Coffee heat rising

Shaking off the blues

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Of late, I’ve been sliding into the Slough of Despond.

It’s all freaking depressing, what with the dog ailing, hundreds of dollars in vet bills piling up, plagiarizing students (and more recently, a plagiarizing client), barely literate university seniors, the economy, the mess in Iraq, the horror in Burma, the meanness of the Democratic presidential campaign when we so desperately need leaders of good will, the neighbors having fits about a few enterprising burglars, and the general loneliness of onliness.

Time to shake that off!

Here’s the plan: come up with several things I would like and do them. These things have to

  • be within reason;
  • be possible to do in a fairly short time; and
  • create a change, no matter how small, in the routine or the scenery.

So. Here are some things that would brighten my days:

I would like to keep my house cleaner!

  • Start with a real spring housecleaning:
  • Oil the kitchen & bathroom cabinets.
  • Clean & condition the leather furniture.
  • Scrub the dog nests off the walls.
  • Wash the windows.
  • Clean the dust off everything.

I would like my nails to quit splitting.

  • Go to a salon and get a silk wrap or have product applied.

I would like the front yard to look less cluttered.

  • Put Gerardo up to digging out some of the extraneous plants.
  • While he’s at it, persuade him to clip off the frost-killed bougainvillea branches I can’t reach.

I would like to keep my car cleaner—gratis.

  • Use early Sunday a.m. to wash car.
  • Use shop-vac to wet-vacuum areas where coffee has spilled.

I would like to establish a second income stream that will bring in $12,000 to $18,000 a year by the time I retire.

  • Go in with T.M.; frame the proposed business plan.
  • Attend ABPA meetings; schmooze.
  • Figure out how to increase blog traffic; monetize Funny about Money.

Really, there’s nothing we can do about the larger issues around us. We can’t change the damage an incompetent and craven leadership has done to the economy and to our country’s place in the world; we can’t talk sense into any of the candidates who hope to take over that leadership; we can do little or nothing to help the Burmese or make up for the failures of our educational system or get us out of Iraq; we can’t even stop burglars from burgling. Whatever changes make life more tolerable happen on the individual level. Voltaire was right:

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

One frugal move = 12 to-do’s done

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So this morning I decided to wash the car in the driveway, my $13 having purchased a less-than-perfect job the last time I took the minivan to the car wash. Figured it was time, since I couldn’t see through the windshield.

In particular, I wanted to try to get the old, stale coffee stains out of the carpet, where over the months and years I’ve spilled my favorite potable while driving around town. Toyota’s carpet and upholstery are practically invulnerable. Hence, a rough-sounding strategy: spray plenty of window cleaner on the rug, scrub the stuff around with an old sponge, and then suck it out with the shop vac.

Amazingly, the scheme worked with no ill effect. It not only got out the coffee stains, it also pulled up a number of other spots scattered around the vehicle. Other than the Great Automotive Coffee Extraction Project, the rest of the job was pretty easy: I sprayed the van with a little Windex Outdoor, which doesn’t do much for windows but works great on paving, walls, and your car. This product comes in a container that attaches to the hose and has a spray attachment that turns the water flow off (saves water!) and also switches to “rinse,” making it simple to lather and rinse off the vehicle.

The Coffee Extraction Project got the eight-year-old carpeting almost as clean as new, and a little Murphy’s Oil Soap cleaned and polished up the vinyl interior trim. So, for the price of a quarter-bottle of Windex Outdoor I saved myself $13 on the wash-and-rinse and, if you believe Johnny’s Carousel Car Wash prices, another $80 on the detail job.

Better yet, because I chose to wash the car in the driveway, in the process I did a whole series of small chores I wouldn’t even have thought about had I schlepped to Johnny’s:

  • Filled a spray bottle with a handy solution of diluted Murphy’s Oil Soap
  • Cleaned the fingerprints off the garage cabinets
  • Refilled the window-cleaner spray bottle
  • Cleaned the garage door threshold
  • Cleaned the utility sink
  • Cleaned the clothes washer
  • Took out the garbage
  • Cleaned the garbage basket
  • Washed the grackle guano off the pavement under the ash tree
  • Picked wildflowers and put them in the kitchen
  • Cleaned the fireplace ashes out of the shop vac & washed the filter
    Memo: Don’t use the shop vac to clean out the fireplace!

