Another interesting week went by. At work, my boss started more work on us. The reason being he’s being bombarded with new projects and proof of concept initiatives.

The year’s worth of budget is cleared and many big projects got a go and we are falling short of heads. Until the time we hire people (through outsourcing partners) we have to manage the increased work-load. See, I am not complaining about more work or my boss here. I did try to understand the situation behind his increasing demands.

If you see the rationale behind your boss’s action, most of the time, your work may turn out to be a better experience. I know many who start thinking about retirement the moment they are asked to do additional work.

Last week, Monday, brought me a sweet surprise.  I was formally inducted in Yakezie Network, if you have missed my introduction, I would request you to head over and read my member post, none of my posts ever saw comments go above 100 before this post.

I am thankful to all Yakezie member and challengers, you make blogging easy!

Stealthily I am building a new site, personal finance related. Finance Product Reviews, which brings on my product reviews on various personal finance products. I have planned on to separate out product reviews from this blog and move them over to FPR.

I reported a few bad news last week. I did find out a solution to a few of them. Tomorrow I am going to publish a mammoth post on how this blog affected my at-work performance. I request you to come for that article tomorrow.

Our older car, 2002 Hyundai Elantra, finally gave in. The cheap car with cheap parts has its limitation. With KBB value of $2,800, I am not at all fond of shelling out $2,500 towards fixing my engine, radiator, AC belts, and a new battery.

I am eyeing for a Toyota or Honda used-car as the replacement. I spoke to a few friends and colleagues. I may get one by March second week. Until that happens, SMB has to wake up early and drop me to the office and every evening she has to pick me up from work.

This was not at all a good week for me. We have taken some decision about our life that is costing us money like a rain. I will talk about it another day.

At work the blog took its first toll (at least to me it seems that way) when the 2011 appraisal came across finally. More about it later (this Friday).

SMB’s job hunt continues, some formality still remains before she can apply formally. If she could land up a job by March end, we would be thankful to our fate.

Since Friday, December 23, my year-end vacation started. We get 28 paid vacation days a year and it’s take-it or loose-it scenario. I had 6 days leaves left to be taken and opted for last 6 working days of the year. Earlier we planned to go to Savannah, GA for a couple of days.

But, we found out that Paula Deen’s restaurant, “The Lady and Sons”, the number one attraction of Savannah per SMB (my wife), was booked till first week of January.

There was not much charm left now, as we live near beach any ways and Miami beach is by far the best beach we have seen so far, across the world.

Another year is almost coming to an end, Halloween reminds me of end of the year, every year. The picture below is mine in Halloween costume, circa 2007 in Austin, TX. I am with our award-winning frugal Halloween theme decoration at work.

SMB always tells me to use pictures from our own camera instead of painstaking search for a reusable image. I was pondering for last few days, for this post I couldn’t found a better image than this. Personal story and personal pictures make a powerful personal blog post.