Back to Normal

It feels good to sleep in my own bed. It also feels good to wake up, walk to the living room, sit in my chair, and check my email and various blogs over a glass of iced coffee. Jesse and I treated yesterday as a holiday, foregoing all of those new years resolutions that we spelled out for each other over the past week: eat healthier, exercise more (or in my case at all), hang pictures and artwork in the apartment, and establish a budget! He went for a run with Brian in the afternoon and then we picked up burritos for dinner. Afterward, we played Trivial Pursuit with Anna and Brian and a bunch of their friends for hours. I found out that Anna loves trivia games just as much as I do, so it was a treat playing on her team (even though we totally sucked for the first half of the game). It was awesome! Oh and we woke up to what looked like a blizzard last night around 1am. I thought it was a dream, but this morning the ground and roads were covered with white -- probably around 2 inches. Luckily, the sun is out and should melt it all away.

After marveling at the white roads and rooftops this morning, I sat in my chair and checked the news, blogs, etc. to the warm glow of my Christmas present from Jesse. When I came up short on ideas for things that I wanted/needed this year, he suggested that we splurge a little on a nice lamp for the living room instead of scouring Craigslist for the next two months. I thought that was an awesome idea and we set out on one of our snow days two weeks ago to browse in some of the really neat shops in the Pearl District. We found the perfect lamp in a furniture store about 8 blocks from our apartment. As an even sweeter deal, the store was having a 50% off sale, so I am now the happy owner of a pair of awesome lamps. The other is on my "desk" in the bedroom.

About halfway through my coffee, I decided to buckle down and start tackling one of the major resolutions -- starting a Portland budget. Fortunately, we planned on having our budget blown to smithereens during the move and saved accordingly. We both have done a pretty good job of being frugal with only a fraction of the monthly income that we had in D.C. However, it's a new year with new rules and if I'm ever going to get that house, yard, and dog, we're going to need to start building our savings again (rather than raiding it slowly each month to meet expenses).

Luckily, I did a lot of the legwork last January when Jesse and I decided to start budgeting for the first time to save for our move. I'm already very familiar with Quicken and I still have all of my budgeting spreadsheet templates with formulas and categories ready to go. Still, we're working with a vastly different income and like a lot of people this year, we are having to trim down a bit to stay within our means. I'm happy to find that based on my calculations for the next three or four months (that's really all I can plan for with my future employment situation still up in the air) we'll be able to meet a reasonable budget with a little left over for savings. However, our dining and discretionary budgets have taken quite the hit, so some days sticking to our limits will not be easy.

With the budget vetted by Jesse and our first cash purchases of the year recorded on our 2009 budget spreadsheet, I feel relieved to know that we are getting back on track after nearly five months of wandering. It took a lot longer than we planned, but that's okay. We're not just settling anymore. Portland really feels like home.