Jazz Fest

Every year a mini jazz festival is held in one of London's nicest neighbourhoods - it's called "Wortley Village".  It's not special because the homes are big and pricey, no, it's just a great family neighbourhood with it's own stores and businesses. A few streets get blocked off to traffice and various bands play in front of the neighbourhood garage:

...a local pub aptly named "The Wortley"... (and where I just happened to be hanging out :)...

...and a church (among other venues) (actually it's not a church any longer - it's apartments)...

Whoa! Do you see what I see?   Pardon me while I zoom in...

Is that not one of the cutest sax player you've ever seen??

I found lots of neat people to hang out with - my friend Cheryl who bought me a pint at The Wortley which led to several silly selfies!

Todd - one of my most favourite people of all time - I've written a few posts about Todd - you may remember if you've been reading my posts for a long time Todd was one of my very special pupils - he still knows how to make me smile :)

And then I connected with Troy and Jules - we enjoyed the great weather, the great music and had a great meal at the other village pub - aptly named "The Village Pub"!!  Yes...it was all great!

 Okay...just one more...

Okay...two...  :)

By the Numbers

I'm pretty satisfied with the numbers this month. August ended (can you believe it???!) with a surplus of $284 (in addition to putting $350 into savings). YEAH BABY!! Riding my bike everywhere is really saving me money. Other savings included utilities: natural gas was a low $32 and electricity was $42!! We've run the A/C a little bit but mostly our house stays pretty cool as it is protected by two huge maple trees and a locust tree. The patio only gets about an hour of direct sun per day and a couple hours of filtered sunlight. I can't complain. It was sweltering and humid today but the A/C only kicked in a couple of times.  I keep it set at 25c.

I went over a little bit in the food budget because it was cherry season and I gorged myself. Not even kidding! Cherries are my favourite fruit and no time to be frugal!! I bought quite a few bags at an average cost of about $13+/bag. But I more than made up that overage by NOT having to put much gas in the truck. And recently our gas prices have dropped making the gas budget even smaller.

So what did I waste spend my money on this month?

• went to the movies twice (The Minions and Shaun the Sheep Movie :)
• two albums downloaded from iTunes
• bought several books; a couple new but the rest were second hand
• beer
• yoga x 4
• Yogathon - $25 donation
• played progressive euchre twice plus dinner
• $20 UPS delivery fee for the maps/guide for upcoming trip
• renewed my hiking membership $25.00
• paid for travel insurance
• paid for train x 2 while away
• extra google storage - $2.71
• Hallmark membership
• hiking: food/entrance fee into provincial park
• dinner/beer at the Jazz Fest yesterday
• food/icecream at Rib Fest
• Dairy Queen x 2, 3, 4 times?? But who's counting right?

Some freebies: 

• loaned my truck to my brother and he treated me to dinner at The Waltzing Weasel
• Kazi worked the Beer Festival downtown and treated me to several samples and gave me a T-shirt from her workplace - Toboggan; (there was a long line up to get into the Beer Fest so she threw me a T-shirt over the fence and I put it on and walked right in as if I was working there lol!) Then I benefited from her "beer" expertise (beertise?) and tried a number of yummy samples (I wasn't driving!!)

This was my favourite! Scotch Ale.....

• also free - weekly meditation, weekly visits with my brother, pot luck dinner & MORE!!

All in all a pretty awesome month!! And not just the numbers...!