Money, get away...

...Get a good job with good pay and you're okay... (thanks Pink Floyd)

Some days I wish that we didn't have to deal with money. As that late, great philosopher the Notorious BIG once stated, "mo money, mo problems". Well, in the case of our family, the current situation is "less money, mo problems". Now that Rachel is staying home with the kids, we are adjusting to a rather precipitous drop in income. The solution to this problem involves two related ideas: 1) reduce expenses, and 2) increase income. As for reducing expenses, we've done about as much as we can, including the recent disconnection of my beloved satellite TV service with TiVo (*sniff*). But, alas, it's still not enough to stop the hemorrhaging of our savings. So, I decided to get a temporary second job. I thought about returning to pizza delivery, but the rise in gas prices definitely makes that job less lucrative. Retail is always an option, but working at the mall or Best Buy or Home Depot for $7/hr just wouldn't be worth it. So, I decided to talk to the HR person at Covance and see if they would let me do some extra work for separate pay. I'm an exempt employee, which means I don't get paid for overtime. But, I figured that if I worked in another department, doing lab grunt work, they might be willing to pay me extra for it. Well, they agreed! And, even better, I'll be working in the same lab that I'm currently working in, but doing different stuff. They're still working out the details of the pay rate, but I'm sure it'll be more that McDonald's! Bottom line: I'll be working about 10 hours of overtime every week, and incoming will be increasing. Yay!

Also: I went and looked in the mailbox yesterday, and there was a check for $300 from our mortgage company, payment for overage on our escrow this year. Hooray! God has promised to take care of us, and He's showing us every day that He is faithful.

To top it all off, Gen Con is less than 2 weeks away now. I've been practicing playing Heroscape and Magic to get ready for my tourneys. I still think I'm going to get shellacked. But I'll have fun doing it!