Archive for February, 2008

February 29th, 2008 - HEL/OC for adoption

I looked at the credit union website again about loans, to check rates versus ING (where we have savings and CD accounts). On their online application form, it asks if you want a HEL or a line of credit. Hmmm…nowhere else are HELOCs mentioned. So I called. Talked to a nice lady named Sue. They don’t have HELOCs. Well, actually, they sort of do. They don’t offer one with check writing abilities, but you could get the loan and not take the money until you need it bit by bit. (IE, you walk into the office and say “I need $10,000″ and you get a MO or it moved to checking or whatever.) Oh, well, that would work for us.

Then I explained why we needed the loan and that it could be in two weeks or two years that we suddenly needed most of the money immediately. (Actually, you put down a deposit of $5000, I think, then most of the rest is due at placement. Unless you are matched with a baby who has already been born. Then almost all of the money is due right away since you are paying the matching and placement fees at once.) And her advice was to wait until we need the money and get the loan then. 2nd mortgages are kept in-house and their rates haven’t changed in ages (true–it’s about the same as when we got the one 16 months ago, actually a wee bit lower I think). They usually take less than a week to approve. And in an emergency, they could probably get us the money in a day. If I recall correctly, our last one was done in 3 days. Including my coming in on day 2 and saying, “Oh, wait, can we increase it that $3000?”

And they’ll go up to 95% of our home equity, unlike ING which only does 80%. If the adoption happens right away, that extra 10% could be very useful, since we’ll also need to replace my income as I have only about 22 days of paid leave.

I wonder why we never looked at a 1st mortgage with them?

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February 29th, 2008 - Podcatching: Excess Baggage

Excess Baggage is a travel show from the BBC. I suppose it could fit with the “adventures” part of this blog. Topics in the past month have ranged from the experiences of being a Black British traveler overseas, a visit to the National Railway Museum, and a man who has visited over 100 of the islands of Scotland. Usually under 30 minutes.

I’m enjoying a number of BBC podcasts; I like getting a wider perspective on the world.

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February 28th, 2008 - GDP calcuations aren’t right

You may find Adbuster’s 1-minute video/ad about how the gross domestic product is calculated thought-provoking.

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February 28th, 2008 - Podcatching: You and Yours - Environment

You and Yours - Environment is another BBC radio show. Some of the issues they address are the same ones we all talk about here in the US. But then there are interesting ones that are very local or regional, like a recent episode about a land dispute alongside canals or an island that is getting electricity for the first time to everyone (via solar and wind generation). Again, I really enjoy getting a different perspective on the environmental issues in the world.

Oooh–two interesting ones are in my list: biofuel buses stopped running due to cold weather and something about local milk. (Um, isn’t ALL milk local in England? All of the UK is only twice the size of WI.)

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February 28th, 2008 - Podcatching: The Splendid Table

The Splendid Table is a food show. Sometimes I love the topics. Sometimes they talk about wine for 15 minutes (I don’t drink and have no interest in alcohol). It’s an hour long show. My favorite parts are the road food section (every week, two folks who travel the US and stop at diners, local restaurants, etc., and share best places to eat. I’ve read their book, too.) and the call-in section at the end. She sometimes does a neat feature where a caller lists five foods in their fridge and she has to come up with a recipe that only uses them plus 3 generic items (like olive oil, garlic, and salt).

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February 26th, 2008 - I won!

I’m so glad I updated my 2008 goals last week. I just won the Living Deliberately goal progress contest!!! Sadly, only one other person joined in the update. How about you? Will you join in May? I’m sure there will be another great prize.

It doesn’t have to be financial goals, it’s for any life goals. I just happened to have only listed financial ones.

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February 26th, 2008 - The HEL is paid OFF!

Just 15 months ago, I told you we planned to pay off our home equity loan in just 3 years. I paid it off today! I’m not sure when we actually got it, but I think it was about November 06, which means we paid it off in 15 months. WOW.

