WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

I WANT THIS THING AND I HAVE MONEY> PLEASE TAKE IT.

I am going to the US, but I cannot pay for anything on this website with my Canadian card. I called customer service, he suggested I sign up as an international customer for shipping to my billing address. I did, and IT STILL WON'T SHIP IT TO ME.

this is what we've been doing

in the crisp fall air.

We put together our base cabinets, slapped ugly contact paper on some plywood (small town = one contact paper option available), created a new gravel concrete parking pad, removed the siding on one side of the house, and continued the barn demolition. Pictures:

Splitting wood - thought I had a better photo of demo (on right)

Edible? Looks like I could, but internet proved not useful.

From atop the barn, nasty shingles no match for Wonderbar.

The beams rich people pay money for.

Down to the original boards.

Into the evening - building paper protection.

New parking pad for eventual wood deliveries and guests.

Ugly ass contact paper/temporary countertop.

View over the reclaimed barnboard countertop. Need trim.

Open shelving only until we get handles (this weekend?) + clash.

Hanging dill and garlic on post.

Hanging mint on post + cast iron country seriousness.

Pesto, tomato, apple, huckleberry and gaudiness

Saved some money by preserving our harvest...

...spent some of it on this borderline gaudiness (love it)

My house costs three times my annual salary...

...and I got a steal of a deal.

I worry about money alot. I worry about debt, I micromanage the budget, I deny myself dinners out and new shoes more often than I used to. This article in Globe and Mail explains why I've hustled since the age of fifteen to save money for university while also trying to make a life worth living (in my eyes = travel, wedding, home ownership, time for family): it is damn expensive.

Life & tuition costs 1984 vs 2012 (Globe and Mail)

I had a big scholarship for both my degrees, and I still graduated in debt. I've recently paid off my student loan officially (no debt-punching celebrations since I cheated by consolidating the last $1000 to our home reno line of credit to simplify the budgeting/get the government off my back), six years after I graduated from my first degree paying back double what the government suggested.

This is all alarmingly relevant, as the Quebec student protests have recently swelled their ranks to encompass not just disenfranchised youth but also parents and teachers who are acutely aware of what increased debt does for life down the road. The symbol of the protestors, the little red square, represents life "in the red". I've been thinking about these protests: how peaceful they've generally been, how few media outlets are covering the unfolding events, how perpetual critics of "apathetic youth" look away (or worse, criticize the "joint-smoking, free-loading" youths) now that they are protesting in huge crowds, and how we are all basically required to get at least an undergrad degree to be competitive in a job market that doesn't pay enough to climb out of the hole in reasonable amount of time (say...less than five years).

Thank goodness I live in a cheap area of the country (for housing at least). I can't even imagine the thoughts I'd be wracked with if I lived in a city I couldn't afford in a house that cost six times my annual salary. We'd never have kids, and we would likely never vacation either. Bootstraps can only be pulled by so much force before they snap, and I've got compassion for the plight of financially drowning students everywhere. Suit up with a red square and realize that just because an older generation thinks the students are whining about bullshit doesn't mean they are.

In a holding pattern

Everything's on repeat these days and I'm not sleeping well/worrying about money/coveting stuff. It's weird and I don't like it. A trip later this month will hopefully hit the reset button.

(Zoe Keating looks like she might own a few pairs Fluevogs)

Underfoot and overhead

So the plaster board is all up (as much as we can do, anyway) and the plaster people have been notified. We're on their schedule to get the veneer done in the next few weeks, and I'm excited to see the transformation from the dark grey walls to a light bright white. It's been extra cosy - since the plastering is easier when there aren't switches or plates in place, we've had no overhead lighting for weeks. The change from grey to white (and from plugged in lamps) to ceiling mounted lights is going to be bright!

Will this be us in a month?

Next step is flooring. Last time I talked about it, we were tottering between snazzy bamboo and rustic barnboards. In the interim, we acquired a sand-blasting tool able to shoot out walnut shells to refinish the wood, a softer alternative to sand blasting. Despite doing quick calculations confirming we have enough wood in the barn to do the first floor, we've run into some problems - the sand blaster requires an air compressor 6 times more powerful than the one we own and 2 times more powerful than the biggest compressor we could rent from the hardware store. Additionally, the wood might end up that bright orange-y gold colour after stripping, it's hard to say in advance.

