New Job, New Routine, New Friends

Hey everyone! If you haven't heard, I have a new job! Unfortunately my new job has be being extremely exhausted after work most days which makes it quite difficult to do much of anything... including my blogging. Now, I truly do enjoy typing and sharing my stories with the world, but when you're so tired that you can't even bring yourself to spend some time typing for a bit is quite something.

For anybody wondering, I'm now working at the Thunder Creek Pork Plant in Moose Jaw. Historically, I haven't done MUCH for physical work. Instead, I've done a lot of cashiering and customer servicing and whatnot of that type... this work requires much more lifting and using of the arm muscles that I haven't had much of previous to now. So as a result, I end up being quite tired and sore at the end of the day especially given the fact that I have to get up by 5:00 AM at the latest if I want to have enough time to comfortably get ready for work in the morning.

So how crazy is that? I still like to stay up much later than I probably should whether or not I have to get up so early in the morning... though I find that because what I do for by entire work day is pick up and move meat around, I don't exactly need to be in the best mood and super awake and all that. Basically I still like to stay up late and watch shows and YouTube and Twitch and things, but I often don't have the energy or willpower to get anything else done while I'm here.

Luckily with this new job and new routines around it, I've surprisingly managed to find new friends! Never did I ever think I would find people that I would get along with working in a pork plant of all things, but strangely enough there are people there who enjoy joking around and even playing games outside of work. I've been needing to find new friends to game with for quite a while now and suddenly finding people I can chat about games with and play games with is such a rush that I haven't had for quite a while now. I finally feel like I have interesting things to talk about again!

So for the time-being I'm looking for an office job to take advantage of my schooling and get a higher pay to better support the family, but in the mean-time I'm much happier than I ever thought I'd be working in a cold pork plant. It's definitely something to get us by for now that I can stick with if I for some reason can't find what I'm looking for in an office. With that, wish me luck in my continuing search and let us see if we can get back on track with everything we're wanting to do.

In the mean time, have a great day everyone! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== 30 days on $30 ===

     February 3rd, 2018 marks the beginning of Carley's 30 days on $30 challenge. In this challenge, her goal is to spend only $30 for the month of February on food and drinks. She had asked if I was interested in doing this with her. Unfortunately my answer had to be no due to being completely aware that I would be miserable the entire time. Carley on the other hand, is mentally prepared to go through this to gain a better understanding of how to keep a food budget on the cheaper side rather than unnecessary spending. She is also using this as an opportunity to learn to be more creative with the foods she has available. Finally, she's doing this because she wants to be able to say she has completed this and can do it whether or not she really has to.

     At first, while I was accompanying Carley on her shopping trip, I had thought to myself that it couldn't be possible to buy enough food with only $30 unless most of it is spent on something really cheap like rice. As it turns out, most of the food she got is NOT rice. There are quite a few noodles and soups and things and even some juices. Amazingly, what she managed to find and buy is much more than I would have expected and definitely more options than I would have thought possible. Here's a picture of everything she got for herself throughout the day.

     I know every time I go shopping I always think I'm not getting all that much... until I get to the checkout. At that point, things start to add up and then I realize just how expensive it is to eat anything other than noodles and rice. Just in case some of you don't believe this is actually $30 worth of food, here's the receipts as proof.

     Now, for all of you who can do math, yes, these receipts do go over the $30 value. There's a bit of a story to that as an explanation: See, we were looking at frozen vegetables thinking she'll need some sort of veggies to eat for the month. At first we were thinking of a couple different kinds of vegetables, but then we saw a price tag for a larger bag of peas for only about $2. Who could pass that up, right? It's not every day that you find a price tag that is probably printed wrong! Unfortunately the cashier we went to was her first day on the job and the manager on duty started yelling at her when he came over. It was in a different language, so we couldn't tell what he was saying, but it was clear that the girl was being yelled at. We felt so bad because she started crying that we just decided to pay what the price came up as and leave. Here's the tag we found for the peas.

     So, yes, the price tags aren't completely accurate as a result of the error, but keeping this price tag in mind, Carley did in fact stay under her price limit. She's keeping her food separate from the rest of the household so she can keep track of it all. My job? I'll be here to tell you all about her experience with this challenge and keep track of whether or not she's sticking to the rules. If anybody has any questions, please feel free to comment and I'll be sure to get the answers for your as soon as I can. Just for attempting something like this, I'm very proud of my Carley whether or not she succeeds.

~ Kyle Welykholowa