food and boots

Andrew and I went over to a friend's house to make sushi on Friday and I realized two things:

1. The Asian grocery store by my apartment is AWESOME. Great prices on veggies, a thing of tofu for .99 cents, plus a huge tank of catfish. I am doing as much grocery store shopping there as possible. I don't think they sell peanut butter, though.
2. I want to move to a bigger apartment (preferably a house/apartment where it's the entire floor of a house) and have a big table to have dinner parties.
   

I made this dal palak recipe last night, which was so good. A decent amount of spiciness for both Andrew and I; since I usually like this spicier than him, it hit a good middle ground for both of us. As I'm trying to eat less meat overall, Indian food is a good source for recipes. They have so much delicious vegetarian food.

After trying them on in November, I finally bought these boots:

Way to go, christmas money! I've realized I'm less likely to make larger purchases for myself regularly (as opposed to little things frequently that often add up to the price of one of these larger purchases) and instead use gift money/present opportunities to make a larger purchase - boots, running shoes, iPod, etc. When I graduated from college, Erich and KT said their present was either going to be an iPod or all the Scrubs dvds. I chose the iPod because I figured I'd be less likely to buy that on my own as opposed to all the Scrubs dvds (which I have been buying randomly over the past few years or so - usually whenever I see one for sale at a used store). I figure it's good to recognize that about yourself. Plus those boots are hot. I'm excited to wear them.

Ok. Time to go. Bacher out.

irresolute

I really dislike New Year's resolutions. Maybe since I associate them with falling off after 6 weeks, I don't think they're useful or effective. I always think, "Oh, well that's something the person won't really keep up through March," or that they only half-heartedly want to accomplish it. On the other hand, I don't necessarily think that about goals. I feel a person can set a goal and they have a fairly good chance of achieving it. It's the same thing, just a different word, so I don't know why I have those connotations. Increasingly, I feel the need to reassess and set new goals at year end, which is deliberately something I really didn't do before. Blame it on some type A personality shit.

Last year, I wanted to cook two new recipes a month and learn how to cartwheel. Trying two new recipes a month was pretty successful - here's a catalogue of some recipes I've tried this year and enjoyed. I have some new ones in my recipe folder too. I'm not making an intentional goal to try new recipes this year since I feel it's stuck with me pretty well and I have lots of inspiration to try new recipes. Don't they say it takes 6 weeks for something to become a habit? Well, I think I've got this down. In fact, tonight I'm making roasted butternut squash and bacon pasta.

Cartwheeling? Nope. Still don't know how.

I've got a few I've been kicking around for this next year:

• 100 books in 2012. I kicked 75 books in 2011's ass (currently on number 102 for 2011) and I think I can do it again next year.
• 3 half marathons - Green Bay in May, Red, White and Boom in July, and one more in the fall. I wanted to do two last year and only did one, mostly for financial reasons.
• Cut out meat one day a week, for health and environmental reasons. Probably Mondays.
  
• Progress on our net worth, specifically through building savings and paying down our smaller debts. I know goals are more likely to be accomplished if there's a specific, measurable goal, but we haven't sat down and figured that out yet. But those are the things I think we can hit, based on some initial calculations.

Good? All right. Bacher out.

the monies

So... I turned into a budgeting/financial crazy person today.

I finished breaking down our spending for November compared to our budget, budgeted our Christmas presents, switched the autopay of the remaining bills over to our new credit union, cleaned up my Bank folder on my computer, and made a net worth spreadsheet (including columns to update next year). My spreadsheets are all quite pretty, if I do say so myself. The contents are a little rougher (hello, giant negative net worth), but I suppose in order to get ahead, you have to figure out where you are first.

Don't worry. I resisted color-coding the spreadsheets. Still, I am all over this shit.

Also, Sam is sleeping on the couch next to me and his face and legs are twitching and spasming like he's a robot.

trees, gourds and sprouts. and a car.

Things going on:

We bought a new car! Huzzah!

Andrew's starting making terrible engine noises on the way back from WI a few weeks back. After checking it out, it was either 1: new engine or 2: new car. Considering the body of his car was in pretty bad shape and we were thinking about getting a new car sometime in the next year anyway... new car it is!