As you know, I intended to pay it off this summer, then in April or May. So why here in February? We had our first homestudy visit yesterday. Found out things can go a bit faster. A) We only have to have 2 visits, not the 4 I expected. and B) it doesn’t matter because our resume can go in their file before the homestudy is finished. It’s to our advantage to get it in ASAP because they currently have only 10 families waiting. If we’d known before and had gotten the resume papers to fill out, we could have given it to her yesterday and been on file today, I bet.

We intend to have the resume ready to go in 2 weeks when we see Elayne for our last visit. That means we have to get going on the HELOC. Thank goodness for the slush money I keep around, plus our emergency fund. We have some large bills coming up (like the trip out East and taxes) but we have enough money to pay for them even if they were due today as well.

Unfortunately, the credit union doesn’t offer HELOCs, so I have to figure out where to go for that. Do I go with ING, where we have savings/checkings/mortgage? Or a local bank I have no relationship with? And when with the HEL come off the credit report so that it’s clear I’m not getting a third mortgage? I thought I have 6 weeks or more to figure these things out….

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February 19th, 2008 - Update on 2008 goals

I’m participating in Living-Deliberately’s challenge to update our year goals. I’ve only posted financial ones, so that’s all I’ll address.

Give 2% of gross income to charity. Have stuck with this! Haven’t actually sent out much to charities, but it’s in the budget so I can’t touch it.
Save 16% for retirement. Despite changing our budget to accommodate adoption expenses, we remain committed to this one. I even did it with the back pay received this month (the state budget wasn’t resolved until long after the new fiscal year ended. The pay increase was retroactive about 6 months) by sending an additional withdrawal to Eric’s IRA.
Payoff HEL–this one’s going to be done long before October. After additional payments last month (from money saved for electrical work we aren’t going to do) and this month (money saved towards tax payment that isn’t needed), we’re looking at April or May (last payment will be 1/3rd of the monthly one so I might just do it in April to get it over with).
Maintain fully funded (3 months expenses) emergency fund. We’re moving it out of CDs as the mature, just in case we need it for adoption expenses, but we intend to not touch it. We’ll get a HELOC first.
Keep grocery and household spending under $300. So far so good. Jan’s were both over 1/3 under budget. But in Feb, we had to buy diapering supplies for MaggieMaggie, and that was almost the entire household budget. They simply all ran out at the same time. Potting training is going very slowly, so we still need diapers. And, unfortunately, she’s about out of the one size we didn’t buy at the beginning of the month.
Start new car/car repair fund. I’ll let you know come August. But we have said we won’t dip into this money, either, for the adoption, in case of car repairs.
Earn at least $25/month from Deal Barbie Pays I did get money in Feb, due to hard work in Dec. But then I was sick in Jan and got into a series of books that I just don’t want to stop reading in the evenings. So I haven’t kept up on this. I did, however, do testing, so will still have money coming in. If I include rebates, I have made $25/month, but I’m not sure I can count that?

In full disclosure: I probably wouldn’t have updated my progress if she wasn’t giving away a free resuable grocery bag. I just can’t resist them!

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February 19th, 2008 - Podcatching: NPR Environment

NPR Environment is a great way to listen to my favorite news stories from NPR without listening to the radio all day long. It gathers environment stories from Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other NPR programs. I think each episode is about 30 minutes long (I don’t have any in my directory right now, since I’ve already listened to this week’s).

The NPR Environment website has links to more stories and stories in more depth. I haven’t explored the site, so I don’t know if the audio versions are longer or more varied or just link to the stories individually that are collected in the podcast. The individual story pages link to other related stories–some of which are in the podcast some of which aren’t.

I’m quite impressed with NPR’s website. It’s not just whole shows but those shows chopped up into individual stories. I wouldn’t have expected that.

