Happy New Year!!!!

It is December 22 as I type this (yes, with ALL my fingers and my thumbs because I am old and learned to type in school....with a typing teacher...Mr...what the hell was his name?...anyway, he had a horrible case of cradle-cap and chunks of his bald pate would fall on your keyboard if he came over to tell you what you were doing wrong or to type faster. It was a great motivator...type fast and accurately and DON'T get scalp skin chunks all over the keyboard and your stuff) and Dec 21 was Solstice!  Woot woot.

I had dinner out with friends to celebrate.
All holidays should involved binge eating.  We had fantastic Thai food and candy.  Then more candy.  And more candy.

Here's a surprise, I don't feel good.  Oh well.  Maybe that whole tube of instant crescent rolls I made in a skillet on the wood stove will make me fill better especially topped off with the burnt percolator coffee. 
Or not.

For me, today is the first day of the new year.
Here are the resolutions.
But first...my resolution theory.  This is the current theory.
A FEW resolutions that I can probably keep.  I used to do a litany of resolutions that mostly reflected how much I hated myself.  That didn't seem to get me anywhere.  My first attempt, years ago, at this was swapping "lose weight" out for "change weight"...you can't lose if you decide to "change" your weight.  It's bound to change.  I actually lost weight that year.  Or so I choose to believe.

This year:
1)  Breath work.  I'm taking yoga classes on breath work and it helped the asthma and the night time teeth grinding so I intend to do some breath work each day. 
2) Drink 2 cups of water first thing in the morning.  Drinking all my water later in the day means I am up and down the ladder all night peeing.  Perhaps shifting that to the morning will help.
3) No Amazon in 2020.  I don't like their labor practices or the new enormodome of crap people don't need that opened by Spokane and will no doubt provide a few crap jobs for people who need a job.  I doubt my dropping the 5 or 6 orders I was still making each year will change much.  I think I ordered 3 things from there this holiday season and I could have gotten them elsewhere if I'd tried harder. 
4) Donate weekly to the food bank or Kiva.  I like Kiva a lot and have given kiva certificates as gifts to various folks.  It is microlending so you usually get the money back and a bit of interest. I re-invest or donate to the organization to cover their administrative costs and keep it going.  It's like simple investment training for me.  I have had 1 loan go bad.  The country fell into civil war and obviously basic survival should take precedence over paying back the loan on that cow that probably got blown up.  I've already been donating pretty much weekly to the local tiny free pantries in Moscow.  I buy 10$ of food and put it in there.  Folks who might need it take it without any administrative oversight.  You walk up, leave or take food as you like.  I personally like to put together something that makes sense...ingredients for tuna casserole, or oatmeal-sunflowerseeds-raisins.  A meal.  There are lots of random cans of outdated olives that are "food" but not terribly nutritious.  I think the whole canned chicken (5$) with noodles (2$), cream of celery soup (50cents), mixed veggies (50cents), canned pears (1$) and cobbler mix (1$) is my favorite.  It's a meal I wouldn't mind eating.   Chicken noodle casserole with veggies and pear cobbler.  Anyway, I get my grocers and drop and extra 10$.  I can usually shave my own grocery budget by 10$ so it's not an extra expense.  Last weekend I took some dry white beans in a ziplock out of the free pantry as I dropped in my food.  It had been there for WEEKS and clearly no one wanted those nasty beans.  I'm going to plant them and see if they grow.  Maybe they will give the gophers gas when they eat the shoots. 

There it is.  Minimal resolutions that are easy to keep.

Happy New Year.

17 Things

So, I need to procrastinate hence...blogging.

I saw an article on "17 Things Frugal People Usually Don't Do"
https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/17-things-frugal-people-usually-dont-do

Let's see  if I'm "usual"

1)  Finance cars         
Nope.  I pay cash for used.  No interest and certainly not putting it on a HELOC

2) Overdraft bank accounts     
Nope.  Don't do that.  That just costs fees and nonsense.

