The Modern Troll

Waah, no election day freebies!

2010-11-02T12:22:00.002-04:00

Remember back in 2008, when you could get free coffee, ice cream, and other goodies just for voting? I missed out on the free ice cream that year, so this year I was determined to find out just what kinds of free stuff was available. So, before running out to vote, I did a quick Google search on "election day freebies." Sorting through the results was a bit tricky, because most of them were actually from 2008. At last I found a link specifically about the 2010 election—but instead of listing free goodies, it talked about the lack of any. Yes, it appears that all those companies that were so eager to help get out the vote back in 2008 have now decided that there's nothing wrong with voter apathy after all.

OK, I realize that participating in the democratic process is supposed to be its own reward, but it's still a disappointment. It's like going to give blood and finding they're all out of cookies.

In the Laboratory

2010-10-27T19:49:00.000-04:00

Here's a little fellow who seems to belong to a genus of critters that I'm beginning to think of as "Advanced Stick Figures." Since he has a labcoat and a clipboard, he must be a scientist. Television has taught me that.

Since we're (or rather I'm - you may be thinking about something entirely unrelated at the moment) on the subject of scientists, I'll take this opportunity to repost my rules for safe and proper laboratory behavior:

It doesn't go in your mouth.
It doesn't belong in your ear.
Don't stick it up your nose.
Don't get it in your eyes.
Don't drop it on the floor.
Don't touch it if it's on fire.
If it smells bad, it's probably bad for you.
If it smells good, it's probably worse.
If you can't smell it at all . . . well, it's been nice knowin' ya.
If it can be pointed, be careful where you point it.
Just because the radiation won't kill you now is no excuse.
Read the label first.
If it ain't broke, don't break it.
If two substances are in separate containers, there's probably a good reason for it.
If it kills other living things, there's a chance it's not good for you either.
If metal dissolved in it, odds are your fingers won't fare much better.
An experiment that causes physical pain is a poorly designed experiment.
If you didn't do control experiments, you didn't do any experiments. Start over.
A result you don't like is still a result.
If it didn't work the first time, repeat the experiment.
If it did work the first time, repeat the experiment.
That which does not kill you . . . usually hurts like hell anyway.
Learn to cope with frustration.
Lightning may not strike the same spot twice, but just about everything else will (corollary: if it exploded last time, it's likely to explode this time too).

Fell Porpoise

2010-08-04T12:32:00.001-04:00

I just Googled the phrase "fell porpoise" and came up with nothing. Nada. Zippo. Not a single webcomic. Not a single blog. Not a single hipster making a pun along the lines of "no one could fathom his fell porpoise...no matter how much it chittered and squeaked." Nothing.

Interwebs, you have failed me.

You have failed to come up with every possible inane notion or idea before I have a chance to. SO I CLAIM THIS ONE. THE FELL PORPOISE IS MINE! MINE I TELL YOU! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Take that, Interwebs.

Uh oh

2010-06-01T11:02:00.001-04:00

How embarrassing....

Knights of the Mystic Turnip

2010-05-26T12:50:00.001-04:00

I seem to be stuck on a root vegetable theme. If that is so, so be it. I'd include an in-depth description of who these little spuds are, but to be honest, I haven't the foggiest. In fact, I can go so far as to say that I don't carrot all.

Sketches

2010-05-24T21:10:00.001-04:00

I recently realized that there's no reason that I can't post sketches in addition to the fully finished (or at least as fully finished as they're likely to get in my hands) drawings I normally put online.

Let an umbrella be your umbrella

2010-05-18T13:16:00.000-04:00

By the way (for those who arrived late), my lovely wife is now setting her thoughts on the subjects of frugality and ecological responsibility adrift upon the breezes of the interwebs at ecofrugality.blogspot.com. Check it out if you get a chance. It's far more interesting than this stuff.

Komodo Bunny

2010-05-17T11:18:00.001-04:00

Another hybrid, drawn at the New Jersey Folk Project spring festival:

Improbable hybrids

2010-05-13T13:25:00.002-04:00

A couple of new drawings. Drawn for a contest over at DeviantArt.

The premise is that they are the products of genetic engineering gone wrong, the first a monstrous cross between Homos sapiens and Aquila chrysaetos, the second a more innocuous cross between two organisms whose names I can't recall at the moment. Perhaps a polar bear and a Vidalia onion.

It is actually an interesting exercise to imagine what a hybrid between two or more distinct species might look like. It's very difficult to avoid drawing chimeras.

Laboratory Haiku

2010-04-22T13:09:00.001-04:00

No haiku about
RNA polymerase
Can say very much

New ecofrugal blog

2010-04-07T19:56:00.003-04:00

For the past year or so, I've been sharing this blog with the Troll. However, since I first decided back in January to focus my blog posts on the topic of ecofrugality, the title "The Modern Troll" has come to seem kind of inappropriate. Thus, I have decided to start a new blog that will be devoted specifically to the topic of ecofrugal living. I welcome all fans of this blog to come and visit the new one at ecofrugality.blogspot.com. I have re-posted several of my old posts on ecofrugal matters at the new site. Meanwhile, The Modern Troll will become the exclusive domain of the Troll once more, although my old posts will remain available, at least for the time being. See you all on the ecofrugal side.

Beautiful weeds

2010-04-05T22:53:00.001-04:00

Saturday's mail brought us a flier from Lawn Doctor, offering to help us get a "lush, green, weed-free lawn." This description is so unlike our current lawn that I couldn't help wondering whether they had sent around spies to scope out the yards in the area and target the folks that they assumed were most in need of help. Our yard has become more or less a safe haven for weeds of all kinds, from chickweed to dandelions to wild garlic. One whole slope in our backyard is thickly covered with purple dead nettles, which look beautiful in the morning sunlight as I hang out the laundry. Yet I realize that the sight of this thick, lush growth would sent many if not most homeowners running for a bottle of Roundup. This fact moves me to wonder: who exactly decided that these flowers are "weeds," anyhow? Whose idea was it that the ideal lawn should be a thick, dense carpet of turfgrass with nothing else in it? Why is grass better than dandelions?

My handy desktop dictionary defines a weed as "a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants." So basically, these various wildflowers are only weeds if you don't want them where they are. I'll readily agree that in my garden, a dandelion is a weed, because it's using up water and nutrients that I want to save for my tomatoes. But a lot of people seem to assume that every part of the yard should be filled with "cultivated plants," and therefore wild plants of any kind, anywhere, must be weeds. This seems like an awfully wasteful approach, since it requires you to get rid of all the plants that grow naturally in your yard, with no assistance from you, and put in plants that don't grow there naturally, which will require constant attention from you to keep them looking their best. For example, to keep a grass lawn looking good, you have to mow it, water it, fertilize it, and, oh yes, exercise constant vigilance to keep out the "weeds." (Or you can pay someone like Lawn Doctor to do it, to the tune of about $300 a year. Sure, you may have to stay inside for a couple of hours after they've sprayed all those chemicals around, but isn't it worth it to have a "lush, green, weed-free lawn"?)

So what's the ecofrugal alternative? Well, here's one that's really simple: if only unwanted plants are weeds, then all I have to do to get a "weed-free" lawn is to declare that all plants are welcome in my yard. Without pulling up a single plant, I'll have eliminated all the "weeds" by declaring them to be non-weeds, and it won't cost me a cent!

More praise for Freecycle

2010-03-29T09:20:00.002-04:00

Back in January, I posted about the virtues of Freecycle as a way to get rid of unwanted stuff. Well, now I can also laud it as a way to get new, useful stuff. Yesterday we scored our first ever major acquisition from Freecycle: nearly 1000 cement pavers. The poster was so eager to get rid of them that he even offered to transport them for us in his pickup, which took a lot less time than repeatedly loading and unloading the trunk of our little sedan. So after a couple of hours of lifting and stacking, we now have sore arms, sore knees, and enough pavers to build a 10-by-20-foot patio. Hooray! Now we just need to keep scanning the Freecycle postings until someone offers a few cubic yards of gravel and sand...

Luxury

2010-03-27T16:23:00.003-04:00

Every so often, usually while taking a shower, I'll be struck by the thought of just how luxurious my lifestyle is. That may sound odd coming from someone who lives without so many of the amenities that lots of her peers think of as necessities of life (air conditioning, cable TV, convenience foods, and so on). And indeed, I'm well aware that I'm not nearly so extravagant in my habits as most Americans of my age and income level. Yet compared with most of the people who have ever lived, I live in positive luxury. Consider, for example: I take a hot shower almost every morning. Now, cast your mind back to the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, if you've ever read it. That family had to haul every bit of its water from a stream or a well, and to heat it one kettleful at a time on the stove before pouring it into the bathtub. Considering what an undertaking that was, they naturally couldn't think of doing it every day. The whole family bathed once a week, on Saturday night (so they'd be clean for Sunday), and they all took turns in a single tub of water. Now granted, the Ingalls family wasn't rich, even for their own time, but 150 years ago, even those who were rich enough to have servants draw a bath for them couldn't expect them to stand there pouring hot water over their bodies continually. Yet I not only spend five minutes each day under a stream of hot water but take this blessing almost entirely for granted and get grumpy if the water supply fails for any reason.

Perhaps this kind of thing is the reason for the saying, "A luxury once tasted becomes a necessity" (which I've seen attributed variously to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Alex Berenson, and "the Greeks"). I first encountered this line in Andrew Tobias's modestly titled The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need (an excellent volume that I may get around to reviewing in a future post), and at the time, I didn't quite see the point of it. I've certainly sampled luxuries in my life—from champagne to silk underwear—that I felt I could go on living quite happily without. Yet I often forget how many of my own personal "necessities," like hot showers and electric lights and high-speed Internet, are really luxuries. I don't always appreciate what a treat it is to be able to sit up reading long after the sun has gone down, or to enjoy a cup of hot cocoa every morning even though the nearest cacao plantations are over a thousand miles away, or to type in a phrase like "when was the shower invented" or "where is cacao grown" into Google and find an answer in seconds.

Maybe the saying really ought to be, "A luxury once accustomed becomes a necessity." I can easily live without luxuries I've tried once and been indifferent to; I can even live easily without luxuries I've tried once and enjoyed purely as a change of pace. But a luxury that's become part of my daily life is truly hard to give up.

So while I have no intention of foregoing my daily shower, I guess I should at least try to make a point of appreciating it.

Two out of three ain't bad

2010-03-21T00:13:00.004-04:00

Last month, the LiveCheap site ran an article by a guy who had worked in the information and software business. He laid it down as a basic law of software development that out of fast, cheap, and good, you can have any two, but not all three. If you want to develop good software quickly, you should expect to spend serious money; if the client insists on having it done both quickly and cheaply, then the quality will suffer. However, if you are prepared to spend some extra time, you can get the job done well on a low budget. He then goes on to explain how this same principle applies to many other areas of frugal living, from buying a computer to booking a hotel room.

I can personally attest that this rule definitely holds true in the area of home improvement. For instance, the previous owners of our home seem to have tried to make every job as fast and cheap as possible. We saw many examples of this when we started work on the big basement room. Rather than taking the time to make the walls smooth, they had covered up the defects with cheap (and cheap-looking) plastic paneling. When putting up the ceiling, they had slapped the panels into place willy-nilly, without bothering to align them with the joists. They hadn't even bothered to make sure the panels they used were all of the same thickness. They'd thrown down a piece of sheet vinyl on the floor that didn't even reach all the way to the edges of the room; they'd left a visible gap between one wall and the ceiling; they'd wired up the lights in a way that made no sense and didn't really illuminate the room.

Now, I've watched enough HGTV to know that a lot of homeowners, faced with a problem like this, would spend thousands of dollars on a good and fast solution. They would rip out everything and start over from scratch, hiring professionals to put in new walls and ceilings, reframe the windows, and install new flooring. However, we approached the problem differently. Since we didn't need the space right away, we could afford to take the time to do a good and cheap job. Over the course of two and a half years, we worked on every single part of that room—ceiling, walls, windows, doors, lighting, and floor. We always looked for inexpensive solutions that would salvage as much as possible of the existing material. We also did as much of the work ourselves as we could. The only professional we hired was an electrician (and that was mainly because our town really makes it difficult to get permits for DIY work). It took time, but the results were worth waiting for, and we can feel confident that we got our money's worth out of the job. And as a bonus, we have a space we can feel proud of, because we know it's the fruit of our own labors.

I have to admit, though, that as we gear up for the next big project—the downstairs bath—I'm starting to wonder if maybe it would be worth spending just a little more money so we can see results a little faster. So while we're planning to become regular customers of the Habitat ReStore up in Morris County, if we can't find everything we need there in a reasonable amount of time, then the hell with it—I'm prepared to...[whispered] pay retail.

If you try sometime, you just might find...

2010-03-19T13:16:00.007-04:00

A recent article on the Get Rich Slowly blog discusses the difficulty of striking a balance with money. The author, in her youth, was a big-time spender and racked up major debt. When she finally decided to change her ways, she went completely to the opposite extreme, cutting her spending to the bone and adopting a no-frills lifestyle. She got her debts paid off, but in the process she went from being a compulsive spender to a compulsive saver. She now finds it difficult to spend, even when it's appropriate.

I can recognize some of this compulsive-saving instinct in myself, too. Sometimes I obsess too much over tiny expenses, like whether I should really spend $5 on a new tube of face cleanser or wait until I've used up the old cleanser, even though it doesn't seem to work very well. But in general, I think I manage to strike a pretty healthy balance. I do think carefully about every purchase, but I'll spend the money when I'm convinced it's worth it. (For instance, I did go ahead and buy the new brand—but only after popping back home to make sure there wasn't a coupon available online.) I don't feel like I deny myself anything I really want; I just try to get what I want for as little money as possible.

So when I followed a link to another article on Get Rich Slowly that was about something called "The Balanced Money Formula," as outlined by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi, I fully expected my spending to be in balance. Their formula breaks down spending into Needs and Wants. They say you should spend no more than 50 percent (ideally, no more than 35 percent) of your take-home pay on Needs, spend 30 percent on Wants, and put aside least 20 percent for Savings. I pulled up my little budget spreadsheet and ran a rough analysis of our spending, and I found that our spending on Needs was within the 50 percent limit (though not quite down to 35 percent) and our Savings were well above the 20 percent mark. Where we fell down, according to Warren and Tyagi, was that we weren't spending enough on Wants. The article suggested that those who spend less than 20 percent of their income on Wants "might be missing the point of money." While you won't get into financial trouble spending too little on Wants, they say, "you should ask yourself—are you making enough room for fun?" I suspect that Warren and Tyagi, looking at the 12 percent of take-home pay we spend on Wants, would answer that question with an emphatic no.

The thing is, we don't feel deprived. We just don't have very expensive tastes. We don't need to spend a lot to do the things we enjoy. We go to concerts a couple of times a month, but they're typically folk shows, where the tickets range from $7 to $25 (or where we can get in free by volunteering). We don't have TV service, but we watch shows on Hulu and borrow DVDs from the library (and enjoy low-tech pursuits, like reading aloud and playing board games). And also, a lot of the things we enjoy fall into categories that get lumped in under Needs rather than Wants. Gardening counts as a Need, because we grow vegetables to eat, but it's also something we do for fun. Home maintenance is a Need, because it includes the money we spend to keep the house standing and the heat running, but it also includes money we spend to make the house look nicer just because we like it that way. I counted meals eaten out as a Want and groceries as a Need, but a mocha frappe whipped up in the blender is just as much an indulgence as a Starbucks Frappuccino. So the line between those two categories gets a little blurry.

My conclusion? Warren and Tyagi are may be right to say that it's a mistake to spend too little on Wants. However, how much is too little depends on the person—it doesn't have to be a hard-and-fast number. The question isn't how much of your income you're spending but how satisfied you are with what you have. Why spend more on Wants than you really want to?

Partying like it's 1899

2010-03-15T09:02:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, we had a big rainstorm—rain falling almost horizontally, squeezing itself through previously undiscovered gaps in the windowframes, and wind yanking the gutter guards loose from the gutters and banging them against the side of the house. And around 5:30 pm, just as the daylight was failing, the power went out.

Now, as an ecofrugal individual, I'm always inclined to think of myself as being less dependent than most folks on modern conveniences. In many ways, we live a pretty old-fashioned lifestyle. We hang our clothes on a line; we wash our dishes in the sink. So I guess I assumed that, if we had to, we could manage without electricity better than most people. However, it didn't take us very long to discover the limits of what we could do without it. Our heating system runs on gas, but the pump that circulates the water is electric, so no power meant no heat, either. We could still light the stove with a match, but we couldn't use the oven because the controls are electronic, so we had to set aside the ingredients for that night's casserole and reheat some leftovers on the stove instead. We lit a bunch of candles, but we quickly found that they didn't actually shed that much light, and although I have a little oil lamp, I couldn't find the oil to fill it. And after eating and washing the dishes by candlelight, we found ourselves at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the rest of the evening. We'd planned to eat some homemade ice cream and watch the latest episode of Project Runway; now the TV was out of commission and we didn't dare open the freezer. First I tried reading aloud by the light of a wind-up flashlight, and then we played cribbage by candlelight, but we could barely see the cards. Finally I suggested that we just get out of the house and—believe it or not—go to the mall. So we passed the next couple of hours browsing in a Barnes and Noble and came away with two new books. Rather than making us more ecofrugal, two hours without electricity was enough to drive us straight into the arms of the mainstream consumer lifestyle.

