...not that I imagine anyone lost any sleep over my hiatus from blogging (myself included).

Seeing the year 2007 from my last entries sort of takes my breath away. The biggest change is that I became a homeowner! Though that experience was horrific and I never want to go through it again, I did learn a whole bunch of lessons about finances and homebuying that maybe someday I'll be brave enough to write about.

Work is the biggest part of my life right now. I was promoted and my boss's words after "congratulations" were somewhere along the lines of "good luck, you're going to need it." I'm sure most people are familiar with the challenges of a promotion...yet another topic I'm sure I'll blab about some point in the future.

Financially, I'm doing ok, or at least I'm not worrying too much over paying the bills. Again, there's so much to cover. I guess I'm really just brainstorming here (and eating up space). My latest "weird" financial habit has actually been keeping a Wishlist of items. Yes, on a daily basis, I jot down in my little notebook a running list of items that I have been wishing for. This is a bit of a stall tactic that I employ, and it actually works. The thing is to write a new list each time, and then to see what items keep showing up, and which drop off the list over time. My current list is just 3 items as follows:

coffee maker
toaster
leather jacket

Now the interesting thing is that my list was much MUCH longer just a month ago. Items such as flannel sheets, cashmere sweater, gloves, sunglasses, silver necklace (and more items) have disappeared. Why? Not because I bought them, but because they were just passing whims. I quote the sunglasses as an example. One weekend in September I was shopping at the outlets and was tempted to buy a pair of Ray Bans. But I paused because I wanted to go online to compare prices. I never got around to doing so, and now they're totally off the wish list.

Try keeping a Wishlist running for a few weeks. It really is interesting to pare down your list of "wants" to a few items. Then you can really focus on looking for good deals on just those few items.