BRB Chai

Belle's definition of breakfast:  warm, sweetened beverage with some amount of caffeine.  Solid food optional.  Current drug of choice is Chai Tea latte.

I've been testing homebrew recipes for speedy prep, minimal clean up, and drinkability.  

Here is the front runner.  

• Milk (I tried reconstituting dry milk, but that tasted like watery tea with gross clumps.  Soy would probably work, but I'm collecting these cool glass milk jars for dry storage so Soy got the pass this round)
• Agave Nectar (honey takes too long to ooze.  straight sugar would also work fine except in my world, it is a more stigmatized sweetener)
• Tea bag of some persuasion (I chose Macha green because I have a ton, it makes a dark green flavorful tea with minimal brew time and the puck tea bags save me from straining rogue paper pulp in the drink.  Wasn't really grooving on how citrus flavored teas and milk taste combined.)
• Spice-- this is really flexible.  "traditional" blends tend to use a lot of Cardamom as a base.  Ginger, Cloves, Allspice, Anise, Cinnamon, etc. are fair game.  For the sake of speed, I'm not straining this mix, so keep in mind when selecting spice this drink will be a bit "dirty."  At times, I've dissolved Korean Ginseng tea mix in with the spice for an energy boost.
• Canning jar with lid-- I like wide mouths because they are less messy to fill for other projects.  

1. Fill canning jar 1/3-1/2 with water and drop in a tea bag. 
2. Nuke in microwave (topless!) for 60 seconds +/-
3. Top off canning jar with milk, spice (2 tsp +/-), sweetener (1.5 tbs +/-)
4. Nuke again in the microwave (topless) for 60 seconds +/-
5. Add top and shake like a martini until ingredients blended and desired frothiness is achieved
6. Remove top, fish out tea bag, and enjoy straight from "drinking jar"

Book Review: Early Retirement Extreme

It started out with looking for quick, informative podcasts I could play during my vigils on The Wall (scraping paper off the upstairs rooms).  I landed on Money Girl, with its fast and upbeat episodes.  That got grating after a couple hours.  It was the same basic advice on rotation:  budget until you earn more than you spend, pay off your short term debt, max out your tax shelters (be slow to repay mortgage and tuition, fund your 401K and IRA).  From there, it's just a long habitual slog towards retirement.  Despite the lip service to frugality, every show is sponsored by someone looking to send you a new bill; even when there is no sponsor, the host is hawking her book or "financial coaching" services.  Sigh.  Where is the finance 201 course?

The best personal finance books I've read have been A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Your Money or Your Life.  Starting there, I found a lot of folks on Amazon had also purchased something called Early Retirement Extreme.

Jacob Fisker is an hardcore austerity advocate, in a similar vein to Tim Ferriss when he's out to achieve a mission in the shortest possible amount of time.  Fisker says it is possible to get yourself to "Financial Independence" within 5 years.  His main focus is on cutting back on unnecessary consumption through a combination of minimalism and DIY cross-skilling.  This could bring your yearly costs down below what others would call the poverty line.  From there, if you keep the same employment, you'd by default be saving  more than half your income which you could plow into investments and income generating initiatives which hedge inflation and perhaps offer a small real return.

I'm not quite ready to take things to The Extreme, but his points of view helped reset more ambitious goal posts-- I agree that we have an unnecessarily large house for 2 people, 2 furs, 2 scales, and 4 feathers.  If we'd wanted to buy a mobile home instead, our cost structure would be a lot lower.  But I agree with paying it off faster than 15 years because that debt structure ties you into working for a reliable income for a really long time in a pretty fixed location.  Sublets or some other income generation might be an even more lucrative way to convert square footage to income.  You'd be hard pressed to start a B&B in a trailer park.  Likewise, ditching the car exclusively for a bike does not seem like a savvy cold turkey move in Socal.  Perhaps a slightly more moderate interpretation will play out well as Fisker has only been formally "retired" for 2 years and has been making decent royalties on his self-published book in the interim.  Who knows if he will revise his position on financing if he has kids or encounters health problems in old age.

soapnut shampoo

Is it just me or did it ever bother you that the actresses on The Walking Dead and Lost always looked so... clean?  No products, rationed showers, and yet... In an attempt to recreate this look authentically, I've scaled back a lot of high maintenance habits one picks up as a teenager (ironically, the demographic least likely to need any sort of beauty boost).  The latest experiment involves soapnut shampoo and in most circumstances can be parallel processed with weekend cooking adventures.  I read a derivative of this in the book "Making it" but didn't have any of the ingredients at the time.  A year or so into this DIY thing, I'm way better provisioned.

