Don’t forget that Funny will host the wonderful Make It from Scratch Carnival on Tuesday. Be sure to submit your contributions through this convenient form at the carnival.
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WTF? Doesn’t anyone hear that alarm going off???
Hello? There’s an alarm shrieking. Is no one paying attention? The House has approved a NINETY PERCENT TAX for the sole purpose of punishing a corporation whose executives annoy us.
Folks. The federal income tax is not intended to be used as a bludgeon.It may be against the law to use it that way.
This is a disaster for America, far worse than any economic recession could be.
Make no mistake about it. The powers that put George W. Bush in office will be back. This precedent will give them a handy-dandy tool to use against people they don’t like. And who knows? One of those people could be you or me.
That’s the whole issue about the rule of law. It’s supposed to protect everyone, not just people we don’t like.
The Times reports that “Democrats and some Republicans said the tax on bonuses for traders, executives, and bankers earning more than $250,000 was the quickest way to show angry Americans that Congress intended to recoup the extra dollars.”
“Quickest way?” We call that expedience. Another term could be stone stupidity. It’s every bit as stupid and arrogant as the Bushite theory that if a president says something, that makes it legal.
I don’t like AIG’s actions any more than the rest of us do. But that doesn’t justify trashing the Constitution in a fit of pique. There’s gotta be a better way.
This one is going to come back to bite. In a big way.
Moments of Fame
Green Panda Treehouse hosts this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, where Funny’s rumination on the “Slow Money” idea appears. I enjoyed Pimp Your Finances’s rant about the widespread allegation that responsible savers are trashing the economy. Living Almost Large questions the long-term effect on the economy of excessive and almost universal student loans. And there’s a good essay at the Personal Finance Playbook on price-to-rent ratios, something of interest to some of us who might not have planned on having to rent out a house.
Funny’s reminiscence about nearly buying a bed & breakfast appears in this week’s Carnival of Personal Development, hosted by Health Money Success. The round-up is getting quite large. I liked this: Jacob Duchaine gives us 10 steps for getting a girlfriend. Wonder if they’ll work to get a boyfriend, too? Beyond Bounds has a nice post on “living the jobless life.” I like it!
Feels Like Home hosts this week’s Make It from Scratch Carnival; my scheme to soften laundry with hair conditioner made the cut here. And whoa! Right at the top of this carnival is Praiseworthy Things’s guide to making almond milk. In my misspent youth, I used to make that. PT’s looks better: she uses better tools and she takes her time. As a bonus, she also tells how to use the leftover almond meal to make bird suet. Wifely Steps has an interesting and beautiful-looking recipe for sautéed bitter gourd, a Filipino dish. Uh oh…chocolate addicts had better avert their eyes: 5-Minute Chocolate Mug Cake from Lighter Side. You make it in a mug, cook it in the microwave, and from the photo, it looks highly edible. At Recession Depression Therapy, Neighbor Nancy offers some encouragement and the basics about canning. If you’re gardening a lot or you have fruit trees, canning is a great way to make the most of your excellent produce. I could cite every post in this carnival: it’s full of neat ideas and fun things to do. Be sure to visit!
Speaking of Make It from Scratch, Funny will host next week, so be sure to submit your best ideas at using this handy carnival form.
Single-handedly rescuing the economy
Yesterday M’hijito and I went out and spent enough to bring the entire global economy back to life. Well…at least to revive the value of Lowe’s stock.
The Investment House that I so recently was fretting about has needed decent window coverings since we bought it. The previous owner, who rented the place out, had installed cheesy plastic miniblinds in all the windows. In the south-facing front windows, they not only do nothing to block the heat from the summer sun, they seem to assist it in radiating into the house.
M’hijito has long wanted wood blinds, set inside the casements. We checked out the faux wood and found the price is about the same, so we ordered up some real ones that roughly match the color of the salvaged French doors that now form the visual and design centerpiece of the front rooms.
They should look pretty nice, and I think they’ll help a bit with insulating the windows (we really can’t afford to replace the windows with double-paned numbers; certainly not in a style that wouldn’t compromise the house’s historic character). Since we installed a high-efficiency air conditioner and packed the attic with insulation, we’re hoping this will help to drop the gents’ power bills into the almost-reasonable range this summer. Hope so: the price was bracing.
Could we stop at dropping 8 1/2 bills on the decor? Hell, no!
From the window-covering department, it was off to the nursery, where M’hijito unburdened himself of a nice slab of his annual bonus and I continued to get rid of my tax refund. He bought more stuff for his elaborate vegetable garden project, and I found this incredible echeverria with blossoms that look like gold lilies-of-the-valley.
