Lordie! So far am I over this month’s budget, I’ve given up trying to restrain the spending. As usual when I decide to indulge myself early in the budget cycle with a sorta expensive but affordable purchase, every damnfool thing that costs money to fix has popped up or gone wrong.
Then the locksmith showed up and miraculously fixed the museum-quality antique lock at the downtown house ($50); the pool went on the fritz ($135); I ran out of pool shock treatment chemicals ($53), the air conditioning company called to inquire after payment of a bill racked up last March for routine annual maintenance, which I mistakenly thought they’d charged on AMEX then and so filed and forgot ($120); Costco blindsided me with a demand for membership renewal ($53); we installed gutters on the downtown house ($353); and FINALLY after a year of stubbornly offering ugly Bermuda shorts and uglier pedal-pushers, Costco came forth with the style of summer shorts I love and that evidently has gone out of fashion ($56 for three pair).
The upshot of these frolics: $702.51 worth of red ink.
All is not lost, though.
Last month, I fronted my S-corporation, The Copyeditor’s Desk, $531 in start-up costs and office supplies, which I put on the card and paid out of my cash flow. Since then, the corporation has earned enough to cover those expenses. As it develops, with careful bookkeeping, you’re alllowed have the corporation repay its debt to you. So, CE Desk will cover about $530 of this month’s shortfall.
That brings the overrun down to a manageable $353.There’s plenty in the Indulgences & Surprise Expenses savings account to cover this.
Meanwhile, M’hijito said he’d pay half the gutter cost, erasing another $176 of red ink, bringing the overerun down to a mere $177. It’s not really necessary for him to do that, though, since a) I didn’t expect it and b) he keeps insisting on paying my bill every single time we go out to eat. By now he’s easily forked over more than $177 in free sandwiches, breakfast platters, tacos, sushi, and beer.
Today is the 14th. Because my budget cycle is set up to coincide with the AMEX billing cycle, it ends on the 20th. I actually have all the food, gas, and supplies I need to tide me over for another seven days, and so in principle I could do a no-buy week to stanch the flow of red. Experiences shows that’s karmically risky, though—the last time I tried that stunt, the dog died, expensively.
Okay, okay, I know: superstitious! But truly, a $702 personal budget overrun passeth all understanding. So instead of vowing not to part with another penny between now and the 20th, I’m just gunna lay low here. Spend normally. Maybe not spend very much. But no no-spend weeks. Maybe Lady Karma won’t notice…
This may not be visible to those of you who view the New York Times Magazine online, but today the Times downsized the magazine’s print version in a big and ominous way. They’ve cut the trim size (the issue’s physical height and width) and, to accommodate the smaller pages, have switched to an eye-straining smaller font with display type that at one heading level looks weirdly smaller than the body type. The effect is…well, depressing. It’s another symptom of the demise of print journalism, a development that does not bode well for a healthy democracy.
They’ve also upgraded to a “brighter and more contemporary color palette.” {gasp!} I woke up this morning with the remnants of a migraine that started two days ago and is only just clearing. Today’s brighter and more contemporary cover consists of a stomach-flipping, brilliant, sulfuric ochre that bleeds off all four margins, with black type against a window of Day-Glo magenta: eyeball-grating! At first glance, it actually caused physical pain. No exaggeration: I still can’t look at it without making my head hurt more. In fact, as we scribble, I’m ripping off the cover, folding it so I can’t see it, and hiding it in the trash.
When a magazine starts out with a large trim size, shrinking it to the dimensions of an ordinary newsstand publication doesn’t sound, on the face of it, like a big deal. But lemme tell you: a publication like the Times Magazine builds much of its appeal through its visual presence and its tactile effect on readers. The magazine was physically pleasing to read and to handle, and that is why one is willing to pay to have such a thing delivered to one’s home. This fact is not understood by management, particularly when management has no comprehension of journalism or graphic design and is interested primarily—one might say solely—in the bottom line. These bozos fail to grasp the idea that when you diminish the magazine, you may save money on production costs, but you lose readers. When you’re already hemorrhaging readers, you can’t afford strategies that drive away those who have stuck with you through good times and bad.
While I was working for Arizona Highways, the publisher decided to save dollars by cutting the trim size and, worse, by going to a cheaper, thinner paper stock. Save money? Yup. Stupid move? Oh, yeah!
Highways was the pre-eminent regional magazine in the country. It also was one of the premier photography publications in the world. For a certain type of landscape photographer—the sort who hauls a hundred pounds of large-format gear 15 or 20 miles into the bush, eschews Photoshop, and rarely if ever does a set-up shot—it was a go-to market that could make a career. For readers around the world, it was a window to the American Southwest and a nice little dream factory. For the state of Arizona, it was the mother lode of tourism.