Rhuh-rhoh...

Pros: wood is free, rustic planks from on-site (5" by 14' in some cases) add to the whimsy and eco-friendliness of reclaimed barnboard floors, we would have enough to do the whole house if we wanted to

Cons: Don't know what we are doing or how the finished product might look (aka this could turn into a four month project), the cost of renting tools to do the job might negate the "free materials" aspect, the colour might be ugly, the softwood would wear down more than a commercial finish

With this in mind, we did a quick tour of commercially available products that aren't outrageously expensive. The bamboo flooring mentioned upthread is $4/sq ft (our first floor is about 900 sq ft) so it doesn't matter how lovely the look, how long the boards or how hard wearing the finish is - it's outside our budget (sigh...up until last week I was still cyber stalking that product...). We did find a replacement product at a discount lumber store nearby: a maple pre-finished hardwood that has a strikingly similar colour range as our beloved bamboo. The catch (of course) is that the $2/sq ft product is basically made up of factory ends. When A-grade maple hardwood is marred by knots, gashes or other "unsightly" blemishes, the manufacturer just cuts off the offending bits into a pile of tiny interesting pieces. Since I'm daft and forgot to bring my phone with me, I don't have an image of the 4 foot x 3 foot panel the retailer had made up, although husband and I both thought it looked much like the varigated bamboo. Here are three pieces of sample together as a sample (top option):

Is it eco-friendly if you install end-pieces?

What's the problem? Buy the available maple product, have a lovely floor that stays within budget, get a kitchen.

My problem is that I'm a wood snob, and I have a paradigm that nice hardwood floors = expansive lengths of wood with few visible seams. I can't break the stigma in my head that installing a bajillion 1 foot long (or less!) off cut pieces of maple in my first floor is going to look super cheap and awful.

It boils down to having expensive tastes and no money (again...). It will take a few weeks and a few failed attempts at refinishing the softwood barn boards to change my mind, I expect. Til then!

if you love something, set it free

One general rule I live by: you should give away what you hold dear, because it is only in giving that it will return to you (and you will appreciate it more when it does!). I'm not a metaphysical believer, but I do think life has a cruel way of reminding you of your pettiness when you least want to hear it. Plus hoarders are unattractive.

Most things, like love or maple syrup or books, are easy to give away. Money....not so much for me. My husband joked when we first started combining finances that he used to be the miser in every situation. Now it's me. Perhaps an inevitable bit of my personality? - the same bit that makes me good at science or planning? (I'll elaborate more on that tomorrow). Whatever propels me to budget and finance and planplanplan has started to rub off on others though, so at least I'm giving something useful away.

Over the last year or so, I have met with four friends with different financial personalities and issues (one still studying, one a homeowner/artist, one young professional working in the non-profit field and the fourth about to move where her boyfriend was going to school). Together we worked on budgets, short-term and long-term goals. I think each of them, during our "session", told me they wished someone had sat down with them ages ago to teach them this stuff (life pie, income potential, interest rates, etc). It got me thinking that my job at the university might be just the right arena to round up willing young souls who might be interested in learning what "prime + 2.25%" actually means.

I held off advertising around campus in the Fall because it isn't until second semester when students really feel the financial pinch. Ideally, it would be a casual round-table discussion on financial vocabulary and basic concepts, where I would steer conversation, chip in with my knowledge and serve donuts. :) Perhaps this week I'll actually book space and make up a poster, something I've been putting off due to vague feelings of "who-do-you-think-you-are-itis". Inferiority complex - pipe the fuck down, I'm just trying to help.

Last January I had 14K in student loans left. After reading a bunch of these personal finance blogs, I excitedly proclaimed 2011 to be the year I cleared all my stupid debt off (!!) I was going to punch my debt in the face too!!

Needless to say, I failed.

January 1st 2012: my balance sat at 4,000. Eight more excruciating months at current payment rate. Gah!

So here's to July 1st, 2012! The day I hopefully kick the last of that debt in the face. Meet me out back behind campus, mo-fo.

the funk in the air

After my trip to California, I entered a phase of utter non-productivity. I came home to a broken washing machine, a car primed to fail the yearly safety inspection, and had somehow lost my hair dryer before even leaving for my trip (how does one lose a hairdryer?!?)