Not knowing how long the power outage was likely to last, we decided the next morning to prepare for the worst. So we went out and bought a bunch of batteries for our radio and for a couple of little LED lights that we'd been meaning to install under the kitchen counters. We also thought about buying some ice in case we needed to try and save the contents of the fridge or freezer, but when we found that the ice at the corner store was all half-melted, we decided to wait until we were sure we needed it and then drive to the supermarket so we could get the bag home still frozen. Apparently these few steps we took were enough to invoke Murphy's Law, because when we returned, the power was back on.

Of course, no sooner had we verified this than the phone rang with a recorded message from the borough telling us that there was a "boil water advisory" due to local flooding—meaning that we now have power, but not potable water. Luckily, we really were prepared for this possibility, with 20 gallons of water stored up in jugs in the basement, so we have plenty of clean water to drink, wash dishes in, and brush our teeth with. The only tricky bit is remembering to use the stored water for these things, rather than turning on the tap reflexively. At least we don't have to go out and haul it from a well.

Ecofrugal fantasy mall

2010-03-11T12:30:00.003-05:00

A couple of miles up the road from us, there's an old strip mall that's been undergoing renovations for most of the past year. Prior to that, it wasn't much use as strip malls go; the only stores in it we ever went to at all were the Asian supermarket and a huge discount warehouse called National Wholesale Liquidators, which unloaded at rock-bottom prices all the junk that other retailers couldn't sell. In amongst all the junk there were occasional gems, like the pair of compact fluorescent torchères we picked up for only $8 each, but finds like those were few and far between, and we weren't terribly sorry to see the place close down. However, I have found myself wondering, each time I passed by that derelict hulk, whether all the money the owners are putting into stucco and stonework will actually attract any new stores—and if so, whether they'll actually be stores I would want to patronize.

So I started thinking about what I'd really love to see move into this old, run-down strip mall once it becomes a new, spruced-up strip mall. Here's what my ultimate fantasy configuration would look like:

The former Asian grocery would become a new Trader Joe's. At present, the nearest one to us is in Westfield, half an hour away. With a new one a couple of miles away, we would no longer need to make a special trip to stock up on organic raisins and recycled-fiber toilet paper.
The big National Wholesale Liquidators space would house a new Habitat ReStore. These are like thrift shops for home improvement goods of all kinds, from tile to paint to furniture. The goods are donated and sold at, I'm told, mouth-wateringly low prices. I've never been to one yet myself, because the nearest one to us is in Freehold, half an hour away (in exactly the opposite direction from the Trader Joe's) and is only open from 10 to 3 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Having one right in our back yard would be an ecofrugal dream come true.
The other big storefront, which I believe used to be a discount children's clothing store, would become a Goodwill store or some other big thrift shop. Right now, there is only one thrift shop within walking distance of here, and it has a very unimpressive, seldom-changing selection, plus it is only open about ten hours a week. There is a Goodwill store about 20 minutes away by car, but since it's not close to any other stores we patronize regularly, we have to make a special trip to visit it, so I seldom get the chance to browse.
One of the smaller storefronts could house a fabric store, a type of establishment that seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. The only big chain left is JoAnn Fabrics, and the nearest one of those is in the Mercer Mall, nearly an hour away. But we all know that lots of frugal practices and skills are making a comeback in this recession, so why not sewing?
And then, just to add an extra kick to each trip, I'd like to throw in a coffeeshop of some sort. A crunchy, hippie-type coffee bar offering Fair-Trade brew and soymilk would be great, but I'd settle for a Starbucks.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Coming out of hibernation

2010-03-09T10:24:00.005-05:00

After being cooped up in our cave all winter long, venturing out only to shovel snow and go to hardware stores, the Troll and I are finally starting to emerge from our long winter's nap. He rode his bike to work this morning, and I just finished hanging up the year's first load of air-dried laundry. After three big snowstorms in February, it's hard to express what a delight it is to be outside on a bright March morning, pinning socks and underwear to the line. The days may not be long enough or warm enough yet to get everything dried completely, but after months of being confined to the tumble dryer, I can't help feeling that my clothes will appreciate the chance to get out and get some air. I know I do.

This first touch of spring came right on time for us, too, because we've finally finished up the project that's been keeping us busy indoors through the long winter months. Yes, the room we are tentatively calling the "big room" is now finished—floored and finished off with molding throughout. Here's a slightly blurry picture of the final result. It isn't exactly furnished yet, but we've moved in a few big items (a futon, a dining table) and we can now finish it off at our leisure with rugs, curtains, art, and so on. And, having met my informal mental deadline of having the room done "by spring," we are free to move on to outdoor projects now that the weather is nice enough to allow it. I know pruning and weeding are bound to be tedious chores in the heat of July, so I may as well do as much of them as I can now, while it's still a refreshing change of pace.

Best Home Show Ever

2010-03-02T09:07:00.005-05:00

The Troll and I are too cheap to pay for cable service at home, so I was pleased to discover recently that the HGTV website has episodes of several shows available to watch online. (One minor drawback: although there are only a few short commercials in each episode, it's usually the same 30-second commercial repeated several times in each episode—and it will show up again and again in different episodes. And trust me, these are not commercials that improve with repeated watching.) So I watched a few episodes of some of their more popular shows, and after a while I found I was getting frustrated. The problem I was having is that, with a few exceptions like "Designed to Sell," these shows appeared to approach the job of redesigning a space with reckless disregard for the cost. Oh, some of them had a nominal budget, but it was a budget of, say, $25,000 to $35,000 to make over a dated kitchen—and that's without any new plumbing or wiring work. Their approach to pretty much anything the homeowners didn't like was to rip it out and replace it with new, high-end materials. And the most annoying part of all was the way they would install $10,000 worth of new stonework and then brag about how they saved the homeowner $75 by refinishing the existing light fixture instead of buying a new one.

So after a while, I was starting to wonder if there were any shows out there that didn't take such a wasteful approach to home redesign. Then, while browsing on Hulu, I discovered "Wasted Spaces." This is the perfect antidote to those spendthrift HGTV shows: a show with an ecofrugal approach. The premise is, the host/builder (a delightful Aussie named Karl Champley) comes into the homes of people who need more space in a particular area and shows them how to make use of unused spaces—overhead, in the floor, in the walls, or in other rooms of the house. Then he designs and helps them build a custom storage unit, tailored to their space, out of materials you can buy at any home center—often for as little as $100. His projects have included a recessed pantry built into the wall between the kitchen and the garage (with additional shelves on the garage side for storage there); a custom desk with a hideaway laptop drawer that doesn't even need hinges; a wall-mounted rotating art display; and a set of hidden storage compartments set into the floor for stowing away valuables.

Unlike the hosts of many home shows, who tend to be annoyingly chipper and sound scripted even when they're ad-libbing, Karl Champley is down-to-earth, has a sense of humor, and really knows his stuff. His shows are full of useful tips like, "When you're buying lumber, never take the first board in a stack; it's usually warped" (something that the Troll and I had already learned through personal observation). He takes the time to show the homeowners (and the viewers) the nuts and bolts of a project—sometimes quite literally, as when he demonstrates how the hardware on a new cabinet works. He can make an exquisite corner cabinet out of plywood and ceiling tile. And, incidentally, he's really hot.

This show, to me, captures the essence of ecofrugality: avoiding waste. Rather than throw everything away and replace it for thousands of dollars, it shows you how to make the most of what you have for hundreds. Seasons 3 and 4 are available on Hulu, and well worth a look.

Name That Room

2010-02-23T11:21:00.005-05:00

This is only very loosely related to the blog's new ecofrugal focus, but it's something that's been on my mind:

Last night, after a long session of working on the basement floor (which is progressing slowly, but surely), the Troll remarked that the new floor had really transformed the room. It now looked, he observed, "like a room." This might seem like a non-statement, but it's actually a pretty striking observation. When we first laid eyes on that basement, it looked like a basement—a semi-finished, walk-out basement, but a basement nonetheless. From the fake wood paneling to the cruddy vinyl floor to the bare light bulbs, everything about it said that no one was really taking it seriously as a room. But the work we've put into it has transformed it into a real room—bright and well-lit and decidedly finished.

The problem is, we're still in the habit of referring to this room as "the basement." That makes it sound like a dark, musty area that's used only for storage, or perhaps for the occasional woodworking project. If we're going to start thinking of this room as a proper room, it needs a proper name. But what?

My mom has occasionally referred to this room-in-progress as our "family room," but that doesn't sound right to me. A "family room" is the room where you spend time as a family—as opposed to a formal living room, which isn't really for "living" at all, but only for looking at. If it gets used at all, it's only when company comes, and only when the company is someone you don't feel comfortable enough with to treat them as family and sit in the family room. But in our house, the living room is actually used as a living room; it's the place where we sit and watch TV and generally hang out. So the basement room definitely won't be a "family room"; if anything, it will be just the opposite, a big space that we use mainly for entertaining. I've heard of finished basements being referred to as rec rooms (for "recreation"), but to me that term suggests a space whose main feature is a pool table, or a foosball table, or perhaps a big TV set. Definitely not the kind of recreation we have in mind for our room, which will more likely involve board games and perhaps the occasional music party.

I suppose we could call the room the dining room, as our house doesn't currently have one, and this large basement room is the only one in the house big enough to accommodate a full-sized dining table. But this won't be the main room that we use for eating, and eating won't be the main function of the room. If we ever have dinner parties, we'll certainly have them downstairs, as it's the only room big enough, but the big dining table will be used for board games more often than for meals, and the room will also have a sitting area that doesn't fit in with the "dining" function. "Living room/dining room" is a term that might cover both functions, but our house already has a living room, and we're not planning to switch our main living area from upstairs to downstairs.

On the decorating shows, they often refer to a finished attic or basement as a "bonus room," but this term seems to imply that it's an extra space that you get thrown in for free—not really part of the main house. I want the name we give to this room to make it clear that it's a real part of our house, even if it's one we don't use every day. The names of most rooms come from their functions (living room, dining room, bedroom), but this room will be used for a variety of functions—dining, gaming, music, entertaining, and occasionally putting up overnight guests. So what do we call it? The game room? The party room? The great room (because it's large)? The gathering room? Or should we name it for its location, rather than its function, and just call it "downstairs"?

Any suggestions?

Re-something

2010-02-18T16:04:00.001-05:00

It sometimes seems to me that there should be a word for the kind of changes you can make to a room that are neither redecorating nor remodeling. "Redecorating," to me, sounds like a job you can do in a day. It could range from something as simple as rearranging the furniture to throwing everything out and bringing in new furniture, but in either case, it doesn't involve any changes to the basic structure of the room itself. At most, it might entail repainting or replacing the carpet. "Remodeling," on the other hand, suggests making changes to the basic structure--knocking out walls, putting in windows, that kind of thing. It sounds like the kind of job that you expect to take weeks, if not months, and to make the room pretty much unusable in the meantime.

What there doesn't seem to be a word for is the kind of changes that fall somewhere in between, like the changes we're making now to our basement. Over the past few years, we've ripped out the paneling and the old vinyl floor, rewired the room and put in new light fixtures, built new windowsills, boxed in an exposed heating pipe, repaired and repainted the walls and ceiling, replaced the handrail on the staircase, and painted the stairs. We're on the home stretch of this massive project now, installing the brown-paper floor over the existing concrete. It certainly feels to me like we have done more than "redecorate" this room, but I don't feel like I can really claim we "remodeled" it, either.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to call this kind of work "refinishing." When you refinish a piece of furniture, you strip off the old varnish or paint or whatever and apply a new surface, while leaving the bones of the piece unchanged. That's kind of what we're doing here. Pretty much every surface in this room has been altered, but the basic structure--windows, walls, ceiling--is the same. I think this is a useful ecofrugal concept, because the kind of refinishing we've done in this room can have just as big an impact as actual remodeling, but it will generally cost less, use fewer resources, and produce less waste.

The IKEA Challenge

2010-02-12T08:39:00.004-05:00

One of the most popular stories on the New York Times website today is "A Roomy 178 Square Feet," about a New Yorker who has crammed his tiny studio apartment with all kinds of objects on the theory that "the more stuff you put in a room...the bigger it seems." I guess there must be something wrong with my spatial perception, because to me, the room looked tiny, cluttered, and ungepachkit (an incredibly useful Yiddish word meaning "tastelessly overdone--too much of too many things at once"). Not that I'm such a minimalist that I like a room to contain one bed, one chair, one table, and no gewgaws of any kind. No, I like a few accessories to brighten up a space, but I like them to look like they belong in the space. I like it to look like some thought went into the choice of what to put in the room and what to leave out. I like there to be enough furniture to fill a space, but still leave room to walk around. I like to see three or four colors that harmonize together, not twenty different shades fighting with each other.

All of which brings me to an idea I've been meaning to write about for some time: the IKEA challenge.

This idea first popped into my head when the 2010 IKEA catalogue came out (and by the way, yes, it really is spelled in all caps--at least, that's the way they spell it, and I think every person or other entity should have the final say on how to spell his, her, or its own name). As I leafed through it, marveling over the prices I got to thinking, "I wonder if it would be possible to furnish an entire apartment from IKEA for $1000 and still have it look decent?" What I had in mind at the time was a one-bedroom apartment like the one I used to have, with a bedroom, a kitchen, and a living/office area. But seeing this guy's tiny studio (which does, by the way, include an IKEA bed) has inspired me to try a new challenge: furnish a wee 178-foot studio so as to make the best possible use of the space. The pieces must fulfill all the same functions as in my original challenge--a place to sit, a place to eat, a place to work, and a place to sleep--but in one room. The budget is still $1000 ($1500 less than the guy in the article spent to deck out his place, even with all his clever handmade pieces and thrift-store finds).

To do this, it will obviously be necessary to pick out some pieces that do double duty. For example, we'll need a bed that can double as a couch, or provide storage space, or all three. Like, for example, this Hemnes day bed, which can serve as either a couch or a single bed, with drawers for storage underneath--and, with the drawers pulled out, can even turn into a double bed. However, much as I like this piece, I must admit that at $500--not even including the mattress or bed linens--it's too much for our self-imposed budget. No, we're better off with the Beddinge/Lövås sofa bed, only $200 with the most basic cover. We can add the $30 Beddinge storage box to store the bed linens when it's in its sofa form, making the piece even more functional.

So now we have both a bed and a couch. To complete the sleeping area, we'll need a dresser and a nightstand of some kind, and to complete the living area, a couple of chairs and some sort of coffee table. Here, again, it's double duty to the rescue. This eight-block Expedit bookcase, turned on its side, can be stocked with five of these little two-drawer inserts, to serve as a combination dresser and TV stand. A smaller one, stacked on top, can store books and accessories. The whole piece together costs $270. One of these little Lack side tables, available in a rainbow of colors at $8 each, can do double duty as a nightstand, and the matching coffee table ($20) can go in front of the sofa/bed and scoot aside at bedtime.

Chairs will obviously have to do double or triple duty as well--in the sitting area, the eating area, and the office area. So we'll need something light and versatile that's easy to move around, like these stackable Nordmyra chairs at $40 each. The plastic Herman chair would be a lot cheaper, at $15 each, but not as nice-looking, and we can squeeze the nicer ones into the budget if we make the $170 Norden gateleg table, with its folding top and three storage drawers, do double duty as a dining table and a desk.

So far, we've furnished the whole room for only $815 including tax, which leaves plenty of money in the budget for accessories to make this sparsely furnished area look less Spartan. Like a big mirror--say, this 29-by-29-inch Noresund, for $20--to visually increase the size of the small space. A nice Kroby floor lamp will add some light for another $30. We can add what decorators like to call "pops of color" with these Granat cushions, only $4 each, and this Hampen rug, $50, in bright red, and warm the space up with a nice Polarvide throw for $3.50. Throw in some extras--a wastebasket, a couple of potted plants, a few candles for atmosphere, and a handy desk organizer--and the total budget comes in at just over $970. That leaves us an extra $30 for any little odds and ends I may have forgotten. And the finished space looks, in my imagination, a lot more pulled-together than the apartment featured in the Times.

Driving the Bandwagon, Part 2

2010-02-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

Last April I noticed that the Troll and I were ahead of the curve on an emerging trend toward frugality. The cable-free, line-dried lifestyle we'd been living for years was suddenly considered hip. While it was a novel sensation to be a trendsetter, I figured it would never happen again.

Well, what do you know? According to this article on Bankrate, the latest trend among homebuyers is to seek out "lower prices, smaller floor plans, greener elements" and other features that "conform to their lifestyles." Many people want to live in neighborhoods that are walkable, close to their jobs, and/or convenient to transit. Formal dining rooms are out; energy efficiency is in. McMansions? So last decade.

In other words, buyers today are looking at the same criteria that we used when we were shopping for this house three years ago. We're trendsetters again! Next thing you know, millions of Americans will be driving 15-year-old cars, playing board games, and listening to obscure folk artists. Knock wood.

World's Biggest Craft Project

2010-02-08T19:14:00.004-05:00

A year after I first thought of the idea, I've finally bitten the bullet and started installing a brown-paper floor in the basement. So far, I've managed (with some help from the Troll) to cover about 25 square feet of a room that measures somewhere around 400 square feet. It is, shall we say, a slow process.