Car shopping is a huge pain in the ass. You spend a lot of time looking on websites to find vehicles in your price and mileage range, then go to the car lot to see that the car is in worse condition than it looked online or that it's been sold already. We were very close to buying a different car and while we were giving the dealer 36 hours to think about putting new tires on it, someone else bought the car. That was disappointing, but I really like the car we bought and it's in great condition and has less miles than the other car. So go us!

Since our evenings were consumed with car researching/test driving/buying for the past two weeks, the house pretty much went to shit. I only finished the last of the Massive Pile of dishes yesterday (it was so massive that it deserves uppercase). It didn't help that we needed to continue to eat, thus adding to the Massive Pile. We also had a Big-Ass Pile of laundry, but we did that on Sunday.

I opened up a retirement account - woo! Considering the economy is shit, I'm in a pretty aggressive fund, hoping that by the time I retire at 88, I'll have enough to pay for a mediocre old folk's farm. I'm not betting that Sam will take care of me in my old age... he seems pretty thankless.

Sam spends a lot of time sitting or trying to sit on our laps.

Ok, that's Dia. I took that to make Sam jealous.

Andrew cut down this big ass tree and we want to make a cutting board from the wood cookie:

For scale.

Although that little shit has been taking bites out of the bark. I found him chewing on a hunk of bark just this morning.

I just made a batch of acorn squash seeds using my patented "forget about them and remember in a panic" method. They are pretty damn tasty. I'm going to try gnocchi this afternoon.

I bought a pumpkin at the store and made pumpkin puree. I haven't used it for anything yet, so I'm open to suggestions of pumpkin-flavored deliciousness.

I also bought two stalks(? sprouts?) of Brussels sprouts at the farmers market while I was on the way home from a happy hour last week. Impluse purchase? No, never. Not when it comes to Brussels sprouts. We're down to one last serving of sprouts from the two stalks, so that'll be my lunch today.

Ok, there's a finale episode of Project Runway that's calling my name, so time to go cook sprouts and make gnocchi. Bacher out.

the great purge of 2011

Over the past few years, my mindset regarding "stuff" has shifted from having it - wanting things to be around in case I want to read/watch/use it - to one of not having. I use the library instead of buying books; I don't randomly buy DVDs anymore; most of the clothes I buy are thrifted and thus cheaper and one less thing for a landfill. I'm much more deliberate about what I buy in general - I'd rather spend money on good food (ingredients and meals) than another DVD I sorta like.

A few months ago and sporadically since then, Andrew and I have done some major spring cleaning and went through our closets, bookcases, dvds, cupboards and purged a TON of stuff. Clothes went to Goodwill (two garbage bags worth) and I FINALLY got rid of my favorite shirt from middle/high school - my 1997 Tator Trot shirt. Seriously, it had more holes than swiss cheese. All of our tupperware definitely has a matching lid now and I got serious about the "one in, one out" policy regarding wedding presents, since I don't need two 8x13 cake pans. We sold several bags worth of books and DVDs to a secondhand store and I have 5 or so books listed on Amazon, trying to sell them for more than the bookstore would buy them.

We cleaned the closet that weekend!

This picture is from yesterday, so the closet cleaning stuck pretty well over the past few months.

We got rid of enough books to clear off one whole shelf plus parts of others:

We also sold enough DVDs to have a whole shelf for game:

Yes, that is one of Sam's toys on the floor... a Target dog that he ripped the stuffing from its guts.

It's been really good to weed out our belongings and get rid of things I know we won't use. Now that we've gone most of our stuff, I'm now beginning to purge some other areas such as... the fridge!

We have 3 half bottles of meat marinade. I'm making meal plans that include using these up.

4 types of mustard! Andrew's responsible for this one since I hate mustard. He keeps bringing some home after his work camping trips.

Two identical bottles of stir-fry sauce. Seriously.

Two nearly empty bottles of salad dressing. I'd been making my own balsamic vinaigrette whenever I wanted dressing, so these got shoved to the back. I'm actively using them up now.

Other things to purge:

Hotel shampoo and soap. I've got a big bag of it and apart from maybe keeping a few bottles for traveling, I'm going to use them all up. I imagine this might take some time, since there's at least a few washings worth in each bottle.

Tea candles! We had a bunch of candles left over from our wedding, including some much larger ones. They were just sitting in the closet and I pulled them out during the original purge back in April. I've been using them up since then and I went through 6-8 of the larger candles and have now started on the tea candles.

