| Ramblings on Food and Post-Retirement Inflation |
[May. 20th, 2012|08:11 pm] |
One big criticism people have of early retirement is that your projected spending might not be right. The goal is to save enough money that you can live off the earnings forever, but what about inflation?
There are typically two answers I see addressing this fear. One is that just because you never have to work again doesn't mean that you won't ever find yourself working for money. And any extra money you earn is a cushion when you've planned as if you were never going to make more.
I suppose that could happen to me. Somehow.
The other is that you get better at being frugal. Once you are not working all the time, you have time to learn new skills, new strategies, new options.
I really don't see this happening to me. I am already doing all the strategies I can think of that I'm willing to do. Worse than that, I find myself wanting to spend more and more money over time, particularly on food.
I've long known that most restaurants and food processors do not cook the way I want. They use white flour when I use whole wheat pastry flour. They use high-fructose corn syrup when I use sugar. They use hydrogenated fats, or at least lots and lots of butter where I use smaller amounts of non-hydrogenated oils or butter. They use meat with nitrates in it. White rice instead of brown.
And I keep hearing about short cuts that are taken to make food cheap. Some of them are quite horrifying such as how chickens are treated, how antibiotics are overused to the point of breeding resistant bacteria (on animals that aren't even sick), and how the evil monopoly on many genetically modified foods has their products in all kinds of food and non-food products (such as corn in the gas).
I'm still going to eat out and eat convenience foods (and consume petrol) because basically I don't want to live the kind of lifestyle that vegans and gluten-intolerant folks have to live when I don't have to.
But surely there are some companies that do better than average?
Yes, and not only do they cost more, they are not usually my favorite companies. I recently did a Google search. And I've actually heard of some the restaurants on people's various better-food lists.
Chipotle is good, but Freebirds is yummier to me. At Chipotle I find the meat too spicy hot, so I counter that by getting the crispy tacos with sour cream.
Olivia is on the list. The only food I really like there is the waffle, totally dessert food.
Magnolia Cafe and Kerby Lane are good but usually crowded.
Ruby's BBQ is the worst BBQ in town. (I prefer Salt Lick and Rudy's.)
And then of course some super expensive high-falutin' places.
As for convenience food, I tried Amy's canned pasta (cheese ravioli, I think) one time and it was basically dessert.
But I think food is only going to get worse from here on out. I like Twinkies as much as anyone, but lately, everything I read about food is making me angry. Some web site showed a picture of two-year old burgers and fries from three different fast food restaurants and, at least in the smallish picture, they looked exactly the same as "fresh." That can't be good.
Taco Bell put whatever mysterious non-meat substance in their taco "meat." Can I really let myself keep eating that? In crispy taco shells that surely profit Monsanto?
What if I cook everything myself? I'm buying hamburger that's $8/pound at Whole Foods, and then mixing it half and half with textured vegetable protein. (Yes, I've also heard soy is evil, somehow. At least having come equipped with two X chromosomes, I'm built to deal with feminizing hormones.)
And sugar is processed with a bunch of chemicals, so I switched to brown sugar, but it turns out that they still process the sugar just as much and than add molasses to it. So now I get turbinado sugar. Why does it cost more to do less processing?
Well, it's still easier to get good ingredients than good convenience foods. And when you do your own cooking, then you don't have to rely on restaurants food processors.
One recent victory in this area is enchilada sauce. I finally got an acceptable recipe, and Robin tweaked it to make it even better. Next time I'll try my own version of that tweak (and if I like it, I'll make a blog entry). So that's good. Except that I like my enchiladas with beans and rice, so I have to make THREE things for one meal!
And now apparently I have to make my own ice cream. HEB Creamy Creations Light ice cream is no longer being made--it has been replaced by "Churn-Style" which is whipped up with extra air so they can sell me less for the same price; it's less satisfying so I actually eat more. Their light ice cream was the perfect compromise between ideals in convenience, price, taste, and calories. Oh, well, I guess the dairy products were full of hormones anyway. Right now I've got some Stonyfield organic dark chocolate nonfat frozen yogurt, which is pretty good but super expensive, though quite a bargain (even not on clearance) compared to the goat milk ice cream we got to sample last week.
