December 31, 2010
but it’s a photo to hold you over ’til I can focus again.
Looks like all the poking and prodding about my being next was rather a bit more informed than my tart replies of: not anytime soon!
December 19, 2010
Apparently, the only bakeware in this place is a cookie sheet and pie tin. This fact never fails to surprise me when I desperately need a slice of cake or cupcakes. Thank goodness for the pie tin, though, it’s a fair enough substitute vessel for the following simple lemon cake recipe I stole off the internet (Yahoo Answers). It’s not a pretty picture but it fits the silliness of cake in a pie tin:
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup sugarMix together sugar and butter.
Add eggs and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice; mix well.
Add salt, flour, and baking powder to mixture.
Add milk.
Bake at 325°F in a well greased loaf pan for 1 hour or until golden brown.
Mix 1/3 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup sugar.
Use a toothpick to poke holes in top of cake and drizzle lemon juice and sugar mixture over the top of the cake when removed from the oven.
Serve warm or cool.
Baked in a pie tin, it only took 37 minutes to reach perfection and another ten minutes of cooling while soaking in the lemon&sugar mixture. We ate half of it immediately. #pigs
It’s strange how little things like finally having enough staples on hand to bake something from scratch, despite flailing for a thing to bake it in, makes this place feel a little bit more like a home to me.
It’ll be a year in April, and it still feels like I’m a stranger in a foreign land, most days.
December 18, 2010
In any season, I think it’s appropriate to think of others, actually, but this is particularly timely for a few reasons. My good friend and fellow blogger J. Money of BudgetsAreSexy.com has been toiling long and hard on this fantastic project called LoveDrop (defunct, now).
It’s a micro-giving network intended to target people in need, one person or family per month, and surprise them with a bundle of financial gifts and other assistance. This started as very much a grassroots campaign, so although it’s not a not-for-profit organization and your contributions aren’t tax deductible, it’s for a very good cause. The project officially launches on January first, but it’s certainly open for people to purchase a subscription and get involved.
The group does have to pay taxes so the ratio of your contributions breaks down as follows: 50% to the recipients, 20% to taxes and 30% to organizational overhead.
Score one for transparency, and ten points to these guys for pursuing their passion of changing the world, one ‘drop at a time!
And to add to the mix, just as I completed the last touches on this post, I heard that LoveDrop co-founder and friend J. had been fired. Frankly, given all the projects in his head that need birthing with so few hours in the day, it couldn’t have happened to a better man. So consider supporting the cause and becoming a member because wouldn’t it be fantastic to help one of our own realize a dream of making the world a better place?
May 19, 2010
It’s amazing how much you can get done without a regular 9 to 5 taking up most of your day. Your day can start as, well-rested and refreshed, you have that leisurely cup of coffee or tea, basking in the morning sun with the paper. Work and errands are queued up, run on your schedule and so much more gets done.
Or does it?
Sometimes, after a round of several appointments and errands I’d feel terribly accomplished, but there was a sneaking suspicion that it simply wasn’t sustainable productivity. After all, it was rarely producing any income. On the flip side, getting up pre-dawn for work five days a week and squeezing in the personal stuff when and if you can feels so constrictive that the lure of the open schedule is a siren song. Of course, that alone is hardly good reason to stop working full time and I’d be unhappy if I weren’t being productive and earning money to hoard like a treasure-loving dragon.
There are days, though, that the idea of building an empire of something that is nearly self-sustaining, doesn’t require endless meetings to keep alive or keep moving, and doesn’t rely on the vagaries of a single entity for survival is awfully enticing. That and all the new Dr. Who and Caprica episodes that I know I’m missing are nibbling away at my patience. Ok, again, I know, not a valid reason. As a reforming workaholic, I claim right of not yet knowing how to balance work and play.
Have you considered the merits and drawbacks of being your own boss? If you could make an honest and respectable (however you define that number) wage, would you?
Mrs Micah recently asked Are You Ready to Become Your Own Boss?
I know that’s Nicole of RainyDaySaver‘s goal;
VH of Funny About Money is doing quite well sort of running her own show between the CopyEditor’s Desk and her community college classes;
Mrs. Money’s really liking the idea of ditching her full time position because she’s not happy with her job, thence to perhaps become a SAHM for at least a year;
On the other side of the fence, Paranoid Asteroid has no intentions of going freelance or entrepreneurial, and several people agree with her. Unfortunately I can’t find that post!
Which side of the fence do you prefer?
May 15, 2010
It’s been long enough since any graduations of my own that graduation ceremonies are now utterly unmotivating. Or so I say now. May is a bit early for my taste, but maybe around June I’ll feel the energy from Pomp and Circumstance!
