Time saving.

KfW2 has often gone to extreme lengths for small gains. Over the past few years, she's been shaving minutes off her commute to work. The first change, the big one, was to change from public transport to using her own car. She looked at the figures - times taken plus cost - and compared them both.

Strangely, the cost wasn't that much different. The big savings were in the time she would save. If she took public transport, she'd walk 20 minutes to the bus, the bus would take 45 minutes to get to the city, then another 20 minutes from the bus terminus to the office, each way.

If she took the car to the city limits (25 minutes) and get the city service (15 minutes), she'd save 90 minutes per day.

Then she decided she still needed to save money, so instead of taking the city bus service, she'd park slower to work. So then her car journey was 30 minutes and her walk to work was 20 minutes. She'd save nearly £5 each day, though.

And now that's not enough, so she leaves the house over an hour earlier to beat rush hour traffic and has found a new parking space. She claims she saves so much time, but when she mentions the actual details, her commute isn't that much shorter, if at all: the car journey is 30 minutes again and her walk is 15 minutes.

Sadly, this most recent change means that we don't travel to work a few times per week any more. No more free lift for Ruuude, but most importantly, the half an hour or so we'd spend together twice a week was a chance to catch up and chat. That's now gone. Bearing in mind, I've already mentioned that her new job is keeping her unavailable, our contact is pretty minimal these days (at least compared to what it used to be).

We didn't see each other at all over the Christmas holiday period.

We're just seeing each other less and less, and communicating less frequently.

I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it.