A Little Bit Greener

So, I very much want to try new habits that will improve my life. I would like to live a little greener, because it would make me feel good and be good for my budget. So lately I've been thinking about green options.

What I've come up with so far that's doable for me :

- One that I've already done : kick my soda habit. For the last few years I've been drinking as much as a 2 liter of diet soda every single day. Every day! Do you have any idea how much that piles up? It was sapping my budget and the bottles were cluttering up my room. I felt so bad about not recycling them. But through effort and withdrawal headaches, I have officially kicked the sweet stuff. I am drinking nothing but water and actually enjoying it. And it's about $10 in savings each week. Yeah!

- I've shrunk out of pretty much my entire closet in the last two years. I made do and wore them to the point that it got ridiculous, but then it was time to get rid of them. So now all those old clothes have found their way to a hamper downstairs, to be cut up to make doll clothing for my BJD. I'm still getting the hang of sewing, and it takes a weight off my nerves that I'm not buying new fabric just to screw up. Yay repurposing!

- Once my stand mixer arrives (I chose store pickup to save on shipping), I'll be making homemade breads and pizza dough, which I'm told is cheaper. And I'll be able to customize to my tastes. Bear in mind that there was a time in my life when I was getting Dominos delivery as often as 4 times a week. I have so many vices to lose.

- Biking to the grocer. I've located a bike path that will allow me to take backroads rather than the highway to reach the Kroger. I won't be able to try this out until I get the bike, which won't happen for about a week (my savings "budget bank" is at $64 right now). But I'm hopeful. It would save so much money in gas.

- Getting a trash can devoted specifically for cat litter. So far I have been saving grocery plastic bags and using them to scoop poop. But if I had a bin set up on the porch or garage, I could dump litter until the trash bag is full, and not worry about smells. Then I could convert to reusable bags.

- I want to try my hand at a little gardening. I'm so black thumbed that I killed a cactus once, so I don't know how this would turn out. And for a long time I assumed I couldn't grow anything I would eat, since because of my selective eating disorder, I won't even touch most fruits or veggies. But I have an idea now. I could grow tomatoes and herbs to make my own pizza sauce! My favorite food in the world! So yeah, I want to give it a go.

- Sometime in the future I'd like to get a small solar panel for the roof. One of the $100-200 ones. From my research its seems that wouldn't run much, but it would be enough to light my bedroom. I'll have to hide this one from my parents though (they don't approve of solar power). And I'll wait a year or two, because rumor has it that a new production method is going to slash the prices of solar panels by 80% come 2012.

Rapture Rundown

In response to the Rapture That Wasn't yesterday, I thought I'd post cliffnotes for Revelations for those who haven't actually read the book. Even if you're an atheist like me, I'd recommend checking it out. It's a fascinating read, very colorful.

It starts with Jesus (who is on fire) giving John dictation for letters to seven churches. I like you guys, but you other guys, knock it off or I'll whoop you. That sort of thing. Also there's some Satanic Jews.

Then John is summoned by an angel to visit heaven. There he sees God, lots of angels, some really freaky beasts, and Jesus (who is now a mutated lamb. He changes shape). God's got this book, right? With seals on it. Nobody can open it, until Jesus the Mutant Lamb steps up.

The first four seals summon the Horsemen. I'd like to note, only Death is named. The other three are supposed to 1. conquer, 2. take away peace, and 3. make things expensive. The fifth seal brings back the dead who were good people, and they chill out in heaven. The sixth seal causes nasty earthquake/blacksun voodoo. Everybody freaks out.

At this point, the Rapture happens. At least I think it's the Rapture (it's only called that in Thessalonians). 144,000 male virgins are "sealed", get everlasting life, and so on.

Anyway, on to the seventh seal! The seventh seal... does nothing for half an hour.

Seriously, that's what it says.

Then we get seven angels with trumpets. Also an angel throws a censor (incense burner) and causes more earthquake voodoo. First trumpet : hail and bloodfire. Second trumpet : fiery mountain, ocean of blood. Third : a star named Wormwood crashes into the rivers. Fourth : 1/3rd of sun, moon, stars blacked out.

Pause while one of the angels has a panic attack.

Fifth trumpet : another star falls. It unlocks the bottomless pit. Horrific chimeraic locust/scorpion/human/horse things swarm out. They sting people, who suffer for five months and can't even kill themselves to stop the pain.

Sixth trumpet : four angels come up from the river, summon a horseman army on more chimera horse/lion/scorpion mounts. They kill 1/3rd of the world.