Inputs

• (Homegrown acorn squash and wide mouthed canning jars entirely optional.)
• Soapnuts (calls for 5 nuts, but I threw in 10 because I was using "brut" bottles) - these are laundry soap alternatives available on Amazon and with the greywater cistern experiment, I had about 5 lbs of them lying around.
• Water- I used a pint glass to fill 2 bottles.  This is as much as mini crock could handle and since this stuff is fresh, you probably don't want to make oodles of it at once anyway.
• Mini-crockpot or standard issue pot + burner- MaEpic sent me her spare which has been perfect for these sorts of Jungle Jane adventures.  Pot works fine, but takes more supervision and occupies a burner which you might need for your split pea soup project.
• Cheese cloth or other filtering implement (possibly clothes pins/rubberbands/etc. for ease of use).
• Funnel (possibly widemouthed container with spout for liquid transfer)
• Cool small bottles - these are single serving champagne bottles purchased after reading "Sparkle" a self-indulgent chick lifecoaching book which advocates a "champagne diet" and comes with requisite pink and rhinestone cover (all of this thankfully masked by buying the kindle edition and reading on my iPhone).  TIL you can get lifecoaching credentials through online programs for less than 40 hours of work!  Would suggest the darker J Roget brand if confronted with a selection in BevMo.  It tasted better and was fizzier than its clear wide-mouthed Karma cousin.  Big mouths --> this runny shampoo will slosh all over the shower before a small share of it will make its way to your hair.   Bonus points for spray bottles for applicators.  You may have misgivings about choosing glass if you are inclined to drop stuff in the shower or balance things on precariously thin/crowded ledges. 
• *optional and awesome: 10 drops of essential oils or sprig or two of fresh herbs.  Rosemary is rad any time.  Lavender has calming effects if you tend to shower to unwind at the end of the day (or want to encourage hair growth).  Peppermint has some pickup if morning is more your style.  

Assembly:

1. Simmer your pint of water and soapnuts for a while-- say 20 mins stovetop.  Or just forget about them until they've turned the water in the crockpot a steamy golden brown.  
2. Add essential oil or herbal amendments if using and allow to cool.
3. Move out of pot and into wide-mouthed pour-friendly container (if available)
4. Line your funnel with filtration medium and pour liquid into bottles.  (soapnuts can be transferred into a pouch for a second life on laundry duty)
5. Refrigerate if not planning to use in the next week or so as this is a fresh product-- goes double for folks taking the herbal vs. essential oil route.  Mentally note that while it may be chilling in the fridge, this is no longer a champagne product

Notes on use:  this stuff won't lather the way a conventional shampoo does, or make your hair "squeaky" clean.  Think of it more as a rinse.  It is soapy-- shake the bottle and admire the foam.  It won't strip your hair of natural oils and cause it to dry out, thin at the ends, or create a heavy duty conditioner dependency.  Plus you get to choose what your hair smells like.  I'm trying this to extend the life of a flagging supermarket shampoo bottle.  If it does the trick, I've got 5 lbs of soapnuts to experiment with.  If it doesn't work out, there's a bunch of interesting shampoo bars on Etsy to investigate.

DIY Deodorant

So the jury is still out on whether products in commercial deodorants can lead to negative health outcomes.  (Wiki summary here)  In reading, "Making It," I realized I had most of the inputs for a DIY adventure and decided to give it a shot.

Empty deodorant stick (the roll up platform kind-- travel size is most manageable)
1 tablespoon beeswax
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/8 tsp tea tree oil
1/8 tsp lavender or other essential oil

Combine beeswax and olive oil in a double boiler (or functional equivalent).  This stuff is messy and I stray towards pretty small quantities, so I use a little gladware cup.  I tried nuking it in the microwave, but stirring the wax was too interruptive.  Mix until fully melted + blended.  Add tea tree oil for its antiseptic properties.  Add another essential oil like lavender to moderate its smell.  I tried frankincense & myrrh the second time around and liked the smell better-- but it still smells 90% like tea tree.    Pour into the rewound deodorant stick.  Let cool and you're good to go.

This stuff doesn't have antiperspirant properties, so if sweat through is a big concern, this project probably isn't for you.  The signature scent potential is appealing so I may experiment with a couple more batches of this.

By the Books

Speaking of that idyllic shot of bookshelf and comfy chair (consignment shopping for the win)...