Putting down the pieces of paper is actually kind of fun--a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle. To make them look natural, the pieces need to be torn from the roll rather than cut, creating an uneven edge. So they have to be fitted together to avoid leaving bare patches without too much wasteful overlap between pieces. It does get a bit tiring after a while, kneeling on the concrete and pressing piece after piece of paper into place, but it's also satisfying to watch the finished area expand. The really tedious part is preparing the pieces of paper. Each piece has to be torn from the roll, thoroughly crumpled, and unfolded again, to create wrinkles in the paper that will absorb the poly and give it a nice marbleized look. The paper is fairly heavy and stiff, and it's remarkable how fast your hands can get tired crumpling and unfolding dozens of pieces at a time. After several hours of this, my back and knees feel fine, but my hands are still sore.

So, this isn't a quick and easy weekend project, but I'm hoping the payoff will be worth the work. Even from the little bit we've done so far, it's clear that the end result will be much more interesting than a plain painted surface.

Midwinter's Day

2010-02-02T15:05:00.002-05:00

Today is Groundhog Day, a holiday not much celebrated except in elementary schools (and, of course, in Punxsutawney, PA). It's a pity, because this little-observed festival is all we really have these days to commemorate the midpoint of winter--the halfway mark between the winter solstice (which comes amid all the hustle and bustle of Christmastime) and the spring equinox (which leads the way for the spring festivals of Passover and Easter). In the past, various festivals occurred at this time of year, from the Irish hearth festival of Imbolg to the Catholic Feast of the Purification of Mary, or Candlemas. It's a traditional date for taking down Christmas decorations, as described in this poem by Robert Herrick. And the tradition of watching the weather for a sign of spring is reflected in the old English rhyme, "If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, / Winter will have another flight. / If Candlemas Day bring clouds and rain, / Winter will not come again."

Okay, perhaps it's not realistic to believe that spring will ever really come this early just because a groundhog can't see his shadow. But even so, this day is a sort of a turning point in the season--not the beginning of spring, but the beginning of the end for winter. We may still have six weeks to go, but we've made it through the darkest and, with any luck, the coldest days. Under the snow, the bulbs are waking up, and soon we'll see the first green shoots of crocuses and snowdrops. The sap is beginning to rise in the trees, and soon it will be time for maple sugaring. For gardeners, it's time to order our seeds and start plotting out next spring's vegetable beds. Winter may not be over, but its days are numbered.

So, for all those who want to honor this point in the cycle of the seasons, here's a little poem I wrote four years back while traipsing through the bleak brown February landscape--tentatively titled "Groundhog Day."

This is the heart of winter,
the certainty of cold.
No snow to make the landscape bright,
no ice to glaze the branches;
just brown, and grey, and mottled green,
mud thick as molasses.
Past is the cheer of holly boughs,
the flickering gold of candles.
This is the long wait for the dawn,
for the first shout of green.
This is not the time for fruits,
not the time for flowers;
this is the time for hidden things,
for seeds that stir beneath the soil,
for frogs that sleep in beds of mire,
for sap that rises in the wood.
This is a breath held, and held, and held.
This is not the end of the year but the beginning.

The Other Popcorn Report

2010-02-01T15:59:00.003-05:00

I think popcorn is just about the perfect snack. It's healthful, filling, and easy to make. Of course, if you load it up with butter and salt, it's not quite so healthful, but in its natural state, popcorn is a nutritious whole grain with about 125 calories, nearly 5 grams of fiber, and less than 1.5 grams of fat per quart (according to the USDA Nutrient Database). The only problem is, making this kind of stripped-down popcorn usually requires an air popper--a big, noisy appliance that takes up space and can be a hassle to extract from your cabinet. So for the sake of convenience, most people go with pricey, overpackaged microwave popcorn, which is exactly the opposite of ecofrugal. According to an analysis in The Complete Tightwad Gazette, microwave popcorn costs anywhere from 4 to 13 times as much as regular jar-packed popcorn, and each bowlful comes with a throwaway microwave bag and plastic wrapper.

Fortunately, there is an elegant solution that offers the convenience of microwave popcorn without the waste: the reusable microwave popper. This simple device costs about $10 and takes up no more cabinet space than a regular bowl. After some trial and error, I've found that the organic popcorn from the bulk bins at Whole Foods works best in my home microwave. I measure 1/4 cup of kernels into the popper, punch in 3 minutes and 45 seconds, and pull out a full bowl of fluffy white popcorn with no more than half a dozen duds at the bottom. I don't even have to transfer it to another container--I just drizzle on some olive oil, sprinkle it with salt, and dive in.

A pound of the bulk popcorn costs about $1.60 and yields about 13 bowlfuls--12.5 cents per bowl. The cheapest microwave popcorn I've ever found (an off-brand on sale at the Dollar Tree) cost twice as much per bag. So an inexpensive microwave popper is an investment that will pay for itself after, at most, 80 uses--which, at the rate I go through popcorn, means about four months. And because I keep the popper and the popcorn both within easy reach, it actually requires no more work than unwrapping one of those wasteful little bags.

In Praise of Freecycle

2010-01-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

The Troll and I are doing a little reorganization in our kitchen--a subject I might discuss at more length in another entry, but for now I only mention it because part of the process is clearing out the cabinets and getting rid of unwanted items. Getting rid of stuff is always difficult for us, because we both just hate to throw away anything that's "still good," even if we know we'll never actually use it. But luckily for us, this is where Freecycle comes in.

In case there's anyone out there who doesn't already know, Freecycle is a worldwide network of online communities that help people reuse unwanted stuff. If you have something you want to get rid of, you post an entry like this:

Title: OFFER: left-handed golf clubs
From: Lobelia
Date: 13:39, 26 Oct 2009
Location: Hobbiton
Description: Set of left-handed golf clubs. I don't play golf and I'm not left-handed. Don't ask me what I'm doing with them. Quick pick-up preferred.

And within a day, usually, you will get at least one request for the unwanted item from another member. In fact, it's not unusual to get a deluge of requests within the first couple of hours. (You can choose to give it to anyone you wish, though I usually follow a first-come, first-served policy.) In the past five years, I have successfully used Freecycle to get rid of many items, including:

an eight-year-old Macintosh computer
several old textbooks
a reel-type lawn mower with a wheel that (as I stated quite openly) didn't stay on very well
a Weed Whacker with a motor that was (as I also stated quite openly) on the verge of burning itself out
an old CRT monitor
a surplus of rubber bands

We have also acquired a few items from Freecycle, including books, videotapes, and most notably, the "jungle adventure" tent that turned out to be the most successful gift we gave to any of our nieces and nephews last Christmas. And while we've never actually used Freecycle to request a specific item, I have seen people ask for and get all kinds of things, from computers to out-of-print books.

So, if there is anyone out there in cyberspace who does not yet belong to a Freecycle group: try it, you'll like it.

The Name Game

2010-01-27T10:57:00.001-05:00

There are famous people, both real and fictional, whose surnames may be a complete mystery to us. Instead, we're more likely to know them by a combination of their first name and some other descriptive word. For example, the characters John McIntyre and John Black from the movie "M*A*S*H" are more often referred to as Trapper John and Ugly John, respectively. Here are ten more that I came up with. How many of the blanks can you fill without having to resort to a Google search?

1.   ________ Bill (Cody)
2.   ________ Bill (Hickok)
3.   ________ Harry (Callahan)
4.   ________ Max (Rockatansky)
5.   ________ Prudence (Farrow)
6.   ________ Steven (Van Zandt)
7.   ________ Albert (Robertson)
8.   ________ Mary (Mallon)
9.   ________ Eddie (Antar)
10. ________ George (O'Dowd)

Also, are there any others that you can add to the list?

Thrift Week, Day Seven: Clothing

2010-01-23T17:51:00.007-05:00

Well, we've finally made it to the end of Thrift Week. (Whew! Writing an entry every day is harder than I expected.) Our topic for the seventh and final day is clothing--or, as the Consumer Expenditures Survey puts it, "apparel and services"--which costs the average household $1,801 per year. Not surprisingly, clothing for women and girls accounts for the largest share of this expense ($718 per year), followed by clothing for men and boys ($427), footwear ($314), and "other apparel products and services" ($248). I assume "services" refers to dry cleaning and the like. The smallest item in the clothing budget is clothing for children under two, which costs the average family only $93 per year.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the reason clothes for young children cost so much less than clothes for older children and adults is not just that little bitty clothes require less fabric and therefore cost less; I suspect that many children under two years old are clothed largely, or at least partly, in hand-me-downs. Children this young grow out of their clothes long before they wear out, so naturally it makes sense to pass them down to a younger sibling or an acquaintance. However, what's less obvious is that many adults and older children, for one reason or another, also discard clothes before they're worn out. Kids over two may continue to outgrow their clothes while they're still in good condition; adults, as I can sadly attest, may also outgrow their clothes, or in other cases, shrink out of them. Also, picky adults may discard clothes in good condition because they're not the latest style, or because they've just grown tired of them. As a result, buying (or otherwise acquiring) secondhand can help adults and older kids dress themselves just as cheaply as the little ones. And as always, buying secondhand is a sustainable choice as well, because it saves resources and prevents waste.

The best way to find secondhand clothes will depend on your particular wardrobe needs. If you work in corporate America and need to look natty when you show up at the office, you may need to stick to the higher-end thrift shops and consignment shops. You may pay as much or more for a secondhand garment at one of these stores as you would for a new one at a cheaper retail store, such as Sears or J.C. Penney, but the piece will probably be of higher quality. (You can at least be sure that it won't fall apart after the first washing, since it's already had one.)

If you work in a more, ahem, casual environment, as I do, you have a wider range of options. No-frills thrift shops, like Goodwill, offer a wide range of clothes at anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of what they'd cost new. You do have to look each item over a bit more carefully before you buy, as it might have stains or other damage that would cause a consignment shop to reject it. Clothes at yard sales can be even cheaper--one or two dollars per garment or even less--but you usually can't try them on, so you have to size them up by eye only. (Of course, if it doesn't fit, you're only out a dollar, so "when in doubt, buy it" can be a reasonable approach.)

The only thing better than cheap, of course, is free, and there are several ways to get free clothes. Single garments or batches of items often show up on Freecycle, but of course, you don't get to try them on--or, in most cases, even look at them--before deciding whether to take them. Still, if you're willing to pick up a batch, keep what you like, and re-list the rest, you can get stuff you like this way without paying a penny. If you need to see what you're getting, you can get free clothes by having a clothing swap. (Some folks call these "naked lady parties," but there's no reason men can't have them too.) Just pull a bunch of items you don't want anymore out of your wardrobe, then get together with several friends who have all done the same, and pick out new-to-you clothes from what everyone's brought. The leftovers can go to Goodwill or some other organization.

A few other ways to save money and resources on clothing:

As much as possible, avoid clothes that require dry-cleaning. A dress that looked like a great bargain in the thrift shop may more than double its cost with the first cleaning. And the chemicals used by most dry-cleaners are appallingly toxic.
Give a darn! That is, repair holes to keep garments usable longer. Try to catch the holes while they're little--a stitch in time literally does save nine.
If you don't sew, or if an item is beyond your abilities to fix, consider taking it to a professional tailor or seamstress for repairs. You can also get a professional to alter clothes that no longer fit you and extend their useful life. It may not seem worth fixing a secondhand garment if the cost of the repair is more than what you originally paid for it, but it may look better if you compare the cost with what it would cost to replace. And even if it costs as much to fix as it would to replace, you're still saving natural resources. Repairing shoes is even more worthwhile--a good pair of shoes that's molded to your feet is a real treasure, something a new pair really can't replace.

Well, that wraps up our celebration of Thrift Week. Hope you've all enjoyed it. We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Thrift Week, Day Six: Insurance

2010-01-22T10:54:00.006-05:00

Today's topic is insurance, which I realize I actually should have covered back on Day Four, because it's the fourth-largest expense in the average household budget ($5,605 per year, or 11.1 percent of total expenditures). What's odd is that this figure covers only "personal insurance and pensions." It doesn't include health insurance (which is covered under medical expenses), auto insurance (under transportation), or homeowners/renters insurance (under housing). Instead it covers "life and other personal insurance" and "Social Security and pensions." This makes it a tricky topic for me to address, because we actually don't have a entry in our budget for these expenses. They either come out of the Troll's paycheck before he lays hands on it, or they get lumped in under taxes and savings. So these are sort of "invisible" expenses for us.

In fact, I have to admit that I don't really think of these as "expenditures" as all. I mean, an expenditure is money that you spend--you pay it to someone, and you (presumably) get something in exchange. But Social Security contributions aren't an expenditure; they're part of your taxes. Taxes aren't so much an expenditure as a force of nature, like the weather. You may not like the weather, and you may not like the way your tax money gets spent, but in either case, there's not a whole lot you can do about it (not directly, at any rate). So you pretty much just have to live with it.

As for "pensions," well, I'm not entirely sure what they mean by that. I think of a "pension" as a kind of guaranteed benefit that you get from your employer or, in some cases, from the government--not one you pay for yourself. But it sounds like the Bureau of Labor Statistics is using the term to include all types of retirement funds. The thing is, contributions to a retirement fund aren't really an "expenditure" either. You're not spending that money; you're saving it for the future. True, that means you don't have it right now to spend on something else, but the money isn't gone. It's still your money, just set aside for retirement.

So as far as actual expenditures go, areas in which you could save money by making smarter choices, that just leaves life insurance in this category. And that's an area about which I know little to nothing. I've never actually paid for a life insurance policy in my life. I've never needed it because there's never been anyone dependent on my income. And the basic life insurance policy that comes with the Troll's work benefits would be quite adequate to take care of me if he died unexpectedly. So I guess the only useful advice I can offer about life insurance is to figure out how much you need, and carry that much and no more.

Here's how my favorite financial writer, Andrew Tobias, put it in his The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need:

If you're single with no dependents, you need little--to assist with burial expenses and, posthumously, pay off debts--or none. The great push to sell college students life insurance is not entirely unlike the selling of ice to Eskimos, except that a lot more insurance is sold that way than ice.

If you're married, with a hopelessly incompetent spouse, a family history of heart disease, and a horde of little children, you should carry a great deal of insurance. Less if your spouse has a reliable income. Less still if you have fewer children or if those children have wealthy and benevolent grandchildren. And still less as those children grow up.

If you are very rich, you need no insurance at all, except as it is helpful in providing liquidity to settle your estate. If you live richly off a high income but own outright little more than a deck of credit cards and some cardigan sweaters, it will take a lot of insurance to keep from exposing your dependents to an altogether seamier side of life when you are gone.

I guess you can probably tell why he's my favorite financial writer. How many other financial writers are actually fun to read?

Thrift Week, Day Five: That's entertainment!

2010-01-21T16:59:00.007-05:00

At $2,835 a year, entertainment accounts for 5.6 percent of the average American household's spending. The Consumer Expenditures Survey defines entertainment rather broadly; it encompasses "fees and admissions" (presumably to movies, shows, museums, and so on), "audio and visual equipment and services," "pets, toys, hobbies, and playground equipment," and a catch-all "other" category. Rather oddly, however, it does not include "reading," which falls into a category by itself. Tack it on to the entertainment budget, and the total rises to $2,976 per year, nearly as much as health care.

The cost of reading materials--$116 per year--is dwarfed by the $1,036 per year that the typical household spends on "audio and visual equipment and services." This might suggest that most Americans do more TV-watching than reading, but there's another explanation as well; books, newspapers, and magazines can often be enjoyed a lot more cheaply than audio and visual media. If you are lucky enough to live near a good public library, as we do, you can find many, if not most, of the books you'd like to read without having to pay a cent (and without having to find shelf space for them when you're done). And if you have a fast Internet connection, you can read many newspapers and magazines online--along with some other content that doesn't exist in paper form. In fact, this article on the Consumer Expenditures Survey site suggests that increasing numbers of Americans may be doing just that, as consumers spend more each year on Internet service and less on newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

However, all those folks using the Internet to save on reading might not realize that it could help them with those "audio and visual services" as well. As I noted earlier, with our little media spud, we can get pretty much all our TV through the Internet, using some combination of Hulu and downloads from the network sites. At some point, we might spring for a Netflix account to get access to the more obscure shows that we can't get for free--but at $9 a month, it's still a lot cheaper than $55 a month for a basic cable package with 90 channels, only 5 of which we would ever watch.

Similarly, the local library can be a way to save on those "fees and admissions." Our library's selection of videos and DVDs may not be as large as you might find in a Blockbuster Video, but it's a lot more interesting. Most of last year's movies that were of interest to us--including Up, Slumdog Millionaire, and Julie and Julia--can be found there. And we've discovered that we actually enjoy the whole experience of watching them at home more than we enjoy seeing them in a theater. There are no screaming children (or screaming adults on their cell phones), and we don't have to sit through half an hour of advertisements and trailers for films we would never want to see before we get to the film itself. (Digression: What on earth makes the theater owners think that if I show up to see, say, the latest Harry Potter movie, that means that I would be interested in all manner of action films composed mostly of explosions? And don't get me started on the stuff they subject you to if you show up to watch an animated film.) The seats are more comfortable, the popcorn is free (or at least cheap), and if we have to pee, we don't have to climb over several hostile strangers (twice) and miss ten minutes of the movie.

As for "pets, toys, and hobbies"--well, that would be a whole entry in itself.

Thrift Week, Day Four: Health care (or the lack thereof)

2010-01-20T13:34:00.008-05:00

The scheduled topic for day four of Thrift Week is health care, which costs the average American household $2,976 per year, or 5.9 percent of total spending. Of course, this average figure is misleading. Some people pay far more, as this conversation on the Dollar Stretcher forums reveals. Our annual medical expenses, by contrast, come to less than half the national average.

