Can you say "stupid"?

So you are a Responsible News Reporter and are a role model for young and old. And you do something like this to report on the flooding in RI:



I'm never quite sure what is supposed to be accomplished by this. Is there anyone who doesn't think "That has to be one of the most stupid things I've ever seen?" Did he really want to be in there or, as he strode out the door with a camera crew, did a boss yell out "Hey, don't forget your waders. It would be great if you could get soaking wet and put yourself at risk by wading in the flood waters when you give your report. Maybe you'll also teach people it's OK to wade through waist-high floodwater when they absolutely don't have to"

I wonder what emergency response folks think when they see something like this.

I finally reach the final straw concerning vehicles

Two weeks ago I was filling the white truck up with gas, pushed the nozzle hard into the intake, and suddenly experienced a toxic spill. The pipe between the intake and gas tank had rotted out.

Luckily it was not the gas tank and when I turned the gas off, the leak stopped. The station manager gave me (and did not make me buy!) a bag of cat litter to sop it up.

Can you believe I did not have a bag of my own in the back of the truck?

But it was the last straw. I had been planning on driving the truck to New Jersey for work. Work would pay for a rental car but -- living in the country -- getting TO a rental car is no easy feat, and I couldn't leave a potentially-leaking truck in an airport parking lot.

So when I got home, I slammed down my keys and picked up the phone.

Most people would have heart attacks over the way I buy a vehicle. A) it needs to be new. New vehicles have been a God-send to me. They last well over 10 years, and after they are paid off, they are excellent collateral if you are ever in a financial bind. Having no vehicle payments has been wonderful, but having to call the tow truck twice in the past half year, and foster/friend/mechanic Craig to bail me out countless times, has not been so great. B) I tell the dealer what I want and say "call me when you find it." I'm not playing games, okay? C) I feel I do enough research online and with other owners, that I will buy a vehicle sight-unseen.

I have been looking online for vehicles for almost a year now, and had decided on either a Ford Transit Connect truck ($22,000) or a Kia Soul ($14,000). I had stopped to look a Transit Connect just the day before in Ithaca, and probably had a salesperson come out to accost me, I would have made the very-expensive-and-probably-unwise decision to buy one. But they didn't. So I didn't. Whew.

As much as I wanted a truck (especially one I could practically live in) I knew a new vehicle was going to be stretching the budget to the max, so I called the only Kia dealer in my area.

Luckily I got a salesman who "got it." Seriously, really "got it." Well, there was that moment when I said I wanted a base model and he said "Oh, we have one here. Well, it has a sunroof and the audio packages" and I said "How much?" and he said "$16,500" and I said, simply, "No." From then on, it was smooth sailing.



Yes, I bought a car over the phone. I told him to find me a black, base model Kia Soul, by the end of the next day. Well, we did have that second moment when he called back and said I could "pick it up on the weekend" and I said the whole point of buying a car was because I needed it BEFORE the weekend--but you know? He got it. I faxed over my license and insurance card. Once he realized I was serious about the "next day" thing, he even used his day off to make sure that car got picked up, delivered, and inspected before 5pm.

Getting to the car was another matter. I probably should have taken the plates from the blue truck, but I took them from the white truck because I was going to have to leave whatever vehicle I drove over, until I got back from my work trip. So only the blue truck was legal to drive. However, the blue truck decided it wasn't interested in moving smoothly. I started her up about ten times during the day only to have her stall out. Luckily, right before I was ready to go, she roared to life and purred like a kitten.

(I wonder if she will when I try to get her home?)

I met the salesman at 7pm to sign the paperwork, and after a short conversation with my insurance company, lots of signatures, and a check, I had a car.

Then there was the moment of truth. Would I LIKE it?

When they brought the car around I experienced a huge sigh of relief. The Kia Soul is much bigger than it appears online. It's rather like a RAV-4 without the "4." It's almost as high as a small truck. And the inside is sensible. Things are where you expect them to be. There are no cupholders in odd places or window controls in the middle of the dash instead of on the door. The only complaint I have is that all the door locks (inside and out) are operated via the driver's side door via a manual key. So to open the hatch you have to open the front door and hit the unlock button.