So my point is that I sort of want to do all my shopping at Whole Foods and Wheatsville Coop (and Trader Joe's--scheduled to be built sometime near Town Lake) but that will not help me with my frugality goals except to the extent that the food is healthier for me personally (rather than just the farmworkers, the animals, the people who get bacterial infections, and the ecosystem).
I also have high-priced non-food fantasies (though I suppose these are not relevant). For example I sort of want to build a huge ballroom in central Austin and let the Austin Ballroom Dancers use it for free whenever they want. Also I want to build public ultimate frisbee fields, where ultimate players get dibs over soccer players. Also I want to hire someone to take care of my yard.
Back to food, here is a cake.
Cake of the Day
And here is a better look at the dragon couple:
 |
|
|
| One Seat to Rule Them All |
[May. 8th, 2012|09:52 pm] |
Apparently I am asking for too much. Here is what I want from a toilet seat:
* Does not crack in half
* Does not have hinges that rust
* Does not have bolts that rust
* Does not have connecting washer so soft that the seat moves around
* Does not have little plastic things underneath that are easily crushable
That's besides the regular stuff:
* Is not creepily squishy
* Fits the toilet
* Is a plain wood or painted white
Any hints on how to get a good one? I have tried cheap ones (obviously), expensive ones, one specifically advertised as having rust-free hinges, one advertised as being completely rust-free. These strategies have not worked. This weekend I went to Breed and Company, hoping to find quality. The few non-elongated seats were not inspiring.
Any other ideas? These should not have to be replaced every 2-3 years.
Cake of the Day
I'm pretty sure I don't understand this scene of a girl and her pet puddle, with mom and dad butterflies watching over.
And a close-up:
Hmm, more like a lover than a pet. |
|
|
| Tiring Day |
[May. 2nd, 2012|11:18 am] |
Yesterday morning there were police cordons across the pawn shop, the old location of the pawn shop next door, and Chris's Liquor on the other side. A body had been found. Might or might not have been a murder victim.
At work the office was closed to students and there was a stench in the air, related to a dripping, stinging sludge. Apparently a drain upstairs was clogged with coffee grinds (= brown sludge). So, someone poured Draino in and the pipe burst (= dripping and stinging). Acid + base = bad idea.
It was cleaned up and fans were on, but fortunately we had a morning meeting elsewhere.
During which no one could get the computer working including several experts dragged in from the outside.
So then we decided to go the the birthday lunch early. It was also off the premises.
Coming back, some people decided to work from home. So I decided to work from my other campus employer, though I had heard that I had been moved to another office. My boss was not there, so I couldn't get in. Fortunately, the stench was cleared out by then, so I finished working as usual.
Today I learned that moving me to another office meant authorizing me for a key to another office. It did not mean moving my computer over or otherwise providing me with a computer which could access everything I need. It did not involve telling the person in the other office that I would be moving over. It did not involve moving my other supplies over.
I am tired. Also on day 11 of a cold.
Cake of the Day
 |
|
|
| DVD Extras |
[May. 1st, 2012|08:09 pm] |
I haven't even seen "The Avengers," and already I've decided I want to get my hands on the future DVD so I can see the extras.
Both Joss Whedon and Robert Downey Jr. have contracts that give them final say in their movies. And the two of them did not agree on everything at first, though they did agree to settle things without lawyers. So, I'm thinking there might be some very interesting stories on the DVD.
Second, they both agreed that Iron Man originally had too big of a role in the movie. Just because Robert Downey Jr. is the most famous actor doesn't mean Iron Man should have more than 30% of the movie. Because it's "The Avengers." I'm thinking that sounds like a big pile of interesting deleted scenes. Of course they might not have actually filmed them, I don't know.
There aren't that many DVD extras I've enjoyed; frankly there aren't that many I've watched.
"El Mariachi" - Listen to the director blabbing over the movie to find out all sorts of things he did to make a (pretty exciting) movie with only $7,000. Much fun.
"Bend It With Beckham" - Watch the extra on how to make aloo gobi, even if you don't like that dish. More than one cook chimes in on the proper way to do things; it's quite fun.
"Saved" - I probably just like the deleted scenes because I like the movie so much. One of these was in the film festival version we saw and was the first scene that showed Robin that we weren't dealing with an ordinary movie here. Another them is when two of the actors play around with kissing, which in itself is already going overboard (not in the script at all), but then they go even more over the top with it.