So, you may ask, how do we do it? What thrifty strategies do we employ to keep our health-care costs so low? Answer: pure luck. For one thing, we are lucky enough not to have any serious health problems. But also, the Troll is lucky enough to work for an employer that provides a very generous health plan, for both him and his spouse, at a very reasonable cost. If he were ever to lose this job, we would be forced into the private health-care market, and our annual expenses (including premiums, copayments, and medications) would more than sextuple overnight.

So I can't offer any advice about how to be thrifty in the area of health care. Basically, the US has an absurd, arcane health-care system in which the quality of the care you receive and the amount you pay for it are determined almost entirely by luck. If you're lucky enough to have a good employer, or a good union, you will probably have a good health plan; if you're unlucky enough to be unemployed, or employed by a small company that can't afford a good plan, or employed by a big company that refuses to pay for a good plan, you won't. And because of the outcome of the Massachusetts election, there is pretty much no hope that this expensive, inefficient, and unjust system will change any time in the foreseeable future.

Thrift Week, Day Three: Food

2010-01-19T17:25:00.006-05:00

The topic for day three of Thrift Week is food, glorious food. The average American household spends $6,443 a year on food, plus another $444 on alcoholic drinks. Together, they account for 13.7 percent of the household budget.

Food is another area in which the "eco" part of ecofrugal can sometimes come into conflict with the "frugal" part. Not always, of course. In many cases, the most sustainable food choices are also the cheapest. For example, the biggest-ticket items on many people's grocery bills--meat and prepared or processed foods--are also the ones with the biggest environmental impact. Replacing meat with beans and processed foods with whole foods will save money and help the environment at the same time. But in other cases, the sustainable choice can cost more. An obvious example is organic foods, which can cost anywhere from 20 percent to 100 percent more than their conventional counterparts. A much less obvious one is local, seasonal produce. Logically, if it's the middle of winter, then apples that were grown at an orchard less than 100 miles away and stored in a cold room for the winter should obviously be cheaper than nectarines, a summer fruit, that were shipped all the way from Chile. Yet thanks to the vagaries of supply and demand, it doesn't always work out that way. Here in the so-called Garden State, the big supermarkets (which tend to have lower prices) are more likely to carry imported produce rather than local produce. Thus, you can buy imported nectarines for $2 a pound in February at the Mega-Mart, but to get local apples, you have to go to the natural food store the next town over and pay $2.50 a pound. In a situation like that, what's the frugal choice?

My approach, as with transportation, is to look for the middle ground. Since organic foods cost 60 percent more than conventional foods on average, I've set that as my arbitrary limit on how much more I'm willing to pay for them. If the price differential is less than 60 percent, I consider the organic food to be a good value. If it's more, I'll choose the conventional version--with a few exceptions. For foods with high pesticide levels, like peaches, strawberries, grapes, and peanut butter, I'll always buy organic. The same goes for foods for which conventional growing practices are especially damaging to the environment, like sugar, coffee, and cocoa. (Actually, for coffee and cocoa, the working conditions are a bigger concern than the environment. So I buy Fair Trade, which usually means buying organic as well.)

For most people, eating 100 percent virtuous food may not be practical, or even possible. If you live in an area with a short growing season, there may be no way to feed yourself year-round with only local, organic foods. There are always compromises to make, so I guess it comes down to a question of deciding what you can live with. For me, that means striking a balance between the financial cost and the environmental cost--a balance I continue to adjust over time as circumstances (my own, and the world's) change.

Thrift Week, Day Two: Transportation

2010-01-18T09:23:00.007-05:00

Welcome to Day Two of Thrift Week. Today's topic is transportation, the second-biggest item in the average American budget. For the average American household, transportation costs $8,604 a year, or 17 percent of total expenses. That includes the cost of automobile purchases, gas and oil, maintenance and repairs, and public transportation, plus a few miscellaneous expenses like drivers' licenses and auto registrations.

Transportation is a tricky area for the ecofrugal. On one hand, most forms of mass transit, like buses and trains, have a lower carbon footprint than driving--especially driving alone, as so many commuters do. But if you already own a car, it's probably cheaper to drive it than it is to take the bus or the train. After all, you've already paid (or are still paying) for the car itself and the insurance, so all you save by not driving it is the cost of gas. And gas has to get pretty expensive to make driving more expensive than transit, at least around here. As an example: back when I was single and living in Princeton, I used to ride a little train called the Dinky to my job in Princeton Junction. The trip was only a couple of miles each way, but it cost $3.75 round trip--$16.25 per week. At the time, I owned a very fuel-efficient compact car that got about 36 miles to the gallon, so driving that 40 miles per week instead would have used up a little more than a gallon of gas. At the time, gas was only about $1.50 per gallon, so I was paying about $14 extra each week for the privilege of riding the train. (I was willing to pay it because I found the 35-minute commute by train, which included a one-mile walk to the Dinky station and ten minutes of reading or doing crosswords on the train, so much more pleasant than the 20-minute commute by car, which included about 10 minutes of actual driving and 10 minutes of sitting in traffic and fuming.) Taking the Dinky might have been an economical option if it had allowed me to give up my car entirely. But I relied on the car to get me to places where I couldn't go by bus or train--places that literally had no bus or train stop within 5 miles. And this was in New Jersey, a state that has a better mass transit system that most.

So what are the ecofrugal to do? Well, there is some middle ground. For instance, the Troll and I can't make do without a car--but we can easily make do with just one car for the two of us. At my old job, I could commute by train, so I didn't need a car most days; now that I work from home, I need one even less often. His job allows him to commute by bike in nice weather, which, unlike mass transit, doesn't cost any extra (the cost of maintaining the bike is only a few dollars a month, which is offset by the savings on gas) and offers a cheap, healthy alternative to joining a gym. Carpooling is another useful option. These days, our car makes very few trips of more than a few miles with only one person in it; usually it carries both of us, or the two of us plus a friend. This lowers the cost-per-person of driving, both in dollars and in pollution. And finally, living in a walkable community saves us money on transportation. We might have been able to find a cheaper home in a suburban area, but by choosing to live in a town with a real town center, we put ourselves within walking distance of the library, the grocery store, the drugstore, the post office, and most of the other places we might need to run errands in a typical week. So the extra money we spent on housing comes back to us in transportation savings, as well as health benefits and a better overall quality of life.

Anyone else want to share ideas about ways to be thrifty with transportation?

Happy Thrift Week!

2010-01-17T12:54:00.005-05:00

Did you know that this is National Thrift Week? Well, OK, not officially. The holiday hasn't been officially recognized in over 40 years. But for half of the twentieth century--from 1916 to 1966--the week of January 17 through January 23 was celebrated as "Thrift Week" to encourage Americans to save. There were even special themes for each day of the week: Have a Bank Account Day, Invest Safely Day, Carry Life Insurance Day, Keep a Budget Day, Pay Bills Promptly Day, Own Your Home Day, and Share with Others Day.

Thrift Week began on January 17 because it was the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, the most frugal of the Founding Fathers. Since this happens to be my birthday as well, I thought it would be appropriate to host my own celebration of Thrift Week here on the blog. However, it doesn't seem to make much sense to celebrate the individual days, like "Have a Bank Account Day," since I would imagine anyone reading this blog already has these matters pretty well in hand. So instead, I'm going to spend each day of the week focusing on one of the top seven categories in the typical American budget: housing, transportation, food, health care, entertainment, insurance, and clothing. I'll talk about ways that we're thrifty in each of these categories (meaning not just spending less money, but using resources as wisely as possible), and I'll invite you folks out in cyberland to share your ideas too.

But first, a quick aside: if you visit the website linked above, you'll notice that the "thrift expert" cited on it is David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, whose other big issue is the promotion of "traditional marriage"--meaning mommy, daddy, and kiddies, with the kiddies definitely not optional. Although a self-proclaimed liberal, he has publicly decried same-sex marriage because the "true purpose" of marriage is to provide a stable environment in which to bring up children, and a same-sex partnership is, according to him, inherently unsuitable for this purpose. I wish to stress that my support of Thrift Week does not in any way imply that I also support Mr. Blankenhorn on this issue. I agree strongly with him about the importance of thrift; I disagree equally strongly with his views on marriage. So I'm focusing on the message and doing my best to ignore the messenger.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's turn to our topic for Day One of Thrift Week: housing. According to the 2008 Consumer Expenditures Survey, the typical American "consumer unit" spends $17,109, or 34 percent of its total budget, on housing, making it by far the largest expense for most Americans. Housing expenses include shelter (owned or rented), utilities (gas, electricity, water, phone), household furnishings, and "housekeeping supplies," which includes cleaning products and office supplies such as postage and stationery. Pretty much anything that you use exclusively in your home falls under the category of housing.

Here are a few of the ways in which the Troll and I are thrifty in our home:

We didn't buy more house than we needed. Actually, some might question whether a couple without children needs to own a house at all. An apartment or a condominium would certainly cost less and use less resources. But on the other hand, many of the frugal things we like to do, like gardening and line-drying our laundry, are things you really can't do without a yard. So we decided that we did want a house, but just a small house--not one where the two of us and our cat would rattle around in all the space. We also decided we were willing to do without a lot of the amenities that many people think of as necessities, like a dishwasher, central air conditioning, and a garage. It took us over a year to find a house in our price range that we were happy with, but it was time well spent. A smaller house meant a smaller mortgage, which meant that our finances weren't strained during my long stretch without work last year. And it saves us money on utilities as well, since there's less space to heat and cool.
Anything that we can do ourselves, we do ourselves. If a room needs painting, we paint it, rather than hiring a painter. We don't have a cleaning service; we don't have a lawn service. (In fact, our attitude towards our lawn is pretty much one of benign neglect. We cut it only when it gets long enough to lose small objects in, and we never fertilize it, because if it grew faster we'd just have to cut it more often.) This means that things don't always get done around our house as fast as they might; for instance, we've been in the process of refinishing our basement for over two years now, and there's still a good bit left to do. But after all, we're in no hurry, and when it finally is done, it will be much more satisfying to be able to say we did it ourselves.
In wintertime, we keep the thermostat at 67 degrees during the day. (I know some people turn it even lower, but I'm a wuss.) At night, we turn it down to 56. In the summer, we use the A/C only on the hottest days (when it gets above 90 degrees in the house), relying on fans to keep cool the rest of the time.
Most of our furniture is secondhand.
We keep the place clean with a few basic, inexpensive (and nontoxic) products, such as vinegar, baking soda, and ordinary soap. We use rags in place of paper towels.
Here's one that might not be obvious as a household expense, until you remember that "housekeeping supplies" included office supplies: we do most of our banking online, including paying bills. This saves paper, postage, and time.

The one thing we don't skimp on? High-speed Internet. We rely on it for too many things, including my job and the aforementioned online banking. However, you could make an argument that this, too, is a frugal choice. The $50 a month we spend for our cable modem takes the place of many other things we might otherwise have to pay for, like TV service (we can watch TV online with our new media spud) and newspapers (we can read the New York Times online). It also gives us easy access to sites that help save us money, like the Dollar Stretcher, MyPoints (which gives you "points" when you shop online, which you can then cash out in the form of gift cards), and Coupons.com. Perhaps for a later entry, I'll do the math on all this and figure out to what extent our high-speed connection actually pays for itself.

How about you, fearless readers? Any thoughts you'd like to share on the subject of thrifty housing?

Winter warmer-upper

2010-01-12T17:43:00.003-05:00

Much as I would like to keep the heat turned down in the winter (both to save money and to reduce my carbon footprint), I'm just too much of a wuss. I'm all right at night when I can pile on the blankets, but during the day, when I'm working at my computer, I can't manage anything lower than 67 degrees. Even at that temperature, I find myself shivering under three layers of clothing (plus a hat, plus wool socks and winter boots).

So, as the cold weather set in last November, I was actually considering dropping 40 bucks on a Slanket (a higher-end version of the Snuggie, star of so many TV infomercials. I never considered the Snuggie itself because, according to reviews I've seen, they're no bargain even at $15.) However, when I spotted fleece throws on sale for $2 apiece at Walgreens, I got to thinking that maybe I could make my own blanket-wrap from those. After some experimentation, I found that I could wrap one of them around my torso like a towel, then drape the second one over my shoulders like a cape.

With this double blanket over top of my regular clothes, I can stay toasty warm with the thermostat at 67 degrees. Now if I can just work up the courage to bump it down another degree or two and be a little less toasty....

MediaSpud

2010-01-12T11:30:00.006-05:00

It started a few years ago with me hauling my 17" LCD monitor and my Dell notebook into the living room so that we could watch videos on the computer while sitting on the couch. The advent of an LCD television made this process easier, as the monitor no longer had to travel, the notebook connecting nicely via TV-out S-video. A new notebook for work allowed the old notebook to stay attached to the TV full time.

Until it died, that is, whereupon I realized that I had created for myself a need that had not existed before.

I needed a media PC.

Well great.

So I tried to replace it with various computers I already had. This turned out to be a learning experience.

From my desktop machine, an AMD 64-bit (2.8 GHz) monstrosity that looks and sounds like a garbage truck, I learned that there is such a thing as too large and too loud when it comes to a piece of machinery that's going to spend its time next to your TV and stereo.

From the Dell notebook that I cobbled together from a scrounged machine augmented with parts from my recently deceased notebook, I learned that there is such a thing as a computer that is too dumb to play video.

And from the lovely Mac notebook that I tried as an experiment (as a work computer, I couldn't consider using it for that purpose), I learned that there is such a thing as a computer being too expensive if its sole purpose is to play video.

So, if I was going to acquire a dedicated media PC, what did I want?

1) It had to have a brain big enough to play video well.
2) It had to be quiet.
3) It had to be cheap...or rather, inexpensive.
4) It had to have low power consumption, as it might get left on for extended periods of time.

And let me tell you folks, there ain't too much at the intersection of that particular Venn diagram. Even the Mac Mini, probably the best option I could find at first, was (at $600) more than I cared to spend.

And then I read about the NVIDIA Ion.

To put it briefly, the Ion is the Intel Atom processor (a tiny, somewhat feeble processor) souped up with high-end NVIDIA graphics processing unit, i.e., lots of graphics power in a small, energy-efficient package.

So I took the plunge and started building the MediaSpud:

The motherboard is a Zotac IONITX-A-U (purchased from Amazon) with 4 Gb of compatible dual-channel DDR2 RAM. This was connected a Western Digital 320 Gb hard drive (2.5", 5400 rpm) and a DVD burner. To top it all off, I added a combination wireless mouse and keyboard - probably the trickiest part, as both keyboard and mouse had to operate properly at a distance of at least eight feet from the receiver. After reading a number of reviews of such products, it became painfully apparent that manufacturers' claims about range were a bit, well, optimistic. I did manage to settle on a combo from i-Rocks that was both well-reviewed and relatively inexpensive. And I'm happy to say that it has worked as advertised. The computer communicates both video and audio to the TV via HDMI. A serviceable HDMI cable can be purchased on Amazon for less than $5 (most of which is the shipping).

All these components came to about $325. The IONITX-A-U comes with a wireless card and with a built-in power supply, so there was no need to purchase either.

The enclosure is made mostly of 0.5 cm-thick plywood and measures 37 cm wide by 21.5 cm deep by about 8.5 cm tall (including the little cork feet that it stands upon). I had originally planned to make the case as small as possible, but decided that having a little extra space would make the whole project much easier to execute. I was right.

The power button I got from Radio Schlock. I soldered it to a connector wire that I happened to have lying about so that I could turn the machine on without having to short across the power pins in the motherboard with a screwdriver or paperclip. There are none of the other front-panel connectors and indicator lights that we've become accustomed to having on our computers, but I figure if I need any, I can just add them later. I have a drill.

Proper (I hope) ventilation is performed by the CPU/GPU heat sink fan, which blows out through the hole in the top of the case. Air is drawn in through several holes drilled low in the sides of the case. This fan is the only part of the MediaSpud that makes any appreciable noise - having no variable speed setting - but is still very quiet when running full-tilt.

Both the hard drive and the DVD burner are SATA-2, so the internal cables shouldn't obstruct air flow much.

The four corner posts are cherry and help rigidify what would otherwise be a rather flimsy box. The motherboard rests on four small posts that are also made of cherry - these pieces are tiny by necessity and the hard wood can take screws without splitting. The DVD burner and the hard drive are affixed to the case with pieces of steel corner bead which have been snipped to size. The hole in the top of the case is protected with a bit of screen. The shortest wood screws I could find at the local Home Deplowe's were slightly longer than the plywood was thick, so I tried to use washers where I could, but the occasional screw does peek out on the outside surface of the case. It's not pretty, but it does the job. I will tell everyone that I eventually plan to replace it with a more elegant, better constructed case, but to tell the truth, I'll probably just stain this one and Case version 1.0 will be Case version Only. Not too bad for under $10.

My mother-in-law having gifted us with a Kill-a-Watt, I decided to see how the various computers around the house fared. My desktop machine pulled 100 watts when idle and about 130 when playing a Hulu video full-screen. By contrast, Lobelia's souped-up G4 Mac runs at about 40 watts when idle and a little over 70 when under load (running a Youtube video, which is about the most intense thing it is ever asked to do - we don't dream of playing Hulu vids on it). The MediaSpud running Windows XP, however, comes in at 22 watts when idle, 25 when running Hulu full-screen, and still only 30 when running the World of Warcraft free trial (which it does quite nicely, despite its tiny brain). Of course, our 26-inch LCD TV pulls 120 watts, so make of the likely overall power savings what you will...