I rarely listen to the radio. At work, I could listen online, but I quickly figured out that I can’t pay attention to news stories and work at the same time. I’m rarely in the car. If running errands in the afternoon, we do often play WPR IDEAS Network, but it’s a call-in show at that time usually. On the weekends, I do listen to morning shows like Calling All Pets, Zorba Pasteur On Your Heath, Whaddya Know, and Car Talk. But usually only parts while running errands or baking. (I would also listen to music in the kitchen, but our radio gets one station clearly–WPR from the campus transmitter 1/3 mile from our house.)

And now that I can listen to shows on the iPod, I rarely listen to the kitchen radio, either! Just explaining why I don’t listen to my favorite news stories actually on the radio itself.

Posted in podcasts | 2 Comments »

February 18th, 2008 - Podcatching: The Environment Report

The Environment Report podcast, from NPR, “is a news service committed to revealing the relationship between the natural world and the everyday lives of people. The Report is based at Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor.” There’s one a week, and I think the reports are produced specifically for TER (unlike some others that simply collate reports from other shows of the week). Each one is about 20-30 minutes long, which I appreciate. (The hour long shows seem to always end up with a 15-20 minute segment I’m not interested in. Since I listen on the way to/from work, and it’s winter and quite cold/windy/snowy these days, I hate taking off my mittens to fast forward.)

The Environment Report website is also available. At the website, you can listen to longer stories focused on one topic. They also provide links to additional information about those stories. I can’t figure out how to subscribe to any of the other stories via podcasts.

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February 15th, 2008 - Podcatching: National Geographic World Talk

National Geographic World Talk is my most FAVORITE podcast. When I first subscribed, every single episode (about 3/month for 3 years) downloaded. I was overwhelmed and deleted anything that didn’t sound REALLY interesting. After listening to the first few, I was hooked. When I’m done with the ones I saved, I’ll unsubscribe and re-subscribe so that I can listen to all the ones I missed.

Each episode is an interview with someone who’s been featured in National Geographic Adventure (at least, I think they are always in Adventure, that’s the one I remember, maybe other magazines from NG as well). So we hear from mountain climbers, arctic explorers, wildlife photographers (okay, I deleted some of these because I thought it would be pretty boring to listed to someone talk about taking pictures. I kept one about someone who photographed mountain climbers. It was so interesting!), elephant vocalization researcher, journalists, philanthropists….and the list goes on. I think I saved 20 of them and have found every single one fascinating. I listed to all my other podcasts each week just so that I can savor these and make them last as long as possible.

The only drawback is that each is only 15-25 minutes, far too short!

Their blurb says it all: “Take an electrifying journey around our planet, exploring the latest discoveries and embark on the world’s greatest adventures with some of the most fascinating people on earth. Get back in touch with the explorer in you.” And explains why I love it so much!

Posted in podcasts | 1 Comment »

February 14th, 2008 - Getting out the ink

I’ve used hairspray on ink stains since I was a little kid. Drove me nuts, because that’s the only reason I ever bought hairspray. Well, now I no longer have to buy any: Home Ec 101 just told me to use rubbing alcohol since it’s the alcohol in the hairspray anyway.

Not that it won’t probably be a decade before I use up my AquaNet, which I believe I purchased when I left home. That was either for college–1990–or grad school–1995. Either way, it’s lasted a really long time.

Probably because I rarely get ink stains anymore. I’ve gotten pretty good at capping my pens at work as soon as I’m done with them. And picking up non-pen items for fiddling with. It’s just safer for me.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

February 14th, 2008 - Podcatching: Escape Adulthood

Ooops, I forgot that I listen to another personally produced podcast. This one’s also a husband-wife team: Escape Adulthood podcast with Kim and Jason in Madison WI. She’s a former kindergarten teacher and he’s a cartoonist. They focus on things that help you continue to be childlike–the Feb podcast was an interview with a man who makes up candy for Willy Wonka! That was so much fun to listen to, even though WW is owned by Nestle, which I boycott (for failing to stop using child slave labor for chocolate production even though they promised, and for pushing formula on poor women in Africa who could not safely use it outside the hospital due to poor water while if they had been taught to breastfeed they could have easily continued to feed their babies).