Cutting the trim size meant they had to cut the size of the photo reproduction. A spectacular scenic looks a whole lot less scenic when you shrink it a quarter-inch or so all the way around—surprisingly so. Cheesying down the paper quality meant ink on one side of a sheet would show through to the other side. This annoyed the photographers, so much so that the real heavy hitters, who did not need Arizona Highways to make or break their businesses, quit submitting their work.
Overall the magazine’s quality dropped markedly: markedly enough to be noticeable to readers. Circulation, which at one time reached every country on the earth but one, went into free-fall. It had been dropping; now it plummeted.
Two editors in a row walked or were fired. The second, who pretty clearly was hired to ride the publication into the ground, fled before it could crash. Highways is still being printed, but no one understands why. Its days may be numbered in the single digits. They were numbered in the first place, but the numbers were surely reduced when management decided to cut production quality.
Hey, guys. Give us NEWS! Give us QUALITY! Real readers don’t want infotainment. We don’t want Play-Nooz. And we’re not gunna pay for junked-up products. If journalism were still journalism, maybe it would survive a little longer.
When I lived in Saudi Arabia back in the Dark Ages, Indian, Goanese, and Pakistani workers would get workers’ visas so they could come on as domestics for American and British oil company employees. Pedro was a Pakistani man who worked as a cook for our friends the Dakers.
Pedro was a past master of concocting curry dishes for American and English tastes. It was a challenge, because many fresh products were unavailable, and so he had to make do with a lot of canned and dried goods. I’d like to share with you two dishes he used to make for his employers: Pedro’s curry and Pedro’s curry puffs.
Curry Puffs
As a little girl, no snack food thrilled me more than Pedro’s amazingly delicious and tongue-singeing curry puffs. He used to make real puff pastry, layer after layer after layer of folded-together butter and dough that took at least a full day to create. Unless you love to stand in the kitchen, substitute the sheets of puff pastry you can get in the grocery store freezer, or sheets of phyllo dough, also available in most supermarkets.
Given his choice, he likely would have used lamb. He was probably Moslem, and if so he wouldn’t have used pork, nor do I ever recall him adding it. He used ground beef. I’ve combined ground beef and lamb in this recipe, to good effect. Try to get the best quality curry powder you can find, or make your own.
You need:
• puff pastry dough or phyllo dough • hamburger, ground lamb, ground pork, or some combination thereof • an onion, chopped • one or two cloves of garlic, minced (Pedro used garlic powder) • a little olive oil • salt and pepper to taste
• a lot of curry powder
Sauté the onion in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a skillet. Lift the onion out of the pan and brown the ground meat in the onion-flavored oil. Add the minced garlic. If a lot of water cooks out of the meat into the pan, drain the liquid by dumping the meat into a sieve or colander and then put the meat back into the pan. Mix the onions back in to the meat. Season with salt and pepper, and then stir in enough curry powder to raise the hair on your head. Just keep adding and tasting until it’s good and zingy. When the meat is cooked through and the spice combined well, remove from the heat.
Preheat the oven to about 375 degrees.
Roll out the pastry dough on a floured board (if using phyllo, work with a small amount at a time, keeping the remainder moist under a dampened clean kitchen towel). Cut it into pieces about 4 inches wide by about 8 inches long. Place a dollop of the curried meat in the middle of a piece of dough. Fold the short ends inward over the meat, and then fold the longwise ends over those. Pinch to seal. Place on a baking pan.
When the pan is full (leave some space between each packet), cook the curry puffs in a fast oven until nicely puffed and brown. Allow them to cool before eating—the filling can get very hot.
Serve as an hors d’oeuvre, or to small scavenging children who hang around your kitchen.
Pedro’s Curry
This is a stew-like affair, from what I’m told unlike anything real Asians eat. Apparently it was designed for Anglo-Saxon diners.
You need:
A wide variety of condiments:
• grated or flaked coconut •papadums or thin, crunchy crackers such as Wheat Thins • chutney, preferably mango chutney • high-quality plain yogurt (an afterthought; we didn’t have it in Arabia) • toasted almonds or pine nuts • rice cooked with raisins
Ingredients for the curry:
• stew beef (lamb is also good) cut in two-inch chunks • 1 large can of tomatoes • plenty of curry • 1 onion, chopped • 1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced, or 1/8 to 1/4 tsp garlic powder • a little olive or cooking oil (we had no olive oil; Pedro used Crisco) • beef or chicken stock (I have added red wine, but of course we didn’t have it out there) • various canned, frozen, or fresh vegetables: peas, carrots, corn, string beans, etc. • optional: a potato, cubed
In a stock pot or good-sized Dutch oven, brown the onions in the oil. Remove the onions and set aside. Add the meat to the hot oil, a few pieces at a time, and brown on all sides. Put the onions back into the pot. Lower the heat and add three to six tablespoons of curry powder. Stir well; then turn off the heat. Allow the meat to stand for an hour or two, soaking in the flavors of the curry.