We're still exploring this computer's capabilities, but I can say that it does everything that I expected it to. It can handle both 720p and 1080i HD video, though I find I like it better in 720p. It can't handle streaming HD from Youtube, but I expect that's because those videos are CPU-intensive rather than GPU-intensive.

All who are hungry, let them come and eat

2010-01-06T14:19:00.005-05:00

As an ecofrugalista (if that isn't really a word, well, it is now), I don't eat out very often. Eating at home isn't just cheaper; it also gives me a lot more control. If I want to choose local produce, or Fair-Trade coffee, or free-range eggs, eating at home is generally the easiest way to do it.

But not, it appears, the only way. As it turns out, my little town of Highland Park is now home to the Better World Café, described as a "community café"--the fifth of its kind in the country. It serves up local, seasonal foods at reasonable prices. It lets customers choose their own portion sizes--and also the size of the bill. While the cafe will give you a "suggested price," you can pay less if that's what you can afford, or pay more if you'd like to make a donation. If you don't have any money at all, you can instead volunteer an hour of your time to pay for your meal. So no one goes away hungry. Cheap eats, living-wage jobs, no disposable dishes--how could I not love a place like that?

I'd been meaning to give this place a try since it first opened back in October, but I kept forgetting about it--or at least, forgetting about it during the lunchtime hours (11 to 3) when it's open. Today, as lunchtime rolled around and I realized that there were no leftovers in the house, I decided this was the perfect time to check it out. I wandered in and found a cheerful crowd eating and a server chatting away with one of the customers. She explained how it all worked and pointed out that day's menu on a white board, with suggested prices. I got a bowl of mushroom broth with tofu and veggies, a chunk of bread to go with it, a carrot cupcake with cream-cheese frosting, and a cup of Fair-Trade, organic coffee--all for a suggested total of $5.28, which I rounded up to $6. The soup was hot and savory (though a bit on the sour side), and the carrot cake moist and tasty. It didn't look like a big meal when I sat down, but by the time I finished my coffee and bused my tray, I was stuffed. Yet I didn't have to feel guilty, because it was all nutritious (hey, carrot cake is a vegetable, right?) and locally grown. A hearty, healthful meal for six bucks--from a place that helps feed the hungry, supports local farmers, and strengthens the community. How cool is that?

The thought that counts

2010-01-02T17:11:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year! One of my resolutions for 2010 is to update this blog more regularly--at least once a week. I also think that it would be good for the blog to have a clearer theme, instead of just picking up on whatever random thoughts fire across my brain synapses. So I've decided to focus on this concept of ecofrugality that I introduced back in May. There is already another blog out there that goes by the name of "The Ecofrugal," but since it was created in May 2009 and still boasts only one post, I doubt I'll be treading on anyone's toes by picking up the idea and running with it.

So, with this new focus in mind, I'd like to say a few words on the subject of holiday gifts.

Looking back at the presents we gave and received this past month, it seems to me that there was no correlation whatsoever between the cost of a gift and how much it pleased the recipient. The most expensive gift we gave was a $50 Home Depot gift card for my sister and brother-in-law, and they did like it--although my sister actually argued that it was "too generous" a present to give in the middle of a recession. On the other hand, my mom seemed equally happy with the Puzzle Lady mystery I got her from the library book sale. (She likes crossword puzzles, and she likes mysteries, so it seemed like a pretty sure-fire choice.) Of all the gifts we gave our nieces and nephews, the best received was the "jungle adventure" tent that we picked up from our local Freecycle group, which didn't cost a cent.

Likewise, the gifts we loved the most weren't necessarily the most expensive ones. For instance, I was quite pleased with a book of crossword puzzles from my sister-in-law that she candidly admitted had been re-gifted. She said she found the puzzles too hard for her and wanted to pass them on to someone who could handle them; how could I not be flattered by that explanation? The biggest present we got was a check from my in-laws to put toward the purchase of a new fridge, and while we were naturally happy with the check, what really delighted me was the packaging:

So what's the moral of this holiday story? Is it really the thought that counts? I hesitate to say yes, because so many people seem to use that phrase as an excuse for not really thinking about the gifts they give. If you don't care for the present they selected more or less at random, they'll say, "Well, it's the thought that counts," as if that phrase meant "I remembered to get you something, and that's all that really matters." So I'd like to suggest instead that what really matters is the amount of thought that goes into a gift. The best gift will be one that you clearly chose with a specific person in mind, one that really shows you were thinking of that particular person's tastes and interests. In other words, the thought that counts is not "I need a Christmas present for Aunt Mary," but "I know this will make Aunt Mary happy." And if you can't find the gift that fits that thought, a token gift--or none at all--is better than an expensive present that could just as easily have been chosen for a complete stranger.

Cable chaos controlled

2009-12-21T09:21:00.003-05:00

Hooray for the Troll! He dug around under my desk and got all those cables sorted. As I suspected, putting them all together in a single bundle wasn't possible, but he got most of them contained in two bundles--bound together with twist ties, and then covered up with some pipe insulation we had left over. He also made handy labels for the cords so that I can tell what each one is, should I ever have to unplug them. Did I mention that he was wonderful?

Cable chaos

2009-12-18T10:30:00.003-05:00

In some ways, my computer makes my life a lot more organized. My work can be done almost entirely with electronic files sent back and forth between me and my client, so my desk doesn't get buried under stacks of paper. I can receive and pay most of my bills online, do my taxes electronically, and use the Internet to find articles on just about any subject. And storing it all in little folders on my hard drive takes up a lot less space than storing it all in real, paper folders, and makes it easier to search, as well.

However, in order to keep everything on my computer organized, I need to have it connected to a monitor, a printer, an external hard drive, a cable modem, a set of speakers, and probably some other things I don't even know about. As a result, the space under my computer is a mess, as you can see from the attached photo. I've done my best to coil up the excess lengths of cable and keep them out of the way, so now instead of a mass of tangled-up cables, I have a mass of coiled-up blobs of cable. But I can't help thinking there has to be a better way.

I have seen products for organizing cables, but none of them seems like quite the right thing for me. For example, IKEA sells a little basket that attaches to the underside of a desk, but that's only useful if all your cables are going from the same place to the same place. I have cables from point A to point B, from B to C, from C to D, from B to D...it seems like I'd need one basket for each direction. This doohickey called the WireMate looks a little better, but can it really send all the wires in every direction I need them to go in? And can it handle the multitude of different cables, of all different thicknesses? And even if it can do all that, is it really worth 20 bucks? It seems like there ought to be a cheaper, more elegant way to accomplish the same thing--but I must confess, my creativity is failing me.

Chosen people my foot

2009-12-14T09:42:00.003-05:00

Settlers in the West Bank just burned a mosque. It is generally assumed that they did this to strike back, not against Palestinians for any act of violence on their part, but against their own government for having declared a temporary moratorium on the building of new settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli government's response has been to add several West Bank settlements to its "map of national priorities," thereby making them eligible for additional government financing, in what is widely interpreted as an attempt to appease the settlers.

In other news, Joe Lieberman, the only Jew in the Senate and an alleged Democrat, has publicly stated that he will not support the current health care bill or any other bill that either adds or expands any government health plan. Without his vote, the bill--already a seriously watered-down compromise--is unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to get it through the Senate. (Side note: it appears that the issue with any Senate bill is no longer whether it can muster the 51 votes needed to pass, but whether it can get the 60 votes needed for cloture. It's simply assumed that the Republicans will automatically filibuster everything.)

At this point, I feel like just putting away my menorah and casting aside those vestiges of Jewish identity that I still retain. If this is what modern Jews stand for, I don't want to be one.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Joe Lieberman is not the only Jew in the Senate, but one of thirteen (Boxer, Cardin, Feingold, Feinstein, Franken, Kohl, Lautenberg, Levin, Lieberman, Sanders, Schumer, Specter, Weiden). And he's not technically an "alleged Democrat," but an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Still, he is an alleged ally of the Democrats in the Senate. Sanders is also an independent, but you can generally count on him to vote with the Democrats on those rare occasions when the Democrats are actually united on an issue. Like herding cats, I tell you.

How about that?

2009-12-08T13:58:00.002-05:00

When Daniel asked me to draw this, I never dreamed that the editors of the journal could be whimsical enough to put it on the cover. But then again, what do I know?

'Tis the season to buy plastic stuff

2009-12-07T10:12:00.000-05:00

The Troll and I have finished most of our holiday shopping, but we still don't have any idea what to get for our two-year-old nephews. With adults or older kids, you can always ask, "What are their interests?", but in the case of these two little guys, their main interests are climbing on things and hitting things. Hard to translate those into something that will fit under the tree.

So, searching for inspiration, yesterday we wandered through the toy aisles at Target and BJs. We both had the same reaction to this experience, one that can best be summed up in a single word: ick.

It's hard to explain exactly what was so off-putting about it. Maybe it was the fact that there were just so many mass-produced plastic objects crammed into that one space, row on row, box on box, until they all kind of blurred together. Most of the gifts we're giving to our family members were accumulated over the course of the year, as we came across them at sales and stores and concerts and thought, "Oh, this would make a good gift for so-and-so." Picking a gift off those shelves would have felt like the exact opposite of that: "Oh, we need to get something for so-and-so. Here, this will do." It would be like hanging an empty pizza box above your sofa because it's about the right size for the space. It would so obviously show no creativity, no real thought for the recipient, that it felt like more of an insult than giving nothing at all. As we emerged from the toy section at BJ's into the grocery section, the Troll grabbed a butternut squash off a rack and declared, "I would rather give each of them a butternut squash than give them one of those toys." (Well, why not? They'd probably have just as much fun with it.)

Now, it is of course possible--even probable--that we're overthinking this. After all, these kids are two years old. It's unlikely that they would be offended at being given a gift that was obviously selected at random off a shelf in the toy aisle. As long as they have a box to unwrap, they probably won't even care what's inside it. But in that case, why not just wrap up an empty box for each of them? They could climb on them, sit in them, hit each other with them and not do too much damage--hmm, I think I might have something here.

11/11 11:11

2009-11-11T10:52:00.004-05:00

It is now the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. Everybody make a wish!

Reward and punishment

2009-11-04T15:08:00.002-05:00

What's orange and sounds like a parrot?
A carrot.

What's brown and sticky?
A stick.

The Drawing of the Three

2009-10-29T14:46:00.006-04:00

Anyone who's never played an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game - how's that for a mouthful?) probably won't appreciate this drawing very much. Anyone who has will likely recognize the holy trinity of DPS, tank, and healer - a necessity in fantasy worlds where exploration and adventure invariably end up taking a back seat to game mechanics and the acquisition of stuff.

On occasion, I try to rationalize this trio of healer, tank, and DPS (damage per second, if you care) by drawing a parallel between it and the classic villain combo of brains, brawn, and gun (Vizzini, Fezzik, and Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride are a good example), but after some contemplation, the reasoning always breaks down. It's just that I have so much difficulty trying to figure out where the brains are....

But I don't want to vote by mail

2009-10-22T22:31:00.002-04:00

This year, everyone who lives in New Jersey will be allowed to vote by mail. You don't need to show that you'll be out of the state on Election Day or that it would be a hardship for you to get to the polls; you don't need a reason at all, in fact. Anyone, for any reason, can vote by mail.

Now, I'm all for making voting more accessible. And I'm sure for some people it is a lot more convenient to vote in the comfort of their own home than to get themselves to a polling place. But me, I like to go to the polls. To me, it doesn't really feel like I've voted unless I've gone into the little booth and pushed the buttons. (I liked it even better when we had the old mechanical machines where you could twist the lever and it made a nice satisfying clunk. But even the electronic machines are more satisfying, to me, than writing out my vote on a piece of paper and dropping it in the mail.)

So, fine. If others want to vote from home, they can vote from home; if I want to go to the polls, I can go to the polls. The only problem is, New Jersey's Democratic party seems to be doing everything in its power to stop me.

First, I got a vote-by-mail application in the mail. (You have to fill out the application first, and then you get the actual ballot sent to you.) I was mildly surprised that the state seemed to be going to such lengths to make people aware of this new voting option, but I figured it didn't matter to me. I just tossed it in the bin.

Then I got a second application. And I also started getting phone calls--dozens of them. A recorded message on the other end informs me that this is the Democratic Party calling, and warns me urgently that TIME IS RUNNING OUT to send in my vote-by-mail application, and urges me to mail it in without delay. It started to sound like they were trying to convince me that this was the only way to vote, and that if I didn't mail in this application, I would never get the chance to vote at all. And I realized that someone less familiar with the voting process would probably get just that impression. I mean, you get this official-looking document in the mail, and it says, "Fill this out to get your vote-by-mail ballot," and nowhere on it does it say, "If you do not get a vote-by-mail ballot you may still cast your vote at your local polling place," and you think, "Oh my God, we all have to vote by mail now? I didn't know that!"

Well, look, making voting more accessible is one thing. But why on earth are New Jersey's Democrats trying to convince everyone to vote from home, whether they want to or not? Why are they going so far as to send misleading messages implying that voting from home is the only option? Why in God's name does my party want to stop people from going to the polls?

I don't know for sure if there's anything that could convince me to stop voting for Democrats. But this is definitely testing my limits.

Warning: Middle Age Ahead

2009-10-06T12:35:00.004-04:00

In case I needed further confirmation that I'm now a grown-up, yesterday the Troll and I did the most grown-up-sounding thing I can imagine: we refinanced our house. More than that: we refinanced to take advantage of lower interest rates. I mean, honestly, how middle-aged and bourgeois can you get? The next thing you know, he'll be wearing a tie to work, and I'll be making people take their shoes off in our house so they don't scuff our hardwood floors.

Here's a funny thing about the refinance, though: our new monthly mortgage payment is an exact multiple of $100. The principal and interest together add up to a number ending in 79 cents, and the property taxes add on a number ending in 21 cents, and when you add them together, boom, perfect round number. How weird is that? Real-world numbers don't ever seem to come out perfectly round like that unless you force them.

Oh well, we can be pretty sure it won't stay that way, since property taxes go up every year without fail. And isn't that a grown-up thing to complain about.

Happy New Yearrrrrr

2009-09-19T17:54:00.003-04:00

Isn't it disconcerting when two festive occasions fall on the same day?

Today, for instance—at least until sundown—is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, traditionally celebrated with prayer, the eating of apples and honey, and the sounding of a ram's horn. But it's also International Talk Like a Pirate Day, traditionally celebrated by—well, I'm sure you can figure it out.

It makes things confusing. You get conversations like, "Pass them thar apples and honey, matey" and "Avast, I hear the sound of the shofarrrrrr." And how is the rabbi likely to react if she says, "May you be inscribed and sealed in the book of life," and you respond with "Yarrr!"?

First day of school

2009-09-08T22:33:00.002-04:00

Today, as the Troll and I sat at breakfast, we heard the voices of children traipsing up our street on their way to start a new year of school. (It pleases me that the schools in our town don't start until the day after Labor Day. It seems cruel and unusual to drag the kiddies back to school while it's still officially summertime.)

This time of year always makes me a bit pensive. For more than ten years after I graduated from college, I would always find myself growing restless as August started drawing to a close. Something about the shortening days would trigger some deep-seated drive in me, and like a swallow returning to Capistrano, I would feel the urge to go out and buy new notebooks and pencils and go decorate my dorm room and get my schedule and start my new classes. Which, of course, was a profoundly frustrating urge to have when I had no new classes to start. All I could really do about it was go buy some new pencils for which I had no real use.

This went on until two years ago, when we bought a house. That year, September came and went without stirring in me the longing to go "back" to a place that, for me, no longer existed. All the urges for change that fall had always brought got channeled into the process of fixing up the house, which at that time had only been our home for a little over a month and was still very much a work in progress. So I might have expected the migratory urge to return in full force the next year--but it didn't happen. In September 2008, I was so focused on insulating the attic and wondering whether we'd have a chance to build some permanent garden beds before the frost hit that the start of school passed right by me.

So this year, as the kids head off to another year of learning, I find myself musing about what this all means. Why did I feel the urge to go back to school each fall for so long after I had a school to go back to? And why did becoming a homeowner deflect that urge?

The best answer I can come up with so far is that because I spent the first 22 years of my life as a student (minus a couple right at the beginning), I came to think of fall as a beginning--a time for starting new things. So whenever fall came around, I would have that urge to start something new--but there was never anything new in my life to start on. So the whole urge just took the form of a helpless longing to start a new school year, to be given an assignment, to be told what to work on next. But one thing I've learned about being a homeowner is this: in a house, there's always something to work on. There's always a new project to be started. So now, when that fall restlessness hits me, it just makes me want to be up and doing whatever project is next on the list (usually something that I've been putting off all through the hot, lazy summer). I no longer need to go back to school and be given an assignment; I can come up with plenty on my own.

Or, to put it another way--I've become a grownup.

Neat site

2009-08-25T21:35:00.002-04:00

For those of you who like The Hunger Site, I've discovered another site that's similar, only better. It's freerice.com. First of all, it's a lot more interesting than just a button you can click; it's a game, or a quiz, depending on how you look at it. When you go to the site, you'll be presented with a multiple-choice vocabulary question. Get it right, and you donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry person somewhere in the world. That may not sound like much, but the nice thing is that unlike the Hunger Site, which limits you to one click per day, freerice.com lets you keep playing as long as you like. The questions get harder as you go until you miss one, and then it bumps you down a level or two. So you get to learn new words and help the hungry at the same time. How neat is that? (And if you aren't that into learning fancy words, you can try one of the other subjects, such as geography, chemical symbols, or famous paintings.)