Slowly but surely, I'm going to use up all of this extra stuff. It's not quite as fast as bringing it to Goodwill or a secondhand store, but it's much needed. Someday, I'll be able to store the ketchup in the fridge door.

Other things as of late...

I made some cake balls, but only had enough chocolate to cover a third of them. Oh well, they're still delicious.

Sam watching me cook. He often stands there and just watches. Sometimes he's a little further around the corner, just showing half his face. He's such a weirdo.

He likes to sit on people's laps. Regardless of where or how they are sitting.

We sit like this a lot. This was me last weekend after a 9 mile run. I was tired.

Sam before I started writing this post. He wanted to know what I was doing.

Ok. I'm done for today. I start a new job on Thursday. I'll tell you more later. Good bye.

to-do

Things I'm looking forward to doing post-graduation:

pay off student loans
make enough money to pay off my student loans
read for fun
have a church home
grocery shop on a regular basis
live with Kari
set my coffee maker to make coffee automatically in the morning, put it in my travel mug and ride my bike to work

Is that sad? (except the Kari part)

Whose house? My house, say what say what!

You know how I said I wanted to get my paper done by Thursday, Wednesday if I was doing really well? Wouldn't you know, I finished my paper on Wednesday. I think this is one of the first times I've set a deadline for myself and actually met it. Maybe not. I was pretty good at meeting my deadlines for my honors project. Anyway, first time this year. I feel like I've been plagued with procrastination since I've been at YDS, and this semester I've done really well with finishing my papers on time, if not early. And with that... I'm done for the semester. Halfway done with my masters. Holy crap, my friends.

Tessa's coming up tomorrow to celebrate with me before I leave the Eastern Time Zone for the summer. I mass emailed a bunch of friends, so hopefully some of them will be able to go out drinking tomorrow night. Other people with extended deadlines are finishing up around now too, so people are more free to be out late.

I'm heading back to Green Bay in less than a week, on the 21st. Whoo! I have to pack my apartment and move before then, but it's doable. I'm still figuring out how to move my stuff, but some friends offered to help and to let me use their cars. I'm still trying to figure out the large furniture, but I think it's just the futon, desk and bed that's too big to fit in a car. Maybe this chair, too, but it's getting pretty beat up. I love it, but it kills the back sometimes. I've used it since my sophomore year and it's stayed in pretty good condition that whole time. When I moved from Minneapolis to Green Bay at the end of last summer, we didn't have an enclosed trailer so it got rained on, unfortunately. I think that's why the leather is ripping a lot more.

I didn't get that internship I applied for, unfortunately, which majorly blows. When they called me, I was working on my paper and it pretty much stagnated any work I was doing. I don't know if the thought of going through the whole job search process was demoralizing or what, but it just felt really shitty to have to start all over again. Anyway, I hadn't seriously considered it before then, but I decided to take language classes at the U for the summer. I mean, I'm going to have to take French classes eventually for my PhD so this just means I don't have to take any next year. It's going to cost less at the U than at Yale, so it does make sense to take it now. I sent Kari the relevant information and had her run over to the French department to get the necessary signatures, so I should be a-ok registration wise.

I'm going to get a part time job so there's some cash flow this summer, and since there's people living in the Catholic house over the summer plus the 8 tenets for the fall, the rent is ridiculously cheap - between $200 and $250. So it seems like everything is going to work out for the summer... it's just kind of ironic that I spent so much time on the internships, between applying and interviewing for a different department, waiting for them to make a decision, and then interviewing for another department and waiting for that decision... I mean, I sent in my application before I went to Ireland, back in February. And then after they shot me down, it was pretty much a couple of hours later I knew what I was going to do. My registration form was to the French department less than 24 hours after they called.

For any students having trouble selling back textbooks, I highly recommend Abebooks Buyback. They'll buyback your books and pay for shipping, too. They don't take all books, but I had really good luck with mine. I'm sending in two boxes worth of books and making $50 bucks off of it. Not too shabby, I have to say. Plus I'm sending them off in the weird shaped boxes that will be awkward for moving. Anyway, I'm making money and getting rid of some of my stuff. Win-win, in my opinion. If only they took DVDs... I want to sell the ones I don't watch anymore and cut down on my DVD collection.

