It would have been a no-spend day today -- but I got an SOS call from my son, who needed to return a rental truck, and needed a ride back home. Well, my gas tank was hovering near empty, so I stopped and put $10 in the tank.

Tomorrow I may not be spending money but I'll be incurring a bill. I called a cleaning service to come and vacuum out the duct that goes from my bathroom fan to the outdoors. I noticed this weekend that the cover for the vent is gone. It is open to the world! And I think it's been that way a while, because I kept hearing birds when I was in the bathroom but couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

So here is a lesson. When I called the service I asked for someone to clean out my ducts. They quoted a price of $385. I said "oh..... It'll have to wait till I get paid again..." Well, as we talked a little more, I realized that the price quoted was to clean out my furnace ducts. When I described the opening I was concerned about, they said, "Oh, that's just a vent -- we can do that for $85." Shewww! I would have paid all that money for something that didn't even solve the problem!

I really hope the birds have vacated the vent. I don't want them to get hurt!