So to recap: greasy hair, stinky clothes and shitty car.

I went to a great music festival, which involved staying out until 2 AM during the week, drinking way too much crappy draught beer and otherwise picking "fun" over "responsible". I ate mac and cheese one night for christsake...it was an entire week of processed food, packaged in cardboard and plastic. Just gross.

Questionable content

Then sometime after watching Mission Impossible at the local theatre (but before watching Limitless), the funk broke. I think it was associated with getting this stupid piece of very important paperwork (aka SPOVIP) off my damned desk - FINALLY!- after three months of working on/off on it.

I unpacked my luggage (for real), used the on-campus laundry facilities to clear the 6 foot pile of laundry, and started digging through the ten inch pile of crap on my desk. I've been clearing invoices for the business like a champ, recuperating money we've been owed for six months. There must be good financial karma associated with this drudgery, and I keep whimsically thinking that my bosses will be so appreciative that they'll cut me a bonus cheque for all my hard work. More likely scenario is that I have to ask for a bonus, which I've also been psyching myself up to do. I'll post here about how that works out after the SPOVIP is legally binding for all parties (ie I cross the paperwork finish line).

It will look just like this.

So the next week I'll talk about some of the stuff I've been up to that hasn't made it to this blog: dealing with the car, personal finances, the martial arts class I took, the science I'm teaching myself, the house progress. I'll probably post music too, because the best way to remind myself off cool new finds is to scroll back through this here blog. So with that:

Lecturer?

My university is desperate for someone to teach the intro to human bio class (for non-science majors) this upcoming fall. They've opened the search to M.Sc. holders, qualifying yours truly. If I were to teach anything, a non-science-majors course would be it I guess, that way the students wouldn't realize how horrible of a teacher I am. If the department doesn't hire anyone, all these other classes need to be switched around too. So if I put my name in, it would be considered. Thing is, do I want to teach? My answer was always no, but having lecturer on my resume would be pretty cool, I admit. Hm.

Update: I think I'll apply. Might be the best/only chance I get to stick my foot in the teaching door. The money's shit, but that is never the point of my career moves anyway :)

Old house Things

We are getting quotes for moving our furnace and venting this week. In the process I was looking for antique grates to replace some of the broken or missing ones in our house and came across the ebay listing for this item from Wisconsin for $90:

We have at least two of these exact cast iron grates in our house, and they'll be unnecessary once we move our ducting.

My mom came down this weekend to help outside. I shovelled about 6 yards of pit run gravel around our driveway to shore up low spots in the ruts between the grass lane. It took about seven hours of physical work to get it all done (our driveway is probably ohhh....100+ metres long) and I was very sore the next day. I also seeded one of the two garden beds with zucchini, squash, green beans, lettuce/spring mix/cilantro and some golden beets. I received the tomato plants to finish out that bed from my father-in-law last night. The other bed I seeded with vetch/pea/clover mix (ie green manure) to increase nutrient soil of that fallow bed. Then third bed was too hard to manipulate still (tilled from sod only twice so far I believe), so I'll add some peat moss and till it once more before adding my kale and onions and potatoes. And cucumbers. Also "seeded" the beaver dam on the other side of our 135 acres with 100 tiny speckled trout. Hopefully they'll be big and tasty next year.

Since we left the back part of the house exposed with Typar house wrap and lattice over the winter, now is our opportunity to replace the exterior finish. There is some contention on this, as we try to balance ease of installation, cost of initial installation and maintenance over time. We live in a folk Victorian, so the most historical choices would be wooden horizontal plank or shingle. We could cheat and install either cement Hardie board instead of wooden plank, or vinyl siding meant to look like cedar shingles. Both would have much lower maintenance costs (in time and money) but ew, I hate vinyl. And I LOVE shingles. Love them soooo much. But how much? Like, hire-a-painter-every-few-years-to-refinish love? Scrap-shingles-in-the-heat love? Hmmm...I can say yes, but right now we are financially stable, child-free homeowners. In a few years those things might change. SO decisisons decisions.

