Chicken Teriyaki Bowl #7

Work is very slow right now and I’ve been drifting; watching SG-1 episodes, living on FriendFeed, listening to the police scanner.  I feel myself getting dull, slumping, stupid.

But wait a moment! Today is July 1st!  A whole new month!  A chance to start something new (other than contact lenses)!

My 30 Day Challenge is creativity.  Writing, drawing, photography.  Actually doing it instead of reading about it.  Getting out, out of my office, my house, my personal comfort space.

I hear my GTD friends saying “You need concrete goals”.  Right.  Here we are:

• 3 morning pages every day
• At least 1 hour of photography or drawing per day
• Follow Emerson’s lesson
• At least 1 blog post a day (posts about my 30 Day Challenge status don’t count)

I’m not sure what I’ll gain from this in the long run; I mean I know, but can’t express it well.  Self-worth?  Let’s see where I end up!

Business has been a little slow, with two major projects on temporary (I hope) hold.  Cash flow is a little tough and groceries are getting really expensive.  Since I have more time than money right now, here’s how I’m saving the latter without really changing how or what we are eating:

Baking bread

Baking bread actually takes only 20 minutes of time, including cleanup.  I mix and kneed everything in my stand mixer and raise twice.  Each loaf costs about .35 USD in materials.  The loaves are about 2/3 of the size of a store loaf, but still, store loaves are running $2.50-$3.85 for the kind of bread we buy.  We eat a lot of bread; the two of us probably go through 2 loaves a week, so this saves an average of  $22.60 per month.

Making Granola

My DH won’t eat cheap cereal - generic corn flakes or puffed rice.  So we can count on at least $4.00 for a box of cereal.  Have you noticed how small cereal boxes are getting?  Luckily, he loves my plain granola.  I buy the Quaker Oats at Costco and use molasses/honey/maple syrup/brown sugar for the sweetener.  I buy molasses, honey and maple syrup when they are on sale or a good price at Costco.  A couple of tablespoons of oil, water, cinnamon and vanilla and we are good.  The cost comes to just under .09 per 1-cup serving.  The time spent to make 3 batches (I make smaller batches because they toast easier and I only have one edged cookie sheet) is a total of an hour (lots of in-between time). I figure we are saving about 30.00 a month on cereal!

Yogurt

Yogurt is super-easy to make.  Milk is running 3.56 a gallon here, which makes about a gallon of yogurt.  A quart of yogurt (the good kind) is usually on sale for 1.99-2.50, so the savings is 5.42 a gallon.  We use lots of yogurt in smoothies and as sour cream in cooking.  We save about 10.00 a month on yogurt.

Home Made Pizza

When I make bread, I also make pizza dough, raise it once and freeze it.  It thaws pretty quick in warm water (I freeze it in a ziploc) and is better for us than store bought or delivery.  We always have ground venison or elk, and I just reduce some canned tomatoes for the sauce.  The cheese is the costliest part.  The pizza we usually get costs 11.49.  The made pizza costs about $3.75.  We usually do pizza on Fridays, so we are looking at about 32.00 in savings a month.

Fruit Stand/Farmer’s Market

We have lots of fruit stands and a weekly farmer’s market in the summer time, so I hit them to get very cheap fruit and vegetables.  Of course I’m stuck with what is in season!  We’ve have asperagus (.85/lb) for two weeks, and I also pickled a bunch.  Peas are also out (.65/lb) and cherries.  Asperagus at the grocery store during this time was 1.99/lb, there were no peas.  I figure I save about 15.00 a month shopping at the fruit stands.

Now if only the DH could be convinced to brew beer again, we’d REALLY see the savings!

Let me know in the comments how you save cash by exchanging your time for money.

Beyond Paper, the dba of my current business, evolved out of my original Virtual Assistance business, Digitalgybe.  Since my work focused heavily on the tech side of VA, Beyond Paper was a moderately clever name. (Digitalgybe is a whole ‘nother story and too hard to remember, spell and explain to people.)

My business has changed dramatically, however, and now I concentrate solely on programming for websites.  My elevator speech goes something like “You know when you push a button on a website and something happens?  I make that magic happen”.

Beyond Paper just doesn’t fit for my new business, and I’m looking for a new name.  Any input, suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!

While camping this weekend we were just hanging out enjoying the birds when something flashed by us.  When I looked I noticed a dead chipmunk on the ground, which hadn’t been there a minute before.  Another flash, and I now see it; a long-tailed weasel.

She ran back around, after checking us out carefully, grabbed the chipmunk and disappeared.  Five minutes later she flashed by again (sans chipmunk), ran into the bushes and came back with a second dead chipmunk.  By this I assumed she was a female, hunting for her babies.