Anyway, their whole thrust–they also have a blog, website, store, and go around the country giving talks–is that we need to stop being such serious adults and escape adulthood. And they are making a living off doing this!!!! I think that’s so cool. They cover topics like eating candy, dressing up for Halloween, favorite stories from childhood, making your favorite childhood foods, and so much more.

Sometimes, I don’t like the podcast, like the Halloween one, simply because that’s not a favorite holiday of mine and they kind of put down anyone who didn’t like Halloween. They also always have an ad for something in their store, poorly hidden as “cool thing of the month.” On the other hand, they often do feature neat, silly things. And it’s far better than the real ads of podcasts that are supported by companies–those I really hate. They always have a fun trivia question (Jason asks Kim the question at the beginning of the podcast, she takes a guess, and then you get to think about it for the rest of the house and they reveal it at the end. Did you know the largest snowflake on record was 15 inches in diameter!!!!)

They also had a fun escape adulthood challenge a few years back. I followed this one on their blog–I don’t think they did a podcast back then. They and 10 friends and family each did the challenge every day and reported back on it. They might have had to go buy their favorite candy or write a letter to a teacher they still remember or go do nothing for an hour or buy some Silly String or other fun things to shake loose from the regular routines of being an adult. It was lots of fun to read, even though I didn’t follow along myself.

Posted in podcasts | 1 Comment »

February 13th, 2008 - Defrosting the freezer

Two weekends ago, we finally defrosted the freezer (a fairly large chest freezer). I think it’s been two years since I did it last. I’d swear we bought a frost-free freezer, but it sure isn’t the case. In fact, in just 10 days, it’s starting to ice up again on the inside front!

It’s always a good exercise to clear out the freezer. I got rid of really old stuff, like bread saved for breadcrumbs, which we use about once a year. So why bother saving three old breads plus a bag of crumbs? The birds or the garden enjoyed them instead (it snowed the day I put them out so they get covered up). I also wrote down everything I took out so that I’d have a list of what’s left. It feels like we’re not eating much from the freezer, but I don’t have much written down, there’s not much left in the freezer, and yesterday I noticed just how many plastic freezer boxes are stacked up on the baker’s rack! We really have eaten a lot that I put up over the summer and fall.

I like to do this in winter, because I can put all the food out in the cold and not worry about it. This year, we had the good idea of putting it on the front porch. In the past, I hauled it out to the car. Besides having to go outside, it also meant we couldn’t use the car until I got it all back inside. On the porch, we left it for a couple days until I had time to finish up the job. It was, of course, freezing outside the entire time. Many winters I couldn’t have done this except over one night.

Everything’s put back nice and neat. Also gave the opportunity to wash out the freezer after spills of yeast and flour during the past year. I know what’s in there and where to find it since it’s so organized! And I was encouraged to get out the chicken I bought at the market last August and some ham for ham salad. Next up is using up the various soup stocks I have–including one that I think is beef plus a couple of chicken ones.

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February 12th, 2008 - Bad soup, bad, bad soup

Yesterday, I made soup. Used my lovely summer/fall-made roasted vegetable stock, the last rutabaga, the last three carrots from the farmer’s market, Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, and a number of purple potatoes. Plus an onion, some garlic (from the garden), salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Eric turned it on at at 8ish and we got home around 5:30. They say 8-10hours on low, so it was within that time frame.

Either Worcestershire is totally wrong for soup–but I got the idea from the cookbook which added it to a bunch of soups!–or it burned. Either way, it smelled weird and tasted absolutely awful.

I was so sad to have to throw it all out. I finally make soup–will last for days since usually Eric doesn’t like the veggie soups–and it was ruined. I don’t have a good track record of remembering to make soup–I forget to get out stock, I forget to soak beans, I don’t think I have time to chop things. And this time, I did it all. I was totally prepared and excited. (The minestrone I made in the crockpot was utterly fantastic. Maybe I can make it again. Next week?)