Some of us have the gift of grok, we can disappear into a powertool encrusted cave and emerge with-- reclaimed romex wrought iron window-mirror knock off...  I am not that some of us.  I'm more like the Diablo archivist, Deckard Cain.  I surround myself with stacks of topical literature trying to triangulate on consensus and brinksmanship from myriad points of view.  As a consequence, I'm inordinately interested in friend's libraries as a mirror into their soul or breadcrumbs as to why I like them.   

In the event you find yourself more in the Cain camp, here is my current literary canon:  

*Letters of a Woman Homesteader. Stewart, Elinore Pruitt.  Collected correspondence from a widow who moves to Wyoming in 1909.  Free download from Amazon, quick read.  Holy cow were there some optimistic, git 'er done types at the turn of the century!  Makes the small complaints about lack of heat or shower seem trivial, plus better tune into the spirit of the times when Halladay broke ground.  

*The American Frugal Housewife.  Child, Lydia Maria Francis.  1832.  Housekeeping tips from pre-Halladay era.  Free download on Amazon.  You won't recognize half of the inputs, so these aren't actionable recipes, but the spirit of frugality and industriousness is strong with this one.   

*Getting Things Done.  Allen, David.  When people say I have "my sh*t together," it's largely a credit to this book.  Like most people, I've settled on a lighter weight version of the project management routines he outlines (with periodic returns to the well).

*Three Black Skirts and One Hundred everybody needs a couple pink girl power books.  Three Black Skirts was the first how to stay sane as a semi-autonomous 20-something guide.  One Hundred appealed to my compulsion to make lists and collect stuff.   

*The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Work Week.  Ferriss, Timothy.  Tim is the ultimate hacker, tearing an objective down to the studs and finding the most expedient way to get there (bonus points if its also unorthodox).  The TF diet helped MacGyver and I slim down last summer while the work week helped me escape from a career that was all about optics and being first in/last out/first to respond to weekend email.  

*The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer.  Lived up to its title (twice) and has a super accessible training schedule.  I was hoping it would have tips on speed training for an upcoming relay, but sadly, this is all about finishing and not about setting PR.  

*Making It and The Urban Homestead.  Coyne, Kelly.  Granted, she came across a bit extreme when the first chapter discussed alternatives for the toothbrush.  This was the first survey into sustainable living.  Have found myself pulling these out of the archives when looking for natural cleaning recipes to grey water capture designs.  

*Home Comforts.  Mendelson, Cheryl.  A home ec geek!  Super rare spawn!  Her book is super fun to page through sighing about how long it will be before making sure we vacuum the blinds fortnightly tops our to do list.  

*A Random Walk Down Wallstreet.  Malkiel, Burton.  Loved it, helped me to save the majority of my income to go back to school.  I still use the asset allocation suggestions he provides in the last chapter.  It was written pre-housing bubble, so he's a bit more optimistic on the ROI of home ownership vs. renting, but so are we.  

*Your Money or Your Life.  Dominguez, Joe.  Sparked the realization that to be independently wealthy needn't take the form of a trust fund and an approach for "fully loading" your hourly wage to account for costuming/elbow rubbing/decompressing.  In short, this book got me aspiring to be more of a cottage industrial.  

*The Tightwad Gazette.  Most of this is too tight for me.  Plus it's a compendium of e-zines put together before the internet was so big, so a lot of the tips aren't really the most frugal anymore.  That said, I love the concept of documenting and celebrating ways one saves money.    

*Enough.  Bogle, John.  Deeply respect this dude for coming up with the concept of index funds and making them available at Vanguard.  

*World Changing.  Found this one in a library in Oregon and loved it.  It's basically an encyclopedia of the things they think are broken in the world and what cool skunkworks projects are underway to address them.  

*Gaia's Garden.  Hemenway, Toby.  First introduction to permaculture, the concept of plant guilds, and the concept of allelopathic walnut trees that can poison everything beneath them (except agapanthus I'm desperate to uproot).  

*The Vegetable Gardener's Bible.  Smith, Edward.  Deep beds!  Cold frames?  

*Victory Garden Cookbook.  Loved the backstory about it being a supplement to a TV show encouraging folks to start victory gardens and not knowing what to do with the bounty.  That said, skews towards the sub-zone 9b crowd and some very unappealing staple veggies.  

*City Chicks.  Foreman, Patricia.  A bit misleading, her "microflock" is 20+.  This was the best book I found geared towards folks with the luxury of a yard, but the responsibility that comes with close neighbors.  Deep dive into chicken diets and how to diy.  You will have a minor in composting when you finish this book.  