Voilà! In the time it would have taken to drive across town to Johnny’s and wait around for a half-baked car wash, twelve household projects got done (counting the car wash). The cost was almost nothing, and no gasoline was consumed.
w00t!
Frugality pays, in more ways than one.

Nine Ways I’m Saving on Gas: What’s your strategy?

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My car gets about 18 miles a gallon. Coincidentally, my office at the Great Desert University is just about 18 miles from my house. So when gasoline sells at $3.50 a gallon, it costs me $7 a day to drive back and forth to work, or about $140 a month. That’s from the git-go: before driving to the nearest decent grocery store (about eight miles round-trip), to the Costco (about 10 miles round-trip), to the nearest Home Depot (about 16 miles round trip). Unless I’m careful, the monthly gas bill could easily add up to $200…quite a jump over an $80 tab just a few months ago.

Here are a few strategies I’ve come up with to try to keep a grip:

*Carry as little weight as possible. I’d already removed two of the four back seats from the van, to accommodate two large dogs. Since I never carry more than one human passenger, I took another seat out, leaving lots more room in the cargo compartment and lightening the car’s load by about 50 pounds. Allegedly, lightening up can improve your gas mileage by 1% to 2% per 100 pounds; so the absence of that extra seat should make things .5% to 1% better.

Drive slower on the freeways. To avoid confrontations with aggressive drivers, I watch for slow-moving traffic and then queue up behind it. The impatient folks jerking around me and my fellow tortoises pay an extra 18 cents to $1.16 a gallon for their bullying habits. Meanwhile, I save 40 cents a gallon by driving 60 mph instead of 70 mph.

Drive with overdrive on. It not only saves wear and tear on the engine at higher speeds, it also saves gas.

*Turn off the engine whenever a wait is more than a few seconds, such as at Costco’s gas lines, at a drive-through, or at an endless train crossing. Avoiding idling can save as much as 19%.

Keep the engine in good working order and keep the tires inflated to the recommended pressure. Although Edmunds’s tests found tire inflation made little or no difference in gas mileage, driving on low tires causes unnecessary wear on the tires and may be less safe.

*Build careful shopping lists and buy only at stores that are on the way to and from work. This lets out Home Depot, which has no outlets on any of my routes. However, there’s an Ace right on the way, in the same strip shopping center as a grocery store. Buying hardware and home maintenance items there allows me to buy necessities without having to rack up any extra gas mileage. Ditto picking up the groceries on the way home, instead of waiting till the weekend to go shopping. Safeway, Basha’s, two AJ’s markets, and two Costco stores are directly on my way.

Telecommute as much as possible. Working at home one day a week saves 20% on the cost of driving to campus: $7 a week or $28 a month.

*Use a day of vacation time now and again to engineer three- and four-day weekends, cutting another commute whenever possible.

Always use American Express’s 3-2-1 card for gasoline purchases. When regular unleaded is selling for $3.50, the 3% kickback on gas is the equivalent of 10 cents a gallon.

That’s about it. I can’t bicycle: too far, too dangerous, too hot. Can’t use cruise control: the freeways are so crowded they never move at a constant speed. Won’t ride the bus: turns a 30-minute drive into two hours and ten minutes of wasted time.

Are you doing anything special to save on gasoline? What is it?

Dog

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It’s four in the morning. The dog’s heavy breathing woke me an hour ago and puts sleep out of the question. Well…the steam-engine effect plus worrying about where the money to pay the vet will come from put sleep out of the question.

I’ve now spent almost $500 on the dog so far this month. The billing cycle closes on the 20th; today is only the 9th: plenty of time to rack up more costs against the amount available to spend—which also has to cover food, gas, and all other necessities.