So far, the best I've ever done with the vocabulary quiz is level 53 (out of a possible 60). I usually get to somewhere around level 50 and then I start running into words I don't recognize. For someone who doesn't encounter unfamiliar words that often, it's a rather humbling experience. So I guess I just have to keep playing until I've learned them all. :-)

Monsoon time

2009-08-14T19:56:00.002-04:00

You know that old expression, "It never rains but it pours?"

Well, my work life, after a prolonged drought, is now going through a monsoon. See, there was this health book I was supposed to start working on way back in November. When Thanksgiving came and went, they told me the project would be delayed until the new year. Come January, they told me it would probably start up in March... and so on, with the start date being pushed up by two months each time I asked.

Until now. Last month they got back to me and announced that they were now ready to get started--and oh yeah, they wanted me to write the entire book. All 21 chapters. Including second and third drafts. In six months. Because after eight months of delays on their end, there obviously wasn't a minute to waste.

So after spending the better part of the past year doing no work at all for money, I can expect to spend the next six months doing pretty much nothing else.

So, to anyone who actually reads this blog: I hope you'll understand if I don't get around to posting here too often.

A New Word EXCLUSIVE!

2009-08-12T16:19:00.003-04:00

ONLY AT MODERNTROLL!

New words, never before seen on the Internet, available in all colors of the alphabet while supplies last! Guaranteed meaningless! Yours to define if you act now!

antecuum

blorphrect

confligial

demporiate

esbetral

fraticlastic

gleptrum

hubrotal

ictiflic

jepterial

kintortic

lorbiculum

morcastry

nuglestic

orfnestrial

phrodial

quiblectic

ristricular

syntumptic

tesmonect

uphrumpium

voblial

wriptinic

xantamulus

yabloudia

zofrial

Moderntroll is not responsible for injury or ridicule resulting from use of meaningless words offered at moderntroll.blogspot.com. End user assumes all risk associated with definition of meaningless words. No animals or particularly interesting plants were harmed in the production of these meaningless words. Meaningless words have not been approved by the USDA, FDA, or SPECTRE and should not be considered to have any nutritional, medicinal, or sinister properties.

Squashed!

2009-07-15T15:20:00.005-04:00

I see that my last entry, about two weeks ago, described the "teeny-weeny" zucchini that I had just spotted in the garden. Ha, it is to laugh. Take a look at this monster zucchini I harvested today. By the time August 8 rolls around, I may be all set to celebrate Zucchini-Sneaking Day.

And the pumpkin also shows signs of getting out of hand. Yesterday the Troll had to rig up a little sling from a piece of panty hose to to hold the largest of the pumpkins so that its weight wouldn't pull down the whole trellis.

I think perhaps I cucurbit off more than I can chew.

How Does Your Garden Grow, part 2

2009-06-29T12:14:00.003-04:00

Two, three, four, tell us what the garden bore...

It was an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow-flowered green zucchini that I saw for the first time today! (Well, yesterday, actually.) First one of the season, and there are more blossoms where that came from.

The string beans are also flowering, and I can detect the first tiny beans forming. There are also tiny, incipient fruits on one of the Sun Gold tomato vines. There was one tiny pepper on the Yellow Cheese plant, but it has unfortunately split open while it was still fingernail-sized. Not sure what caused that--all the rain we've been having, perhaps?

The snow peas are still producing, which throws out all my calculations, since my plan was to plant the winter squash in the same spot after I'd finished harvesting the peas. But since it means more snow peas, I can't really complain. We've already had two meals' worth, plus the ones that got eaten raw right off the vine.

We finally got the trellis on our fourth bed put up yesterday, so I was able to string up the pumpkin vine that had been intruding on my onions. The corn is also growing rapidly--well past my knees already--so I have hopes of having fresh sweet corn to feed to the in-laws when they come to visit in a month.

The one crop that's nearing its end is the lettuce. It's interesting how I can now clearly distinguish the heads that I actually planted this year from the ones that reseeded themselves from last year. Last year I planted a generic Bibb variety from the rack at the drugstore, and those plants are now starting to bolt. But this year's plants are a bolt-resistant variety called Tom Thumb, and they still look like proper round heads of lettuce. So we should get a few more salads out of this garden before the dog days arrive.

Third Place? I Don't Know

2009-06-24T17:48:00.002-04:00

On my recent trip to Pittsburgh, I read an article in Acela, the Amtrak on-board magazine, called "The Race for Third Place." (It appears to have been picked up from the airline magazine Arrive, because I found a copy of it here.) It was about how the recession is posing a special challenge for businesses that have been trying to market themselves as "third places"--that is, places where people spend significant amounts of time other than home and work. A "third place" could be a bar, a library, a coffee shop, a health club, a church, or a shopping mall--anyplace where people go just to "hang out," rather than going in, conducting their business, and leaving.

The existence of places like this is one of the things that holds communities together. That's why I like living in a town that has both bars and churches, even though I never spend any time at either type of place. It's why I mourned the passing of the local sweetshop, with its bona fide old-fashioned soda fountain, even though I only actually went there a few times a year. And it's why I was disappointed when the "comic cafe" across the river, once a great hangout where you could enjoy an ice cream or browse through comics or both (just so long as you didn't actually handle food and comics at the same time), moved to a new venue, where the comic shop was upstairs and the cafe downstairs, with no seating at all in the comic area (presumably because they didn't want to encourage folks to sit down and look at the merchandise) and so little in the cafe that you would feel guilty about lingering for even a minute after finishing your food. (I lost all interest in going there after that, and the Troll switched to buying his comics from another store, one that sold games as well as comics and actually encouraged hanging out.)

But it occurred to me as I read the article that, although I recognize the importance of places like these, I don't really have a "third place" myself. Sure, I like to go to a coffeehouse once in a while, but I'm not a regular at any particular coffeehouse. I take ample advantage of our local library, but I don't really hang out there--I mostly just go in, browse through the books and videos, choose one or don't choose one, and leave. I don't sit down with the book I've found and read it right there. In fact, because I work at home, I really don't even have a second place, let alone a third one.

So why, if I understand the value of having a place to hang out, don't I have one? I think it's because for me a "third place" would have to be someplace I could spend significant amounts of time without spending significant amounts of money. That lets out the coffeehouses, because $3 or $4 a drink starts running into money when you make a daily habit of it. And it lets out the library, because you can't eat or drink at all in there, and I like to have something to sip while I read. So the closest thing I have to a "third place" is the local park, where I like to go for walks in the summer, and where I can sometimes perch on a park bench and work on a crossword and drink my own coffee that I made at home, without having to pay $4 for it. But the thing is, when I go and hang out at the park, I'm hanging out by myself. I might see a few joggers passing through, or a mom with her kids, but I don't usually interact with anybody. It isn't really a place where I could go to meet people, or even just to be around people.

I wonder why in a town like mine, which does such a good job in so many ways of maintaining strong community ties, there are no real public spaces for people to connect with their neighbors?

Puzzled

2009-06-15T14:06:00.005-04:00

Something makes me think I'm not doing these correctly.

Just a hunch, that's all.

The Grim Peeper

2009-06-11T09:40:00.001-04:00

I luv werds.

2009-06-10T09:54:00.008-04:00

In my experience, there are two general reactions to things that we don't understand: fear or fascination. From this stems my fascination with words.

And my fear of plastic furniture. But this is beside the point.

Imagine an adjective like "small." To make the comparative form, we add "-er" to make the word "smaller." To make the superlative form, we add "-est" to get "smallest."

Now it is perhaps reasonable to argue that I have chosen a bad example, in that "smaller" is longer than "small" and "smallest" is longest of all, but you get the general idea.

My question is: how many sets of three words are there where the trio takes the form of a base adjective, its comparative form, and its superlative form without being any of those things? We've come up with two sets so far:

temp

temper

tempest

dive

diver

divest

I was wondering if anyone could come up with any more of these. Or at least make fun of me for devoting so much of my dwindling mental energies to questions such as these.

Even more/disturbing

2009-06-10T09:32:00.002-04:00

More disturbing news on the slash front:

I'm a big fan of the show "Stargate Atlantis," and especially of the character Rodney McKay, the über-brilliant, über-obnoxious scientist who always comes through for his team when the chips are down. So one day, out of idle curiosity, I punched a query into Google about McKay's romantic history. I knew the character had a big following, so I thought this was the sort of information that might be out there somewhere in the tangle of the Web.

Well, maybe it was the wording of my query, but I didn't find what I was looking for. What I found instead was something I could hardly believe existed: a Rodney McKay/Sam Seaborn crossover slash fanfic. I mean, what?!?

Sam Seaborn, of course, is the bright, idealistic, and extremely good-looking deputy communications director in the Bartlet administration during the first three seasons of "The West Wing," played with éclat by Rob Lowe. Who is, indisputably, pretty hot. And David Hewlett, who plays McKay, isn't so bad either. But there is nothing--I mean, nothing--about these two characters that would make me want to see them together. There's nothing about the way either of them is portrayed to suggest they'd have any chemistry together on any level--nor, for that matter, to suggest that either one of them swings that way, even slightly.

Out of a sort of perverse curiosity, I read a bit of it to see how it was. Bizarre, is how it was. The setup is basically that Rodney is sent to Washington to ask the Bartlet administration for more money for the Atlantis mission, and when Sam rejects his request, Rodney decides to offer him--an additional incentive. This just does not work on so many levels. For starters, only an idiot would send Rodney on any kind of diplomatic mission. And it's not remotely plausible that Sam would have the authority to approve funding--he's not even involved with budget decisions, and he probably doesn't have high enough security clearance to even know about the Stargate program. (In the second-season episode "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail," Sam reveals that he doesn't have code-word clearance, which he would need to view an NSA file.) The idea that Rodney would think to use sex as a bribe is not at all consistent with his character, and the idea that Sam would accept a bribe of any kind is even less consistent with his. But it was really the idea of those two characters together that was just...too...weird.

The whole experience was so odd and vaguely disturbing that I can't even bring myself to post a link to the story. But I have to admit, the nature of my objections to it goes a long way to show just how big a fangirl nerd I am.

Ecofrugality

2009-05-26T13:53:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me that there ought to be a term--"ecofrugal"--for people who routinely do things that both save money and help the environment. Some folks may be doing these things primarily to be green, while others want chiefly to keep more green stuff in their pockets, but the result is the same in both cases: a healthier planet and a healthier bank balance.

I Googled the term to see if anyone else was using it this way, and I got a few hits, but they seemed kind of scattered. For example, Frugal Village has an article on "Eco Frugality" (two words), which cites some well-known thrifty practices that "run parallel with green living." An article on reusing household items from a site called Gomestic uses the term "eco-frugal" with a hyphen, and someone calling herself grrlscout224 has posted a photo set on Flickr with the title "ecofrugal." And there is also a recently created blog titled "The EcoFrugal," which as yet has a grand total of one entry. But so far, the use of the term seems fairly haphazard. It doesn't seem to have gained much popular currency.

The only source I found that offered anything like a definition of the term was an article on "Eco-Bounty" at trendwatching.com, which noted that many manufacturers are seeking to shift the image of their products "from ‘worthy but expensive’ to ‘cheap and, oh yes, worthy’" in order to attract both "cash-strapped consumers...going out of their way to save money" and "consumers [who] are still primarily interested in sustainable consumption, but no longer willing or able to pay the usual premiums." It cited as examples the new Zoe and Zac line at Payless and the Mini, which is now being marketed as a planet-friendly car that's cheap to run.

Which is all well and good, but a bit incomplete as a philosophy. The products you buy can be a part of an ecofrugal lifestyle, but they're not the only part, nor even necessarily the most important part. In fact, I'd venture to suggest that ecofrugality has more to do with not buying stuff. It's about thinking before you make a purchase: "Do I need this? Will it really make me happier? Could I repair the old one instead of replacing it? Could I make do with something else I already have? Could I borrow it from a friend, take it out of the library, get a secondhand one on Freecyle or Craigslist?" Only after thinking through these questions do the ecofrugal start balancing considerations of price and pollution.

The point I'd like to make about ecofrugality is that it's really a single ideal, not just two unrelated ideals that sometimes go together. A sustainable lifestyle isn't really sustainable if you have to go into debt to maintain it; a frugal lifestyle isn't really frugal if it wastes natural resources. And in most cases, the eco-conscious choice is also the wallet-conscious one. Most of the money-saving trends I cited in my April 11 entry are green trends as well. More people may be adopting these measures now as a way to save money, but as they become more mindful about how they live, they may discover they value the environmental benefits just as much as the financial ones. In the end, this recession might just turn out to be the dawning of the age of ecofrugality.

Credit Crackdown?

2009-05-22T14:46:00.001-04:00

This week the New York Times ran two contradictory articles about the current crackdown on credit card issuers. Monday's article, "Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers," suggests that since Congress intends to limit the ways in which card issuers have long made money off high-risk cardholders (e.g., slapping them with massive late fees and jacking interest rates way up after a single late payment), the poor banks will have no choice but to start going after "deadbeats"--that is, the 40 percent of cardholders who pay their balances in full and on time every month. According to the article, people like me who have been getting a free ride should expect to start paying annual fees or maybe being charged interest on each purchase immediately after it's made, with no grace period for paying off the bill. But Tuesday's "Your Money" column, "Consumers Are Dealt a New Hand in Credit Cards," dismisses these ideas as "just so much saber-rattling," since credit card issuers don't want to lose customers--even "deadbeat" customers--if they can help it. After all, the card issuer does make money from the merchants on every transaction, so it's definitely in the banks' interest for people to continue charging as much as possible to their cards, even if they don't do the issuer the additional favor of carrying an interest-laden balance.

The second idea seems more plausible to me. After all, card issuers have to realize that if they start making their terms too onerous, people like me will simply jump ship. Ten years ago, it might have been difficult to get by without at least one credit card, but nowadays there are more options--PayPal for online transactions, debit cards for in-store purchases, reloadable prepaid cards, gift cards. And moreover, if there's even one card out there that still has no annual fee and a reasonable grace period, then all the deadbeats can switch to that card, and whoever issues it will get a whole 40 percent of the market overnight. So unless all the banks get together and make a deal not to make such a card available (which I'm pretty sure would be illegal), I don't see how there wouldn't be at least one of them eager to be the only no-fee card on the block.

I'm willing to live with having my rewards dialed back. The main reason I used the card was for convenience, anyway; the rewards were just a nice bonus. And if they want to lower my credit limit, oh well, it's not like I was using it all anyway. But the minute they try to stick me with an annual fee, it's au revoir, Visa.

A new drug

2009-05-14T16:25:00.002-04:00

Okay, here's a reason it's actually a good thing that I've been out of work for a while: because it gives me more time to devote to my latest addiction, online cryptograms. The Puzzle Baron's site, www.cryptograms.org, makes the mechanics of solving them much simpler and more straightforward than it is with a pencil and paper. If you fill in one letter substitution, it automatically changes every occurrence of that letter to match. If you decide you've made a mistake, you just change or delete the letter you and the same change appears throughout the entire puzzle. If you decide you've messed the whole thing up entirely, you can just hit "reset" and it will delete everything and give you a blank slate again. You can even set it to show letter frequencies (so that if you aren't sure where to begin, you can just try guessing that the most commonly occurring letter is "E" and see where that gets you) and to advance the cursor automatically (moving ahead to each new unassigned letter as you type).

All this makes it possible to solve a single medium-length quotation in roughly one minute. And since that was so quick, you feel perfectly justified in clicking "Try another cryptogram" to move on to another. And another. And another. And before you know it the entire bag of Oreos is empty.

I'm going to have to figure out some way to ration my use of this site once I actually have paid work to do again. Otherwise, I'll keep logging on for a five-minute work break and emerging again two hours later.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2009-05-05T16:44:00.001-04:00

Haphazardly, in our case. So far, we've planted five crops, with extremely mixed results:

The snap peas are coming up splendidly--in fact, they're growing so fast that I'm a little concerned we won't have time to erect a trellis for them before they climb past the tops of the beds.
The spring onions, which never grew at all last year, seem to be coming up as well, though it's hard to be sure at this stage that they're not weeds posing as onions.
Three out of four parsley plants didn't survive transplanting, and I ended up buying new seedlings at the annual plant sale at the university to supplement them.
The spinach, just like last year's shows no signs of sprouting at all.
The lettuce is the oddest of all: there's no sign of it in any of the squares where I actually planted it, yet in other parts of the beds, little lettuces seem to be popping their heads up more or less at random. I can't figure out whether the seeds I planted somehow got washed out of their places in a heavy rain, or whether the lettuce I planted last year, which bolted in the summer, has re-seeded itself and is somehow coming up through all that dirt we turned over in the new raised beds and the compost we piled in on top of that.

I'm a bit nervous to see how our tomato, pepper, and basil seedlings survive the move, which is scheduled for next week. They all grew all right last year, but things are so weird this year, I don't know what to expect.

iMix, you Mix, we all Mix for iMix

2009-04-20T12:27:00.004-04:00

Okay, I hope I'm doing this right....

One of my favorite bands on earth, if not my absolute favorite band, is Broadside Electric. If you're not familiar with them, well, I could tell you that they once described themselves by the phrase "eclectic electric Celtic acoustic," but actually the band has evolved quite a bit since then, so that phrase doesn't really begin to cover it. Put it this way: if you go to one of their concerts, you should not be surprised to hear to hear, in quick succession, gory Child ballads, Klezmer tunes, Bob Dylan, Gilbert and Sullivan, and a few rollicking reels, played by five musicians on at least a dozen instruments. And that would be just the first set. Oh, and they're all really nifty people offstage, as well.