3) Compromise dietary health to save money
Nope.  I DO compromise dietary health, but I know it is a treat and a splurge and not frugal.  It's not frugal to eat cheap crap and get sick.  I mostly eat organic or local or no-spray stuff, but today there was a Nutty Buddy by Li'l Debbie because I wanted a sugary treat which is not healthy anyway.

4) Carry credit card balances
Nope.  Don't do that.  I did in the past and it sucked.  Part of that was getting enough income and a few windfalls to pay it off and then not starting again.  I log on and pay it every couple of weeks and all the "rewards points" are just cash back applied to the card.

5)  Keep up with the Joneses
Nope.  The Joneses next door bought NEW toilet buckets but I'm still using last years' buckets which I probably found at the recycling center.

6) Hang out with losers
It seems the author means spendthrifts when she uses the term "loser."  Not all my friends are thrifty or frugal so I don't know about this one.  I'm sure at least one of my siblings will need to point out that I am the loser hence don't need to hang out with them.

7) Take fancy vacations
Nope.  I take vacations but not fancy in the sense of cruises and concierged hotels and all are prebudgeted carefully.  My recent trip was on a 66$ plane ticket for the round trip.  I bunked with a friend, and had 75$ per day set for spending and meals for the 3 days.  Not fancy but super fun. 

8)  Forget to price compare
Oh hell no!  You always have to price compare.  I stop at 3 grocery stores on my weekend food run to hit the best consistent deals on my staples.  2 stores are walking distance from each other so no extra gas expense and the other is buy a thrift store where I check my hardware, clothing and office supply needs list before hitting retail outlets (or just waiting to see if the stuff shows up at thrift later) hence no extra gas there either.

9) Automatically opt for employer-offered health insurance.
I do carry that because there aren't really other options where I am so I guess I did do this one.  Maybe it wasn't automatic since I checked for other options.

10) Fail to contribute to 401k or other retirement options.
Nope.  I don't fail to contribute. I put in the amount the employer matches and put the rest toward a debt free retirement situation.

11) Stop learning
Nope, I don't stop learning.  I try to pick up new practical skills when I can.  If you need heat tubes run on rebar for a concrete slab pour you call me!   I got that one down this fall.

12) Skip life insurance.
Nope.  I carry enough to get me in the ground.

13) Waste food.
This one I am weak on.  I do my best but it's damn hard not to waste food.  I compost or feed scraps to critters but without a kitchen it's tough to control things like left overs.  Sometimes I do well, and other times the compost is a bit salad-rich.

14) Fail to keep a stockpile
Well, I don't know.  I stock some things like office supplies and I can now keep 4 rolls of TP dry and clean in the wee shed, but space is at a premium.  I guess having a couple pounds of dry beans and grains and 12 tins of canned fish probably does count as stockpiling given my space.  I also try to keep lunch food at work.  And I keep a gift bin going for unexpected gift obligations.  OK, apparently I stockpile. 

15) Pay full price.
RARELY RARELY RARELY do I pay full price.  I keep a running list of general things I could use and get them when I find them.  Until then I try to get by. First option is find something else to use (need a hammer..use a rock).  Second option is to borrow, especially single use or rarely used items.  Third is yardsale, 2nd hand or thrift (jeans, shirts, many tools).  Fourth option is on sale at a retail store. Like if I haven't found a tool in a year it's good to hit father's day sales at hardware stores.  LAST option is full price.  This did happen once this year.  I really needed a reciprocating saw and the beg, borrow, 2nd hand options were exhausted or crap. A job had to be done THAT DAY. So I bought a good one that uses the same batteries that go on my other tools from last year's fathers day sale purchase.  It's a really good saw and should last me forever.  I used a free-credit reward dealy from the hardware store to stock up on blades and have used the saw frequently so it seem.

16) Forget to shop car and homeowner's insurance annually.
I do generally remember to review those each year and drop unneeded coverage on the vehicles and ask about more discounts on things.

17) Spend emotionally.
What are these "emotions" of which you speak?

Waiting for Concrete

That's a play on "Waiting for Godot"...spoiler alert:  Godot NEVER arrives.