I've really enjoyed posting at Female Impersonator, the feminist blog I mentioned awhile back. Anyway, if you want to read what I've been writing, here are some of the ones I've enjoyed writing/been proud of: Are Sex and the City incompatible? and How to save money by looking like Barbie. Some of the things I've written have been linked to by much bigger feminist blogs, so that's pretty exciting. My friend Lisa says it's like I have a cool feminist internet persona. I don't know if I'd call it that, but it is cool.

Anyway, huzzah to me for being done with school! Huzzah for Tessa! Huzzah for $50 just by pulling books off my shelves! Huzzah for summer classes! (I'm probably going to regret this one).

Computer failure! And how to hopefully avoid the lost-file freakout

As the school year is winding down and finals week has begun, my mind always tries to think of the worst case scenario, just so when that doesn't happen, I'm excited.

One of my Finals '08 Worst Case Scenario is a computer failure - a complete loss of everything on my hard drive. I'm not going to lie... My laptop is pretty much my life. It's got homework, old homework, bank statements, music, pictures, internets... everything. It's beginning to show physical signs of wear - there's a worn out spot from where my hand sits on the computer, some worn out spots from where I pick up my laptop, the keys I use a lot are a little worn down (plus the right side of my space bar... I only space with my right hand). My laptop is only two years old so the internal stuff should be working fine. It's just physically showing my love.

Anyway, as I internally semi-freak out about that, I'm looking into new ways of backing up my hard-drive. In the past I've burned discs, but that often takes a lot of discs and a lot of time. Plus, if everything in my apartment gets burned up, that doesn't really help me much.

I'm thinking about investing in an external hard drive and backing up my info there. Just from a little bit of searching, those tend to be $100+ (which I won't be able to afford until I start my summer job... but I'm not planning on doing anything until after finals anyway). Does anyone use these and are they any good?

Another option I've come across is Mozy Online Backup, which for a monthly fee of $5 backups everything over the internet. I'm kind of leaning towards this one, personally. Actually, I just noticed they have a free 2GB service. I'm going to try this out in the meantime to test it out. If anyone is interested in testing it out too, here's a referral link that gets both of us extra storage space.

So this was meant to be a post asking for advice on backing up files, and now I'm telling you to test out this Mozy site. A bit of a turn-around... but that's ok. I'm still interested in what people use and how effective it is. It has to be financially smart, as well. I'm not wasting money on something I'll hardly ever use.

Time to write a paper about 25th Hour. Bacher out.

And my lost necklace and lost Daily Show tickets were the only two disappointments of the weekend (apart from it raining and being cloudy). Thanks for cheering me up, friends, mom and Andrew!

FAFSA smafsa

Yesterday I was talking to one of my friends who is graduating, and she made the astute point that she never has to fill out a FAFSA (free application for student aid) ever again. I'm super jealous. They're not very much fun, and you don't get any money back at the end of it, like taxes.

I have to say, after 6 years of filling out a FAFSA, I was able to knock mine out in less than 20 minutes. That's pretty good, in my opinion. It helps that I know exactly what they're going to ask for, plus I don't need my parent's information since I'm a graduate student and YDS doesn't take that into account. It also means that the only information YDS considers when making financial aid decisions is mine, aka my awesome income of $6,000 this year. It brings my expected family contribution to a very hefty $0 - good for me, good for my financial aid, good for scholarships. Not to mention that YDS has made it a goal to somewhat relieve the burden of debt for their students - I'm talking in terms of new $1.5 million dollar grants for next year. Let's hope they send some of that my way. I'm quite the qualified, distinguished student.

FY 2008

I know I just posted today - but I thought I'd pass these on in case any of my 5 readers were interested.

I've been reading a bunch of different blogs about being frugal and fiscal responsibility. They have lots of topics and advice. I'm not sure why I'm more interested now than I used to be, but I think it's a good sign for me. Maybe because I'm making (slightly) more money now than I used to or I actually have something to save for (Ireland) or my student loans are looming like big skyscrapers. Either way, I'm trying to be more deliberate with the things I spend my money on. I went a bit off track over the holidays, mostly due to all the cool stuff I wanted to get for my family, but I've been getting back on track and paying off holiday bills. So now during my free time this week I'm going to track my spending for the past few months, work out a budget for now till Ireland that maximizes saving and paying down my credit card (christmas spending and spring book buying mostly...) and after the trip I'll re-examine again to see where the best place to put my money is, and also take stock of my "stuff" aka the things I've acquired which I really don't need - mostly books and dvds - to see where I can sell some of it.