*The Art of Raising a Puppy.  Monks of New Skete.  Read this on the plane from Boston to Orange County with a 4 lb bundle of joy under the seat in front of me.  Got me through the first months until Kai was old enough for puppy K and doggie day care. 

*The Whole Pet Diet.  Super helpful when Kai was having health troubles.  Turns out most of it was puppy immune system catching up and sketchy chemicals sprayed on the apartment complex lawn.  That said, we learned how to cook her chicken dinner and accidentally started eating more vegetables to get rid of her scraps.   

*The Singularity is Near.  Kurzweil, Ray.  I personally don't believe I'll live forever, but that sliver of possibility really changes the way one approaches life and the decisions one makes, eh?  

*Willpower.  Baumeister, Roy.  Partially because I love spinning through the pop lit version of the heavy duty lit review authors of theses past.  Partially because when times are tough, I'd rather believe I just need to muscle in 10,000 hours, however crappy they may be, and I too will be considered a virtuoso (see also:  Talent is Overrated)...  oh, and Baumeister offered more insight into why MacGyver is so careful to make sure my glycemic index does not drop perilously low.   

*A Pattern Language.  This group rocks.  They pull apart all of these patterns that change the way you look at architecture and space.  I was so inspired, I got MacGyver to rotate my work desk 90 degrees in order to have a more "quiet back" and feel less paranoid.  Elements of their observations are baked into every home design decision we've made, and even the meta-process of slowly revamping and prototyping, rather than gutting the house and designing it's rennovated version in a vacuum.  

*Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft.  Buckland, Raymond.  You ever have something you just couldn't bring yourself to purchase when you knew someone else would be reviewing the credit card statement.  Yeah.  Not planning to do any "skyclad" rituals on the next Samhain, but it is kind of cool to see where Science and Religion (however disorganized) diverge and maybe laugh quietly to myself when the trend reverses.  

*The Secret.  Byrne, Rhonda.  See above.  

*The Illiad & the Odyssey.  Homer.  Because we needed some handsome leather bound tomes.  Plus I've read both as an almost-classics major and James Joyce enthusiast.  

*The Lord of the Rings.  Another handsome leather bound tome.  Plus a good overall story, if you have the time to sit down and crack it.  

*Faceforward and Making Faces.  Kevyn Aucoin.  Incredible coffee table books of one famous actress being a dead ringer for another famous actress/actor using the magic of makeup.  Eye Candy.  

*Caravaggio.  Him and Bernini were the highlight of studying abroad in Rome.  Eye candy.  

*V for Vendetta.  More eye candy.  And nerd cred.  

*Fell... misc. Ben Templesmith graphics.  Modern day Caravaggio, imho.  

*Game of Thrones.  Martin, George.  The HBO series was so good!  and true to the books!  Midway through book 2 and this is my go-to read on my phone for those long plane rides.  

Siegecraft

In 7th grade social studies, we were assigned to build a budget for a family living at the poverty line.  I got an A-.  Surprisingly, the teacher didn't take issue with my pollyanna claim the family could save 10% of their income for emergencies.  Instead, he felt that the daily breakfast of cereal and OJ "lacked variety."  I pondered this over my daily ration of cheerios and OJ.    

I've found myself doing themes and variations of this same assignment ever since.  Minimum wage wenching at a Renaissance faire was easily the hardest work (and best accidental diet) I ever had, even with parent-subsidized R&R during the weekdays.  At one point in my salaried past life, I was saving 60% of my income to cover business school which made the b-school travel and carousing feel as self-indulgent as an Enron team building event.  At another point, I obsessed (and still do) over financial independence: cutting costs and setting up enough passive revenue streams that you work because you choose to, not because you have to.  Now, with hundreds of thousands in the money pit, realization of FI is illusory.  Now a good month is one where I earn more than I spend at Home Depot.  

Lately, I've been pretty intrigued with the refrain in Game of Thrones:  Winter is Coming.  Sure, Southern California doesn't really have seasons, but if some catastrophic event were to allow, say, Zombies to walk the earth, how big of a lifestyle hit are we talking about here?  To that end, MacGyver and I are loosely following another 101 [things] in 1001 [days] meme.  I'm hoping it's a more interesting way to grind out those really arduous house projects that have no end in sight.  One meta-goal I'm pretty excited about is "6 month siege," though we'll probably have to leave the fort for work.  Full list is here.   

