book that quickly I have no doubt I can too if I take the time to do it.
• The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying by Suze Orman -Almost done.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Got this one done this week with plenty of time to spare!  I should be able to do the same this week too.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – Up 1.5 pounds direct weight this week, but if I go by yesterday’s weight I’m down 4.2 lbs.  I had quite a bit of sodium yesterday being home sick eating raman noodles, so I think today is artificially high.  Even with today’s higher weight I am still 1.65 pounds down on the averaged trend.  If I use yesterday’s weight (its easy to be artificially high, but not artificially low) I’m on-track for my long term goal.

Budget – We never did set down and do our budget for the last pay period as I mentioned before, but even so we still didn’t overspend and come up short.  We made a few smaller trips to the grocery store, rather than one big trip, but overall we did very well having considering ourselves as completely slacking off this time around.  We will be going over our specific budget before this week’s paycheck to get back on the wagon.

Anyone who knows anything about taxes knows that the tax code is so confusing that unless you’re filing a 1040EZ form, you need to use a professional service or product in order to make sure it is OK.  Some of us are just above the “EZ” level and simple do-it-yourself options like Turbotax suffice.  Others, and I believe Daschle would fall into this category, really have no choice but to use a good CPA to make sure they are doing everything by the book.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume there was no intentional deception on the part of Daschle and it was in fact a legitimate oversight.  With that said, that tells me there are 2 parts to the problem here.  First of all, his CPA was incompetent.  A CPA worth their weight in salt would have been asking enough questions of him to catch this mistake before they were filed, or at least long before it reached the $150K point.  I think he could have saved himself by pointing this fact out.  “I’m sorry, my CPA made a gross mistake.  I trusted their professional opinion and they unintentionally misled me.  I’ve paid the back taxes and subsequent penalties owed, and will be having my completed tax return reviewed by a 2nd CPA before filing from now on to make sure this never happens again.”  No harm, no foul, and he’d probably already be confirmed as HHS Secretary by now.

Whether or not it was a mistake by the CPA, this does expose a very large problem with our tax system today: its horribly overcomplicated.  If a CPA doesn’t know whether use of a car is a gift or considered income, when it is their sole job to know, we have a problem.  Americans spend an estimated $300 Billion dollars per year on tax preparation services of some sort, and this does not include the cost to keep the IRS in place to monitor and enforce the tax rules.  How much more money could Americans and American Corporations save if they could keep and invest this otherwise wasted money?

This is one of the reasons I’m a big proponent of the Fair Tax.  In a nutshell, the Fair Tax system eliminates the income tax system and implements an across-the-board Federal sales tax.  Calculations show that the tax rate would be in the 30% range, which would keep about the same revenue going to the government, and keep people’s tax liability roughly the same.  Talk about simple!  No more keeping shoeboxes full of receipts to sort through. No more IRS audits to see that you claimed an extra $50 in deductions that you weren’t entitled to.  Did you buy groceries today?  You paid your taxes.  Did you buy that new vacuum sealer for your business?  Your taxes are paid.

Under the current proposed Fair Tax, every person in the country with a social security number would receive a “prebate” for all taxes paid up to the poverty level.  This means low income families would effectively not be taxed at all, which is how it works today for the most part.  Any money spent above and beyond the poverty level would all be taxed at the same rate, meaning “the rich” will be paying exactly the same tax rate that the “middle class” families do.  It is simply a fair way to do it.

Another huge advantage to the fair tax is there would be no more tax on savings and investment!  This has phenomenal result.  Since only spending would be taxed, any money placed into savings and into investments would grow completely tax free.  It will also mean you can invest more too.  If you make $40K and are taxed at say 20% if you have enough deductions, you have $32,000 after taxes are paid.  If you spend $30K, that will leave only $2,000 to invest.  Under the fair tax, if you spend that same $30,000 you would have $10,000 left to invest.  I understand that you would probably spend more than $30,000 due to the increased sales tax, but it would make it easy for people to see where that money is going and would encourage them to save rather than spend.  That $7 fast-food cheeseburger meal looks a lot less appetizing when you know you’re going to have to spend over $9.50 by the time federal and state sales tax is added.  The old TV may last a bit longer when the $1,000 replacement will now be over $1,300.  It is what is already happening, except it moves the tax visibility to the cash register receipt rather than seeing a number on the pay stub.

I believe if the Fair Tax were in place, we wouldn’t have all of the controversial “tax oversights” by people in the spotlight.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Back under the limit this week.

• Double Shot at Love (1 hr) – Season Finale ran.  What a train wreck.  Vikki and Rikki both chose Trevor, and he was forced to choose between them.  He chose Vikki much to my surprise.  I don’t envy his situation, or any of them for that matter.  This show had bad news written all over it from the start.  But then they all chose to put themselves into the situation so I really can’t feel too badly for them.   I recorded the aftermath show (half hour I think, maybe an hour, under goal either way) but went to bed before watching it last night.
• Knight Rider (1 hr) – The last episode seemed to get back to the roots of the original show, a group of people secretly helping law enforcement.  I think it has some good things in store if the network doesn’t blow it.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Still Haven’t watched this yet. Been too busy with other things.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – This week’s episode will be watched tonight.  Cristi and I played Halo and Wii for a while last night and didn’t want to stay up late enough to watch this.
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – Haven’t watched it yet.  I did hear rumors yesterday that they filmed an episode in Boise and it will be airing in a couple of weeks.  I can’t wait to see if it is the truth, but I don’t have time to go search for info to confirm it ahead of time.
• Grey’s Anatomy (0 hr) -No episode this week.
• ER (0 hr) – Don’t think this one aired this week either.
• 24 (1 hr) – Still behind on this, but I can’t wait to get started.  Marathon this weekend?
• Non-tracked viewing: Other than some evening news, I watched a couple of episodes of Predator Raw, the behind the scenes and update show on Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator series.  I don’t know if it was necessarily educational, but I disqualified it as I was in bed, waiting for Cristi to get done with some things.  I was tired enough I didn’t want to read, but I didn’t want to go to sleep before she joined me, so it didn’t stop me from doing anything else.

At least 2 books per month -January’s goal met, on track for February.

• Twilight – Have it back from our friend but haven’t started it.  I will start it this week though.
• The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying by Suze Orman -3/4 of the way through it.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Dropped the ball on this one if you don’t count the smoothie recipes, met the goal if they are counted.  This wasn’t the intention of the goal, kind of as with last week’s 3 posts the day before the update.  I’m going to work harder on this goal to ensure I don’t completely blow it.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – Down 2.5 pounds direct weight this week, 1.07 pounds down on the averaged trend.  I’m only slightly behind my overall goal.  At 5 weeks I should be down 10 lbs, but I’m currently down 8.  Since it appears I’ve beaten the plateau I’ve been on, that should correct itself rather quickly and put me back on track..

Budget – We’ve fallen off the wagon a bit here.  We have made a few larger non-budgeted purchases, including the Wii Fit. It was a concious decision though, and with our budget being where it is we could afford to do so.  So while the purchases weren’t budgeted per se, they weren’t impulse purchases that will leave us short and scrounging for food before the next payday either.