A hundred ways to eat a root vegetable

A little more than a year ago we settled into the old house we are repairing, and had some lovely people live with us for short bursts of time. Foodies. Locavores. Teachers. And boy, was I in a good spot to be taught. Doritos for lunch or the occasional chocolate-bar-breakfast was not that uncommon in my life. Instant gratification over nutrition. Blame it on youth.

This picture still makes my mouth water, Pavlovian-style.

I'm proud of how our habits have changed for the better, and the repertoire we've worked on. I'm gonna brag a bit. The biggest change was buying a share in our CSA last year. Every week we would get tons of vegetables, with some selection, chosen at the weekly farmers market. I found it easier to plan meals for the following week because at least this aspect of it (the vegetables available) reduced the possibilities. Heard of Omnivore's Dilemma? Reading that book shed alot of light on life in general but eating habits in particular. Too much choice can be overwhelming. Going to CostCo gives me a near-aneurism. Anyway, the trick is to let someone else (local farmer) pick part of your grocery, then all you have to do is fill in the rest.

We are lucky we live in a place that has a weekly Saturday morning farmer's market. It is still small enough to afford only a single/very few stands for chicken/pork/beef. And none for seafood (which is sad to me). That said, 35 km away there is a giant farmer's market that has multiple booths for all that stuff plus tons more (honey, cranberries, apples, pears). So we have a pretty basic "comfort-food" menu that can get us through the week eating locally produced goods almost all year long, especially if we supplement from our freezer and the neighbouring market. Here are some of the things we'll eat this week:

local trout/butter/flour fried up, served with an apple/carrot/cilantro salad (all local, with a dressing of imported olive oil and organic lemon juice), and our own dill pickles from the garden. Non-local rice served as a carb side-dish. Someone gave me cilantro seeds last weekend as a gift, so I'm going to try and grow those in a window over the next few months. God knows we've got enough apples and carrots in storage to last us.

Honey garlic sausage from our local vendor, fried julienned carrots in a pepper/maple glaze, mustard pickles from our garden and a buttered piece of locally made bread. Sometimes we add fried red cabbage in garlic too. Yum!

local beef stirfry: the best beef I've had in a long time combined with local root veggies (kohlrabi, carrot, red onion), local bean sprouts and local mushrooms. I added some items from my freezer, which I stocked when stuff was in season: green peppers from the farmer and zucchini from our garden. Served with some more non-local rice. Randomly thrown together sauce of tamari & ginger (imported) + garlic & maple syrup (local).

local chicken breast roasted in the oven with spiced broth, combined with mashed sweet potato and frozen local corn. Cranberry sauce from our own cranberries. I'm not gonna lie, I'm fairly addicted to Kraft Stovetop stuffing, so I may round out this healthy pseudo-thanksgiving meal with a 99 cent box of crap-laden Stovetop. Can't win them all...

Carrot ginger soup. We eat alot of meat, but I try to get in one veggie meal (usually a soup) and/or a noodle based dish over the week. The carrot ginger soup is a favorite: we can get local carrots all year long (that taste as good as the ones I remember pulling up from my grandmother's garden as a kid). Combined with some local onion and some local garlic (if we can find it....the stuff we planted this year lasted only until November. I've planted twice as much this year hoping to harvest enough for the entire winter at least), the soup is the nicest thing to eat after shoveling the driveway for the sixth time in seven days. Fried onions & garlic in local butter on the woodstove, add some chicken broth (my own if I've thought ahead to thaw some from the freezer, organic pre-packaged if it was on sale and the pantry is stocked, or regular boxed stuff in a pinch) and four cups of cut up carrots. Add some rice for texture, simmer for an hour then blend to smooth consistency. Voila!

And for breakfast this week I made a batch of the baked oatmeal. We ate it with local maple syrup and brand-name yogurt that was on super-sale this week at the grocery store. I'm still having a hard time with local dairy products. Cow's milk is easy to find and I've grown to like mild goat cheeses (which are lovely on beets. I scored some golden beets in the fridge waiting to be cooked up!). But the yogurts and mild cheddar-like cheeses I've tried so far are 1. really expensive and 2. not that great. So this is an area of improvement: we still stock up on Danone yogurt and Black Diamond cheddar when it goes on sale at the grocery store. But the baked oatmeal had tons of locally sourced ingredients: cut oats, milk, eggs (from our backyard!), dried cranberries, dried apples, dried pears. I think I put in a handful of imported organic raisins too. I feel better about the imported stuff if it's organic (like the celery in my fridge right now) but that's just because I'm a privileged white person who tries to fix the world's giant environmental problems with my grocery money. You know.

