February 8th, 2010

Today I went by the bank and set up a Christmas Club account. The account is like a savings account but you can touch it till November. I set it up so that $7.00 from each of my checks goes into this account. By November, $14.00 a month plus interest will be a pretty tidy sum for gifts. I also transferred my budget allowance for emergencies into my regular savings account. Good habit to get into. New balance for Christmas Club account- $7.00, Regular Savings- $7.65 available. Both transfers are documented on the spreadsheet. After that I went and bought some groceries, expenditure on the spreadsheet. I noticed the car had a bit of a miss at idle. I stopped by Chevron to check on my application there. Mark was not there. So I popped the hood to listen to the engine and heard air hissing, tell-tale sign of a vacuum leak. Air was getting sucked into the intake manifold, throwing off the air-fuel mix and causing the miss. After poking around for a few minutes, I found the leak. Vacuum hoses that were probably the original ones that came with the car were dry-rotted and cracked. Quick trip to Autozone and $4.65 worth of new vacuum hose solved that problem. Runs perfect now. See "Transportation" column. While at Autozone, my boss asked me if I could work tomorrow to set planograms. No-brainer there, I need the money. After the car repair, I stopped by the Circle K on University and asked how to apply. App. is online. Apply to one store, then after a week, the app. is good at all the local stores. Also stopped by the Shell station on University and asked if the manager was there. He was not. Go back tomorrow. Then I went to the Chevron on Cottage Hill and asked if they were hiring. They referred me to the one on Range Line Road. Went there and got application. Will fill all of these out.