It took me a while to put my finger on it, but there was something about the Christmas holidays that I definitely did not like and I breathed a sigh of relief when they were past. It was not the “I’ve maxed my card from shopping” post holiday blues, because I never did play that game. It was more that when I’m around rich food I have absolutely no self-control, and during Christmastide all of womankind engages in some undeclared cooking and baking competition to see who can produce the most calorie-dense dishes. Every year I rue the ten pounds of blubber I gain in two weeks that will take me until July to lose.
In January I look forward to getting back to what we call “good ole Depression food.” Based largely on potatoes, onions, cabbage and beans, it is both some of the least expensive and most healthy fare, and requires the simplest preparation. It takes me back to my youth when the aroma of a fried potatoes and onions with milk gravy breakfast filled the house and fed our brood. We also consumed a lot of oatmeal, eggs, and hot cocoa for breakfast. Lunches were ham and bean soup with cornbread. As a toddler, I called it camel soup because that’s how my ears heard Campbell’s soup. Milk, a teaspoon of butter, black pepper, diced potatoes or tomatoes formed the ingredients for my mother’s homemade potato and tomato soups. Potatoes, onions and hamburger were the basis of various goulashes and hashes. Kidney beans, cayenne pepper and hamburger gave us hardy chili. Lunch sandwiches were toasted cheese, scrambled egg with mayo, and fried baloney with the bubbled up centers. (Ok, so fried baloney isn’t all that healthy…this is my nostalgia, isn’t it!)
We didn’t eat much lettuce or salads back then, but cabbage seemed to find its way into everything. Cooked cabbage, (boiled in sugar and pepper water), served with a peeled boiled spud and some beef was a supper mainstay. On Sundays women made Cole slaw with a sugar and vinegar mix to go with mashed potatoes, dark gravy and beef or fried chicken, milk gravy and mashed potatoes. Most main meals were three courses: meat, potatoes and gravy, and a side, usually either cooked cabbage or canned corn with butter. Dessert was butter and jelly bread. You were expected to empty your plate and it was considered good Hoosier etiquette to mop your plate with bread and eat the mop.
Today the entire front door of our fridge is filled with condiments and salad dressings. In the 50s, it was mostly ketchup, vinegar-sugar water, butter, salt, pepper, and gravies that flavored meals. In hindsight, there was probably too much red meat, lard and salt in those meals and I’d try to replace or reduce those elements today. Still the weekly shopping list was relatively simple and the food tasty in those meat-and-potato meals. Milk, butter, bread, eggs, sugar, flour, vinegar, ketchup, oatmeal, cocoa, potatoes, onions, cabbage, dried beans, canned corn, hamburger, chicken, baloney, and a large brick of cheese, now that is a pretty simple and inexpensive shopping list by today’s standards.
My mouth still waters at the thought of Mom’s simple cooking!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Politically-Incorrect Tirade
Most people consider me a simple, frugal tightwad. Be warned, beneath this nice-guy frugal tightwad exterior, I have a darker side. Inside, I am a ranting, raving, proselytizing Anti-Materialist. Not only do I want to buy necessary things cheaply, but I would not take much of society’s “stuff” if they gave it to me. Often I consider material goods as so much litter to clutter up my life.
In my retirement, I am trying to follow three basic rules: (1) when it stops being fun, stop doing it. (2) Simplify, simplify, simplify. Order is important; a place for everything and everything in its place. (3) Downsize, downsize, downsize. My goal this winter is go through my files and drawers and garage and throw out a lifetime buildup of paper and clutter.
For me unneeded material possessions are life-junk which add extra complexity, tenseness and expense to life. If it is nutritious food, I’ll buy some. If it warms me in winter, OK I’ll buy. If it is broken and needs to be replaced, OK. If it would prove useful in an emergency, then OK. Otherwise, I worry that things own me more than I own them.