Naturally, I had to have a pot for it. Right? A crackle-glazed pot from China. Of course.
And naturally oneecheverriacalls for anotherecheverria, so of course I had to buy an elegant but less floral hen & chick. And it needed a pot, too. Naturally. And some dirt to fill the pots.
None of these were especially expensive, but they add up.
March is a dangerous time for the gardening Arizonan. The temptation to buy plants is well-nigh overwhelming, partly because the weather beckons you outdoors and partly because any plants you’ve already got are rewarding you with astonishing frenzies of bloom. Check out this thing, which apparently is a freesia:
Do I recall planting it? Nooo…. It must have been one of those extraneous bulbs that I stuck in every pot and flowerbed I could think of. A few weeks ago I found it sprouting in a dried-out pot I’d stashed in the pot shelves behind the shed on the side of the house. Dragged it into the backyard where it could get some water, and voilà! Who’d’ve thunk it?
The atmosphere is so heavily perfumed with citrus and jasmine that in the evenings you can smell it inside the house with the doors and windows closed. The lime has so many blossoms it looks like it’s been snowed on. The roses have run amok. The cassia are still covered with brilliant yellow flowers. And it is not possible to resist gardening.
Think I’ll name that gorgeous echeverria Michelle Obama… The other one can be Barack.
😉
Moments of Fame
Stock Trading to Go.com has posted the 195th Carnival of Personal Financewhere Funny’s squib on paying bills by snail-mail vs. electronic funds transfers appears. On the same subject, Green Panda Treehouse expresses a preference and polls friends on Twitter. Interesting post from Bad Money Advice, who explains why we soon may want to consider converting our traditional IRAs to Roths. And J. Money over at Budgets are Sexy got a lot of conversation going over by asking readers whether they’d rather be rich or hot.
The beloved Make It from Scratch Carnival is up at I’ve Got a Little Space to Fill. This week’s edition is full of things that outshine Funny’s chard-with-walnuts contribution. In the course of offering up a delicious-looking French toast with ham recipe, GP of Manely Montana tells a cautionary tale about running a B&B—remind meto blog about that one of these days. Mary at Simply Forties hits the gong again with a recipe for spring rolls. I’ve always wanted to know how to make those, and this version looks even better than our favorite Vietnamese restaurant’s. As if I needed an excuse to consume some more honey, Victoria Kabakian produces an incredible honey ice cream (OMG!!!) at Mission: Food. A tempting site devoted to crocheting appears here…my mother taught me to crochet, but I’ve forgotten how. I think I have her set of crochet hooks somewhere; it might be worth watching the video to relearn that skill.
And here’s a new Moment for Funny: Dodgeblogium included the rant on trying to collect unemployment in the Carnival of the Vanities. This is the first time I’ve submitted a post to that venerable round-up. I see quite a few PF bloggers are there, many of the usual suspects like The Smarter Wallet, Silicon Valley Blogger, and Nickel. Because this carnival is very eclectic, it offers a diverse set of viewpoints, though. Check out GrrlScientist’s story at Living the Scientific Life about her experience with Finnish emergency care. Here’s an M.D. who’s into brain fitness, writing a site of interest to all us old codgers who so annoy the snark artist at the Shark Tank. Interesting!
At the Farmer’s Market
Yesterday morning a friend drove into town from the far-flung suburbs so we could visit the downtown farmer’s market together. People say this is the best farmer’s market in the city. The ones I’ve seen in other parts of town have been a bit lackluster, more crafts fair than produce market, so I was curious to see what “the best” means, particularly since other bloggers say they get good deals on local produce at these operations.
Getting there was a challenge: you have to navigate the new train tracks and a labyrinth of one-way streets—the City has kindly made a nightmare of driving downtown. Parking, at least, was free: in a graveled lot with no markings, overrun by people scrambling to get space between cars left sitting cattywampus, higgledy-piggledy and willy-nilly. My friend found a paved lot, where she parked in an end space; when we went back to leave some of her purchases in the car while we walked to a restaurant, someone had parked a pickup with an extra-long truck bed at right angles to her vehicle, blocking her exit. Fortunately, the space next to her was empty, so she wriggled her car out and reparked it in that spot. While she was backing out, two drivers came along and tried to grab the empty space; if I hadn’t been standing in it, they would have blocked her from getting her car out.