Return to the stove and add the can of tomatoes and about three or four cups of broth. If you wish (assuming you’re not living in the Middle East), add a dollop or two of red wine. Simmer for an hour or two to cook the meat well and blend flavors.
If you’re using fresh vegetables such as carrots or potatoes, add them far enough ahead of serving time to cook them through. Add each vegetable with serving time in mind. I like to use frozen veggies, because they’re fresher-tasting than the canned vegetables we had overseas but are parboiled and so needed simmer as long in the pot.
While the curry is simmering, cook up some rice: one cup dry rice will serve three or four diners. Bring 2 1/2 cups water to the boil for every one cup of dry rice you plan to use. When the water reaches a boil, add the rice and turn the heat to medium-low. Add a quarter cup of raisins for each cup of dry rice. Cover and simmer. Length of cooking time depends on the kind of rice you use. I prefer converted rice (sold under the Uncle Ben’s label in supermarkets); it takes about 20 to 25 minutes to cook.
While the rice is cooking, turn the oven to 400 degrees and toast some almonds or pine nuts–again, about a quarter-cup per cup of rice. Lay them flat on a cookie sheet and place in the hot oven; watch carefully, because they’ll brown quickly.
If you’re serving papadums, fry them in hot oil while the rice is cooking.
To serve, place the cooked rice and curry in separate serving dishes to take to the table. Pass the condiments in small serving bowls.
Guests serve themselves rice, spoon the curry over it, and then top the dish with condiments. Waldorf salad makes a very good accompaniment to curry.
Thank heavens! Just as SDXB is about to leave town, abandoning his feckless daughter (let’s call her Pauline, as in “Perils of…”) to deal alone with AHCCCS (Arizona’s ungenerous answer to Medicaid), the Department of Economic Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, another pending eviction, the usual array of angry creditors, and several flying phalanxes of lawyers, an angel has stepped in to pick up the reins while he’s gone.
Somewhere along the line, incredibly, Pauline managed to make friends with a nice Mormon girl, who has taken an interest in the current flurry of perils. She has accompanied Pauline to DES and otherwise helped out. Even more incredible: this lady has galvanized the LDS Aid Society to come to Pauline’s rescue! They are on their way to her house as we speak to pack her up and get her out of there, and not only that, they’ve found a place for her to stay!
Do you realize what a miracle this is? Pauline has no, zero, zip credit. She has been evicted from three houses for nonpayment of rent, one of which had its garage door busted down by the Repo Man, who wished to drive her car back to its rightful owner, the lender. She can’t even get a checking account: SDXB had to get her a savings account at his credit union, and to do that he had to sign on it. Only a saint would even think of renting to this woman.
And…well, I can tell you for sure: a nice Mormon girl is about as unlikely a friend for Pauline as you can imagine.
For SDXB, this is the best news that’s come along in weeks. Make that months. Since there seemed to be no way to get her into another house, he was about to look into trying to get her and the kids into a homeless shelter (although he expected the rabid, possibly homicidal ex-husband would use the opportunity to nail permanent custody of the brats), where she would have to camp until he could get back from Texas and waypoints.
Let’s hope these women do some serious proselytizing and maybe even convert Pauline. LDS provides exactly the kind of social network that a feckless, generally abused soul like Pauline needs. And they promulgate a highly functional way of thinking that Pauline has failed to imbibe during her forty-two years. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the shock of her injury and total financial and social collapse has finally gotten her attention. Maybe she’ll be open to learning a new way to structure her life…something that will work for her and for her children.
Personally, LDS is not my cup of tea. But for some folks, it has a great deal to recommend it: solid values, clean living, a powerful social network, and an ethic that fosters steadiness and responsibility. IMHO, Pauline would benefit enormously from the influence of this group.
Image by Philipp Spinnler:
Statue of the Angel Moroni, Berne Temple, Switzerland Wikipedia Commons
Yesterday morning Matt the Air-conditioning Tech called to discuss the thermostat issue. By then I had finally managed to figure out the trick of programming the thing, evidently quite the trick, since one of the instructions he gave me over the phone was wrong. If an expert can’t work it, I don’t feel like such a moron taking months to master its “simple” instructions.