What do you pay for when you buy a material product? You pay for the container it comes in. What do you think costs more, the green beans or the steel can they come in? You (or someone) will pay for the disposal of the container and eventually the product itself. You also pay for the transport of the product, more and more from farther and farther away. Ocean freighters, freight trains and semis are not free goods, nor is fuel and labor. The buyer also pays for all the advertisement used to convince him to buy the product. More and more advertisement is to convince people that shopping itself is entertainment and needed therapy for any blue funk. Ads are full of over-smiling, happy, cool, hip buying people, so if you are not happy (or cool, hip or smart), this can be cured by hitting the malls.
Of course, if you own anything of worth, then you are also going to pay to insure it. Aren’t we all getting insurance poor? Do you want an extended warranty with that? If it’s out of warranty, you will have to pay for repairs. (Oh No! There is no such thing as “planned obsolescence”…all products are built to last.) Then there is the cost of storing it. Many domestic arguments develop along the lines, “This house is too small, and we need to buy a bigger one.” “No, the house is not too small; we just have too much stuff in it.” Did I mention taxes…like sales taxes? My attitude is, if I don’t own it, I don’t insure it; I don’t repair it; I don’t store it and I don’t donate 6% of my income to the state.
Obviously, this is a rant and I could go on for pages. I pretty well have the tirade out of my system now, so I’d best stop before I offend or bore any more politically correct shopaholics. Suffice to say, if I could take the beard itch, I’d probably be Amish.
In my retirement, I am trying to follow three basic rules: (1) when it stops being fun, stop doing it. (2) Simplify, simplify, simplify. Order is important; a place for everything and everything in its place. (3) Downsize, downsize, downsize. My goal this winter is go through my files and drawers and garage and throw out a lifetime buildup of paper and clutter.
For me unneeded material possessions are life-junk which add extra complexity, tenseness and expense to life. If it is nutritious food, I’ll buy some. If it warms me in winter, OK I’ll buy. If it is broken and needs to be replaced, OK. If it would prove useful in an emergency, then OK. Otherwise, I worry that things own me more than I own them.
What do you pay for when you buy a material product? You pay for the container it comes in. What do you think costs more, the green beans or the steel can they come in? You (or someone) will pay for the disposal of the container and eventually the product itself. You also pay for the transport of the product, more and more from farther and farther away. Ocean freighters, freight trains and semis are not free goods, nor is fuel and labor. The buyer also pays for all the advertisement used to convince him to buy the product. More and more advertisement is to convince people that shopping itself is entertainment and needed therapy for any blue funk. Ads are full of over-smiling, happy, cool, hip buying people, so if you are not happy (or cool, hip or smart), this can be cured by hitting the malls.
Of course, if you own anything of worth, then you are also going to pay to insure it. Aren’t we all getting insurance poor? Do you want an extended warranty with that? If it’s out of warranty, you will have to pay for repairs. (Oh No! There is no such thing as “planned obsolescence”…all products are built to last.) Then there is the cost of storing it. Many domestic arguments develop along the lines, “This house is too small, and we need to buy a bigger one.” “No, the house is not too small; we just have too much stuff in it.” Did I mention taxes…like sales taxes? My attitude is, if I don’t own it, I don’t insure it; I don’t repair it; I don’t store it and I don’t donate 6% of my income to the state.
Obviously, this is a rant and I could go on for pages. I pretty well have the tirade out of my system now, so I’d best stop before I offend or bore any more politically correct shopaholics. Suffice to say, if I could take the beard itch, I’d probably be Amish.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Church Happenings
Now I know that a church is sacred ground and I do not mean to be irreverent or offend anyone, least of all God…but sometimes really funny things happen in church. So I hope all concerned have a sense of humor as I relate a few anecdotes.
The pillar of the community, the salt of the earth, had died. The congregation gathered in our little country church to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. As often happens, someone forgot to turn off his cell phone. The phone owner panicked when the phone tone rang out during the funeral and instead of turning off the phone he simply hung up on the caller. Three times the caller called back and three times the phone song rang out through the church with “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now.”