We enjoyed walking around. It was a stunningly beautiful day, cool and clear. The downtown area is gentrifying apace—or it was, until the Bush economy collapsed. Strips of old, formerly abandoned 1940s stores have been renovated and repopulated with new shops, and great blocks of so-called “lofts” fill former empty lots and the sites of demolished flophouses. In downtown Phoenix, a “loft” is an overpriced condominium apartment, less overpriced now that no one can or will buy them but still out of most buyers’ reach. Sadly, the area is still populated with homeless mentally ill people living on the streets, the first and worst symptom of America’s ailing healthcare system. As I was leaving, a particularly desperate panhandler came after me and would not stop pestering me even after I got into the car and locked the door.
The farmer’s market offered more produce and preserves per square yard than others here in Arizona, but about half the booths were occupied by people selling tie-dyed shirts, crocheted scarves, wood carvings, pottery, handmade soap, lost-wax metalwork, bead jewelry, and on and on. Prices didn’t strike me as much of a bargain, considering that a raft of middlemen supposedly are cut out of the marketing process.
I bought 2.5 pounds of tomatoes—a handful of vine tomatoes, two heirlooms, and two green tomatoes that I intend to fry for breakfast this morning—for $7.39. That was not a bad price: $2.95 a pound; unclear whether these were organic, but they didn’t appear to be. Potatoes and sweet potatoes were a dollar a pound. We came across a lady selling some exceptionally delicious hummus; I proposed to buy a container of that for $3.00 and a bag of pita chips for $6.00. On second thought, though, after the vendor mentioned that the stuff didn’t contain any tahini but really was just puréed chickpeas, garlic, and olive oil, I decided nine bucks was a little much for a can of beans and a bag of chips, especially since I have a perfectly fine food processor sitting in my kitchen.
After my friend and I parted, I wondered idly how some of the prices we’d encountered would compare with with grocery-store prices. So, on the way home I stopped by AJ’s (my favorite gourmet emporium and home of the Elegantly Overpriced Commodity) and Safeway (itself no bargain corner).
At AJ’s, vine tomatoes were selling for $2.99 a pound; green tomatoes, a rarity in stores here, were offered for $3.99. Campari tomatoes, the variety I buy because they are the only tomatoes with anything resembling flavor available in this part of the country, were $4.99. Pita snacks ran from $6 to $20 for a package. AJ’s carries our vendor’s hummus: $4.99, two bucks more than buying it directly from its maker at the farmer’s market. Potatoes were $1.49 a pound.
At Safeway, I couldn’t find pita chips, but a package of pita bread sold for $2.19 for ten pieces; easy enough to paint it with olive oil, cut it into triangles, and crisp in the oven. A can of chickpeas cost all of $1.39 for organic and $1.00 for nonorganic. Campari tomatoes were selling for the same price as AJ’s; vine tomatoes were $2.69 a pound. Neither store had any heirloom tomatoes. Sweet potatoes were $1.29 a pound, but regular Idaho potatoes went for 5 pounds for 99 cents—about 25 cents a pound.
Okay. Given that you’d have to make your own hummus (a process that would take all of about 5 minutes) and substitute bread, toast, or tortilla chips if you didn’t want to dork with cutting up and toasting pita bread, let us compare the costs:
Hummus:
Farmer’s market: 3.00
Gourmet market: $4.99
Safeway DIY ingredients: $1.00 plus a few drops of olive oil and lemon juice
Tomatoes:
Farmer’s market: 2.95 a pound
Gourmet market: $2.99 to $3.99 a pound
Safeway: $2.69 a pound
Potatoes:
Farmer’s market: $1.00 a pound
Gourmet market: $1.49 a pound
Safeway: 25 cents a pound
Pretty consistently, the Safeway underpriced the farmer’s market and the AJ’s on the goods I was prepared to purchase this weekend.
Even where the farmer’s market was a few cents cheaper, one has to question the cost of the hassle factor: shopping there requires a significant investment of time. The site was so crowded and so cluttered with sellers of kitsch that it was hard to make your way to the food stands. To buy something, you were supposed to get a slip of paper on which each of your desired purchases was marked, go to a central cash collection site to pay, and then take the receipts back to each of the vendors you’d visited. This would entail elbowing your way to the desired vendors and standing in line not once, not twice, but three times for each purchase you made!
Fortunately, some of the vendors would take cash and credit cards. Just as fortunately, the hummus vendor did not, and the prospect of dorking around in two more lines deflected me from making that impulse buy. In terms of gasoline expended, the Safeway is a third as far from my house as is downtown; the AJ’s is half as far. And no panhandlers harassed me in either grocer’s parking lot.
For a special outing, it was fun. But day by day, it’s not a venue I would add to my regular round of places to buy groceries.