**
I've heard that starting about now, previews for "The Avengers" are full of spoilers. So, be warned.
Cake of the Day
Today's cake is a dress:
Here's a close-up:
And here are some "during" shots, so you can see a little bit of the history of how cake turned into this:
 |
|
|
| Review: Death of a Salesman |
[Apr. 20th, 2012|10:00 pm] |
I can't remember if I'd read Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949) before, but I picked it up a few days ago and finished it today.
Wow, I am never reading that play again.
The beginning is surprisingly modern--dealing with the malaise of things not quite going right in your life. Very Nine Inch Nails. Depressing and horrible and so very realistic.
I didn't much like the main character, though because I liked his wife, I tried to like him.
The middle was an anti-seminar about positive thinking. It really captures all the reasons I can't get excited about positive thinking, plus a few more. Let's just say that positive thinking not enough, not by itself. But it's also too much, just too much to live up to.
We get to meet his kids who seemed likeable as children, but I couldn't yet tell what I thought of them as adults. I decide I can't imagine any way to help the main character at this point.
In the last part, we get a little more insight into how the characters got how they did, and I formed very strong opinions about the two sons. And I become even more convinced that there is no way help the main character.
The end made me cry. I don't know why; it's not like the ending is a big surprise.
And then there's an additional nose rubbing in the unpleasantness tacked on after that.
So, it's a good play because it makes it very easy to understand how messed up you can get if you pursue the wrong dream or try to fit in or refuse to deal with a reality that's too harsh for you (or whatever your interpretation is of what went wrong). In fact, it's open to all kinds of interpretation.
It's nice to have something that can really explain a difficult concept. Ugh, but I already got it, and I've already been struggling with what I want to be when I grow up, and I'm still struggling a bit, so for me it was just unpleasant.
Except for the part where one of the characters figures things out for himself. He doesn't succeed in explaining it anyone else (but us), but there's hope for him. And in a story this bleak, that's something.
Cake of the day - I didn't want to add a typical cheery cake to this post. So I went out of order looking for something. This was the best I could find and the more I look at it, the more I like it here.
 |
|
|
| Out of Control |
[Apr. 18th, 2012|08:37 pm] |
This part-time temp job thing has gotten out of control. I'm working in three different offices for a total of 44 hours per week for the next 7 weeks. (I know, plenty of other people regularly have to work 50 - 60+ hours at their ordinary single job, and some of them don't even like the job, and many of them have children and pets who need them. They win on the suckiness. Still, I'll be glad when I get back to 20 - 40 hours per week.)
Interestingly, the computer situation has been a little wacky in all three places. In one job, they updated Windows a couple weeks after I started, in one job they replaced the computer at the end of my second day, and in one job they have to check out a laptop for me to use when I come over.
Cake of the Day
Someone at workplace #1 harvested more carrots from his yard than he could eat in salads, so he made a carrot cake and brought a huge container of pieces to share with us at work. Awesome!
Can you imagine someone at working saying, "Oh, I made a cake and it's just too big for me to eat it all myself" and then they whip this out?
Comes with its own knife.
I suspect this guy's armor is not very protective. (Well, it probably protects his or her identity perfectly.)
Video of the Day
It's a house that's less than 600 square feet and broken up into three separate stories. And yet I love it. It's beautiful, interesting, and hilarious all at the same time.
"I've ... trimmed [the wall] at the top with some real and some fantasy hieroglyphics. So I've probably accidentally cursed myself and have no idea I've done it." - owner Bill Whiting |
|
|
| On Eating Carbs |
[Apr. 7th, 2012|01:44 pm] |
Robin recently told me about yet another article describing how carbs make you fat; this one said everyone used to know this before the seventies anti-fat fad.
Well, I love carbs, so I don't want that to be true. And so I have two hypotheses on how that might not be true for me. Because my superpower is rationalization.
The Unrefined Carbs Hypothesis
It could be that it's only the simple carbs (sugars) that make you fat. In this case, you're still allowed to eat plenty of whole grain breads, carrots, beans, and brown rice, even if you don't want to be fat. If that's the case, all these studies have been sloppy, and haven't separated out the two kinds of carbs, so that's why people get confused.
A highly desirable but unlikely related hypothesis is that it's only high-fructose corn syrup that makes you fat. Which is in everything in America and thus wrecking all the studies. Everything except my own cooking. So I'm good!