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February 12th, 2008 - The Slow Life Picks Up Speed

The Slow Life Picks Up Speed from the New York Times tells about how the Slow Food Movement is making its way into a larger movement encompassing other aspects of your life.

I love this idea!

This article mainly focuses on Slow Design–things others have created that slow life down. From a woman who knits rugs with wool from sheep she has met to someone who makes a basket that tips over if you fill it too fast.

I read the mentioned book, In Praise of Slow a while ago but never blogged about it. (Life was going to fast at the time, I suppose so I finally returned it to the library without writing about it.)

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February 12th, 2008 - Giving a life-changing gift

I should have posted this link back in December, but I just didn’t get around to it. World Vision Online Donations: Gift Catalog allows you to purchase things such as a pig (or a share in one), a well, a fishing kit, education, support for abused women, etc. The items are actually purchased (or used to support programs) and given to a recipient at one of their locations world-wide.

Thanks to Megan at That’s Swell for the link. Eric heard about it on the radio before she posted but couldn’t remember the name. A couple weeks later, she posted about it and I immediately knew it was what he’d told me about.

Posted in Charity | 1 Comment »

February 6th, 2008 - Video killed the national park star?

I’m guilty as charged: Internet killing park visits, raising conservation worries. I don’t believe I’ve visited a national park since our honeymoon. I don’t think it’s due to video or internet usage since my appreciation of and concern for the environment has grown since then. I just haven’t had opportunities for vacations to places I choose. (IE, we mostly travel to visit family.)

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February 5th, 2008 - If you are in the market for a toilet

Find a WaterSense Labeled High-Efficiency Toilet | WaterSense | US EPA

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February 5th, 2008 - TerraCycle Inc

Not sure when or how I found this place; it’s been sitting in my blog drafts list for a while. Finally doing a bit of housecleaning here. TerraCycle Inc “is trying to eliminate the idea of waste. To do so, we must find great uses for objects that used to be considered waste. And best of all, you can raise funds for your favorite charity by helping us collect waste. It’s easy and shipping is free.”

Apparently, you can sign up to recycle various garbage, such as yogurt containers, and get paid for each one you turn in. There are limited spots available each month (500 for the yogurt, 198 left at the moment I’m writing this) for each item.

They use the stuff they get to manufacture other stuff, such as turning pop bottles (aka soda bottles) into bird feeders and containers for their worm castings. The odd thing about their products is that there isn’t much uniformity in the packaging since they’ll accept all sorts of different brands of bottles. How cool is that?

There’s a store locater (upper right home page)–I can supposedly find their products at Target. I’m going to have to go check that out….

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My Adventures in Simple Living

Archive for February, 2008

February 29th, 2008 - HEL/OC for adoption

February 29th, 2008 - Podcatching: Excess Baggage

February 28th, 2008 - GDP calcuations aren’t right

February 28th, 2008 - Podcatching: You and Yours - Environment

February 28th, 2008 - Podcatching: The Splendid Table

February 26th, 2008 - I won!

February 26th, 2008 - The HEL is paid OFF!

February 19th, 2008 - Update on 2008 goals

February 19th, 2008 - Podcatching: NPR Environment

February 18th, 2008 - Podcatching: The Environment Report

February 15th, 2008 - Podcatching: National Geographic World Talk

February 14th, 2008 - Getting out the ink

February 14th, 2008 - Podcatching: Escape Adulthood

February 13th, 2008 - Defrosting the freezer

February 12th, 2008 - Bad soup, bad, bad soup

February 12th, 2008 - The Slow Life Picks Up Speed

February 12th, 2008 - Giving a life-changing gift

February 6th, 2008 - Video killed the national park star?

February 5th, 2008 - If you are in the market for a toilet

February 5th, 2008 - TerraCycle Inc

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