In spite of four Benadryls, the dog can barely breathe through her nose. At this point she gets ten pills a day and four doses of eyedrops. She’s now developing the cracked, scaly skin around her nose said to be a symptom of lupus, another wildly expensive chronic disease. In saner moments, I think I should put her down. But in fact most of the time she seems pretty lively: she eats well, she plays with her toys, and although she can no longer run after the toys, she still wants them thrown and she still retrieves forever, albeit at a walk instead of a run. She’s as alert as a 13-year-old dog gets. Is a stuffy nose a capital offense? Or running the human into bankruptcy?

The thing that’s frosting my cookies here is that after two weeks of dosing her with antibiotics and smearing a veterinary ear ointment on her nether parts-a procedure that puts me at risk of having my hand removed at the ankle—she still stank until I broke out a tube of Myconazole 7, which brought an end to the problem in two days flat. Same as it brings an end to similar problems in a human female. In other words, $10 worth of an over-the-counter antifungal did what $500 worth of veterinary care did not do.

Since it’s not possible to get the stuff up inside the dog (not and live to tell about it, anyway), it may be that two rounds of $50 antibiotics were necessary. But as far as I can tell, they did little or nothing to clear up the infection. What worked was the grocery-store ointment. It would have helped a great deal if the vet had suggested this first, rather than clipping me for drugs that I can’t afford and that don’t seem to have done much.

That makes me reluctant to drag her back in over the nasal congestion. I suspect that every time I take the dog to the vet, the vet takes me to the cleaners.

But she’s doing the same thing Walt did at the end of his life: sticking to me like she was glued on. She won’t let me out of her sight-she follows me if I get up to go to the bathroom. The “Velcro dog” effect, IMHO, is not a good sign. Dogs, being social animals, want to hang out with other pack members, but it’s not their nature to be on top of each other all the time. When this happens, it means the dog is uncomfortable or in pain and is seeking reassurance. So, there’s probably more at work here than simple old age.

Sigh.

Burglars

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The guy who’s taken the lead in our local homeowner’s association is having a frenzy over a rash of break-ins and burglaries we’ve been enjoying around here. He’s been e-mailing “Safety Alert” bulletins filled with neighbors’ reports on the latest happenings.

Surprisingly, he missed the shooting, though, which did make the local Play-Nooz. Over in the ritzier section, several armed neighbors have formed an impromptu posse. They actually caught an SOB breaking in to one of the million-dollar homes, and so one of them broke out his blunderbuss and blasted the guy’s tires. The cops were not amused. But the homeowners looked pretty smug. “We’re armed,” one of them growled, glaring into the camera. “Don’t come around here!”

He did send us this great story:

. . . watch out for a window washer. We live on E. Orangewood Ave. My husband was out mowing the lawn about 10:30 May 7th when a white, long bed Chevrolet truck between 1998-2000 drove up to the house. Driver was an African-American man over 6′ tall and 220 lbs. in his late 30’s-early 40’s. He said he was supposed to wash the windows of the house. He said “The homeowners want me to wash them.” My husband said he didn’t have any tools in the back of his truck.He must have thought my husband was a yard worker because when my husband told him he was the homeowner and asked for his business card he sped off very quickly.

That address is a ways from here. Pretty funny, though. Poor guy was too dumb to tell the difference between a homeowner and a yard dude. Ohh well.

Closer to home, we have the following entertainment:

Three weeks ago at about 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, we had an incident near 15th Avenue and west Golden Lane. A man and woman in a car were being followed by PD. They parked in our driveway and told the officers that they lived here at our home. (Both my husband and I were at work at the time.) We are so thankful that a vigilant neighbor (who is in law enforcement) saw what was happening, came over and told the police officer that the people did not live at our house. A quick background check revealed the car was not registered, the driver’s license was suspended and who knows what else. The driver was arrested.

Heh heh heh heh heh!

Yesterday morning while I was breakfasting on the patio, the neighbor’s alarm went off. Sounds like she has the same squeally little Costco stick-on alarms pasted to her windows that I’ve installed. Darn things are ear-splitting, and they can be heard across the street. I walked over to look down the alley-Manny caught some perps by spotting their car parked outside another neighbor’s back gate-but couldn’t see anything. By the time I got there, the alarm had given up the ghost. Forty-five minutes later, the cops pulled up and I heard her talking with them; she’d apparently come home and found a window open.

