February Recap and March Goals!

Happy March to all my friends.

Spring is right around the corner, and "renewal" is in the air.

Last month found me with a sense of lethargy I coudln't seem to shake.

Here's a look at how last month went, and this months goals.

HEALTH JOURNEY

Early in the month I gained back several pounds from January, but by the end of the month I had lost 13 pounds.  My total loss for the year so far is 16 

I got between 10k and 20k steps MOST days, but did 0 workouts, making my fitness goal I set for myself for last month a fail.

READING ACCOMPLISHED

I've set myself a goal of reading 60 books this year.  This is my yearly goal every year. I have read 10 books towards my goal so far.  I have not been able to get to the library, so many of the books have been re-reads from my home library with a few from Kindle Unlimited or the Hooplah app.

In February I read:

5.  Seven Up by Janet Evanovich
6.  55 Slightly Sinister Stories by Racha Mourtada
7.  Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich
8.  Bogey This: Garfield's Guide to Golf by Jim Davis
9.  To the Nines by Janet Evanovich
10.  Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich

ONLINE EARNINGS

I wasn't really applying myself to ANYTHING this past month.  I did earn a little though.

• $10 From Fetch Rewards (in the form of an amazon gift card)
• $10 from Mistplay (in the form of an amazon gift card)
• $? Profit from Winning a Dietbet.  (Amount unknown as we are waiting for other participants to weigh in)

I could have $5 in MyPoints, $1 in Swagbucks and $16 from Pinecone Research, but I'm waiting for higher payouts.

So I was paid out $20.00 in February, not counting earnings that did not qualify for an actual payout. 

Very Short of the $50 goal I had set for myself.

MARCH GOALS!

1.  FITNESS: 

• 3 workouts a week, minimum.  
• Stop mindless eating.  No eating in front of screens.
• Aiming for a 10 pound weight loss this month.  With a stretch goal of hitting 190 if I can.

2.  READING:

While not as big a struggle as some of my goals, I still don't make enough time.  

• Less no random app scrolling at night.  Read a couple of chapters before bed.

3.  ONLINE EARNINGS:

• Post something on my business IG page daily.
• Post something on my business FB page daily.
• LIST THINGS FOR SALE on etsy, ebay, etc.
  

 

On Ordering Online For Same Day Pickup

Good evening friends!

It is 11pm as I sit down to start writing this blog.  I've got a cup of decaf in front of me, and Supernatural playing in a corner of my screen (Its my first time watching and I'm on season 8) and I'm thinking about my day at work today.

One of the things I spend most of my day doing is pulling the Buy Online, Pick-up in Store orders and I thought I'd share a little bit of information for those of you who shop this way.  This might not be true for every store that offers this shopping option but they are true for where I work at least.

First, these orders never stop coming in.  Never.  All day, from the time I come in until the time I leave lots and lots of orders.

I work for a big corporation, and like most big corporations we are almost always short staffed.  That means that there is not a team of people pulling these orders.  There is just one single person at any given time pulling these orders.  When I am there that person is just me.  And when I get there I don't get to start with a count of 0 orders.  For example, when I got to work today there were already 10 orders waiting to be pulled, with more coming in as fast as they can be pulled.

Back to being short staffed, I'm not just pulling orders.  I'm also helping the customers actually in the store, taking phone calls, running backup on the register and taking people's orders to their cars when they come for their curbside pickups.  I am a very busy person.

With these orders, most of them are not just 1 item.  6 items in the average number but I've pulled as many as 58 items for an order.  And these orders are not always from the same department.  They are scattered throughout the entire store so I'm running here and there and everywhere to pull these orders.

All of this is to say, sometimes your order isn't going to be ready in the short amount of time that the the people who make these promises in corporate office say they will.  There is literally a store that never has a customer in it that they base their times off of.

Today I had a customer call several times to check on the status of their order.  Their order was a large one, and about 5 or 6 down from the start of my pull list.  Every time they called I had to leave the floor to take the call. That would add even more time to being able to get it pulled (remember....I'm also the person who takes the phone calls).

Even better, after a couple of calls, they just show up and calls in for a curbside pickup.  So, I had to bump their order ahead of all the other orders which were placed before theirs.

Because that is fair, right?  In our society "Me First" is the strongest mentality. 

That was just a long way of saying, be patient when you order online for same day store pickups.  Lots of other people are doing the same thing and we're doing the best we can.

Now, writing this took me 41 minutes and it's almost midnight....

Good night friends, sleep well.

The 100 Day Project

As I was socially sharing my post yesterday I remembered that a little thing called The 100 Day Project was happening, as well as the UBC.