So, I love these folks, and in a recent mailing they sent out, they suggested that one way for their fans to promote their music would be to make an iMix on the iTunes store containing some of their songs and maybe 10 others by "popular artists." So I looked up the directions and it didn't seem too difficult--in fact, I already had several playlists on iTunes containing one or more Broadside songs, and I figured I could just publish one of those. Upon consideration, I decided that to get a good sampling of music I should combine two playlists, which I had entitled "Light" and "Darkness," into a single playlist called "Chiaroscuro," and publish that. So I spent a happy hour or so selecting songs from these two playlists and arranging them in a pleasing order, interspersing the lighter and darker material. Then I tried to publish it to iTunes and hit a snag: many of the songs in my collection were not available on the iTunes store. So a little more pondering ensued as I looked for alternate versions of these songs on iTunes. (Example: the entire Beatles catalogue is unavailable on iTunes, so I ended up with a live George Harrison version of "Here Comes the Sun" and the King's Singers' version of "Blackbird," which is actually quite nice. The Califone version of "The Orchids," by contrast, isn't nearly as cool as the Genesis P-Orridge version, but what can you do?) A few songs had to be cut completely because iTunes didn't have any version available at all, or at least not any that I found acceptable. So after considerable tweaking, I arrived at a finished iMix that I was reasonably happy with.

Now, here's the part I hope I'm doing right. ITunes provided a link labeled "Publish to the Web" that is supposed to make my iMix available via my blog. (I assume that you can't actually listen to the songs unless you own them, but you can listen to a short clip from each song to see how you like it, and if you're interested, you can buy it.) So I'm going to give this a try. Here's the link (I think):

Driving the bandwagon

2009-04-11T21:44:00.003-04:00

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, frugality is actually a hot new trend. Here are a few of the radical steps the article mentions that people are taking to save money:

• borrowing movies from the library
• planting gardens
• canceling cable service
• composting (to avoid trash disposal fees)
• having clothing swaps with friends
• trash picking
• darning socks
• drying clothes on a line

In short, people across the country have started doing all the stuff I've been doing for years. How about that--I'm trendy. Who knew?

Harumph

2009-04-01T11:56:00.002-04:00

Saturday's New York Times featured a column on puns by op-ed contributor Joseph Tartakovsky. His basic premise seemed to be that all puns are bad and that writers with any talent invariably eschew them. (Of course, he couldn't help admitting that Shakespeare was a notable exception, and he cited several other examples of extremely clever puns made by extremely clever people, but for some reason he didn't seem to feel that these counterexamples in any way undermined his central argument.)

Well, I suppose that I, though a dedicated lover of puns, shouldn't have bothered to take umbrage at this. After all, this guy isn't exactly a noted literary critic (in fact, he's a law student at Fordham, so I'm not sure what makes him fancy himself an expert). He's obviously just a grouch who starts off every morning by sucking half a lemon and then taking a brisk sneer around the block. In fact, the very fact that a person like him hates puns seems like a better argument than any other for making them. But I couldn't help being a bit nettled by his supercilious sneering at puns as "low" humor, especially since he didn't bother to get his facts straight. He cited the fact that "The 20th century’s finest humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, doesn’t use" puns as evidence that puns are inherently unfunny. Well, as it happens, we're still on our Wodehouse kick at home, and the very same day I read this article, I happened on this passage in Thank You, Jeeves:

"Mr. Stoker, sir. He is inquiring about Miss Stoker's whereabouts."

Well, of course, there's always that old one about them being at the wash, but this seemed to me neither the time nor the place.

Now if that isn't an example of how a well-aimed pun can strike directly on the funny bone, what is?

Oh, I Say, What?

2009-03-23T11:25:00.003-04:00

One of our favorite diversions in our household is the all-but-lost art of reading aloud. Typically, this takes the form of my reading aloud to the Troll while he does some work around the cave. Since I'm better at reading than I am at fixing things and he's the other way round, this seems to work out pretty well for all parties.

Anyway, recently I was reading to him from the chronicles of Jeeves and Wooster, by P.G. Wodehouse. If you're not familiar with these stories, they're a series of lighthearted confections dating from the 1920s about a bumbling British gentleman, Bertie Wooster, and his supremely competent manservant, Jeeves, who not only keeps Bertie impeccably dressed but also exerts his considerable brainpower to extricate his young master, and his young master's equally bumbling friends, from a variety of scrapes. What makes the series so particularly charming is the way the characters talk. Bertie is always saying things like "Hallo, hallo, hallo, what?" while Jeeves's lines are more along the lines of "I endeavor to give satisfaction, sir," and the distinctive speaking styles of these two characters are sort of a hallmark of the stories.

Anyway, after reading a few of these, it occurred to me to wonder if anyone had ever written any Jeeves/Wooster slash fiction. After all, both characters do seem to be more or less confirmed bachelors, and in fact, one of Jeeves's most common challenges is helping Bertie escape from unwanted marriage engagements. However, I was inclined to dismiss the thought almost as soon as it popped up, because the idea of writing anything remotely smutty in the voice of either of these characters seemed inconceivable.

Not, it would appear, to all. A quick Google search turned up several hits, including one particular site that listed and provided summary reviews of several J/W stories. So I read a few, and I must say, the mind boggles. One problem with writing this sort of thing, as the author of the site pointed out, is maintaining the proper voice. As she put it, "How can you put these two into an awkward, sweaty, and not ironic position without losing the style? You don’t just say “his hard length” unless you can make it sound good in Bertie’s or Jeeves’s voice." And I must admit, it's not the sort of thing either of them really seems likely to say.

Even more than the style, though, the problem seems to lie in the characters themselves. It's all but inconceivable to imagine these characters having sex, not just with each other, but really, with anyone at all. Bertie isn't too absurd, I suppose; though clueless, he's thoroughly good-hearted, and it isn't impossible to imagine him showing a fair degree of enthusiasm once someone managed to explain the whole concept to him in terms he could understand. But it's nearly impossible to imagine Jeeves being swept away by passion under any circumstances. One of his most salient character traits, in fact, seems to be his imperturbability--that and his utter competence at dealing with any situation. So of course, there's every reason to think he would be extremely competent between the sheets as well--but that alone just doesn't make for terribly interesting reading, don't you know, what?

Living La Vida Local

2009-03-11T14:06:00.001-04:00

Lately I've become fascinated with stories about people who, for whatever reason, challenge themselves to spend some period of time--typically a year--doing something that most Americans would never think of doing. The most recent work I've read in this genre was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver (the primary author's husband and older daughter, respectively). The "Hoppsolver" family resolved to spend one full year eating locally. With a few exceptions (such as grains, olive oil, coffee, and spices), everything they ate came from their own county in rural Virginia. Much of it was grown on their own small "farm," which, though zoned for agricultural use, offered less than 4,000 square feet of tillable space thanks to the steepness of the surrounding hills. Over the course of a year, the family grew everything from early spring chard to enormous blue pumpkins, not to mention more zucchini than any four people could eat or give away. They also raised their own free-range turkeys for meat, and Lily, the younger daughter of the family, raised a flock of chickens and started her own business selling multicolored, free-range eggs at $2.50 a dozen. Everything they couldn't grow themselves came from their local farmers' market or from other area growers they knew personally.

I can relate to the reasons that inspired the Hoppsolvers to move across the country from Tuscon to Virginia just so that they could live off their own land (or at least the land of their immediate area). I've been known to shake my head bitterly in supermarket produce sections over bins of nectarines on sale for $1.99 a pound in the middle of February. Nectarines are a summer fruit, and to me, it seems just plain wrong that it's possible to buy them so cheaply in the middle of winter--shipped all the way up from the southern hemisphere, burning up petroleum and belching out greenhouse gases every mile of the journey. It's probably akin to the frustration I feel when stores start putting out their Christmas decorations before Halloween has even come. It feels disrespectful to the season to push it out of the way to make room for something else that's supposed to be more important. I like to honor the cycle of the seasons, enjoying each thing in its proper time--like strawberries, which around here come in around May. I appreciate strawberries more when I have to wait for May to enjoy them--and conversely, I appreciate May that much more because it brings the strawberries.

So I can see the benefits of eating the way Barbara Kingsolver and her family did (and, to a large extent, still do). Yet at the same time, I can't really imagine myself ever undertaking this challenge. I'm too fond of too many foods that the Garden State just can't provide. Sure, I could do as the Hoppsolvers did and make exceptions for bread flour, pasta, olive oil, chocolate, raisins...but how long could this list get before I'd have to draw the line, or else admit that I wasn't truly eating locally?

The thing is, before I read this book, I thought I was actually doing pretty well in the areas of buy-local and do-it-yourself. Maybe I don't routinely make my own cheese like Barbara Kingsolver (we tried it once, but it's a messy process, and it ends up costing more per pound than the supermarket stuff), but we do bake our own bread, grow our own tomatoes, hang out our wash on the line. We're certainly doing better than the majority of Americans at treading lightly on the earth, and also at living with appreciation for what the earth gives us. We don't buy the $1.99 nectarines in February; we wait until they show up at the farmers' market in July. So do I really need to feel guilty about the fact that, while waiting for the fruits of summer, I enjoy winter oranges shipped up from Florida?

Truthfully, naah. I don't really need my life to be 99 and 44/100 percent pure. If I can even get the percentage above 50, I'll be fairly pleased with myself. After all, if the perfect really is the enemy of the good, then I need to allow myself some imperfections if I hope to succeed in approaching my ideals. I can accept that I'll never truly reach them, but at the same time, I can admit that it's getting better, a little better all the time.

How Do I Love Thee, Trader Joe?

2009-03-02T11:33:00.001-05:00

Let me count the ways:

1. Organic raisins at $2.79 a pound.
2. Crumpets in both plain and cinnamon.
3. Humanely farmed bacon.
3. Pesto-filled tortellini.
4. Free samples of excellent coffee and whatever unusual treat has been cooked up for the day (yesterday's was macaroni and cheese with fresh edamame).
5. Bunches of daffodils for a buck fifty.
6. Honey-oatmeal soap.
7. A toothpaste with natural peppermint, baking soda, and fluoride, and without sodium lauryl sulfate, which gives the Troll canker sores.
8. Chocolate sold by the half kilo.
9. The Fearless Flier, which, with its purple prose and vintage artwork, presents the month's specials with style.
10. Lots of perfectly unremarkable staples--like toilet paper and frozen peas--at far better prices than the big supermarkets can offer.

The only part I hate is the crowds. We've given up on trying to park in the store parking lot--you can spend fifteen minutes trying to get to a spot ten feet away. So now we go only on Sundays, when parking is free in town, and park in the lot next door. But there's no way to avoid the crowds in the store itself--people and carts clogging the aisles like the arteries of a middle-aged couch potato who lives on McDonald's fries. If anything, the crowds seem to have grown worse since the recession came down on us in earnest--which seems odd, since most of the stuff you buy at Trader Joe's strikes me as the sort of luxury items that consumers are reported to be cutting back on. Could it be that all the folks we keep bumping into (literally) in the aisles at Trader Joe's used to shop at Whole Foods and have changed their allegiance in search of better bargains? Or are these folks still piling their carts with Joe's merchandise because it's the one luxury they still can afford?

The Perfect Storm

2009-03-02T09:21:00.003-05:00

The snowdrops and crocuses have been out this past week, poking their little white and yellow heads out into the brownish desolation of late February as if to assure us that spring is indeed on its way. On my daily walks, I gathered fallen twigs with their little red leaf-buds showing, swelling with the tiny green leaves inside ready to uncurl. And then suddenly, last night, winter came back down on us with a vengeance, dumping seven inches of snow on us before daybreak.

The ironic part is, this is the sort of perfect snowfall that we haven't had all winter long. It's mostly been a dull sort of winter, with plenty of raw cold and biting wind, but very little snow to brighten up the bleak grey landscape. The few significant snowfalls we've had were of the nasty, wet variety that clings grimly to the shovel and leaves behind a slick film on the sidewalk that congeals almost immediately into ice, making you wonder whether you haven't made matters worse by attempting to shovel it at all. And now, just as spring seemed to be just around the corner, we get more than half a foot of clean, fluffy white snow, completely covering up the dead grass and leaves and turning the whole neighborhood into a winter wonderland. We never seem to get this sort of beautiful snow at Christmas time, or in the grimness of late January and early February when it seems like there's nothing good to be said for winter. A month ago, I'd much have preferred a blanket of beautiful white snow to the mucky brown of bare ground with nothing growing out of it, but now, when things were just starting to bloom, it all feels somehow wrong.

Of course, this is most likely just winter's last hurrah--although the weather here in New Jersey is unpredictable enough that you can't be truly sure of anything. Back in kindergarten, I learned the old saw about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, and I expect this March will do just that. By this weekend, according to the weather report, the temperatures will climb back up into the 40s and 50s; a more seasonable rain will come in and wash away the snow. The remaining crocuses will come up, followed by daffodils, violets, forsythias. The little buds on the trees will uncurl their leaves, and by the time April arrives, we'll have springtime for real, instead of just the teasing glimpse of it we got last week before winter reasserted itself. So perhaps it's just as well to have this one (probably) last snowfall to give us a chance to appreciate winter at its best--winter as it should be--before it melts away into nothing for another year.

Sneak Preview

2009-02-20T09:59:00.000-05:00

Last week, we had a sort of sneak preview of spring--temperatures in the 40s and 50s, with brisk winds and just a little bit of drizzly rain. It felt like we'd skipped the whole month of February and gone straight into March. Well, now we're back to winter again--25 degrees out and with a wind chill that makes it feel more like 13 degrees. Oh well. At least after our little preview, it's possible to believe that spring will come. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for crocuses.

Things I still need to get used to

2009-01-24T10:49:00.001-05:00

The year is now 2009. That means this decade is almost over and we still haven't figured out what to call it. (The "oughties"? The "noughties"?)

I am 36 years old. It's time to accept that, by most definitions, I can no longer be described as "young."

We have a garden to plant this year. That means that right now, January, is the time when I should be planning it and buying my seeds. I am so not on top of this.

I do not hate the President. It's been so long.

So Crazy It Might Work

2009-01-20T10:45:00.001-05:00

The Troll and I are in the process of refinishing our basement. Actually, we've been in the process more or less ever since we bought the house 18 months ago--tearing out paneling, repairing walls and ceilings, installing new lighting. But the current stumbling block is the floor. The floor's not quite level, so carpet, tile, or laminate would require the installation of a subfloor. In addition to the expense, this would eat up about half an inch of space from an already low-ceilinged room, and there might not even be room for it under the baseboard heaters. So my idea was to stain the concrete--until we got around to ripping up the old vinyl floor and saw what the concrete looked like underneath. Not pretty.

So my next thought was to paint the concrete, but I was uncertain about what type of paint to use and how to apply it. I wanted something environmentally benign, not too expensive, and easy to use--and of course, I wanted it to look nice too. Then yesterday I came across this bizarre yet intriguing idea: paper-bag decoupage. Basically, you tear paper bags (or brown kraft paper) into irregular pieces, apply them in overlapping layers to the floor (various sources have suggested using wallpaper paste, water-based polyurethane, or a 50-50 dilution of Elmer's white glue), and seal the whole thing with five or six coats of poly. The finished product has been described as looking like natural stone (but much softer underfoot) or distressed leather. You can apply a stain, too, if you want a color other than the natural brown paper-bag finish.

It sounds crazy, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like exactly what we need. Of course, our grocery store doesn't have paper bags, so we would actually have to buy the paper. But it seems like, for an investment of a day's labor and the cost of a gallon of poly and a roll or two of kraft paper, we could have an attractive floor finish that would also make a great conversation piece. And the beauty part is, if we didn't like it, we could always paint over it, which is what we were planning to do anyway.

So where is the glaring flaw in this plan that I'm overlooking?

An ending less Horrible

2009-01-07T17:09:00.002-05:00

OK, this has been bothering me for months now, and it's time to get it off my chest.

I hated, absolutely hated, the ending of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I realize I'm in the minority on this. When I visited the official fan site to hear others' reactions, the overwhelming majority were positive. Many argued that the dark, bitter conclusion was the only truly fitting end for the characters as they had been drawn. Those who suggested that perhaps such a dark, bitter conclusion was a little inappropriate for what had been billed as a lighthearted comedy were almost universally derided as fluffybunny wimps who like all their stories to be nothing but sweetness and light and the good guys living happily ever after. One fan even ventured to suggest that the ending wasn't dark and bitter enough, because Dr. Horrible never intentionally killed anyone or overtly embraced his true, evil nature.

Well, bollocks to them all. I didn't like it, but that doesn't mean I wanted a sweet, fluffy ending in which Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer both realize they should be nice from now on and decide to be friends and team up to save homeless kittens. After some thought, I've concluded that the ending I wanted would have looked something like this:

Everything is the same up until the point when Captain Hammer pulls the trigger and the Death Ray explodes in his hand. Then:

[CAPTAIN HAMMER runs from the room crying like a little girl. BILLY lies on the ground, his body pierced through by the shrapnel of his failed weapon. PENNY runs to him.]

PENNY: Billy!

BILLY: (weakly) I'm sorry, Penny. I didn't want you to see...who I really was...

PENNY: But Billy, I knew that all along.

BILLY: You did?

PENNY: Yeah, those goggles really aren't as good a disguise as you think they are.