In the meantime, there’s something about a) coming back to my old room and b) traveling on a Saturday that makes me just want to hole up like a hermit and so that’s what I’ve done today.
I’ve emerged to spend $30 in pursuit of grooming and feeding. Both were good.
The latter was a catch-me-up session with a dear friend whose family news left me stunned and wandering the mall with unseeing eyes for half an hour until my brain cleared. While there were no deaths, there was a close call, and several other life events as defined by say, your health care provider for qualification to change your plan have or will occur. None of the good ones, though. The best I could do with give great big hugs and wish things would improve, rapidly. Y’know the weird thing? I felt guilty. It all happened after I moved, and I thought, “well crap, my world didn’t completely fall apart aside from that one really tough week, but your family took the hit.”
It felt like the odd void of disaster in my family was moved to someone else I love. Crazy, I know.
In any case, I’ll be writing the usual cousin check for a graduation and another four years completed. As always, I’m inmensely proud and scrambling for an appropriate card to tuck it into because darned if I didn’t take the box of cards up north with me when I moved!
And can I say? I’ve missed this crazy SoCal sun!! I’ll have to remember how not to get sunburned tomorrow.
March 22, 2010
“Finite means, and deciding how to spend them, has a delicious tension that infinite means can’t supply.”
– From Carla Power’s The Pleasure of Pinching Pennies on Oprah.com
I can’t tell you know much I love that sentiment. The paragraph continues …
“If the lamp’s genie had granted Aladdin limitless wishes instead of just three, where would the fun be in that? The link between thrift and being fully engaged with life’s possibilities was recently noted by Barbra Streisand, of all people. Back before she got famous, she had to stretch her $45 clerk’s salary all week. “Those were amazing times,” she told a talk-show host, “when you have your future ahead of you, and the challenges of making that $45 last, and appreciating every penny.
Spoken like a true multimillionairess, you may scoff. The glamour of making ends meet frays pretty fast when you’re worried about losing your house or going without health benefits. There’s thrift, and then there’s fear, and nobody should confuse the two. But for those fortunate enough not to want for basics, there is a glorious discipline in trying to stretch your money to fit your vision of the world. Like a good workout, or great sex, weighing up how you spend your money recenters you, allowing you to feel the reach and heft of yourself moving through the world.”
The distinction made here between thrift and penury is critical — there was absolutely nothing fun about working 80 hours a week, trying to make decent grades in college, all the while wondering if I was going to bring home enough to pay both the rent and utility bills. There was nothing glamorous about dropping silent tears over my checkbook, willing the numbers to match up and stay in the black.
But years after that was over, when I graduated and started making a little more money, I made choices for myself. I started to appreciate what was truly important and why they meant more to me than eating out or buying Stuff. My parents’ choices made more sense: buying used clothes; handing clothes down through four cousins; only allowing me to borrow, not buy, books; and helping displaced family with comparative luxuries like take-out food, money and shelter. It took some years before I realized that they were making perfectly acceptable sacrifices for their kids to provide basic necessities to our extended family.
When you have just enough to get by, your choices are your values. Your lifestyle brings out the grit and creativity that usually hides deep in your bones.
My post on buying a car (should I or shun’t I?) was included in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance! ’twas rough times out there, the Carnival is overrun by the classic ninja vs. pirates vs. nuns vs. fighting robots vs. real estate agents vs. zombies!
August 13, 2009
Aside from the spending reports from my recent travel, let’s just say I’ve … been paying so little attention to my cash flow that I have no idea how much I’ve spent this month. But that’s not the worst part – I’ve been going out sporadically, but no more than once or twice a week, and for pretty low-key stuff. Local burger joint, and suchlike.
No, my real stupidity is located in the travel reservation part of life. During my most hectic lead-up to two weekends ago, I made reservations at a Best Western for a single night stay in the middle of nowhere because that’s where an old friend was getting married. After days of squeezing in hotel and rental car research between other obligations, my travel companion and I came to the realization we just couldn’t afford it.
Cue: cancel the hotel reservation. Right? RIGHT???
Oh no. THIS idiot forgot about it completely.
Seriously. 100% completely forgot it until a note of the $98 transaction popped up on Yodlee charged to my trusty new credit card. When the truth dawned on me, I was as wordless as a much less cheerful Andy Runton’s Owly …..
“????” I said.
Then “!!!!!”
You may not think it’s physically possible to kick oneself and hang head in shame at the same time, but it is. Oh, it is. (“!!!!!”)
Now I’d better creatively replace that money. (“……”)
This is what happens when you stray from routine: mistakes that cost you big money. Normally everything that has a cancellation date is recorded meticulously on the day of the call, as well as on the day that I have to make the cancellation call by. My planner, however, has been languishing on my desk since July 1st, and that’s all my fault.
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