This is, of course, how they get you to move up to the non-base car for $16-18K.

Off we went to NJ, and then two days later to VA. Sure, it's no Lexus, and I'm glad I got the standard, because I'm betting the automatic is pretty wimpy (even with a larger engine). But it's a darned good little tall hatchback.

I enjoyed the back seats for the two trips, but shortly they will come out and I'll get a rubberized carpet for the back. Currently I could fit perhaps ONE trapped cat in the hatch, and that's not going to cut it. I've lived with two seats for around 20 years, and I can continue to do so.

I still have the two trucks, and am waffling on what to do with them. Do I keep one, or sell them both for scrap? It would be nice to have a truck for trash-and-big-object hauling (otherwise I'll have to take trash in every single week with the small Kia) but is it worth the extra insurance cost?

I'll let you know.

It's trying to be spring in Spencer

Saturday after payday is historically "go buy a ton of cat food and cat litter" day. I've stopped paying any attention to the funny looks people give me when I load up my cart with bag after bag of cat litter at Walmart. I usually make a point of wearing a jacket or clothing with "Americancat.net" emblazoned on it, but not many people are looking at my clothes. They are staring at the cart and wondering how many cats that lady must have to need all that cat litter?

In fact, I could get by with far less cat litter per trip, if for some reason I wanted to venture into Walmart every single week. But the more I load up with, the less often I need to visit the place. If I see a floor worker, I'll even ask for a flat cart and a strong arm and we'll walk out of there with 30 bags and I may be able to stay away for almost two months!



On these days I just write out checks or swipe the card and just keep a general balance of how much I'm spending, and add it all up when I get home. I no longer snarl or whine when prices go up. There's nothing to be done.

My raise at work came through this week, so I snagged a new cat bed to celebrate. The more cat beds I have for my house cats and foster kittens to sleep in, the less cat fur I have on my own bed.





Squeak and Ivan give it their seal of approval.

This photo is for my mom, who got Molly a little stuffed frog for Christmas. It is Molly's favorite toy:



With the weather warming up outside, I've been letting the fire in the woodstore die during the day. This means it takes awhile to get it going in the evening. Warmer weather makes for a poor draft up the chimney. So I turn on the furnace, and the pets all huddle up near the heat vents. Once the fire is going, they move over by the stove.

You'd think it was 50 instead of 70 degrees in here!

In fact, Squeak has abandoned the new bed for the ottoman in front of the fire. Ivan is sitting on a mat on my desk, helping me write.



The oil man came by yesterday and my fuel oil usage was reduced by HALF these last two months. What's the difference?

The fan. Just the fan. The heat now comes down into the house proper, instead of sitting up by the ceiling. The temperature went up almost 10 degrees with that fan on, which of course meant the furnace stayed off.

Amazing. That silly fan saved me $150 in just two months.

A decade of procrastination

Ain't it funny what you'll put up with, for SO long.

There's a possibility I may get a housemate for a few months, which means it's time to paint the upstairs. Three rooms had been done since we moved in, but need freshening. One room was never done. And the hallway...UGH! It's still old dark nail-up panel sheeting. The door between the hallway and the back bedrooms is the original paint, and is filthy. None of the trim has been repainted. I've turned a blind eye to it because..well, who cares? But now someone might have to live up there--not just stay for a night.

I mean, look at this light:



The house came with those square light covers, you know, the ones you smash the first time you take a sweatshirt off underneath or try to move something tall? Yeah, those. So when we smashed them one by one we did replace the one in the bedroom (with the most boring fixture imaginable--probably the cheapest) but slapped a regular shade on upside down on the hallway light.

The other two bedrooms have no hardwired lights, so we have something like this:



So today I went shopping for lights and a door for the bottom of the stairs. A solid door would be nicer, but warm air in the winter, and cool air in the summer, needs to make it up those stairs.