Old school Catholics, those of us who remember our Latin prayers, still feel uncomfortable about talking aloud in the church. The younger generation is at ease with engaging in good fellowship and conversation before and after mass. As we waited for tardy stragglers to choir practice, our beloved director (an extrovert’s extrovert) began her enthusiastic monologue of what interesting and humorous events had occurred in the last week of her life. I noticed a couple of the male choir members whispering and looking to the front of the church. When I too looked to the sanctuary, I saw that the tabernacle was glowing an angry red. As the red darkened, it began to pulsate…throbbing…throbbing! My first thought was of the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark of the Covenant began to act up just before it fried a couple dozen Nazis. Just as I was about to drop to my knees and publically confess transgressions, one of the whispering duo said “Lorrie, you best not talk so loud. Look at the tabernacle.” The gleam in his eye told me this was a natural not a supernatural happening. A jumbo over-sized load was approaching slowly down the road in front of the church. The red lights from the dozen or so escorting state police cars shone through the glass rear doors and reflected off the golden tabernacle doors. And to think I almost spilt my guts to the whole choir!
What began as whimpering had escalated into a full-blown tantrum. To the relief of many, the little girl’s father decided it was time to remove her from the church service. As he proceeded slowly down the central aisle toward the rear door, the girl realized that her struggling and crying were in vain. She suddenly threw pleading open arms over her father’s shoulders toward the watching congregation and screamed at the top of her voice, “Pray for me! Pray for me!”
The choir director could not attend the church service, so she sent her teenage son to direct in her place. The young man was musically quite capable but seemed a little ill at ease directing adults twice and three times his age. As for the choir, we were perhaps over eager to show that we appreciated his stepping in and we were ready to accept his leadership. As practice proceeded, the pews began to fill. When we came to the final hymn the young man said quietly, so as not to disturb the gathering congregation, “We don’t need to practice all the verses on this song; we’ll just go through the first verse and the refrain so that we get a good feel for it.”
“Oh yes!” blurted out one of the choir ladies too loudly and enthusiastically, “I NEED a really good feel!”
A stunned silence filled the church.
The pillar of the community, the salt of the earth, had died. The congregation gathered in our little country church to celebrate his life and mourn his passing. As often happens, someone forgot to turn off his cell phone. The phone owner panicked when the phone tone rang out during the funeral and instead of turning off the phone he simply hung up on the caller. Three times the caller called back and three times the phone song rang out through the church with “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now.”
Old school Catholics, those of us who remember our Latin prayers, still feel uncomfortable about talking aloud in the church. The younger generation is at ease with engaging in good fellowship and conversation before and after mass. As we waited for tardy stragglers to choir practice, our beloved director (an extrovert’s extrovert) began her enthusiastic monologue of what interesting and humorous events had occurred in the last week of her life. I noticed a couple of the male choir members whispering and looking to the front of the church. When I too looked to the sanctuary, I saw that the tabernacle was glowing an angry red. As the red darkened, it began to pulsate…throbbing…throbbing! My first thought was of the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark of the Covenant began to act up just before it fried a couple dozen Nazis. Just as I was about to drop to my knees and publically confess transgressions, one of the whispering duo said “Lorrie, you best not talk so loud. Look at the tabernacle.” The gleam in his eye told me this was a natural not a supernatural happening. A jumbo over-sized load was approaching slowly down the road in front of the church. The red lights from the dozen or so escorting state police cars shone through the glass rear doors and reflected off the golden tabernacle doors. And to think I almost spilt my guts to the whole choir!
What began as whimpering had escalated into a full-blown tantrum. To the relief of many, the little girl’s father decided it was time to remove her from the church service. As he proceeded slowly down the central aisle toward the rear door, the girl realized that her struggling and crying were in vain. She suddenly threw pleading open arms over her father’s shoulders toward the watching congregation and screamed at the top of her voice, “Pray for me! Pray for me!”
The choir director could not attend the church service, so she sent her teenage son to direct in her place. The young man was musically quite capable but seemed a little ill at ease directing adults twice and three times his age. As for the choir, we were perhaps over eager to show that we appreciated his stepping in and we were ready to accept his leadership. As practice proceeded, the pews began to fill. When we came to the final hymn the young man said quietly, so as not to disturb the gathering congregation, “We don’t need to practice all the verses on this song; we’ll just go through the first verse and the refrain so that we get a good feel for it.”