The Diabetic/Hypoglycemic Hypothesis
It could be that everyone is somewhere on a scale between diabetic and hypoglycemic. And it's only people on the diabetic end of the scale who should stay away from carbs if they don't want to be fat. (But then, gaining weight can move at least some people closer to the diabetic end, so it gets complicated.)
With this hypothesis, I get to pretend that I am on the hypoglycemic end of the scale, even though every woman on my mom's side of the family eventually became diabetic (even the thin ones), because I get hungry every four hours no matter how much I've eaten. (It's a happy land I live in. Tra la la!) And so I get to eat sugar.
Some brief googling has shown me that diabetics can get hypoglycemia, which seems to disprove my hypothesis.
However, the way they get it is as a side-effect of treating their diabetes, as if over-treating it pushes them too far along the scale, thus supporting my hypothesis.
All so that is why I still eat plenty of carbs, even though I don't want to gain weight. And why I think it's okay to eat a little sugar (every single day!) and to occasionally eat restaurant and party food (full of hidden and not-so-hidden simple sugars).
Cake of the Day
Today's cake is a great barracuda on ice:
Oh, did you think these would all be appetizing? |
|
|
| Jogging, Fighting, Surfing, Cake |
[Apr. 6th, 2012|09:53 pm] |
Jogging
After I quit my job I starting jogging more often (than once a week). Eventually I got to where I was able to continue for a reasonable number of minutes (over 30). Then I found gmap-pedometer where you can map out your route and see how far it is. Or in my case, how short.
I know you're not supposed to compare yourself to other people. But is it okay to compare yourself to your old self? By which I mean young self? I think so. I have the same genetics, and I've had no injuries or debilitating anything since that time.
Previous records: 10K race in 58 minutes 58 seconds = better than 10-minute miles.
Quickest mile: 8.5 minutes.
Learning those distances I've been running lately let me see that those were 13-minute miles. That's a pretty big difference.
So then I decided to figure out a one-mile course and run it as fast as I could to see how fast I could get a single mile.
Once I got into it, I decided not to run as fast as I could after all. That's because it seemed to me like if I were inhaling on one step and exhaling already on the next step, it might not actually be safe to go faster. But I did make sure to keep breathing nice and hard the whole way. And it did turn out to be faster. A lot faster: an 11-minute mile. Cool.
I decided it might be good to have some of my jogs be one-mile speed-practicing jogs and some be longer distance-practicing jogs. But although my next jog was longer (28 minutes), I also tried to remember to actually jog and not just kind of do a bouncy slog while focusing on my thoughts. And those turned out to be 11.1-minute miles. Weird. And cool.
All of those numbers are kind of vague because I timed myself by just turning on my iToy and looking at the time as I started and as I finished. The time I was looking at did not have seconds. But I have now found the stopwatch function.
So, when I started, just focusing on time and not speed was a good thing. And just measuring in minutes was good enough. And now paying attention to speed is helping me improve, and that's good.
Fighting
I've been playing Backyard Monsters which is an online building game with very cute little weapons made out of tin cans and gears and stuff. And it's also a war game because you can attack each other (or wild monsters) with your monsters and take over outposts.
There's recently been a new rule that no longer makes it harder and harder to take over outposts the more outposts you already have, so huge gangs of players are going out and taking over everything.
My outposts were highly advanced and difficult to take. Yet they are no problem at all for people with infinite resources, though mostly it did take them two or three attacks to take one down and in two cases I went into protection before they could finish me off the first time.
My original plan was to keep re-taking my outposts and making them take them back, and maybe get so annoying that they just quit. But my outposts are way too hard to take back when I have the minimal resources I have now. I also don't have the experience attacking people that my enemies have.
It's a bummer. I guess I should just keep practicing, though.
Surfing
I just found Epbot, a blog by a gal who makes stuff and likes Steampunk and Disney World and sci fi and geekdom and decorating baby rooms and pennies and costuming and cool videos and cakes. I totally wasted/enjoyed several hours reading through it today.
Here's Women's History Month Goes Gaga - an example of her sharing. "This time it's a parody of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, and the subject is the women's suffrage movement - specifically honoring Alice Paul and her contribution to women's rights."