We pause again so John can talk to an angel with a book. God makes John eat the book. It tastes like honey, but causes indigestion.

Then there's these two prophets. They can cause plague and other voodoo. Suddenly a beast comes out of the bottomless pit and kills them. They stay dead three days, then go to heaven. For the sake of reference, we shall call this Beast A.

Seventh trumpet sounds. Everybody in heaven throws a "Yay God!" party (they do this about every five minutes throughout Revelations).

This part is my favorite. So, there's this pregnant chick, clothed in a sun/moon/stars theme. And there's a seven headed, ten horned (flying purple people eater) dragonbeast, who we later find out is Satan. She runs and hides, because Satan wants to eat the baby. He wars with the angels, they kick him out of heaven. He spots the chick on Earth, tries to drown her with water from his mouth, but fails. She grows eagle wings and flies off. He sulks and goes to fight other people instead.

Satan meets up with another seven headed, ten horned beast (small world!). We shall call this Beast B. Satan and Beast B get people to worship them. Yet another beast (Beast C) gets people to build a statue of Beast B, they worship it (or get shot), they get the mark of the beast (Beast B, I assume) tattooed on them. And it turns out, the Bible blatantly says that 666 is supposed to be a riddle. Some people think it's supposed to be Emperor Nero. Beast B also blasphemes a lot.

So God smites Babylon (the city where the Beast is) and the people worshiping Beast B, by carving it up with sickles and pouring blood from a Winepress of Wrath (coolest symbolism ever!). The beast (B) is slain.

Repeating the constant seven theme, we get seven angels with vials, with plagues in them. They are : 1. body sores, 2. sea of blood, dead fish, 3. rivers of blood, 4. the sun sets people on fire, 5. darkness, 6. the river Euphrates dries up -

We pause while voodoo devil frogs convince some Kings to fight.

- and 7. more earthquakes/lightning.

And then John meets the Whore of Babylon. Man, this woman is slutty. She's done everyone. She's got her own seven headed beast (Beast D), and this one's red. So God makes all the Kings she slept with hate her so much that they cannibalize her.

One of the angels gloats for awhile about how the mighty city of Babylon has fallen, and how great it used to be. I'm sure there's several religious people out there who assume this part is about the USA.

So, it turns out Jesus is getting married! An angel cracks a joke by calling the vultures eating the dead a "marriage supper". The angels throw Beast B and his followers into the lake of fire and kill everyone else. They lock Satan up in the bottomless pit for a thousand years. Jesus rules over the Earth for a thousand years with some of the dead (but not all). But then Satan gets loose and convinces people to fight again. So God burns them all and casts Satan into the lake of fire too.

Then, everybody else comes to life and gets sorted out into good/notgood, and the baddies go to the lake of fire, and the good ones go to a reborn City of Jerusalem, which is really sparkly, and they live with God and Jesus.

Jesus gets married to the anthropomorphized city, and they all live happily ever after. Except for the bad guys. And dogs. Apparently dogs go to hell.

The end! So, what did I take from reading this book? Well, the most interesting thing I noticed is that on several occasions, the visuals in Revelations are blatantly pointed out as being symbolic. One angel even goes into detail about how Beast D's heads represent the various kings, etc. For those who might take the book literally, this sets a very dangerous precedent. Just how many stories in the Bible are metaphorical? Or is Revelations, as some people think, really just a tacked on fanfic by a guy with a lot of enthusiasm (and possibly drugs)?

Whatever the result, it's still a very dramatic, if sometimes perplexing and poorly organized, story.

Back for the Summer / Budgeting

The blog unfortunately fell apart as I concentrated on schoolwork. But now I am off for the summer, and thought I'd pick up this thing again.

What has changed? Well, I'm now at 188 lbs. I'm happy with the grades I got. I'm not couponing much because it's too far to drive to the local recycling center (I would still strongly recommend it, it's very satisfying). And I'm planning to go to Japan in late July, and will post about my trip on here.

Right now I'm focusing on controlling my budget. Not an easy task.

I grew up in what I must admit was a wealthy family. The concepts of budget and frugality were never introduced to me, and I was accustomed to a rather pricey lifestyle. Even in adulthood, the only major job I really held was working for my father's business. I have always been supported by them financially. They still pay off my credit card now, since I'm in college rather than working. So don't hold me up as a guru in any sense. I have severe flaws.

Despite this comfy environment, from early youth I had a love affair with the idea of wilderness survival and running away from home. This desire to be independant and self sufficient has never left me. It has merely mutated into a love of the concept of homesteading and frugality.