Matt said the classic round Honeywell thermostat is no longer being made: mercury. He speculated that before replacing the programmable number with another digital thermostat, it might be worth it to experiment with jacking up the temperature further during the day or simply turning the system off until the house starts to get uncomfortable. That mimics what I used to do with the old thermostat: I would turn it off manually the first thing in the morning and leave it off till I couldn’t stand the heat any more, or, on workdays, until I got home from the office.
Hilariously, Matt suggested one way to shut the fancy thermostat off: press the “Hold” button. He believed that would turn it off until the button was pressed again.
N-n-o. What that does is say to the system “hold the temperature at the figure that’s now showing on your display, no matter what the programming says.” So, if your system is set at 80 degrees from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., the thermostat reads 78 (meaning it registers the temperature at 78 degrees), and you press “Hold,” the device will keep the temp at 78 degrees. Should you notice this fluke and press “Hold” again to toggle that function off, the thermostat will go back to maintaining the temp at 80.
It now looks like the issues are these:
• The thermostat Matt installed isn’t really a model designed for heat pumps, even though he insists it’s perfectly OK with my system.
• It’s apparently more sensitive than the old round Honeywell number. The formerly oven-like bedrooms have been, it must be admitted, suspiciously balmy. To get them that way, the thermostat runs the unit longer than the old one did.
• Eighty degrees is too cool. I need to set it for about 82 in the daytime and then leave the system turned off until it gets unbearable inside the house. That evidently saves more power than programmed setbacks.
Mercifully, just now we’re having a cold spell. When I got up at 5:00 this morning, it was a fantastic 70 degrees outside, after a night that allowed me to leave the AC off and the window locked in its no-burglar-can-squeeze-through open position. Today is supposed to be cool—only about 90—followed by another 70-degree night. w00t!
Two of my favorite PF bloggers are contemplating the fine points of goal-setting. J.D. at Get Rich Slowly introduces a reader’s plea for direction in a project to overcome debt and then asks readers how they accomplish a seemingly unsurmountable task. Meanwhile, Paid Twice, whose whole blog is the story of a goal, trots out (ta DAAAH!) The Prioritizer, a self-help toy that’s been around on CNN for a while, and suggests you could use it not just to to analyze financial issues but “to understand what is deeply important to you and how to find balance.”
Ah hah! Just recently we were talking about (ahem) one of us who can’t figure out what she wants to do with her life. This is a job for The Prioritizer!
So, it was off to CNN to find the answers to life’s persistent questions…or at least figure out which question matters the most.
The Prioritizer works by asking you to list up to fifteen goals, then presenting them to you in pairs and asking you which member of each set is more important to you. After you’ve jumped through this hoop several times, you get a list in descending order of priority, with scores alleging to quantify each item’s relative importance.
Well, I came up with ten:
• Lose about 15 pounds • Get more exercise • Write a detective novel and peddle it to my current favorite publisher of pulp fiction • Get through the coming layoff without going broke • Retire without financial pain • Beat stress • Learn to draw and paint • Develop a craft or art, such as jewelry-making, that will generate some money • Be lots less bored than I am. • Quit working
All very worthy goals (some might say), but they presented a problem for The Prioritizer: some overlap to such an extent that to pick one or the other, I had to state a preference for one of two things that are identical or nearly identical. “Lose weight,” for example, bleeds into “get more exercise.” And getting more exercise is a key strategy in beating stress. The result looked a little strange:
We end up with “get more exercise” and “lose 15 pounds” separated by three slots, and we conclude that losing weight is about half as important as getting more exercise. In reality, they’re about the same when it comes to maintaining and improving my health. “Develop a craft or art to make some money” is indeed different from “learn to draw and paint”: I don’t delude myself that anyone would want to buy any of my pictures, but I do think I could make jewelry or other tchochkies that would sell. “Stop working” essentially repeats “retire without financial pain,” but again we see them widely separated, and “be lots less bored” is about the same as items 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8.
Evidently, the questions were poorly crafted. Let’s try again, with (implicit) goal number 1 being “eliminate redundancy”:
Seems we had a fair amount of redundancy: the list is now cut in half. But does it enlighten?
Well, in a way. Clearly, writing detective novels is not the pond I want to plunge into next. And it is true that the coming enforced retirement occupies my mind more than anything else just now and probably is the most important thing I need to handle, at least financially. And it’s reasonable to think that I need to get cracking on an exercise and diet program if I’m going to stay healthy in old age. It doesn’t do much to answer the question J.D.’s reader posed, which was how do you get a handle on a single important goal? But then that’s not what we asked it to do.
Oddly, it does succeed in ranging the broad things I’d like to accomplish in order from most to least important. A Ouija board might have done as well. But hey! Whatever works, works.