The concrete was supposed to be today but is delayed for WEATHER!  YA! I TOLD the builderman that the hill is a slip-n-slide when wet.  Concrete trucks are heavy.  The hill is steep. And now we are in the rainy season.

Of course, we can't go back in time.  Supposedly the concrete comes tomorrow. 

It will take 3 loads.  I can't believe there is room for that much concrete given how much rebar is in the slab

It's 12" max spacing, often closer.  

 It is drilled into a little footing dealy and the brackets for the post-n-beam structure are bolted into that and will be set in the concrete (grade beam and slab are a mono-pour).  The builderman added the little footing deal to allow bolting in the brackets rather than wet-setting them.  It also allowed the OSB you can see on the side of the photo with visqueen over it.  That's holding back the sloped gravel called out in the plans.  Gravel doesn't just hold a slope during  pour no matter what the engineer draws. 

It will be fun to watch.

TOO Many Puns So It's Just Blog Post about the Build Project

Things have been moving FAST.

The plumbing (owner permit...a.k.a ME).  I buggered it up the first time.  Slammed through another day with new help and MUCH more knowledge thanks to the friends who helped me through the first draft and passed the inspection 49 hours after the "fail". I got a green sticker on a random pipe sticking out of the ground.    I also ended up with 2 big boxes of unused bits and pieces to return to 3 or 4 different hardware stores.  As soon as I have slept a bit, I will get on that.

The first two assistants taught me a TON!  Thanks Jyl and Snuff!  For reals.
The final one...I told him that since it passed I would think of him every time I took a dump.  He was flattered.

So, the hole was filled and tamped. Gravel...tamping, more gravel...more tamping...lather, rinse, repeat.

Got the permit Thursday morning at about 8:30 AM and by 5pm Friday, 90% of the rebar is in.  The builder had a question about a detail (rebar drawn as though floating in the air...hard to pour concrete
on that and keep it in place).  So, he added some more rebar, had me take a picture and send it to his boss (aka Mrs Builderman) and hopefully the engineer will OK the slight modification.

At one point, the Mr Builderman said, "I tend to overbuild things."  Yep.  They should put that on the sign.

This morning 3 people showed up, 2 barely know me!!! And helped me rough in the pex tubes that will distribute heat in the slab in the imaginary magical solar future.  We'll see....
I'm sleeping on it and then in the morning I will go back and start tying them more definitively to the rebar.  The helpers (no names...well, they have names but I don't like to name names) were SUPER good.  None of us had done it but we watched the how-to video.  I watched it on a loop for a couple of hours and took notes because I am me. 
Anyway, here we are:

And the tubes.   I will neaten them up a bit.  I may have help tomorrow morning for that.

I will try to fish out some plumbing pictures too.  Perhaps one of the EPIC plumbers crack on the last assistant.  Cripes!!! It reminded me of the "credit card" joke my sister told me once.

You can admire the beautiful green "right to poop" sticker on the vertical black post.

The builder labor guys complimented me on having all the plumbing in one spot.  YA!!  AND interior wall.  The shortest heat tube goes through the kitchen and bath areas on either side of that.  Kitchen faces south.  The roll of tubing on the left of the picture is where the manifold will be.  It ends up under the kitchen counter.  I had wanted it in the bathroom but at 4'10" wide, with a 2'6" door...and a water supply pipe (that might actually be in the kitchen???  was supposed to be in the bathroom but the wall is 2" thick max so things have floated back and forth around it.  I don't really care...drill a hole and voila...water supply and most incoming water plumbing back in the bathroom), it was too crowded. So I remembered I didn't have to put this near the hot water heater.  If I put solar units on the south 2nd story wall or porch roof, I'll want that thing on the south wall anyway.  And it sorted out the tubing plan.   

I must have done a dozen tubing lay outs.  All of which would have worked and none of which we ultimately used.  Bits of each.  The boards are where walls will be more or less.  It struck me last night on layout 3001 that I had TOO MANY TUBES going through the bathroom if the main manifold is in there.  I'd be melting the toilet wax ring all damn winter.   That is apparently a thing based on the BIG RED LETTER WARNINGS in the installation manual.   Moving the manifold simplified the layout and limited the number of tubes that had to cross each other.  