“Oh yes!” blurted out one of the choir ladies too loudly and enthusiastically, “I NEED a really good feel!”
A stunned silence filled the church.
Harp on the Furnace
I know that I wrote a couple earlier blogs on winter heating (something about freezing my wazoo), but hey, it’s January, it’s cold and I can’t very well be writing about gardening or fishing, can I? So bear with me.
To prepare for ole man winter, I’ve weather striped the front door, put a bail of straw against the rear crawl space entrance, put light bulbs by the water pipes in the crawl space and in the pump house, insulated the top side of the attic entrance, and opened the exterior clean-out door on the old woodstove chimney so that it will draw from the outside and not the house interior. We reset the thermostat during the day based on our needs; I’m not going to overheat the house when we are not in it.
I’ve noticed that when the thermostat is set at 70 degrees or higher, the furnace kicks in very frequently and seems to struggle to keep the house warm; at 60 degrees, it kicks in much less. I think this is because the house maintains a natural level of residual heat from the fridge and freezer, from cooking, from radiant sunlight through the windows, and from the body heat of the occupants which make the 60 degree setting a much easier task. Since I have worked outdoors most of my life and know how to dress warmly and comfortably in light layers, I turn down the thermostat each morning after my wife leaves for work. The rule of thumb is that turning down the heat one degree reduces the fuel consumed 1% to 3%.
The natural comfort zone is between 70 degrees and 85 degrees, but this can be easily extended by ten degrees on either end. A wind chill from a fan can make us feel cooler in summer so that central air conditioning does not need to be used until 95 degrees. A fan uses as little as 1/40th the electricity that a central air unit does. Humidity retards body cooling by slowing skin moisture evaporation, and so can make us feel ten degrees warmer in winter. Most natural gas furnaces burn both humidity and oxygen out of the air, so other means must be found to add moisture to the house, either with a humidifier or by boiling potatoes or rice or simmering soups. Do not use a bathroom exhaust fan in cold weather or all the heat and humidity will be pumped outside in short order. Save the bathroom moisture for the rest of the house. So use a fan in summer and humidity in winter to widen the natural comfort zone.
There are a couple prevalent myths about winter heating:
Myth (1) Closing off rooms and their heating vents saves money. You can close the rooms but don’t close the heating vents. When a furnace is installed in a home it is rated to run efficiently heating the ENTIRE house. If vents are closed, the furnace will work inefficiently as heat backs up and overheats the furnace itself, possibly doing damage to its mechanisms. Better to open the vents, close the doors, and fool the thermostat from kicking the furnace in at all. Keep the room that the thermostat is in warm with a safely operated space heater or from cooking heat or passive solar from a sun porch. Then the closed off rooms become true dead-air insulation buffers without affecting the furnace.
Myth (2) Super insulation will lower your natural gas heating bill. Insulation is good up to a point, but if you are heating with natural gas (not electric, or geothermal, or solar) and the furnace draws its combustion oxygen from inside the house and not from outdoor air, then in an overly tight, super-insulated house, it will burn out so much oxygen that incomplete combustion will cause fuel to be wasted. In other words, the stale air will cause the flame to burn too rich. The inefficient operation of the furnace is similar to having a dirty furnace filter which does not allow it enough air for complete combustion. (By the way, you need to check and change that furnace filter on a regular basis.) The highest efficiency furnaces get their air supply from outdoors which is also healthier for the occupants.
To anyone who feels they can contribute or enlighten on any of the above discussion, I would greatly appreciate your input.
That’s it! …I’m done for the winter. I will not harp on the furnace or winter utility bills again.
To prepare for ole man winter, I’ve weather striped the front door, put a bail of straw against the rear crawl space entrance, put light bulbs by the water pipes in the crawl space and in the pump house, insulated the top side of the attic entrance, and opened the exterior clean-out door on the old woodstove chimney so that it will draw from the outside and not the house interior. We reset the thermostat during the day based on our needs; I’m not going to overheat the house when we are not in it.