Loving something doesn't mean you're any good at it, though, as I found out the hard way during a short time when I was homeless. And even now at age 26 I have terrible spending habits, and couldn't even tell you how much I spend a month. Probably a lot. So since I have the summer off, I've decided to fix that. I'm doing it in my own way, not one I'd recommend as a healthy lifestyle or anything. Just what works for me.

The first step was to set up a budget. I decided on $10 per day, for a total of $300-310 per month. That to everything except gasoline and parent-approved big purchases, such as the patio furniture we'll be getting soon. Yeah, you read that right. I'm eating frugally but buying a bunch new furniture. Icon of sensible spending, I am not. But the purpose of this, for me, is to get myself under control, not to actually live cheaply.

The second step was one that most people won't make, because they will be juggling the choice of healthy food vs. cheap food. I just wanted cheap. And it turns out, junk food is very cheap! So I took a calculator to the grocer, calculated up the calories in each container, and divided it by the price to find out how many calories I was getting per dollar. As in, 800 calories / $1.50 = 533 cals per $1. This tells me how much "fuel" I'm getting for my money's worth.

I made the decision to keep my purchases confined to foods that give me 500 or more calories per dollar. On my restricted diet, that means I'm eating for less than $3 a day.

The other $7, left over at the end of the day, gets put into a "budget bank", which I then use to purchase household supplies. Mostly I have to keep buying catfood, litter, and toilet paper, so I decided to downgrade and get the cheaper versions. The big bags of the chalky litter vs. the round pellets, etc.

Any money left over, I decided, goes towards buying whatever I want. But I'm only allowed to spend money from the bank, so I can't "borrow" from future days and then run out of money through poor planning. I also decided that useful, money saving items should take priority. So far I have purchased a stand mixer, which I can use to make dough for cheaper homemade pizza. Next I plan to get a bike so I can ride to the grocer rather than driving, thus saving on gas.

My results so far? Surprisingly easy to accrue my savings, assuming I don't buy ANYTHING and never leave the house. God I'm bored. Whenever I see something I want, it goes on the budget list, so the list is now very long (and includes frivolous things like a $500 doll or a chainmail shirt). But I can't buy them until I have the money, and until after I buy the useful stuff. So I'm chomping at the bit quite a lot. But I've been very good. No crazy spending binges.

Things I've bought for 500+ calories per dollar :
- Flour, grits, rice, grains, and other cooking supplies (ie butter) are always extremely cheap
- Tortillas, box mixes for things like brownies or cornbread
- Cheap hot dogs, chicken if it's on sale
- Cheap peanut butter crackers... you know, the bright orange ones
- Totinos pizzas
- Storebrand breads
- Garlic bread, oddly enough
- The ingredients for rice krispie treats
- Ramen, the king of cheap food!
- Doritos and most chips
- Full fat milk

Things that, to my surprise, didn't make the cut :
- Canned soups. Man I miss tomato soup.
- Spaggheti O's
- Banquet $1 frozen dinners

I think it helps that I'm a selective eater... I can happily eat cheap quality foods so long as they're in the meat, dairy or grain families. I don't like toppings, I don't like spices, and I don't miss fruits because I never eat them anyway. I think I sense my health declining a bit (since for the moment I've given up my very costly nutritional shakes), so I may have to set aside a little money for health, much as I'm loathe to.

I'll let you know how using the bike to get around works out... I really, really want to cut down my gas needs. Ye gods, it's about $60 for a tank nowadays.

Customers Suck

Schadenfreude! A big German word for the twisted glee we get in the pain of others. Not something that's polite to discuss in public, but everyone feels it, and everyone loves a little gossip now and then. These days, there are forums specifically for this type of gossip, where you can read stories about how much life sucks for strangers you've never met, and feel glad that you're not as bad off as all that.

Customers Suck is a website where members can post stories about the stupid, annoying, or downright hostile customers they've had to put up with, for the amusement of the other members. Some of the stories are bland or minor, but some quickly reach levels of incredulity. And yet, odds are that many of them are true. After all, anyone who's ever held a retail job has at least one of these stories to tell. Some customers just seem to be completely insane.

Here is one of my stories. A woman boarded her dog at our kennel. But when she returned to pick it up, she had issue with the bill. She argued with the manager. Finally she declared "Here's what I think of that!" and stalked out of the lobby, ran to her car, and peeled out of the parking lot. The staff soon realized three things.