It’s not much help to call the police. They don’t show up in time to do any good. Last time I called 911 when some guy was outside a bedroom window, the dispatcher said (I kid you not!), “Well, if he tries to get in, call us back.”

Uhm…and why would I have dialled 911 if I didn’t think he was trying to get in? The only way you can get the cops here promptly is to tell them you have a shotgun and are prepared to shoot an intruder. Then they show up instantly.

Frankly, I don’t think dwelling on these matters does much good. Broadcasting alarms at every little incident just frightens people. Other than locking up the house and sticking alarms on the windows, there’s not a thing we can do about prowlers. You can’t stay home guarding the palace every minute: sooner or later, you have to go to work or at least out to the grocery store. Nor is it healthy to live behind bars, glaring security lights, and alarm systems. The bad buys belong in jail, not us!

During the vandalism episode, when my lawyers were urging me to take a $100,000 bath and sell the house for my own safety, I installed a fancy burglar alarm system, which is wired to the cops and the alarm company. Never turned the darn thing on, and after the contract lapsed, I quit paying the recurring fees. The main reason, above and beyond the hassle factor and the costs (you get a fine for a false alarm, which is easy to set off), is the feeling that I’m not the one who should be living in prison and I’m not going to make my home into a prison. Eventually I put a few of those stick-on battery-run alarms on the windows and the only easily opened door, so that I’ll know if someone tries to get in while I’m here.

One of the advantages of simple living is that I don’t own a lot of stuff worth stealing, and so I don’t feel very concerned about burglary. The only thing I’d really prefer not to lose is the computer. Otherwise, I own practically nothing of significant value, and the only negotiable instruments in the house are hidden in some very unlikely places (no, not the freezer).

The only possibility that concerns me is home invasion, which is pretty commonplace around here. I keep the security door in front locked, never answer the door to strangers, and have alarms on the windows. And, decrepit as she is, Anna can still emit a fierce-sounding bark. So I don’t worry much that anyone will get in while I’m home. Matter of fact, I’ve made a conscious decision to reject worrying about the bogeyman.

Maybe if we all got rid of the stuff, burglars would have to find another line of work!

Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na
Every morning about this time
she get me out of my bed
a-crying get a job.
After breakfast, everyday,
she throws the want ads right my way
And never fails to say,
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Get a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na

—The Silhouettes

Cheap Eats: Six meals in one

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Last week I made a pork roast—mighty good—and still am enjoying meals from it. Videlicet:

Pork Roast

  • a pork roast
  • onion, cut up
  • 1 or 2 cloves garlic, slivered
  • 1 to 3 Tbsp fennel seed
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 1 carrot, cleaned and cut up
  • ½ bottle dry white wine
  • 1 large can tomatoes
  • beef or chicken broth
  • 1 portabella mushroom, washed and sliced, or a handful white button mushrooms, washed and cut in quarters
  • olive oil
  • butter

Peel the garlic cloves and cut them lengthwise to make slivers. With a sharp knife, poke holes in the meat and push the garlic slivers into the holes.

Skim the bottom of a Dutch oven with olive oil and heat the pan over a medium-high flame. Brown the meat on all sides in hot olive oil. As you turn the meat to the last side, add the onion and carrot. Stir around to sauté the vegetables while the meat finishes browning. Add the wine, fennel seed, thyme, and canned tomatoes with juice. Break up the tomatoes a bit. Add enough beef broth to about cover the meat.

Bring to a slow boil and immediately turn down the heat to a simmer. Cover the pan and allow to cook until done, two or three hours.

When the meat is almost cooked, heat a couple of tablespoons of butter in a frying pan and cook the mushrooms over medium-high heat. When nicely done, set aside.

Remove the cooked roast from the cooking liquids and set on a plate. Pour the liquids through a strainer into a bowl. With the back of a spoon, squeeze the liquids out of the vegetables. Discard the spent vegetables and return the broth to the Dutch oven.