Basically, I like buying food from people who grew it/made it. I look them in the face, give them my money and thank them for their hard work. It's just kind of a decent thing to do, if you can.

House Now

Sometimes I wonder how we can live like we are, with the make-shift appliances/holes in the wall/lack of a floor.

This is the view from the corner where the sink used to be, in the old kitchen. The lower left hand of this picture is the under-floor cistern, which we need to cover up before insulating the house. Joys.

But then I remember this place will be GRAND when it is done. And it will be just as I want to be, which is worth tons of sweat and worry. Of course these pictures just show the downstairs, while the upstairs remains construction-free. Living room, spare bedroom, kitchenette, bedroom and bathroom.

This is the house at night. The large hole on the left will eventually be a patio door. Right now it is just a hole :)

Although I have to remind myself it will likely get worse before it gets better (we've had a very mild autumn so far...) since the snow it not far off and our exterior wall downstairs looks like this:

(there is no wall here at the moment)

Yet the important things are present: I have a wood stove to dry my laundry, hot water & a clawfoot tub to have nice long baths in. I have tons of food in the pantry (and otherwise on the property!), and a lovely drive to work in the mornings.

Some of the goodies I gathered from the property: the last of the tomatoes, potatoes, onions and zucchini. Cranberies from the field, sandcherries from the field and about five dozen apples from the orchard which aren't pictured.

This place is big and needs lots of work, but it is mine*.

*not really, it mostly belongs to the bank. I found this informative online mortgage calculator that says just how much faster the mortgage will be paid off if I apply more money every month. I just got a job offer and now know what I'll be applying my raise to - $500 more a month and I'm mortgage free at 9.8 years instead of 23.4 years.

happy birthday puppy

According to the SPCA records, our dog (adopted in January) was born mid-October 2009. Her birthday gift? I've started saving money for obedience training. We have had almost no trouble training her, so I think she would take to service-dog level training if we bothered. We'll see.

(Images taken by Jessie Dodington on a visit to our place this past spring.)

After one year, her ears and body have grown but her face hasn't much. Such a skinny rostrum attached to such giant ears. I call her bat-face :)

visitation rights

Ah, my good. I haven't updated in forever and a quick look at the calendar makes me think it will be awhile until I stop living my life and start blogging about it instead. Next weekend a couch surfer arrives who bought land down the street. He wants to check it out in person now that the snow has melted (he's from Florida!). Another friend will be down from Big City for a few days and drinking at the local pub should be in the cards. Then I'm flying out to Huge City in Province Waywayover to see lots of old pals (mostly from undergrad...I was talking to a new friend and re-iterated once again how GREAT university was because I met so many people just like me) for about a week. Leaving the job and the new employee and the chickens and the bees behind.

I might have to style my hair before leaving because, as I told me style-conscious friend/visitee: "I look like a street urchin". And for about six months I've been coveting this certain shade of red...as seen on Isla Fisher.

I don't know if I could pull it off but I'm mighty tempted to try. I just had another pang of lust as I scrolled through this year's AMAZING Lillith Fair line-up. Kate Nash, Fine Frenzy, Ingris Michealson. They are all begging me to join their blazing-headed ranks. So we'll see if I can scrounge up some salon money before leaving, along with some dough to pay for sweet sweet cosmetics like this, which I can only find in a gigantic city. Preeeetttttyyy. I'm sure the bees would agree.

flakey

Last week I ordered some wee chickens (straight run, buff orpington*, half a dozen day old chicks). They should arrive mid May, so we need to get a coop reading by then. I also scheduled when our garden to be tilled (we decided to move it from the location I originally liked in the fall because of copious tree stumps buried underground), being pleasantly surprised at the $20 cost (I was never going to get around to it at this rate anyway). Bought paint for the exterior of the house. A nice creamy yellow called "bee pollen".

I bought a big five gallon pail at a big box store (they gave me a fifty dollar discount on the upgraded paint because they didn't have the right base for my colour), got home super excited to start the long process of covering up the asbestos shingles in paint when realized I bought latex to put over oil.