1. She'd left behind her wallet.
2. She'd left behind her dog.
3. She'd left behind her daughter.

They tried to call the number on file, but couldn't reach her. They waited for her to return, but she didn't. At a loss for options, they put the dog back into boarding, charged the credit card for the original bill (seeing as they had her signature authorizing it), and put the little girl in the breakroom where she could watch Disney movies and eat an employee's lunch. At closing, with still no sign of the woman, they called the police to come pick up the girl and wallet.

The next day, the woman called up, enraged that we had "arrested" her daughter. She screamed obscenities and then hung up. She never returned for her dog; it was eventually adopted by a vet.

For many more such stories, hit up the website's forum. It also includes subforums for complaining about bad employees, coworkers, and managers. The War Stories section alone is worth a look for the sheer jaw-dropping madness.

Larp

Larp stands for Live Action RolePlay. You remember when you were a kid, playing cowboys or superheroes, and maybe you stole your mother’s red sweater and wrapped the arms around your neck so you could have a cape? Larp is that for grownups. Like gourmet mac and cheese, it takes the childish premise and makes it something much more interesting. And too expensive for a child’s pocket money.

The most common Larp is the quasi-medeival, sometimes fantasy setting, such as the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) and, here in the southeast, SOLAR. It’s basically Dungeons and Dragons, only you run around the woods in full costume and makeup, and beat other people with padded sticks. Other common themes are vampires and, lately, steampunk or cyberpunk.

Is it hokey? Yeah, a little. Is it fun? Heck yeah.

Okay, so obligatory storytime. A friend and I were at Solar, sitting on the steps of the Garrison with other friends. Like many buildings at Solar, the Garrison had a “Ward”, or forcefield of magic X-mas lights that kept monsters out. Yay! We can sleep safely without being murdered in our beds! But no, on this evening, as we were sitting there chatting, we see a monster coming up the path (we knew it was a monster because he was wearing the tabard “poncho” that all monsters wear), with his arms crossed above his head. This means he is “rifting”, ie in another dimension or something. Essentially, we have to pretend we can’t see him.

And as we try not to watch, he steps right through the Ward and up onto the porch with us.

Now, any monster who can step right through a Ward is 1. very powerful, and 2. scary as hell. But we still can’t “see” this guy. And he’s standing right next to us! After a moment of terrified silence, we desperately try to restart the conversation. Ever talked about the weather while death is looming over your shoulder? Not easy.

Finally he came out of rift, and the Chief of the Garrison shouted “Ward Down!” and we bolted from the porch in every direction. I made it safely to the Armorsmith’s Guild. Some were not so lucky. But that wait on the porch for the bloodbath to start? Longest minute of my life.

Larp can be about practically anything. Got some friends, some clothing that could almost be a costume if you looked at it sideways, and a place to run around? You can start a Larp group! Many people pick their favorite fandoms or genres and play the characters from those. I was a member of a Final Fantasy VIII group (I played Irvine Kinneas), and we had many merry times, roaming the backwoods of northern Georgia, fighting off invisible baddies.

Odds are there's a Larp going on in your area, if you look hard enough. Some are pretty freestyle, others have strict requirements and hefty participation fees (Solar requires full costume, plus makeup for non-humans, and $45 per event, not counting boarding). Come try it out sometime; running for your life from ogres is a great way to meet new people!

Oh God, They're Coming Through the Walls!

A couple years ago I purchased my first house. I promptly discovered the “joys” of homeowning as the house insisted on throwing every problem it could at me right from the start. The basement flooded three times from the septic tank backing up. The dishwasher broke, the air conditioning broke, the mailbox fell down. Every possible kind of pest moved in. And the elastic snapped on the fuzzy dice (geek reference!).

Don’t get me wrong, I love my house. And I feel stronger for the lessons it taught me the hard way. After crying the first few times things went horribly wrong, I learned what to do about them. And it inspired my love of homemaking (and my churning hatred of woodpeckers).

I want to talk about pests in particular, so I’ve titled this post as a reference to the time when ants were actually pouring in through my electrical outlet. Yikes. But enough about the ants. Today I want to concentrate on my arch-enemies : squirrels.

I frickin’ hate squirrels.

My house is wood sided. Every fall the woodpeckers (Rraugh! Woodpeckers!!!) drill holes into the walls, and the squirrels widen them and move in. At first I thought this was just something homeowners lived with; afterall, in my childhood home we occasionally had squirrels in the attic, and they were noisy, but otherwise innocuous.

But then they burrowed into my spare bedroom. They chewed. Through The wall. Right into the bedroom. It was freaky as hell.