Anyway, here's a few websites I lost myself in for the past few hours:

Wise Bread
Frugal Fag
The Frugal Law Student

Wise Bread probably has the most resources and most varied topics, so that's probably a good place to start if you're interested.

And in case anyone wanted some cool artwork for their living space, the Library of Congress just released a ton of historical photos, photos that have no copyright restrictions. So you can find a few you like, print them out from Target or Walgreens, frame them, and you have some original, historical, interesting artwork. They have lots of photos of women helping the war effort in the 40's - very, very awesome.



Another option is one I've kind of been doing for awhile but Kari really helped out with at Christmas - old calendars. My mom gives me a Dali calendar every year, so whenever a year is over I take the old calendar, cut it up and use the pictures to decorate around the house, fun notebook covers, whatever. Kari gave me a really cool, big, old calendar of Russian iconography, so I marked a couple of months that are especially neat looking. I'm going to hang those up over my couch and in my bathroom, make it look sweet. I'm trying to decide if I should just tape them up or try to find frames/mats/something. They're somewhat odd shaped so that might be harder to work around, but they'll look awesome in frames or mats. I might be able to find something for cheap at Goodwill - I'd rather tape them up than spend a lot of money on something that looks so-so. I'll post a picture once I figure it out.

Ireland!

Today I bought my plane ticket for Ireland! Whoohoo! I'm leaving March 7 at 8:30 AM (yuck - means I'll have to be up early early to get to the airport) and arriving in Cork at 11:25 PM. Then, on the way home, I'm leaving Cork on March 23 at 4:00 PM and arriving at JFK at 11:00 PM. And then there's another 2 hour drive home. So, apart from the annoying drive to and from the airport and the annoying long flight, it's all very nice. The nice part is the time in between the flights when I'm in Ireland with Andrew. He's my boyfriend. He's nice. So many nice things. Now that I've spent the majority of the money I saved in the fall on my plane ticket, I have to save some money to do things in Ireland, like see castles and drink beer. I'm working more hours this semester, so that should be helpful, at least. Plus it's my birthday soon and it's tax time (rebate! unless I've been screwed by The Man). I have to save lots of money. I put away about $50 every week or two this semester, so it should be easier now that I'm making more. I think once I'm done saving for the trip I'm going to keep up saving at this rate. It's a good habit to have, plus it'll come in handy next time I have to pay over $250 for books for one ONE of my classes.

I started second semester and all of my classes are going well. It's way nicer to have afternoon class as opposed to morning class. Less of an opportunity to sleep through it. Here's my schedule:
M: 1-6 work at the library
Tu: 9:25-11:15 Cinematic Spectacle, my Film class downtown
1-6 work at the library
7-9 Theology and Cinema
W: 1:30-3:20 Christianity and Culture
6-10 work at Holy Grounds
Th: 3:30-5:20 Reading the Visual Culture of American Religion
F: 9-12 work at the library
S: Nothing!
Su: Nothing!

I'm so excited not to have to work Saturday morning. I hate hate hated it last time. But now that Susan, my boss at the library, loves me, I don't have to worry about working crappy shifts anymore. Sunday I even got to train one of my friends and close the library. You know, the high rolling stakes of being a circulation desk employee.

My classes all look great. They're all about stuff I'm very much interested in and potentially classes I hope to teach at some point, so it's nice. Lots of reading for my Visual Culture class... although the "Reading" in the title kinda gave that one away. But I'm reading some pretty cool books, so no worries there. I don't know if I can read the pretty cool books at a rate of 2 per week though.... so I lied about the no worries. There are some worries. Small worries. I'm especially excited about my Christianity and Culture class. The professor is very cool and he's paired some really traditional theology of culture readings with pieces of literature, art and music. It's a pretty interesting way to do it.

I went to bed early last night (10:30 Mom, just like you) and slept until 10... it was great. I woke up a bit and rolled around, but I always got back to sleep right away. I had some crazy dreams, none of which I can really remember. I used to be really good at remembering my dreams. I need to start doing that again. I need to put more importance on writing my dreams down right away once I wake up. I have my journal by my bed, but I need to move it to a more prominent position, I think.

Ok. Goodbye.