It ran over $200, but you know what? The money I saved by stopping drinking at home paid for it. So there you go. One good reason to stop an expensive habit.

I also bought a crowbar in my "replace the tools that belonged to Mark, one by one" campaign.

Then there are other shabby areas of my house that haven't been an issue. Who is going to see my spice cabinet? Who needs to decipher their labels? Up until now, no one.

I failed to take a photo of all the bottles of old stale spices that I threw out. It was rather alarming. Mark and I went through this thing about five years ago. Five years is a long time.



Spices are expensive, so anything that seemed like I should keep until I could afford replacements I did keep. Anything unlabeled or that just smelled like dust went into the trash, bottle and all. I wanted to shop the bulk spice area of Tops (which, surprisingly, has more options than Wegmans) but they didn't have the things I needed. The spices in the baking aisle were way too expensive, so I figured I'd just get one at a time.

Then I stumbled into the organic aisle and discovered small bottles of spices for half the cost of good old McCormick.



So now I am back in action. The fifteen-year-old cream of tartar is gone. The little envelopes of red stuff are all gone (could be cayenne, could be regular paprika, could be hungarian paprika--who knows?) Ditto with the baggies of green stuff--probably a product of two days a half-decade ago when I played with the food dehydrator. With the exception of one jar, all of the "ghost of Mark" handwriting is gone.

We're getting there!

What does your spice cabinet look like? Could I cook from it if I were over at your house?

:)

Foods I've missed, somehow

Can you believe that until about a month ago, I'd never heard of scalloped corn? It seems to me like a food that would have fit right in there with the homemade macaroni and cheese, and tuna noodle casserole of my childhood. I'm not even sure how I stumbled across it on the internet. Someone mentioned it on a blog, I think, and I thought "Scalloped corn? What the heck is that?"

We did eat creamed corn now and then when I was a kid. I loved how sweet it was, although I sort of found the slurpy nature of it a bit icky. Tasty, but icky.

Now, had one of my friend's moms plopped scalloped corn down on their dinner table, or had we learned how to make it in school, I surely would have been whining to mom about turning those cans of creamed corn into a casserole. Heck, all you needed were a few eggs, milk, and Ritz crackers or saltines, which we always had around.



I also remember coming to Ithaca as a student, totally clueless to the concept of Buffalo wings. I honestly had no idea what manner of beast they came from when I saw them on the menu at Dos Amigos. I believe it was in the ABC cafe that I first learned of huevos rancheros. Once upon a time I always topped my eggs at home with cheese. Now I eat them scrambled with a side of salsa. And roasted Brussels sprouts (Just a Taste)? Who knew they could be so good? Yet those are all "restaurant foods" that you bring home to your own kitchen.



(note, the photo directly above is of eggs and salsa, not scalloped corn!)

Scalloped corn? That is family food that some people have at every single Thanksgiving dinner. And I'm pushing 48 and never heard of it. Now I wonder what other absolutely average American pan-o-food is out there that I have totally missed out on?

Old farm photos

Gretchen knocked on my door one day in 2006. She had lived here as a child and wanted to know if she could wander around. A few months later she sent me some photos:






If you've ever visited the cabin in the forest on the hill, the poultry coop in this photo might look awfully familiar.



I can't begin to tell you how many 50-plus year-old guys stop and say "Hey, I used to live here. Did you know this was a commune?" Half the time they are thinking of Owl Creek Farm further down the road, but some of them did indeed live here. I imagine a lot of folks called this place home over the years, more as transients than "commune" members. I have the old abstract, and the place changed hands a lot in recent years.



And I think this is Gretchen, coming up the front hill:



Gretchen now owns Gunn Creek Farm, and you'll see her childhood farm mentioned right on her website.

And we both graduated from Ithaca College. How about that? And never met while we were there.

The farm is also the birthplace of Woodbridge Ferris, senator and founder of what is now Ferris State University. Here is the original cabin on the property, where he was born. My house (and his life on this farm) is mentioned in his biography here under "The New Home."