I’ve noticed that when the thermostat is set at 70 degrees or higher, the furnace kicks in very frequently and seems to struggle to keep the house warm; at 60 degrees, it kicks in much less. I think this is because the house maintains a natural level of residual heat from the fridge and freezer, from cooking, from radiant sunlight through the windows, and from the body heat of the occupants which make the 60 degree setting a much easier task. Since I have worked outdoors most of my life and know how to dress warmly and comfortably in light layers, I turn down the thermostat each morning after my wife leaves for work. The rule of thumb is that turning down the heat one degree reduces the fuel consumed 1% to 3%.
The natural comfort zone is between 70 degrees and 85 degrees, but this can be easily extended by ten degrees on either end. A wind chill from a fan can make us feel cooler in summer so that central air conditioning does not need to be used until 95 degrees. A fan uses as little as 1/40th the electricity that a central air unit does. Humidity retards body cooling by slowing skin moisture evaporation, and so can make us feel ten degrees warmer in winter. Most natural gas furnaces burn both humidity and oxygen out of the air, so other means must be found to add moisture to the house, either with a humidifier or by boiling potatoes or rice or simmering soups. Do not use a bathroom exhaust fan in cold weather or all the heat and humidity will be pumped outside in short order. Save the bathroom moisture for the rest of the house. So use a fan in summer and humidity in winter to widen the natural comfort zone.
There are a couple prevalent myths about winter heating:
Myth (1) Closing off rooms and their heating vents saves money. You can close the rooms but don’t close the heating vents. When a furnace is installed in a home it is rated to run efficiently heating the ENTIRE house. If vents are closed, the furnace will work inefficiently as heat backs up and overheats the furnace itself, possibly doing damage to its mechanisms. Better to open the vents, close the doors, and fool the thermostat from kicking the furnace in at all. Keep the room that the thermostat is in warm with a safely operated space heater or from cooking heat or passive solar from a sun porch. Then the closed off rooms become true dead-air insulation buffers without affecting the furnace.
Myth (2) Super insulation will lower your natural gas heating bill. Insulation is good up to a point, but if you are heating with natural gas (not electric, or geothermal, or solar) and the furnace draws its combustion oxygen from inside the house and not from outdoor air, then in an overly tight, super-insulated house, it will burn out so much oxygen that incomplete combustion will cause fuel to be wasted. In other words, the stale air will cause the flame to burn too rich. The inefficient operation of the furnace is similar to having a dirty furnace filter which does not allow it enough air for complete combustion. (By the way, you need to check and change that furnace filter on a regular basis.) The highest efficiency furnaces get their air supply from outdoors which is also healthier for the occupants.
To anyone who feels they can contribute or enlighten on any of the above discussion, I would greatly appreciate your input.
That’s it! …I’m done for the winter. I will not harp on the furnace or winter utility bills again.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
To Restaurant or Not
To restaurant or not to restaurant, that is the question. Whether tis better to suffer life’s cruel forfeiture of gratuities or eschew forever all social ambiences? Whatever… can a near restaurant- grade meal be prepared by a culinary dummy (like me) at home?
Any idiot can boil spaghetti until soft, drain, and stir in a jar of spaghetti sauce. Serve with grape-cranberry juice, (cheaper than wine.) Butter French bread slices, sprinkle with garlic salt and put in the oven to toast. Light a candle and put some Italian tenors on the tape cassette player. Voila!...restaurant dinner at home and $20 saved.
My wife buys loaves of whole grain French bread at the “oops, we baked too much” sales in the grocery and throws them in the freezer. Pizza for Idiots consists of slicing these loaves lengthwise, topping with tomato sauce, browned ground sausage, mushrooms, and a heavy sprinkling of grated mozzarella cheese. Toast in the oven and you have deep pan pizza…good as any pizzeria.
Any knucklehead can cook brown rice: 2 1/2cups water, 1 cup rice, dash of salt, bring to a boil then cover and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep the rice from sticking to the pot bottom. Next dice up and fry some pork in a skillet, drain excess grease, add a little canola oil and stir- fry in the cooked rice and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. Add soy sauce to suit taste. If you want Chinese cuisine, serve with a jar of sweet and sour sauce; if you prefer a more Thai flavor, skip the sweet and sour and go with tabasco sauce.