Here's Radio Romance Part II - an example something her family made themselves. Or re-made. From an antique radio.
"To hook our iPod up to the speakers, we simply threaded the wire through a pre-existing hole in the right side of the cabinet. (I think it was originally for a microphone or a crank or something.)
"But I couldn't just leave our iPod sitting out on top of the cabinet, now, could I?
"OF COURSE NOT.
"So I spent six months scouring Ebay for an affordable vintage cigarette case to convert into a small iPod holder."
Cake
Here's a cake the Epbot author might enjoy:
Here is a slightly different and closer view:
 |
|
|
| New Blog |
[Mar. 31st, 2012|09:26 pm] |
I have started a new blog. I am still keeping my current all-purpose blog, but I'm also creating a single-topic blog. I read a lot of personal finance blogs by people trying to get out of debt, so they write more as they learn more and sometimes they even get good ideas from their commenters.
Well, I'm going to try the same thing, only on the topic of maintaining my stuff. Whenever something is failing me, and even sometimes when it isn't and I just see a nice replacement, my first strategy is generally to throw away the old thing and buy a new one. Or better, buy a new one and don't throw away the old thing. Because sometimes the new thing turns out to be even worse than the old thing.
I thought of this when I was brainstorming ways to make money and fantasizing hourly about quitting my job. I'm extremely unlikely to make money from this blog, but I decided I liked the idea of doing it anyway.
Raised in a throw-away society, I haven't learned much about taking care of and customizing my stuff at all. It's kind of sickening just what an ignoramus I am. But I'm going to try to pay attention more to how to keep things going properly and just generally make my stuff work better for me.
Because I have stereotypically female skills, I suspect I'll have way more posts on cooking and textiles than other areas, but that might change, eh?
I've been jealous of people using Blogspot instead of LiveJournal for their journals because they're so pretty. But then I realized I should also check out WordPress. But finally I decided to go with Blogspot. They let you (try to) make money on their free version. Which I'm not even trying now, and won't ever get obnoxious about. But I also have (at least) two friends with Blogspot blogs. I don't know if that will come in handy, but it might. Especially for them--they could tell me about something that annoys them on my blog and then tell me how to fix it.
So it's called Less Buying, More Trying. And I do realize that "Trying" has (at least) two different meanings in this context, and both of them are probably true, so I like it. (One is about me trying more stuff. And one is about the new strategies being more trying than the old strategies with which I'm already familiar.)
Should I mention here when I make a new post there? There are two posts on there now: one about cutting a shower curtain liner in half and one about replacing cordless phone batteries. Oh, were you under the impression that these would be interesting? Or something you could learn from? Sorry about that.
Cake of the Day
This one is so cute:
Here's a different and slightly closer view:
The cute gets even more out of control in a close-up view:
I don't exactly know where the cake is in there. But since it was at a cake show, I'm going to trust that somehow it is a cake. |
|
|
| Networking |
[Mar. 27th, 2012|11:17 pm] |
Today was my weekly meeting with my old chickadees, and after the presentation was over, I got up to tell one of them that we had actually tried the Greek restaurant he had recommended and it was dee-lish (though the thing we ordered was greasy). I would definitely try that place again.
Then he said he wished he had thought of hiring me part-time, for six or twelve months, as if it were now too late. I told him that I was only working half time and thus still had time available. He talked to his supervisor and she might be interested. They may get back to me.
A third person also mentioned some interest, but this employer allows only forty hours of work, and I wouldn't want more than that anyway.
That whole thing where people get jobs because they know someone, even jobs that don't even exist that are created just for them? That is happening to me now. I've heard of that before, but because my friends tend to be in fields where I have no interest (computer programming and engineering--yea! smart friends! I love you, my smart friends!), I settle for jobs with either a huge number of simultaneous openings or very high turnover, where they are nice and desperate.
These may not pan out, but the first one did, and it's sweet. It was also sweet creating a resume for a job for which I was obviously qualified. Instead of having to pick out six or eight jobs that were sort of like what I was applying for, I just put my last job, one other recent long-term job at the same employer, and my two degrees. It was also sweet not having to go on a million interviews. Or any at all.
Speaking of sweets...
Cake of the Day
I'm getting mixed messages from this one. Sweet or savory?
It looks like they used coconut for the rice. Cool. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
livingdeb's journal