Weekly Round Up: Valentine's Report

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  My week started in balmy Florida and ended back home in the frozen Tundra.  Luckily there was good food, something new on the fitness front, and puppy snuggles to get through it.

BOBW: Interesting Money Questions

I listen to approximately one billion podcasts, and for the most part it is a case of "in one ear and out the other".

However,  I recently listened to an episode of The Best of Both Worlds podcast called Interesting Money Questions, which I am still thinking about.  Given that the episode went into an ear and did not go out the other, and that I met one of the show's hosts last week, I decided to play pretend and be a guest on the show.  Here are the questions that they asked and my answers.

Let's Go Places (And Meet People!): Florida

 

Since we last talked I've completed a slew of firsts for 2025: first trip, first blogger meetup, and first lighthouse visit.  This is the story of how it all came to be.

Weekly Round Up: Mostly Books

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  

The big news item of the week is that winter gave us a few more days of extreme cold and then settled back to normal.  There was a sweet spot where it was warm enough to walk the dog, and cold enough that the snow was very packable.  Hubs and Doggo had great fun with snowballs on our walks.

Weekly Round Up: Gotcha Day

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition we had a deep freeze, we kicked off Doggo's Gotcha Day celebrations, and STOP THE PRESSES I FOUND THE MOST AMAZING DINNER THAT YOU NEED TO DROP EVERYTHING AND MAKE RIGHT NOW.

My Weird Hobby: A Credit Card/Bank Bonus Earnings Report

From what I understand, the credit card industry has a name for people like me: a deadbeat.  I use credit cards for convenience and pay my bill in full each month.  They don't make any money off me.

For most of my adult life, I had a very simple credit card setup of always more than one card and never more than three.  Prior to the fall of 2022, my lineup was: Amazon, Target, and Costco.  $0 fees, 5% back at Amazon and Target, and lesser percentages for all other spending.  The reason that the fall of 2022 is significant is because this is when I started traveling, and a lot of credit card rewards are specifically for travel.

I kept hearing about Credit Card Hacking, and claims like "I got a $40,000 trip for free" and "my family gets $15,000 in free credit card travel every year!"  Was I missing out?  How exactly would I go about getting my mitts on the goods? 

This is the story of what happened when I decided to find out.

Weekly Round Up: A New Kitchen Gadget

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week the big adventure was that we got a new toy for the kitchen.

Weekly Round Up: A Two Legged Carrot

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches and reads.  The big news of this week is that I encountered my first ever IRL two legged carrot.  And that's kind of all there is to say about that.

Steal a Post: 2024 in Chapters

Today's post is a blatant steal of Stephany's Best of 2024: A Month by Month Recap, with a nod to Elisabeth's Want to Write a Book with Me This Year?

Each month Elisabeth wrote a chapter title to summarize the month, and Stephany used the chapter titles that she left in the comments each month to write her annual recap.  Let's do this!

Weekly Round Up: Arctic Edition

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  As a wise poet once said: Baby, it's cold outside.  We've had cold, cold, and more cold and the forecast is: colder.

Weekly Round Up: Christmas and New Year's Recap

 

A weekly-ish round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Since we last talked: cookies were baked and holidays were celebrated, I had an "oops I did it again sorry not sorry" event on the fitness front, more Seinfeld was watched, and books have started to be read.