Turning also turned (HA) out to be the biggest installation challenge.  So, at the suggestion of EG, a super friend and helper, we went the long way on the north living room and south/east living dining area.  BINGO.  Saved tubing and labor and it was easier to get into the vestibule where the solar batteries will live.

I thought to switch the supply/return path on the north loop so the sleeping area will get the water after the living area.  I like a chilly bedroom.  

Now I'm wondering if I could hook up inground tubes through the landscape around the house but deep in the ground and chill the floor in the summer.  

One helper (Hi C!!) suggested that this heated floor will be excellent for passing out drunk so I need to start drinking ASAP.

Cousin-in-law BG (not a real relative...no Norwegian has that status) had already suggested drinking when the first plumbing inspection was a fail and there was 2 days to hit the next inspection.  I may consider it next week.  The concrete pour will either happen or not happen.  Either way, I will be stressed out.  

In better news...my hair is suddenly down to my belt!  And NO I did not switch to high-waisted pants.  Since I am the shortest waisted person in the west, I'm sticking with the low waisted ones.  I keep the hair braided pretty much all the time so I hadn't noticed it got longer.  

SP and JH let me mooch a shower today and I went for the hair. My head was encased in a hard cap made of dust and scalp grease welded to hair.  Like adobe...hairdobe?  I can't imagine what it did to their drain.  But hey, if they need a new drainpipe run, I not only know how, I have enough plumbing parts in the car and on the porch to do it.  

Thank you to one and all who have helped, visited, encouraged and brought sustenance and expertise (except the Norwegians)

More anon.  

40 Days and 40 Nights...CRIPES

So, the builderman and crew did not show up onsite for 40 days (and actually 41 nights but that doesn't fit the biblical reference).  Fortunately, it wasn't raining during that time.  I had more of a dry sea sort of thing than an ark sort of thing at my place.  Big empty ass hole.

At last they DID show back up.  I wasn't just waiting around, I was visiting, calling, texting and driving by the other job sites to ask when they would be back.  We'll leave it there.

The past few days there has been progress.   This is where we are at now:

The white things sticking out of the ground are forms for porch piers.  There will be a few more over on the side toward the road.  The trench is for the drain rock for the "rubble trench foundation".  It will hold up the super heavy wall.  The white rock behind the tiny excavator (the builderman is quite large so the excavator looks even tinier than it is...his crew today was little guys who are closer than they appear....also the dumptruck just beyond the excavator is actually a little bitty thing like a largish golf cart on tracks rather than wheels...it's like a construction zone in the hobbit movies...perspective is all over the map).  ANYWAY...the white rock is part of a rock wall to the north of the future house holding up what used to be a chunk of hill and is now a steep cut.

New Favorite Old Show

So, I don't have a TV and hence am behind the times on shows.

I've probably blogged about my hoarder show issue.  Well, I found a healthier way to satisfy my yen for thinking others are more messed up than me.

"Til Debt Do Us Part" which I am watching on youtube with a mobile wifi hotspot I checked out from the library for free.

This is a Canadian reality show.  The Canadians are generally more realistic in their reality shows than the 'Mericans are.  This one features a financial advisor who goes to a family with financial woes and works with them for 1 month.  If they behave well, have a good attitude, and demonstrate major life/money changes, they get $5000.00 (Canadian presumably).  Not the huge pay off that 'Mericans would expect.  Like much of Canada, it's toned down and more modest.

Each week there are the predictable plot points which I love in reality TV.  The genre reminds me of the old Batman series in reruns during my childhood.  If it was 5 minutes in to the show, you KNEW the villain would show up, half way and the dynamic duo is trapped in a ridiculously easy to escape predicament, and then it all resolves nicely.