The biggest surprise was how small she was - maybe 18 inches tail-to-nose.  The chipmunk probably massed almost as much as she did.

It was very cool, though, and a good reason to just sit quietly and enjoy the birds.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone even slightly acquainted with me;  I’d make a lousy 1930’s style wife.

13 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

I like to make things. I knit, bake bread, write, program and, occasionally, create jewelry. Last night was hot, sticky and there wasn’t sh*t on TV. I’m bored with my current reading list, so I sat down and created two ankle bracelets to go with my wicked new pedicure.

If my ennui keeps up I can finally finish the socks I’ve been working on for six months:

“All these helicopters downtown either mean a) unanticipated tragedy, b) president’s in town, or c) they’re finally giving me my parade” - Costolo via Friendfeed/Twitter

I live near the Yakima Training Center (which we call the Firing Center), a huge sagebrush wasteland in central Washington.  While maneuvers are going on we can hear the boom—boom of artillery, which is spooky enough.  Last year while the Japanese army was doing training here the noise actually rattled the coffee cup on my desk.  All day.

But that’s not what I meant to talk about.  The quote above reminds me of the other problem of being next to the Firing Center; the helicopters.  Not the nice, news-type helicopters either.  I’m talking the huge, twin roter Chinook.

They are LOUD and they seem to fly over my house at least a couple times of week, usually when I’m right in the middle of a really neat dream at, say, 3:00 in the morning.  Like last night.  Now I’m never gonna find out the Stargate program fares under my command.  Damn.

When they do fly over the house during the day, they frighten my dogs.  I think they perceive the chopper as a huge bird that is going to turn the tables and chase THEM.  Or it could just be the noise.  Whatever it is, the poor dogs cower down on the grass and watch it very c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y.

My last post left me feeling weepy and nostalgic all day, and the only antidote I see is writing the positives of where I’m now living.

I like being only a few minutes from fishing, hiking and camping.

I like that my mortgage is 1/4 what it was in Seattle and I have 3x the space and a yard with room for a dog.

I like that people here don’t think it strange when you say you are going shooting on a Saturday afternoon.  They also don’t care that you like hunting.

I like the very, very good Mexican food, the smell of hops from the warehouses and most of the wineries.  I like the sunny weather that we have all summer long and the thunderstorms.

I like being able to buy fruit and vegetables right from the producers and being able to grow jalapenos and habaneros.

I like the fact that both my husband and I can work for ourselves, have flexible schedules and live pretty well on very little.

Brett Nordquist blogs about what he misses about downtown Seattle now that he is working in Redmond.  Now I’m terribly homesick.

We lived in the Seattle area for 13 years, but worked downtown Seattle.  The last 3-4 years we lived in Belltown, a neighborhood directly north of the downtown shopping area.  Now I live in a smallish city in Eastern Washington.

I miss all the people in Seattle; being able to go out and meet someone for lunch or coffee every day.  I miss seeing all of the strange and wonderful characters on the street.  I miss being able to talk to people about pretty much anything without them completely blowing you off.  I miss the Indian food, the Ethiopian food, the sushi.

I really miss the hundreds of places to just hang out.

I miss the elderly gentleman who sat at my table one day at Starbucks Pacific Place and told me that I should talk to one stranger every day.  We had a lovely conversation about being spontaneous and I never saw him again after that.

I even miss the Frye Apartments heckler guy in front of Pacific Place.

I miss walking down to Pioneer Square to the New Orleans on Friday nights for blues and gumbo.  I miss the Highway 99 club.  I miss the library, even though I could never find anything in it.

I miss being able to walk almost everywhere and having transit to go to those places too far to walk.

I miss the ferries, the cruise ships docking just a block from our condo, the city dogs, Green Lake and Half Priced Books.

I miss the people most of all.  Online social networking only satisfies a small part; face to face time is vital.  And I miss that.

This morning I was moving pretty slow. Did the usual bathroom stuff and then sat on the edge of the bed while I got dressed. As I pulled on my sweatshirt, my cat Roy jumped on the bed and connected with my flailing left arm. The result resembled a Barry Bonds homer - Roy went flying.

Understandably he was upset with me and immediately ran into the living room to lick himself and contemplate my punishment. Petting and cuddles were out of the question - he wasn’t risking another home run hit. I filled up his food dish, which usually would result in purring, but he just sulked at me.

Now he’s sitting in my chair, just staring at me, obviously just waiting for the ideal moment. Thank god the guns are all locked in the safe. The dial is too high for Roy to reach and shooting a gun is impossible difficult without opposible thumbs.

Roy is subtle, though. Hairball in the shoe, pee on the bed, shredding furniture is more his style. I’ve closed all the closet doors for safety. Meanwhile, I’m at Defcon 4 until my punishment is meted out.