As for sea food, fillet of sole never tasted any better than crappie. The super simple way of fixing crappie (assuming you performed your manly chore of catching and cleaning them) is to microwave the fillets for about three minutes, sprinkle with lemon juice and serve with a can of Boston baked beans and some rye bread. If you want to get fancy, dip fillets in milk, then bread the fillets in a seasoned cornmeal or flour mixture. Drizzle the fish with a little butter and bake in a 500 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Grate cabbage for coleslaw; bake a potato (actually microwave for 5 minutes,) add sour cream or make potato salad with mayonnaise and mustard. Be sure to poke holes in the potato with a fork and wrap with a damp napkin or the spud will explode.
Mexican food is as simple as opening several cans of chili con carne, heating in a sauce pan and mixing in some pre-cooked rice. Serve on tortillas that you bought pre-made at the grocery and top with salsa and grated cheddar cheese. How simple is that?
So dummy that I am, I believe I can prepare five restaurant style dinners. Still for the sake of our marriage and to limit cabin fever, we do need a date night out about once a week. We go to an inexpensive eatery about three times a month, (Does the phrase “$5 foot-long” ring a bell?). About once a month, and for all birthdays and anniversaries, we eat at mid-price restaurant.
There is a happy medium between going restaurant broke and never eating out. A final caveat, if you do fix your lady a romantic dinner at home instead of taking her out…you better plan to wash the dishes, Buster!
Any idiot can boil spaghetti until soft, drain, and stir in a jar of spaghetti sauce. Serve with grape-cranberry juice, (cheaper than wine.) Butter French bread slices, sprinkle with garlic salt and put in the oven to toast. Light a candle and put some Italian tenors on the tape cassette player. Voila!...restaurant dinner at home and $20 saved.
My wife buys loaves of whole grain French bread at the “oops, we baked too much” sales in the grocery and throws them in the freezer. Pizza for Idiots consists of slicing these loaves lengthwise, topping with tomato sauce, browned ground sausage, mushrooms, and a heavy sprinkling of grated mozzarella cheese. Toast in the oven and you have deep pan pizza…good as any pizzeria.
Any knucklehead can cook brown rice: 2 1/2cups water, 1 cup rice, dash of salt, bring to a boil then cover and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep the rice from sticking to the pot bottom. Next dice up and fry some pork in a skillet, drain excess grease, add a little canola oil and stir- fry in the cooked rice and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. Add soy sauce to suit taste. If you want Chinese cuisine, serve with a jar of sweet and sour sauce; if you prefer a more Thai flavor, skip the sweet and sour and go with tabasco sauce.
As for sea food, fillet of sole never tasted any better than crappie. The super simple way of fixing crappie (assuming you performed your manly chore of catching and cleaning them) is to microwave the fillets for about three minutes, sprinkle with lemon juice and serve with a can of Boston baked beans and some rye bread. If you want to get fancy, dip fillets in milk, then bread the fillets in a seasoned cornmeal or flour mixture. Drizzle the fish with a little butter and bake in a 500 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Grate cabbage for coleslaw; bake a potato (actually microwave for 5 minutes,) add sour cream or make potato salad with mayonnaise and mustard. Be sure to poke holes in the potato with a fork and wrap with a damp napkin or the spud will explode.
Mexican food is as simple as opening several cans of chili con carne, heating in a sauce pan and mixing in some pre-cooked rice. Serve on tortillas that you bought pre-made at the grocery and top with salsa and grated cheddar cheese. How simple is that?
So dummy that I am, I believe I can prepare five restaurant style dinners. Still for the sake of our marriage and to limit cabin fever, we do need a date night out about once a week. We go to an inexpensive eatery about three times a month, (Does the phrase “$5 foot-long” ring a bell?). About once a month, and for all birthdays and anniversaries, we eat at mid-price restaurant.
There is a happy medium between going restaurant broke and never eating out. A final caveat, if you do fix your lady a romantic dinner at home instead of taking her out…you better plan to wash the dishes, Buster!
