I can’t just put the books back on the shelf. I can’t. Their reproach will eminate even from there.

I’ve heard of people who can just stop reading a book. Maybe the book is really bad. Maybe the reader lost interest. These people actually just stop reading, remove the bookmark and put the book away and never feel a sense of guilt about it.

So the stack grows. The guilt grows and I feel itchy every time I sit down next to the stack.

It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

This passage, read recently, brought to mind a collage of images: earthquakes in China, typhoons in Burma, flooding in the American midwest, and the American lack of fiscal responsibility which we call the mortgage ‘crisis’.

That last item seems incongruous, doesn’t it?  You wouldn’t know it by the media.

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!

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.

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!

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.

When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.  Carr, Nicholas,  Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic, 10 June 2007.