The upside is, I am now fully equipped to deal with them. The first time, I tearfully called an exterminator, but watching him work made me realize I could do it myself, rather than shell out several hundred every fall. So I purchased a $100 “funnel trap” cage from a company that supplies the professionals. This one way cage is designed to be secured to the wall, directly over the hole the little bastards have made. You put it in place at night while they’re inside, and they have no choice but to walk into the trap. Once the hole is empty, you can seal it up by stuffing in metal wool (or insulation, or both), and nailing a metal sheet over the hole (I duct tape it in place first, then nail) and painting it to match the house (ugly, but it gets the job done). Then you dispose of the vermin to your method of preference.

I’ll tell you my method, but those of you who are sensitive might want to stop reading now.

Okay, let’s face it, squirrels try very hard to return to their nests or the nests they were born in. Simply evicting them and dropping them off on the side of the road doesn’t always work (I speak from experience). So if you’re not squeamish or treasuring every life, your best bet is to do away with the buggers.

Being a little squeamish myself, the method I’ve chosen may seem horrific, but it’s the fastest, safest, and cleanest way I’ve found.

I drown them.

Yeah, okay, you can shun me now. But it works. I fill the bathtub all the way, then drop in the occupied trap. Takes all of ten seconds for them to stop moving. I wait a few minutes to be sure, then I simply open the trap and dump the body into a trash bag.

Alternatively, you can eat them. I went through a “wild child” stage in my youth (I’ll probably blog that someday), inspired by books like “My Side of the Mountain”. Squirrel is mostly dark meat, and tastes a bit like duck, in my opinion. You get a fat one, plumped up in preparation for winter, and it’s not bad eating at all.

Comics

There was a brief window before I got too geeky to be dealt with, where my parents actually encouraged geeky behavior in me, thinking it was a sign that I was smart and therefore a winner. I was bribed to do my homework with Magic cards and Dungeons and Dragons books. And on my 10th birthday, I was given a large box my mother had bought for $10 at a yard sale. Inside.... comics.

One in particular stuck in my memory. X-men #1 (not as rare as it sounds). And halfway through the issue, a charming, sneaky, clever thief popped up, and I was hooked.

Gambit. I wanted to be him. Other people’s women swooned over him.

Time passed and the box and its contents were lost to Goodwill, but once I reached adulthood, I found a few comics at another yard sale. And there he was again. Gambit. Master of the cards, never giving a straight answer. Too arrogant for his own good. My collecting days began.

I like to think I own the largest Gambit-centric collection in a tri-state area. And yet it’s nowhere near completion.

But collecting hasn’t been a simple task. There were no comic stores anywhere near me, so I rummaged through flea markets for the few issues I could gather. Collecting out of order is very much like putting a jigsaw puzzle together with most of the pieces missing. “Okay, they’re on a boat in this one... why are they on a boat... and who is that, and why does she have green hair?”

Even after I discovered Oxford Books down in Atlanta (former home of the magnificent Jennie Breeden of the Devil’s Panties webcomic), I still didn’t know what issues to buy. Marvel is tricky with their continuities. X-men and X-men Uncanny are main universe, and so was X-treme X-men though it was a sideplot, but Astonishing X-men and Ultimate X-men are alternate universes and X-men Unlimited is not a series at all but a collection of character studies. And don’t even get me started on the more bizarre alternate universes like Mutant X and Gambit and the Externals. There’s like a million of them.

And while I’m on the subject, X-men is frickin’ complicated. There’s hundreds of characters fighting for screentime, and all of them have backgrounds and families and enemies and sometimes their own spinoff series. Half the time I don’t even recognize who they’re fighting. Though it helps that they name everyone as soon as they appear (they kinda have to!). Everytime a new group shows up it’s like the Mickey Mouse club rollcall.

Course, if you’re like me and you like puzzles and complication, this sounds like a good thing. In that case you’re a born comic collector. Come join us!

The benefits of comic collecting:

- Fairly cheap hobby. An issue is rarely more than $3, and if you collect through yard sales, you can get them for $1 or less. Only very old comics are worth lots of money (the rarest in my collection I bought for $20).

- They don’t take up much space. 60 comics is a stack about 6 inches high (my roommate measured them recently, don’t ask why).

- They’re purdy. I used to read manga, but black and white just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

- If you get into a complicated, long running series like X-men, you will NEVER be finished collecting. I’m always woefully behind on the current stuff. I turn around for one second, and what, Gambit’s Death now? Oh wait, he’s not anymore. But he’s working for who?! Why is he working for him! He hates that guy! Grahh!

For those who don’t care a lick about Gambit, here’s part of my non-Marvel collection. I like finding comics based on tv shows I used to watch. Can you recognize any of them?