January Journal
Frigid January now, and with the indispensable help and mentoring of my brother Jim, he and I are fulfilling a promise I made ages ago that I would remodel the kitchen. We put down thick plywood to reinforce a floor that had developed soft spots; we will retile the floor once we get the new cabinets and counter top in, which is the most arduous, exacting and time-consuming part of the project. My brothers are all handy, while I was the bookworm of the family, a real idiot savant, who inherited my father’s humor and appetite and not much else. My carpentry skills can best be described by two basic rules:
(1) If you give me a big enough hammer, I’ll make it fit…and
(2) If it’s not square, flush, level or plumb, just cock your head a little to one side and it will look fine.
And my work does look fine… in the dark! My wife has taken to naming our rooms after her brother-in-laws. John’s Room is the john; he remodeled our bath. The kitchen will henceforth be the James Room. Joe, we are holding the living room open for you. Just joking, Bro.
“You are just going to sit around with nothing to do and get bored to death,” my wife had predicted when I first retired. (I suspect she had a secret agenda of having me find another job to fill my time.) Truth is even January is fairly busy. I need to begin some form of indoor exercise to work off the weight I gained from the holiday calorie-dense food. Get out the dumbbells and stationary bike. While I’m using the bike, I want to learn by heart the lyrics to songs on the boom-box. I’d like to get good enough to sing at the nursing homes in the not too distant future. With my spouse’s encouragement, I have obliged myself to learn some cooking. I hope to get a small book on frugal living published by the end of the month. (Was that a plug?) I want to get my taxes at least figured roughly and try to find a few more deductions. Government paperwork seems to crawl out of the woodwork. I have to take my time to fill it out to keep the bureaucrats employed. I simply must keep up on my blogging. Enough already…you get the idea that my time is filled even if the water pipes don’t burst.
As the Good Book says (somewhere)… there is a season for everything. I want to enjoy each season in turn. I hope I can find time for reading (so much to learn, so little time), perusing seed catalogs and planning my summer garden. Some days, I get so busy that I miss one of my naps!
(1) If you give me a big enough hammer, I’ll make it fit…and
(2) If it’s not square, flush, level or plumb, just cock your head a little to one side and it will look fine.
And my work does look fine… in the dark! My wife has taken to naming our rooms after her brother-in-laws. John’s Room is the john; he remodeled our bath. The kitchen will henceforth be the James Room. Joe, we are holding the living room open for you. Just joking, Bro.
“You are just going to sit around with nothing to do and get bored to death,” my wife had predicted when I first retired. (I suspect she had a secret agenda of having me find another job to fill my time.) Truth is even January is fairly busy. I need to begin some form of indoor exercise to work off the weight I gained from the holiday calorie-dense food. Get out the dumbbells and stationary bike. While I’m using the bike, I want to learn by heart the lyrics to songs on the boom-box. I’d like to get good enough to sing at the nursing homes in the not too distant future. With my spouse’s encouragement, I have obliged myself to learn some cooking. I hope to get a small book on frugal living published by the end of the month. (Was that a plug?) I want to get my taxes at least figured roughly and try to find a few more deductions. Government paperwork seems to crawl out of the woodwork. I have to take my time to fill it out to keep the bureaucrats employed. I simply must keep up on my blogging. Enough already…you get the idea that my time is filled even if the water pipes don’t burst.
As the Good Book says (somewhere)… there is a season for everything. I want to enjoy each season in turn. I hope I can find time for reading (so much to learn, so little time), perusing seed catalogs and planning my summer garden. Some days, I get so busy that I miss one of my naps!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Don’t Try This
In a recent blog, Frugal or Cheap, I wrote a list of money saving ideas that I recommended people not try. Here are a few more that I discovered over the holidays.
When the door-to-door missionaries give you free religious tracts, do not wrap them and put them under the tree as presents for your daughter’s main squeeze. This will result in some really strange looks on Christmas morning.
If you attend a funeral and eat the post-funeral meal, on the way home do not jokingly tell your better-half that she has just been taken out for a date and dinner. Some people have no sense of humor.