Take two tablespoons of room-temperature butter and two tablespoons white flour and mash them together.

Cook the broth over medium-high heat until it boils about a third- to a half-way down. Then, while the broth is still seething, stir the flour-butter mixture (this is called beurre manié) in the liquid, a little at a time. Allow to cook for a few minutes to blend and thicken.

Turn down the temperature and add the mushrooms to the sauce. Allow a few minutes to blend flavors.

Then slice the meat and serve with the sauce. Excellent with potatoes, noodles, or rice.

Leftover Pork

Cook some noodles or polenta. Slice or shred some of the leftover pork roast and heat it in leftover pork sauce. Add some frozen peas or fresh broccoli and heat with the meat and sauce. Serve with a salad on the side for a complete meal.

Pork Sandwiches

Slice some good bread, the leftover pork, and a decent cheese. Generously slather one side of a bread slice with room-temperature butter. Rub the pork slices with mustard or horseradish sauce.

Heat a frying pan over medium to medium-high heat.

Place one slice of bread, butter-side down, in the pan. Place a piece of cheese on it, then place a pork slice on that. Cover with the another slice of bread, butter-side up. Allow to cook until the bottom slice of bread browns and the cheese is starting to melt. Turn and brown on the other side. Serve with a small salad or fruit.

Spaghetti with Pork Sauce

Dice a fresh tomato. Chop one or two cloves of garlic. Chop some parsley.

Cook some spaghetti al dente. Drain the spaghetti in a colander; reserve.

Skim the pan with a small amount of olive oil. Add the chopped garlic and stir around over medium-high heat for a minute or two. Place some of the leftover pork sauce in the pan and allow to heat. Then add tomato; stir to soften and blend, but don’t overcook.

Dish up the spaghetti and serve the pork-tomato sauce over it. Top with chopped parsley.

Pork Tacos

Shred some pork. Cut up some little green onions. Chop some cilantro or parsley. If you can get a decent avocado, peel that and chop it; sprinkle some lemon or lime juice over it to prevent browning in the air. Slice up some lettuce. Heat a can of pinto beans or refried beans. Get a bottle or deli package of good salsa.

If you still have some of the pork sauce, spoon a little over the shredded pork. Cover and heat in the microwave. If you don’t have the sauce, that’s OK-just heat the shredded meat in the micro.

Prepare some corn tortillas by heating a frying pan or a pancake griddle and flipping each tortilla back and forth on the hot surface until warmed through. Stack on a plate and cover.

Serve the meat, the beans, and the tortillas at table, with the chopped onions, lettuce, cilantro (or parsley), avocado, and salsa as condiments.

Diners make their own tacos by placing a little meat on a tortilla and doctoring it as desired with the condiments. Wrap and eat. Beans can be added to the taco or eaten on the side, according to individual preference.

Pork Provençal

Cut up leftover pork into ¼-inch or ½-inch cubes.

Get some packaged bread crumbs or (preferably!) zap a slice or two of bread in the blender to make crumbs.

Chop some parsley and garlic.

Raid the pantry or garden for spices and herbs, such as thyme, marjoram, tarragon, cumin, chili powder-whatever comes to hand. Get some leftover cheap white wine.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan. Stir the pork, spices or herbs, and garlic over high heat until the meat is nicely browned. Add bread crumbs; stir some more to brown those. Stir in the chopped parsley.

Moisten with white wine and place, uncovered, in the oven for 20 minutes or half an hour.

While the meat dish is finishing, prepare some vegetables, rice or potatoes (if desired), and a small salad.
3 Comments left at iWeb site:

Joanna

hey!I found you on the MIFS carnival this morning!great idea, I stretch my meals too.I do it mostly with chicken though.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008 – 07:48 AM

Stephanie

I love stretching meat like this! I use leftover meat in stir fry frequently!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008 – 08:21 AM

Tia

Found you on the MIFS carnival.These are wonderful ideas!I can’t wait to try several of your recipes.Thank you so much!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008 – 05:39 PM