Mildew Remedy

I was afraid drying the couch cushion covers would shrink them.  As a result, the couch smells about as bad as Kai that time she introduced herself to a skunk.  A 10 lb dog is one thing, but we don't have nearly enough tomato bisque (or Axe) to cover the couch, so I resorted to a remedy out of Kelly Coyne's Making It.  

Mildew Spritzer

Cost/Treatment:  $0.50

• 1 tablespoon tea tree oil (first package thrown over padlocked overgrown fence yesterday)
• 1 cup tap water
• 1 commandeered water container and spray nozzle

If I could do it again, I'd choose a day when we're not working from home.  Tea tree turned out to be overwhelmingly fragrant itself (think rancid pine sap).  Thankfully, it seems to be dissipating and taking The Stench with it.  

1,000,001 Ways to Save Money

A er... incomplete list...

1.  Home brew coffee $0.67/cup

2.  Buy gently used jeans off eBay $83.02/pair

3.  Carpool to work $4.00/day

4.  Buy vs. rent $548.85/month +equity

5.  Home brew craft beer $0.15-$1.15/bottle

6.  Vermicompost $2/lb

7.  OTC pet allergy meds $1.84/dose
8.  Insurance Broker (home) $207.05 + $358,750 more coverage
9.  Mortgage Broker $4,000 seller credit retained +13 bp interest rate reduction
10.  Redfin Realtor $2,400 +  21% reduction from list
11. Used Amazon books $2.81-$23.85/book (AMZN vs B&N new)
12.  Audit cell phone feature usage $15/month
13.  Lender cashback credit card applied to mortgage $0.01/$1 charged
14.  Ask retailer for replacement plate from original set $5.00
15.  Bed Bath & Beyond coupon $5
16.  Moving boxes from Home vs. Office Depot $3.50/box +10% more volume
17.  At restaurants order soup or salad instead of meaty entree $2 per meal
18.  Keep receipts and return unused items $60/doorknob @ home depot
19.  Shop contractors $81/repipe and a more competent team
20.  Downgrade internet baud 5 Mbps $15/mo
21.  Follow up about commitment to discount vanity saved $130 off $279 list
22.  Use total wine coupon on Bruery stock up $10
23.  DIY worm compost bin $61.73
24.  Home Depot sale avocado trees vs. fancy mail order lamb hass variety.  $70.47 + an extra tree for hass-reed extended season
25.  Report wrong version (paperback) of used book was shipped; get refund.  $30
26.  Consolidate auto insurance with home owner's for both vehicles.  $600

L2eBay

Goodwill never struck me as a killer app.  Either you donate there or you shop there, seldom both...  It seems broken in a feudalistic way.

The "e" in e-Bay might as well stand for "egalitarian."

Buy:  I paid $16.98 for pre-owned jeans I had been planning to pay $100 for *on sale.* Sure, this won't work for every item.  I shudder to think what I might have paid in shipping for the $300 recliner MacGyver and I found in a local consignment shop.  But it's enough to make you run a quick e-Bay search before clicking "checkout" on larger ticket items.

Sell: e-Bay has a giant network of trading assistants to help you move your cast-offs with less hassle and more kickbacks than you would see with a Goodwill errand or intrepid listing on Craigslist.  If the Haunted House is still offering up curiosities after closing next month, I might become a TA myself...  Buyer's remorse is paying $10 for a vintage Maxwell House coffee can (operation Audrey III), only to see a half dozen identical articles languishing in the house during the inspection... At the very least, I can engage a local broker should I come across extraneous corporate swag that commands a good price in certain circles.

Rage Quitting Starbucks for Fun and Profit

It turned out to be a mega hassle to get reissued a working Starbucks Rewards card after paying to participate in their pilot program a few years back.  

Thus began the French Press project, which became one of those rare dominating alternatives that is cheaper, more convenient, and healthier.

Cheaper:  $0.93/cup.  Break even:  12 days.  

• French press:  $20
• Bean grinder (optional):  $20
• Snobby non-SBUX beans:  $30 (32 cups)
• 2 cans of whip cream, a couple cups of sugar (only during transition process)

More convenient:  

• Don't need to dress and leave the house
• No replacing leashes Kai chews through while tied to the trashcan outside 
• Less coffee cup waste and frequent trips to trash chute
• More coffee grounds for compost/vermiculture adventures 

Healthier:  

• Decreased refined sugar consumption
• Increased Kai's walk length and variety  (no need to beeline for Starbucks and hurry home to avoid spilling)
• Rad experiments with different low cal condiments (stevia, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.)