Now I have to go back, spend double the money (and time!) to get an appropriate primer. Crap!

* I only realized yesterday that I said buff orpHington, not the proper buff orpington (no H). Newbie!

Eight more days

Being a new grad last summer, I qualified for a government salary supplementation for my first year (-ish) of work at a "small-to-medium size company" in my field of study. At the end of the last pay cycle, my boss informed my that there was a much larger balance in the grant account then we previously believed. Basically, this funding was going to run out at the end of the month whether I claimed it or not, so if I wanted to work my ass off for 17 days in a row, I could drain the account (doubling my normal pay cheque $$), bank the hours, plow through an ever- accumulating "to-do list", apply the money to our new woodstove AND take some time off after April 1st.

So that's what I decided to do, calculating 17 successive, 9-hour days would be enough time logged to empty the left-over grant money. I am now over half way finished, and have managed to stay in relatively good spirits and health. Nine hours days, in reality, are nothing compared to the strenuous hours in other jobs. As my husband reminded me yesterday, upon delivery of some delicious potato pancakes and beer for my suppertime meal taken in the lab..."you're not an undergrad, you're not a masters student anymore. You're getting paid for your time. Chin up."

...of course, it's molecular biology. I protocol started is a protocol to be completed until an appropriate storage stage is reached. So I was here last night at 1 am transferring a Western Blot :)

The nine hour days alone are not really a problem. It is the quick spring that overtook us, highlighting the need for attention outside (ex: incomplete chicken coop, soppy garden and crumbling exterior finish) that is difficult to neglect on beautifully sunny weekend days.
Coincidentally, there were lots of planned appointments (doctor and hair) and installations or estimates for these two weeks (like the stove, planned for a Thursday installation, or the spray-foam insulation guy who is coming tomorrow afternoon). So I have been working more like four ten-hour days, and then five hours a day on the weekend.

I've also been tutoring someone while she studies mid-wifery via correspondance. Her current course is anatomy & physiology. (Thankfully, there is quite the overlap in content from my undergrad cell bio/metabolism/animal biology classes...says the girl who studied fungus, algae and plants for her scientific career). Originally a 14-week course with ~4 hours of tutoring a week, she was just informed late last week that in order to qualify for government student loans, she needs to complete the course in under seven weeks. All of a sudden, four hours a week has turned into 8. We have standing dates on Tuesday & Friday and Sunday evenings to go over the remaining material. She must complete the course by the end of April, so hopefully my banked hours this month can be used for day-long study/cram sessions before her last few exams. She also received a grant to pay for my tutoring services at a great per hour rate.

So just to re-iterate: I have job(s) I love, I'm keeping busy and I love potato pancakes with spinach and cheddar. Yum!

tossing and turning

This week is money week. I've started watching all EIGHT seasons of this reality program called "Til Debt do Us Part" which is basically about a hard-nosed (and curiously accented) host slapping consumer-driven Canadian couples from their debt-riddled lives. Since this is the first time in my life I have had a predictable incomes AND predictable expenses, I've taken the advice to heart. I've made budgets several times over, and actually stayed AWAKE a few nights ago, fretting about our financial future. Which is utterly unnecessary, since unlike the couples featured in the show who are routinely one full year of dual income-worth in debt, we have relatively little. The real eye-opener is that my scratchings on paper have told me we could pay off our mortgage ENTIRELY by the time our five-year term expires, by contributing $2000.00 a month to our mortgage. Ask someone in Toronto whether 2000.00/month for two people is impossible. It certainly is NOT impossible. It is certainly appealing to this young gal, who once had her heart set on mortgage-free living.

As I see it, interest rates can really only go one way from this point on. What if in five years our reasonable, locked-in rate of 5% jumps into the double digits? It has happened before, it will happen again. My mom was telling me about one of the mortgages she had before divorcing my dad and filing for bankruptcy. Fret fret fret.