The 100 Day Project starts on Jan. 31 and goes on for 100 days.  I betcha figured that one out on your own 'cause you're smart like me.

Anyway, you are supposed to pick a creative endeavor to undertake for these 100 days.  

There are things I like to do, and considered.  I could make an ATC every day.  Or a tiny canvas.  Or some found poetry.  Or I could work on a cross stitch project every day and share my progress.

I had turned down each of those ideas for the same reason.  TIME.

See, I leave my house at noon:thirty every day, and I don't get home until 10pm every day.  There are only 2 days a week I have time to pull out my craft supplies (and I usually spend them running errands instead.)

Then I thought, BLOGGING is a CREATIVE act, right?  I have to not only think about words, but I have to arrange them in an order that is not only cohesive, but also pleasing and entertaining.  I also have to find a nice picture to share with each entry, because people like pictures better than words.

Yep, all kinds of creativity there. 

And, since I drop out of the UBC less than a week in every time it rolls around, I thought it makes perfect sense to combine my UBC with The 100 Days Challenge.  That way I can drop out of two things at once, and save some time an energy.

But not really.  If I can make it to 28 days of blogging I should be in a good groove.  And then if it gets dull I can switch off between here and my fiction site

January Recap & New Beginnings Again

Olivia, the Evil Queen,
sitting on her throne,
Surveying her domain.

Happy 2021 Everyone! 

I know I'm a month late in that greeting, but by now we ALL know that I'm slow.  So slow that I can got MONTHS between posts, which is no good, I know.  

I didn't really set myself any concrete goals in January, other than to win the DietBet I had joined, so that made it very easy to accomplish my non-existant goals.  

How did I do?  Lets see.

(Some links below may be affiliate links.  Signing up or purchasing through them may earn me a commission at no extra cost to you.)

Health Journey

Trying once again to drop the 100 pounds I need to get rid of.  

The good news is I managed to lose 10.2 pounds!

The bad news is that I managed to throw out my right hip doing a specific workout program, which is probably going to be a hindrance 

Reading Accomplished

I set a goal for myself of reading 60 books this year.  This is the 3rd year I set the same goal on Goodreads.  The first year I bypassed it.  The second year I missed it.  We'll see how I average out with this year.

In January I read 4 books:

1. Midnight by Dean Koontz
2. Midnight Crossroads by Charlaine Harris
3. The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
4. Hot Six by Janet Evanovich

 Reviews will be posted of these and my other 2021 reads on Noner's Bookmarks.

Online Earnings

I use a few different places to try to earn money online.  This is what I made in January.

• $10 in Swagbucks
• $3 in MyPoints (Didn't request because I'm saving for a higher payout)
  
• $10 cashout in My Achievement (earnings over several months).
• $2.86 profit for winning a DietBet
• $3.89 for a sale in the An Eclectic Aesthetic shop. 
• $15 from Pinecone Research (in the form of an Uber giftcard) 
• $25 from NCPonline (earnings over several months, in form of amazon gift card)
  

So I was paid out $69.75 in January, not counting earnings that did not qualify for an actual payout. 

FEBRUARY GOALS

Okay, time to set some concrete goals.

1.  Despite having hurt my hip this past week, I intend to lose another 10 pounds this month.  I'll be counting my calories, pushing for at least 20k steps a day and working out 5 days a week even if it has to be a seated workout due to my

2.  February is one of the months where the Ultimate Blog Challenge takes place, so I intend to blog every day this month.  I need to post my links in the UBC facebook group, visit and comment other blogs and try to re-build some kind of readership here.

3.  Every month can't be a $70 month, but I'm aiming for at least $50 this month. This means I have to spend time working on my survey sites and listing more items for sale on my facebook page and in my shop.

Today almost felt like Autumn.

I'm wistful for cooler weather.  Despite being born an raised in the South, I was not made to be hot.

But because I do live, not only in the south, but near the coast, I don't get much of the cool weather I crave.

We had a small family outing today.

Mostly we don't go anywhere and when we do we wear our masks. (So don't let this photo fool you.)

We have been housing 5 tadpoles in a fishbowl on our kitchen counter for a month or so, letting the boys watch them grow legs, but just this week 2 of them died.  So we knew it was time to put them somewhere more tadpole friendly.  Since they are local frogs (captured from a swimming pool that had been partially drained, and became the breeding ground for the neighborhood frogs and toads) I knew it was safe to take them to a local lake.

Since the kids rarely get to leave the house anymore they were excited about going even though they were sad to have to say goodbye to their tadpoles. 

Normally we feed the ducks and geese, then go to the playground, but there were too many people on the playground so we stuck to the lakeside, feeding the geese, taking pictures, gathering feathers.

It was a good day.