Link love (Powered by functional nights and goodie bags)

I have had Buffy‘s last three seasons on DVD for about six months.I have only just finished one of those seasons. While my generous friend is very patient and polite, I feel he thinks I’m taking an unreasonable amount of time to get through them.

What can I say? Clearly Buffy is not a priority for me as much as I want to finish the series. These are my first few actual weekends off, and they’re being spent catching up with friends, couple time, long overdue errands and general life/house keeping. I’ve still not yet been to the dentist (planning to wait till after our holiday, though this damn ash cloud is casting doubt over that!!!), the farmer’s market, made bread, or even picked up my guitar. I want to do everything. I also know that this is impossible. I think learning CSS will have to wait (I thought the new job was a perfect impetus to get going on that but if I have many more weeks like this, there just aren’t enough hours to do this properly) and photography will also have to go on the back burner for sure.

However, I appreciate what I have. Despite having to listen to various interns talk about their six-week semester break, having also seen a couple of people lose their jobs recently (the reality is I could very well be made redundant at least once in this industry), I realise I would rather have too little free time than too much at this stage.

Also, thanks to Stupid Cents for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance! Yours truly is in there with this cautionary tale explaning how your credit is like your virginity.

MONEY

Love this highly motivational post on reframing the way you think about money. “Look at it this way – there is someone in your field who makes ten to twenty times as much as you do, and she does this using skills that are better – but not actually ten to twenty times better – than yours. That woman was born a drooling, incontinent baby just like everyone else. So, there’s nothing she’s done that you can’t. But you won’t become her if you keep doing the same damn thing for the same damn amount of money all the damn time.” (I like how Jen also puts paid to the “finish your plate because there are starving kids in the world” argument.)

Young and Thrifty ties in the Vancouver riots with her take on why she’d rather not grow up wealthy.

Lessons learned from the NFL lockout, via You Have More Than You Think.

New homeowner Tracey asks how long it took before your newly-mortgaged budget loosened up a little.

A Lotta Lettuce kicks off her series on planning a wedding on a budget.

WORK

Amanda argues at some point, it’s time to settle down and pick a career path for practical reasons.

What do you do when work invades your dreams? Also, see “how to manage your boss“.

Yes, yes and yes! Just because it’s a hobby doesn’t make it a career path (via After Graduation).

At Get Rich Slowly: Hourly or salary – which do you prefer?

As someone who also sits at a desk for most of her working day, I enjoyed Funny About Money’s post on standing desks and slow death.

LIFE

Fellow lifelong readers, you should read Amanda’s loving homage to books – it really does sadden me to come across people who don’t enjoy reading at all.

Jasmine and I apparently share many of the same problems which hinder us making new girlfriend bonds (Seriously, I think I could have written that post).

Also see this from Amanda at Stratejoy on engineering your own happiness (which you might have seen me tweet about).

FOOD

Cate shares another vegetarian goodie: falafel patties! I just bought a food processor, so I’ll be trying this.

From Iowa Girl Eats, a bright and colourful summer salad including bacon.

Make your own curry powder with this Ten Ingredient Project recipe.