Being in Love -- Frugal or Expensive?

I believe that being in love is one of the most frugal things that you can do.
I'm sure that there's a fair amount of guys grumbling right now about the costs of dating and flowers and gifts and all the extras that they end up footing the bill for. But those things are generally a part of the process of wooing--not the actual act of being in love.
Of course, back in my single days I was pretty easy and could have been had for the price of a 6 pack and a large pizza. But I understand other girls might cost a bit more money. Which could be frustrating for guys.
But once you actually are in love, you'll start spending a lot less money:
1. You want nothing more than to gaze into each other's eyes, so you don't need to spend any money on entertainment.
2. You won't leave the bed unless you are absolutely starving, which means food costs start coming down.
3. Since you're in love, you don't need to go to bars to meet someone, which saves a whole lot of money.
4. Also "having somebody" means that you can cancel your membership to match.com.
5. Finally, "staying at home with each other" becomes a date, and is significantly less expensive than a "real date".
So go out an fall in love!

The Japanese Work Ethic

Occasionally my husband and I clash over the Japanese work ethic.
For example, I personally believe that life's goal should really be to work hard to get enough money so that your money starts working for you. I don't care if that means getting a lot of actual money and investing it (though investing kind of scares me), or writing a book that ears residual income, or creating a website that earns money on its own. Eventually, you don't want to "work" to get your money.
Hubby can't seem to comprehend this. To him, one must actually be physically doing something to get paid. But often, his "working" isn't quite productive. I don't want to be really down on him or anything like that, but it was incredibly frustrating for me to see how long it was taking for him to make our website when I knew damn well that the "work" he was doing on it wasn't really necessary (e.g. changing all of the pictures so that the file size is slightly lower). I really feel that it's more important for him to "look busy" than to actually be doing work.
He tends to think that my working on my websites is "just playing" and he'll give me disparaging looks over his computer. And then I roll my eyes at him when he asks me some nit-picky unimportant question about "the business".
I've tried to get him interested in internet marketing or affiliate marketing or website building or *something*, but it just doesn't work. Or if he doesn't see immediate results, then he thinks it's a failure. I think that if he could just get interested in it, he could make a huge killing because the market in Japan just isn't as saturated as it is in the US.
Sometimes it's just so frustrating.

another 8 hours a day goal

Last week my goal was to actually work 8 hour days. It only went so-so. I would try to work on checking things off of my to-do list, but then I'd get distracted by solitaire or something like that. HAHA.
Anyway, I realized my main problem was the way I was writing things on my to-do list. For example, last week's to-do list might have looked like this:

• Write 2 articles.
  
• Make 3 new pages for the site.
  
• New blog post.
  
• Email Debby.
  

And so on.
But the thing is for me...I'd know that all of that together would take less than 8 hours, so I'd write one article, play solitaire, write another article, go for a walk. Knowing that I could accomplish all of my day's goals in less than 8 hours allowed me to slack a bit.
So this week I'm taking a different approach. Instead of listing specific goals, I'm making timed, general goals.
For example, yesterdays looked like this:

• Go to Coast Guard (1 hr)
  
• 1 hour administrative duties/cleaning/tidying.
  
• 1 hour brainstorming different things.
  
• 2 hours article writing.
  
• 1 hour site page designs.
  
• 1 hour directory submissions.
  
• 1 hour uploading everything.
  

It went over a lot better than last week. So we'll see how it goes as the week continues.

Week's Goal--Work 8 Hours

I know that not officially working is a luxury that few people have. Recently though, I've been disappointed with the way I've been making use of my time.
So this week I decided to make a goal of "working for 8 hours" every day. This is a bit harder than you might think. I mean sure, most people are at work for 8 hours a day, but you don't really spend all of that time working.
I did quite well on Monday and Tuesday. I'm not sure how I feel about today though. I mean, I got stuff done. But I didn't feel as productive. But I also wasn't so careful about timing the work time.
I think I need to make a better effort tomorrow.