**I mentioned in FT's blog that we had a relative who lost home in fire. He was at work when the fire started, and it happened so fast. He was not able to retrieve one single item from his home. Anyway, by some miracle the whole town was not destroyed as initially reported, and he has received photo confirmation that his house is still standing. !! He's still evacuated, one week later, so his ordeal is far from over. It's just sounding a lot more hopeful than it was a few days ago.

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There's no way to transition from that, so I guess I will just jump into our own minutiae.

**Payday was this week. I transferred the entire check into savings.

I already paid all the bills around September 1, so dh's check will go into savings too. That I Was not expecting. More below...

**LM ran through his lunch money (from last year) and so I funded that today. I usually fund both kids for 6 months at a time but since BM is on lunch food boycott I thought I'd just fund LM for the rest of the year. But I guess there is a max I can contribute (per kid). It's annoying because I will probably have to fund him 3 times per year (since I am letting him buy lunch more with BM not partaking) and they do charge a fee each time. On the flip side, maybe good not to over-fund too much in case he changes his mind.

In this case, I think if I can do the max one more time that should take him through the school year.

**We have our 15th wedding anniversary this week. I don't know that we will make any plans. We had discussed not doing anything *big* because we just did our So Cal trip and we leave for Hawaii soon. I think Hawaii is it and I don't know if we will do anything otherwise. We'd usually at least meet up for lunch but dh is working all week and eating out doesn't appeal to me much with vacation right around the corner. (I just get sick of eating out so much when we are away from home).

Who knew we could sink to new levels of boring... Dh has a busy schedule this week and I don't know that we will do absolutely anything. (He's volunteering all weekend, has the focus group, and seems we had some other stuff going on).

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Dh did get an official official job offer and is starting work next week. Will see how it goes.

Of course, money is raining down from the sky and he also got a big focus group next week ($125). It's been a long time, so the timing is interesting.

As to the job, the only immediate change to the schedule is that I will pick up the kids on short days. We had ditched the carpools this year because other parents are too flakey. Anyway, dh thinks I should rely on neighbor to pick up kids on short days. No thanks!! I'd rather take care of my own kids (leisurely, on my lunch hour) and not get phone calls interrupting my work day. It would happen a lot. (Don't ask me! It's epidemic).

Anyway, I look forward to the change up in schedule. I used to go home for lunch every day but then gas prices got so high and the kids were in school anyway. I should have probably done this all along, but we have just been in such "gas conserving" mode in more recent years. With gas prices a little lower I look forward to the change up in schedule. It's once a week that they have short days.