Do not put a large card on a small homemade Christmas gift that reads: “Love you Sis…S M I L E if you’re not wearing underwear!” I thought it would be worth it to see her grin ear to ear, but it wasn’t.
If you write something that you think is humorous or cute in a greeting card (reader refer to previous entry) do not omit your signature and sign your wife’s name instead. This may result in severe cerebral contusions.
Finally, if you take family to FREE ZOO DAY do not trap them in a revolving door or barred turnstile and refer to them as the troglodyte exhibit. Geez…why didn’t I realize what would happen when I let them out!
(Note to reader: Of course all of the above are pure fiction and NONE of them ever really happened.)
When the door-to-door missionaries give you free religious tracts, do not wrap them and put them under the tree as presents for your daughter’s main squeeze. This will result in some really strange looks on Christmas morning.
If you attend a funeral and eat the post-funeral meal, on the way home do not jokingly tell your better-half that she has just been taken out for a date and dinner. Some people have no sense of humor.
Do not put a large card on a small homemade Christmas gift that reads: “Love you Sis…S M I L E if you’re not wearing underwear!” I thought it would be worth it to see her grin ear to ear, but it wasn’t.
If you write something that you think is humorous or cute in a greeting card (reader refer to previous entry) do not omit your signature and sign your wife’s name instead. This may result in severe cerebral contusions.
Finally, if you take family to FREE ZOO DAY do not trap them in a revolving door or barred turnstile and refer to them as the troglodyte exhibit. Geez…why didn’t I realize what would happen when I let them out!
(Note to reader: Of course all of the above are pure fiction and NONE of them ever really happened.)
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Going Green and Tight
Frugal and green… the two concepts often overlap. If I install more insulation and tighter windows, or if I dress warmer and turn down the thermostat, or if I buy more energy efficient appliances all in order to lower my utility bills and save me money, then in each instance I am also being green and reducing my carbon foot print. Energy conservation is both green and frugal. Likewise, if I grow an organic garden and eat out of it to reduce my grocery bill, I am inadvertently reducing the green house gasses spewed from trucks hauling produce cross country. If I decide that I don’t really need the latest electronics or toys from the Orient, then I am reducing pollution from both manufacturing and trans-oceanic transportation while I keep more money in my pocket.
OK, being economical can often have the side effect of also being green, but what about the consumer-driven economy—if people don’t buy, then manufacturers don’t manufacture, and workers don’t have jobs or income? There is a fundamental identity between the value of product and income. In plain English, if everyone consumed half as much, then everyone would only need half as much income. There could still be full employment, but people would only need to work a 20-hr work week to make their purchases. Like that would ever happen! But if it did, there would be more leisure and less global warming.
I, for one, do not believe that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. If we as individuals (i.e., the parts) get our acts together in terms of discriminating between needs and wants, in conservation and recycling, in limiting population growth, in home production, then perhaps the whole or global problems can be alleviated.
Think of me, not as a tightwad miser unwilling to help spend the nation out of recession, when I’m actually a patriotic green environmentalist. Considering that the word frugal is a synonym for economical, and that economy and ecology both come from the same Greek root word, oikos, (which means home or environment), should these concepts really be that much in conflict?
OK, being economical can often have the side effect of also being green, but what about the consumer-driven economy—if people don’t buy, then manufacturers don’t manufacture, and workers don’t have jobs or income? There is a fundamental identity between the value of product and income. In plain English, if everyone consumed half as much, then everyone would only need half as much income. There could still be full employment, but people would only need to work a 20-hr work week to make their purchases. Like that would ever happen! But if it did, there would be more leisure and less global warming.
I, for one, do not believe that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. If we as individuals (i.e., the parts) get our acts together in terms of discriminating between needs and wants, in conservation and recycling, in limiting population growth, in home production, then perhaps the whole or global problems can be alleviated.
Think of me, not as a tightwad miser unwilling to help spend the nation out of recession, when I’m actually a patriotic green environmentalist. Considering that the word frugal is a synonym for economical, and that economy and ecology both come from the same Greek root word, oikos, (which means home or environment), should these concepts really be that much in conflict?
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