In this show, the premise is that money is a mystery to most people.  Corollary premises (premia?) are that talking about money is taboo, people are unaware of what they spend, that people estimate income based on gross (ignore taxes and other deductions), and outgo based on net (ignore interest paid on credit cards and loans and the expense of ownership for things like vehicles and pets and kids and homes).  The advisor states that the primary reason for divorce or break up is money.  So, facing money issues and being open and solving them together sorts out the relationship as well as the debt problem.

The couples in each show discuss what they THINK is going on.  Some are realistic, most are NOT.  Most also blame each other for the issue.  The advisor goes through months of expenses and tells them what is actually happening.  She includes how much more they spend each month than they bring home.  She shows them where they will be in 5 years if they don't change.   It's a good point.  Not so distant in time that people think they can sort it out late, but not so overwhelming that they give up before they start.

Then, Gail, advisor,she cuts up cards (credit and debit).  She shows them a budget that will work for them each month.  Then she puts money in jars, cash money, for area of expense and they have to make it through the month on that.   That's week 1/day 1.

Each week for the month they have an assignment.  The first week is usually dealing with debt.  Some call credit card companies to get lower interest, some have to get a consolidation loan put on their mortgage to get rid of the credit card debt.

The next week they generally have to show how they can cut expenses more and/or bring home more money.

During relationship assignment week they have to usually talk to each other about money. Sometimes they get to do research like how much it would cost for a stay at home parent to go back to work vs what that work will bring in NET (not gross).  Often, with 2 or more kids, they can save more with a stay at home parent cooking and maybe taking in a kid to babysit, they come out ahead of a full time job.  Sometimes, turns out the spouse has to go to work.

In the end Advisor Gail gives them $5000 or less.  If they are turds or think they could do better than her and hence don't do their tasks, they get less.  One couple that I've seen so far, got bupkis.  Nada. Zero.  Zip.  Zilch.  They did nothing and were snotty little twerps.  It's like the one time Batman and Robin didn't defeat the villain and you knew that one was still out there...haunting.

I am surprised EVERY EPISODE (like 40 so far) that people are SOOO unrealistic about their $$.  Of course, I'm single and thrifty as crap.   There are things in my life that I don't want to face (we won't be blogging about those so bite me), but money isn't one of them.

Most couples, or at least one of the pair, just can't be honest with themselves about their money and where it goes or how much there is.  Geez!  It's like the hoarders who can't see the hoard or the folks on "My 600lb Life" (another of my favorite shows to binge watch), who can't see that they are eating enough to support 600lbs...must be glandular?  The money must be evaporating?  The hoard is "good stuff" that is useful in the immediate future...etc.

I think it's rewarding for me to watch because I have work3ed on most of the issue presented already in the past or don't have a tendency toward those particular vices.
It's nice to see what I already do or know that the advisor points out.  I also get some validation on things I've advocated but not done, and encouragement to keep following my own money choices even if something else MIGHT be more profitable.  I'm doing fine, I don't have to be rich.  I pay my own freight and am prepared for the occasional mid level crisis cost.  It also shows me the stress I no longer have since the debt is gone.  Zero.  Zilch. Nada.  Nil. Bupkis.

So, things I do that got validated:

1) Write down what I spend on a daily basis.  I do that MOST days.  Once in a while I miss a day or forget to bring a receipt home to record.  I try to write down 10-15% more than I guesstimate the costs to be.  Most people underestimate spending (and calorie intake) so I bump it up just in case.

2) Have a planned monthly budget.  It fluctuates and since expenses are fluctuating with construction and life...I write up a target for each category each month.  I "WRITE" with pencil on graph paper.  That works for me.  I don't want to turn on an electronic device to track my money.  It isn't "in the cloud" and when the computer or whatever device craps out, I still have all my information.

3) Each month I try to shave down an area that is creeping up in costs. Last month I spent too much on food in all categories:  Groceries (which is just food, not TP or soap or etc), dinner out, work lunches out, and coffee out.  I suspect I will be able to cut groceries but with visitors and lots of work trips, will probably not be able to cut the dining out.  So, I cut the grocery $$ and made a list of what I have on hand and a few things I could make with what I have.  I left the dining out lines high this month because being realistic makes for better success than being in fantasy land.