Again, we I thought we lived frugally. But I think we could be doing better. The complication is that last week, before the budget bingeing started, I called the mortgage lady to ask for money for home renovation. The demolition is chugging along, and hopefully before the snow melts entirely we will be ready to have electricians and plumbers help with our best laid plans. Since we have excellent credit and moderately good incomes, I think we will be approved. The question of course is whether we should go for it if we are. Last week I was sincerely and completely in the "no shit, abslutely" camp. The downstairs is a wreck, gutted without a proper kitchen and NO INSULATION means we are paying out the nose for heating this winter. I don't want to spend the next 24 months fixing it. I want to spend six months fixing in it and then 18 months paying for it. But at the expense of paying years more on the mortgage? We are teetering on "maybe not such a good idea, don't-spend-it-until-you've-got-it"now. Or at least I am. Hubby probably thinks I'm two parts crazy & one part hormonal.



Ask me next week, I'll likely expound on the virtues of different flooring options. I am a tad spastic with my obsessions. *breathe*

In this new age

The amount of amazing art and music and creative-ness that I run across on the internet has me more attuned to how the biggest, bestest library in the world can help artists reach a larger audience. And what my role as a consumer of this art is. It reminds me of a post I read almost two years ago on a blog by writer/actor Wil Wheaton. He expands on a notion first written about by Kevin Kelly.
"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living...Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks."
Maybe it is because I'm a scientist at heart, but I often try to quantify the meaning of beautiful art or music in my life directly, and $100/year seems like a bargain. Something to think about in my quest to simplify life & material goods, and spend more time/effort/money of things that matter to me. Food. Art. Music. Family. Wine :)

where I explain what happens when hubby doesn't work

My husband, being a carpenter often employed in replacing windows or completing additions to homes, requires a minimum outdoor temperature to make the occupants comfortable while this happens. He is usually laid off during the coldest months of the year, regardless of who he is working for (or in what city). So for the past tree weeks, he hasn't been going to work. As a result, our schedule has gotten incredibly wonky. Average time arriving to work is probably 11 am. One luxury of my job is that I can make my own hours. Being a recent grad, I am paid with a government grant for placement among industry, and I was told the grant covered five 7-hour days. (NB: recently informed I'm under the grant value, so I can log more hours if I feel like a pay boost). When I work these 35 hours is entirely up to me. I could work 12 hours on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday and have Thurs-Fri-Sat-Sun off if I wanted to. Lots of molecular biology techniques don't work that way though, so mostly I stay consistent and go in dutifully everyday. With the alarm clock decommissioned, I lazily wake around 9 am, hang out with the dog, shower and then get out to work around 10:30-11 am. The past week I've been staying from 11 am-7pm at work with one hour lunch (around 3:30 it seems). Late dinners are not cumbersome these days thanks to the all-day-cookfest I undertake on Sunday. We eat alot of soup. Last night was a three-bean salad (that tastes better the longer it marinates-yum!) and some (formerly frozen) pork souvlaki I cooked that morning while showering.

Evenings are varied-Tuesday a Nobel Peace Prize winner gave a talk at the university. Wednesday nights are vegetarian/gluten-free/lactose-free potlucks with a half dozen girlfriends, where we consume wine and talk about books, fashion, sex, food and boys (and radio shows, taping birch trees and unemployment insurance). Friends visit the farm and we make good use of the snowshoes gifted to us for Christmas-we went walking in the snow on Saturday, Sunday and again yesterday. My legs are sore from walking so bow-legged.





With no job, hubby is able to tackle the demo downstairs. It is a fine balance between using his free labour while it is available and removing the air barrier (ie plaster) from our walls, effectively exposing ourselves to the cold harsh winter outside. We are averaging $500 month in oil, and that's with the thermostat set to a balmy 12 Celsius. This is what the downstairs looks like these days:




We have narrowed down a floorplan for downstairs, including an open concept kitchen-dining-living room. The front parlour will become a library, and we will add a half-bath and mudroom in the current kitchen location (as well as lots of currently lacking closet space and pantry space). I've contacted the bank to explore financing options related to inceasing the mortgage, as we would prefer to do the bulk of the work in the next 18 months with loaned money instead of a slow renovation over many years. But that may not fly, and we may have to fund it ourselves with tax returns and line of credit. There are pros and cons to each method, so I am okay with whatever works out in the end.

Oh, and I turned 26 years old. My friends threw a surprise sushi party. Awesome!

Proof the "recession money" has filtered down to us pleebs working at the university: Quilted, double ply TP in the washrooms. I'm not even joking.