BILLY: Then why...why didn't you leave...if you knew who I was...underneath?

PENNY: (crying) Because I knew there was another layer under that. Like pie.

BILLY: (understanding) Pie.... (dies)

PENNY: (sings)

I always thought that I knew what a hero was
I always thought I knew the way
That I could change the world someday
I thought I knew

What do you do when the hero pulls the trigger
When the villain takes the blow
Changing the whole world that you know
What do you do

What if the bad guys are the good guys after all?
The ones who make a change for real
Who care about how people feel
How can it be?

I think at last I see a meaning in it all
At last the way is clear to me
The hero that I was meant to be
At last I see
My destiny...

(Slowly, gently, she removes the goggles from Billy's head. Slowly, deliberately, she puts them on. Looks directly into the camera.)

(laughing fiendishly) Ha ha ha ha! (pause) I'm gonna have to work on that. (Fade to black.)

There. That's what I call an ending. A bit of a rip-off of V for Vendetta, maybe, but hey, it works.

Bah humbug

2008-12-27T08:53:00.004-05:00

I think I must be turning into a curmudgeon. Is 35 old enough to be a curmudgeon? How old do you need to be to qualify for a license?

The way I know I've become a curmudgeon is that my thoughts on Christmas, rather than focusing on peace on earth and goodwill to man, are along these lines:

If children got fewer presents each Christmas, they might appreciate the ones they got more. My nephew, in particular, barely looked at each gift after tearing the wrapping off. Then he declared, "I want to open another one!"
Children's toys should not make noise without the active participation of the child. A drum that makes noise when the kid hits it is one thing. An Elmo electric guitar that produces a different riff for each button pushed is quite another. It takes very little effort to keep pushing buttons.
It is a grave tactical error to give a child under the age of five a recorder.
Of the four types of cookies we make every year, the "Chocolate Delights" are always the first to disappear, yet for some reason everyone seems to think that they're the one kind we could get away with skipping.
If you give a child a launcher that shoots foam darts, you should not be surprised at being asked to retrieve foam darts from behind the television set.
A man (or a troll) who can get four children under the age of five to focus on any task (such as decorating gingerbread men) for half an hour at a time is obviously some sort of genius.

Where Have All the Bread Makers Gone?

2008-12-13T11:16:00.002-05:00

My dad mentioned that he was thinking of replacing their old bread machine, which was the very earliest model made. It's large, cumbersome, and noisy, and it makes weird cylindrical loaves that are awkward to slice. So my sister and I decided to give them a new bread maker as a Hanukkah present. Simple, right?

Not so much. The Troll and I visited four different stores that one would expect to carry this kind of small appliance: Sears, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and PC Richard, a big electronics/home appliance store. We saw all manner of microwaves, coffeemakers, convection overs, rice cookers, and "portable wine cellars," but not one single bread machine. It was like being in an episode of the Twilight Zone--every bread machine on earth had suddenly ceased to exist, and we were the only ones alive who knew that there ever was such a thing. We could find any other type of electrical appliance imaginable, including some that we'd never imagined (an electric wine-uncorker?) but not the one we were looking for.

I called up my sister and she started searching the Web for stores that would have it in her area. Since she lives in the big city, she ought to have more shopping options, right? Well, not exactly. She found exactly one store that carried a bread machine--Williams-Sonoma--and they only had the fancy $200 model, not the modest $60 one we had in mind.

So then I figured I'd have to order the bread machine online. My parents wouldn't get to unwrap the machine itself, but we could at least present them with a description, printed out from the Web, of the new toy that would eventually show up on their doorstep. A quick Google search turned up several sites that had the right model listed for around $40 (plus shipping, of course). Unfortunately, every site I tried to order it from said the item was out of stock or on back order. One of them initially claimed to have the machine in stock and allowed me to place an order, only to e-mail me back two hours later informing me that the item was out of stock and apologizing for any inconvenience.

At last, I came to realize that, if I was ever going to succeed in my mission, I was going to have to resort to truly desperate measures. It chilled me to the core, but I knew I had no choice.

I would have to go to Wal-Mart.

Please understand, I had never set foot in a Wal-Mart before, and I had more or less sworn that I never would. I hate just about everything about that company, from its labor practices to its predatory pricing to its insistence on selling bowdlerized versions of popular music. (The list goes on and on and on... PBS made a whole documentary about it, and Brave New Films did the same.) So I had always viewed the Big Blue Box as a symbol of everything that's wrong with American capitalism, and while I was willing to admit that the other big boxes where I shopped (Target, Home Despot, etc.) were probably far from virtuous, I had always considered Wal-Mart the one place where I absolutely drew the line. And now that line was about to be crossed.

I must admit, once I gritted my teeth and stepped across the threshold, the whole trip was quick and really quite painless. It took us probably ten minutes to find what we wanted on the shelf, take it up to the checkout, and walk out again. In fact, after all the rigmarole I'd gone through trying to find this machine elsewhere, it was almost laughable how easy the trip turned out to be. All the same, I still felt kind of dirty afterward. I consoled myself with the thought that I really hadn't given Wal-Mart my business in preference to any other retailer--there simply was no other retailer willing to sell it to me.

I can't help wondering, though: if this bread machine is so popular that all of the online stores have it backordered, then why was Wal-Mart the only bricks-and-mortar store that carried it?

And ten percent of nothing is, let's see...

2008-12-10T10:13:00.003-05:00

According to this article in the New York Times, people are now willing to buy up Treasury securities at zero percent yield. That's zero as in nothing. Nada. Zilch. The same amount you get putting your money under the mattress.

Now, I realize times are bad and the markets are unstable and people are afraid of losing money, but--can't you still earn four percent or so putting your money in a plain-vanilla CD? And isn't that equal to, let's see, roughly four percent more than zero? I mean, what, are the investors afraid that all the banks are going to collapse at once, bankrupting the FDIC and leaving them with nothing?

Hey, maybe the government can raise the money needed for the bailout by persuading investors to buy Treasuries at negative interest. "Here, we'll store your money in a nice safe place for just a nominal fee, and when this trouble's all over, you'll get the rest of it back."

The Stamp Act

2008-12-04T15:35:00.002-05:00

So, you know how charities, when they write to ask you for money, will enclose an envelope for your contribution? Most of them use postpaid envelopes, marked "postage to be paid by addressee." A few of them don't provide postage at all: they write in the spot where the stamp is supposed to go, "Your first-class stamp will help us devote more funds to our programs!" (as if that 42 cents was going to make all the difference to them). But a few of them enclose envelopes with actual stamps on them. Maybe they're hoping that you'll figure, "Gee, I guess I might as well send them a check rather than throw away a perfectly good stamp."

I never fell for that, but I did hate throwing away the stamped envelopes. I used to return them to the post office for a credit, but the last time I tried this, they told me they wouldn't accept them anymore. So then I got a brilliant idea: instead of returning the stamp, I would reuse the whole envelope, by just pasting a blank label over the address of the organization and re-addressing it. I figured there was nothing dishonest about this: after all, I couldn't be stealing from the organization, because they had already paid for the stamp whether I returned the envelope or not--right? And I couldn't be stealing from the postal service, because they were still getting one stamp to deliver one letter--right? All I was doing was frugally putting to use a stamp that would otherwise be wasted--right?

Apparently the postal service didn't see it that way, because the envelope bounced. So, in a fit of pique, I grabbed all the remaining stamped envelopes I'd been saving in hopes that I'd be able to use them and just stuffed them into the mailbox. If they won't accept a perfectly good stamped envelope that's never been through the mail before, then they can go to the trouble of delivering a whole bunch of empty envelopes. That'll show 'em.

Actually, I have no idea what I meant to accomplish by this act of pointless protest, but it did make me feel better somehow.

Gratitude

2008-11-24T11:33:00.003-05:00

At Thanksgiving dinner, my family doesn't "say grace" as such. Instead, we go around the table and each person there tells what he or she is thankful for at that particular point in time. Here's a list I've been working on:

I'm thankful that we took over a year shopping for a house because we absolutely insisted on staying within our price range, rather than taking advantage of low interest rates to buy a bigger house with a fancy adjustable-rate mortgage. I'm thankful that our house isn't among the 1 in 410 in our state that's currently in foreclosure.

I'm thankful that last year we kept so much money in our boring old bank account, earning a trivial rate of interest, instead of putting it all in the stock market to maximize our return.

I'm thankful that my being without work for the past couple of months hasn't really hurt us financially, because we live frugally enough to get by easily on one income. I'm thankful that we're not among the millions of people scrambling for minimum-wage jobs at federal employment centers. I'm thankful that this year we are still giving money to our local food pantry rather than relying on its services.

I'm thankful that I don't live in the Congo or the West Bank. I'm thankful that, if my country is involved in a war, it's all happening far away from me and my family--and I'm thankful that we will soon have a president who is prepared to set a date for ending the war altogether and bringing the troops home.

I'm thankful that my best friend, who was in the hospital for over a month with a dangerous heart arrhythmia, is now recovering, able to work again if not yet able to go dancing. I'm also thankful that he had a job waiting for him when he got out of the hospital after going for nearly a year without work. I'm thankful that he is engaged to a sweet woman who is taking good care of him during his recovery.

I'm thankful that my sister has found both a good man and a good house to share with him--and that she was able to sell her condo, even in a down market.

I'm thankful to have a wonderful, supportive (if goofy) husband, and a warm, fuzzy little cat to keep me company around the house (even if she does loudly request that we get up and feed her earlier than we might consider reasonable).

I'm thankful that we were able to get our attic insulated before the really cold weather hit.

I'm thankful that gas prices have come down (just in time for our annual cross-country drive next month to visit the Troll family). I'm also thankful that, despite the lower prices, Americans are continuing to drive less and pump less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

And I'll be very thankful to spend just one day focusing on all the things I have to be thankful for, rather than on the things that bug me.

On Wealth

2008-11-12T15:57:00.002-05:00

Last year, my father-in-law gave us a bunch of old glass-top canning jars found at a yard sale. Since we don't have a canner, we decided to use them to store a variety of dry beans and seeds we had in our pantry. They're now lined up in a colorful row on the shelf next to our basement stairs--white beans, red lentils, chick peas, kidney beans, brown lentils, black beans, sunflower seeds. Every time I pass by that row of jars on the way up or down the stairs, the word that pops into my head is "wealth."

The jars themselves, with their contents, probably aren't worth more than 30 dollars. But when I look at them, I don't just see the beans themselves: I see curried red lentil soup, chick peas in broth with crisp bread crumbs, pasta fagioli, chili, white bean stew with dumplings. I see a dozen hearty, savory meals, right there at our fingertips. I see the means to make it through a week-long blizzard, if we ever have to, safe and well-fed. Those are not just seven jars of beans; those are seven jars of security.

Sometimes I think Jack in the fairy tale was perfectly sensible to trade away his old cow for a handful of beans. What could be a better investment than that?

Parallel Evolution

2008-11-12T15:05:00.007-05:00

In my regular perambulations about the Web, I often dwell on various sites devoted to upcoming movies. I'm watching fewer movies these days (especially in theaters - waaay too expensive) than I have at any other time in my life (barring infancy, I suppose), but I just can't seem to stay away from reviews and trailers and all the other goodies that the movie studios put out in an attempt to distract us from our Internet long enough that we might wander into a theater and give them money.

Today, I ran across a poster for a movie called "The Tale of Desperaux." I'd seen the trailer a little while back when we made our annual trip to the local cinema (to see "Wall-E") and had liked it pretty well - the movie looked cute and it had been the only trailer they'd shown that hadn't made me want to crawl under my seat and retch. But I did a double-take when I saw the poster. Here's why:

On the left is a picture I drew in March of 2000. You can find it here along with comments left by various viewers going back over eight years. On the right is the aforementioned movie poster. Interesting, eh?

And here's another one that I discovered a few years ago:

On the left is a sketch I made of a kobold, drawn in either early 2000 or late 1999. It's been posted online here since early 2000 also (along with this companion piece, which is actually explicitly identified as a kobold in its description). On the right is a picture of a kobold from the game World of Warcraft, which was announced in late 2001 and was not released until late 2004 (which was when I first saw it).

Ever get that feeling someone's been rummaging around in your brain?

No one has, of course. These are coincidences, the results of a few people (out of the over six billion on this planet) having similar ideas and writing them down. With both of these drawings, the "creative process" I used was fairly straightforward. If you want to draw a picture of a tiny warrior, you give him a little sword to show that he's a warrior and a great big helmet to show that he's tiny (and to give the whole thing a humorous tinge). If you want to draw a picture of a kobold as a sort of a faerie/goblin miner (as kobolds are in some German folklore), you give him a mining pick and a candle (it's dark underground). If you want to make it a little more interesting, you sit the lit candle on top of his head so he has both his hands free to mine.

In both cases, even if the odds are a billion-to-one of someone else having the same idea and drawing a picture of it, the odds are pretty good that at least a couple folks have done it.

But it's still pretty eerie when it happens.

Vote and Get Coffee

2008-11-04T10:27:00.002-05:00

I've voted! Have you?

If you have, you can get yourself a free brewed coffee at Starbucks. Seriously! All you have to do is go in, say you've voted, and get a 12-ounce cup o' joe. It's right here on their website: http://www.starbucks.com/sharedplanet/news.aspx

Oh, and you get to participate in our democracy, too.

Internet Dependence

2008-11-02T22:50:00.005-05:00

I never realized how much of my time I was frittering away on the Internet until my cable got taken out by high winds this past Tuesday. All of a sudden I found I was getting around to all those little projects I'd been putting off for weeks because I could never quite find the time for them.

Unfortunately, that advantage didn't really outweigh the disadvantage of being unable to run to the computer and take care of all those little things that pop up a dozen times over the course of a day. E-mails piled up in my inbox, and I could only attend to the urgent ones in half-hour blocks on the public computers at the library. Worse than that, in the final week before the election, I was cut off from realclearpolitics.com, my source of the up-to-the minute polling data that I required in order to obsess over minute day-to-day changes in the electoral map. And, in what may be the highest irony of all, I had to pay my cable bill by mail, rather than using my online bill payment service, because I was afraid that I wouldn't get it paid on time if I had to wait for the company to get the cable fixed.

So I am forced at last to acknowledge that, without reliable Internet access, my life is not complete. For better or worse, I am now a cyborg.

Preparing to hibernate

2008-10-20T10:44:00.002-04:00

The Troll and I have been busy preparing our cave for winter. We spent much of last weekend transferring about 700 cubic feet of insulation from the basement (where it sat in tightly wrapped bundles) to the attic (where it now lies in a nice solid pink blanket). The in-between stages of this process weren't nearly as neat; at the end of the day, I vacuumed up so much fiberglass from the hallway that the brush attachment looked like a wad of cotton candy. But the effort was well worth it; we got the insulation in place just in time for the first frost of the season, and as the outdoor temperature dropped into the 20s, our house stayed a cozy 60 degrees. Tonight's projects will include lubricating the boiler pump so we can fire up the heating system, wrapping up the air conditioner in its winter blanket, and attempting to salvage whatever fruits are left on our tomato plants.

I'm actually quite enjoying this whole process of settling in for winter. It makes me feel all cozy and domestic. Once the cold weather arrives in earnest, I'll probably be much grumpier about it, but right now it's, "Yeah, hot soup, wool sweaters, football games! Bring it on!"

On Being Sick

2008-10-13T12:00:00.002-04:00

Despite my best efforts to ward off the infection with Zicam, I seem to have caught the cold that the Troll had a couple of days ago. As I mope around the house blowing my nose repeatedly, I have to admit that there is one upside to being sick: it's the perfect excuse for not doing whatever you really didn't want to do anyway. For instance:

"I can't exercise today; I'm sick. I can't do laundry or clean the bathroom or run errands, either. I need to rest, which means lying on the couch in my comfiest, slouchiest clothes, watching Jane Austen movies on tape. I'm too sick to eat salad and whole-grain bread; that stuff's only good for you when you're healthy. Right now I need soft, comforting food like matzo ball soup and ice cream. And I'm only going to read fluffy novels today, because serious books full of useful information are just too tiring." And so on.

Not that this is really enough to make up for the raw throat and dripping nose and general ickiness, but it's something.

Gnome Redux

2008-10-07T21:44:00.001-04:00

He's not nearly as pretty in profile, is he?

The Gnome

2008-09-30T15:53:00.003-04:00

Here's a (relatively) recent drawing that is only now making its way online:

In one of the later Harry Potter books, an unfortunate garden gnome is captured by some of the Weasley children and transformed into a very grumpy Christmas tree ornament. This was a request from a friend of mine and the first drawing I've done in pencil in a rather long time.

And so it begins....

2008-09-29T12:42:00.002-04:00

Well crud. Now I have a blog.

Can't say that I ever really wanted a blog, though I'm sure that if you'd offered me one when I was a child (long ago in the days before flying cars and subcutaneous answering machines), I'm sure that I would have wanted one desperately, believing a blog to be some sort of exotic creature along the lines of a dragon or hedgehog....

But now I know better.

And yet here I am.

My old website is going to be disappearing soon, so I'm going to be trying out alternative content publishing methods, i.e., finding different places to put stuff like this:

The idea is that I'll be putting new stuff here along with whatever earthshaking opinions or observations I can't keep to myself.

Older drawings I'll be moving HERE.

And, as always, a lot of my good stuff can be found HERE.

If you should happen to stumble upon this page, let me know what you think. Constructive criticism and commentary are always welcome.