4) I plan for income interruptions or decreases.  It's happened in the past and could happen again.  Best to live on less than I bring in and get used to it.

5) I do NOT borrow to invest.  CRIPES!  I can't believe people do that but apparently it is common.  Actually, right now I don't borrow for anything.

6) I live mostly on cash.  She makes people live entirely on cash and I have done that.  Right now I use the credit card for gas, travel, storage unit bill, and a few other things that I may choose to buy online.  Otherwise, cash (or check) and immediately put it on the budget sheet.  I pay the credit card off weekly and I never buy material rewards, I just wait until I can get a credit put on the card.  Thus, I do not pay interest (ANY interest at this moment) and instead I take that 1% credit card points deal and put it back on the card.  That's 1% off my gas and storage bills.   I don't put those cash back things in the budget sheet.  I also don't put savings interest on the income on the budget sheet.  The total of those two is under 400$/year most years.  If times get tight, I will put those things on the sheet and track even more closely.

7) I track my income on the budget sheet.  When I get paid at work, get a tax refund, or a windfall, it goes on the sheet.  I leave off the stuff noted in #6 for now.   At the end of the month I total up the income and the outgo on the same sheet of paper and see the difference.

These last three the advisor hasn't recommended in the episodes I've seen, but I them and they work for me:

8) I not only track the monthly totals, I do a daily running total and a daily average.


9) Each month I have a target for the number of "no spend" days.  Those are days with zero money going out.  It makes me remember to gas up on days I'm already doing errands...and it makes me skip the occasional trip to town if it means a fuel up on a day that is otherwise "no spend."  I can usually get 10 no spends.  With more focus, I can get it up to 15.

10)  I get a real paycheck and deposit it. I just had someone tsk at me for doing that and I lashed out a tad.  She said something about my living in 1989 for not having direct deposit.  I said something about being the only one in the general vicinity with no debt and no current financial woes, hence I will just keep doing what works for me.

In the Beginning Was the Hole, and the Hole Was Good (also...a moose)

Well, the hole wasn't really the beginning.  There was the planning, the paying, the paying more, the engineering, the permit, permit renewal, other permits...and before that buying land.  Before that saving for land and looking for land, and before that...  you get the idea.

So, here we are.  Last Tuesday evening the builder man (not an actual redneck Santa, but he could pass for one) staked out the location for the build.  It ended up further uphill than originally planned.   That will help with drainage, but I sacrifice a bit of water pressure because the cistern is also uphill, but less so now.

Then on Sunday morning "early" (9:14am isn't "early" in my book...it's "10ish" in my book but I am widely known to have a stick up my butt about time) the equipment was delivered at the bottom of the hill and the trucks left.  I had a radio show to do at 2pm so at noon, after building a super rad rooster coop which may be featured in a later blog post, and a bunch of other stuff, I cleaned up, washed my incredibly sweaty filthy hair, and headed in to town for the show.  As I'm driving south, I see a builder truck heading north...to my place.  Dang it.  But it's all staked out and what was I going to do anyway?  There was no back-up DJ for the show so off I went.

3 hours later, driving home, I meet 2 builder trucks heading back to town.  Damn!  But I am greeted with this at my place:

That's right, I am now the proud owner of a big ass hole.  Probably will be bigger and deeper by tonight.  I will try to run home mid-day and check it out.  It's right where the stakes are so, that's good.

And now...the moose!  It's a yearling male the must have been recently booted from his mom's place.  That happens about now as the new calves are being born.  The yearling males are idiots and make bad housing choices.  He and I about bumped noses by my driveway and creek...we were both occupied with other thoughts.

I looked up to see a moose, way too close headed straight toward me.  Not a tree to hide behind and in the creek which was close, he would be much more coordinated than me.  They don't see so well to the front so I figured that was my best bet.  I waved my arms around and screamed like a wee girl and it ran UPHILL away from cover, back toward the creek cover, back up hill...idiot.  A mature female or male would have just trotted over and stomped me to death. 

NOW I am not walking around my place texting.  I pay attention.