Well, not the end of my debt sadly, but the end of the semester is near.
I handed in my last assignment today :D
I'm nervous as can be about exams, but there isn't much I can do about that beyond study.
What this means now is that I'll have some free time again! I'll be able to start my garden (front lawn snow is almost gone! Will probably be gone when I get home tonight!). I'll be able to start training for the Ride to Conquer Cancer (check my post on that here). I'll be able to go for runs...
And most importantly, I'll be able to spend more time on my blog :) I'll be able to put together more thoughtful posts than just the mental diarhea that seems to come out when I'm pressed for time. I'm thinking about doing a redesign too. As much as I love blue, it's... ummm.... boring.
New layout it is ;)
So while my posts are going to be sorely lacking on content over the next week until my exams are done, I assure you I'm not gone. I've got plans for posts on microlending, $2 dinner parties, composting, eating locally and possibly a guest post from a friend of mine who volunteers at one of the local car sharing groups; I just don't have the time to properly do them all justice this week. Please bear with me.
I'll be creeping all of your blogs while I'm in transit though, so keep up the good work guys ;) You're my mental refuge.
Showing posts with label Excuses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Excuses. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Potato Proof
There is no such thing as "can't"
There are only excuses.
I find this is particularly true with urban gardening. Unless you live in an illegal apartment with no windows, you can garden. I offer my own proof:
Those right there are potato plants growing in reusable shopping bags. I had some baby potatoes from the grocery store that were sprouting in my cupboard; rather than throw them in the garbage, I decided to plant them.
They grew :)
Not only did they grow, they also produced potatoes which I ended up eating in the fall.
All of my gardening last year was actually done in containers. Potatoes, herbs, asparagus, tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, you name it. You don't need to spend a lot either, as you can see above a little creativity can go a long way towards getting started. Friends of mine grew tomato plants out of the BOTTOM of their hanging baskets. You don't have to worry about staking them that way, and they don't take up any floor space :)
I will be trying to move my potatoes into the ground this year. We'll see how that goes.
I know of at least one blogger who is planning to write a whole series on urban gardening, which I am eagerly awaiting! I'll make sure to link to it when she puts it up :)
Has anyone done any creative gardening lately?
There are only excuses.
I find this is particularly true with urban gardening. Unless you live in an illegal apartment with no windows, you can garden. I offer my own proof:
Those right there are potato plants growing in reusable shopping bags. I had some baby potatoes from the grocery store that were sprouting in my cupboard; rather than throw them in the garbage, I decided to plant them.
They grew :)
Not only did they grow, they also produced potatoes which I ended up eating in the fall.
All of my gardening last year was actually done in containers. Potatoes, herbs, asparagus, tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, you name it. You don't need to spend a lot either, as you can see above a little creativity can go a long way towards getting started. Friends of mine grew tomato plants out of the BOTTOM of their hanging baskets. You don't have to worry about staking them that way, and they don't take up any floor space :)
I will be trying to move my potatoes into the ground this year. We'll see how that goes.
I know of at least one blogger who is planning to write a whole series on urban gardening, which I am eagerly awaiting! I'll make sure to link to it when she puts it up :)
Has anyone done any creative gardening lately?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tracking Coinage
Okay, a little legend for the calendars below:
*fritter fritter*
*fritter*
*fritter fritter fritter*
You hear that? That's the sound of me frittering away money on a near daily basis buying tea and breakfast items at the university. It occurred to me about half way through the month that I was doing this, so I decided to see what my spending would look like if I took the morning treats out of there. This was the result:
Considerably more no spend days!
However, when I totalled it up, my morning breakfasts out added up to about $30.79 over the course of the month. That's just over a dollar a day. I expected it to be much higher than that once I realized how often I was doing it.
Now I'm trying to decide whether this is something I want to stem for the sake of saving a little extra money, or just let slide for the sake of sanity? I know that the *right* answer is to bring my tea and scones from home and put the savings towards my emergency fund; but right now I am feeling a bit of frugal fatigue.
It sucks. Hard.
The savings grace of having this habit at the university is where I can go to get my snack attack breakfast fix. If I was getting a venti chai latte and scone at Starbucks, it would set me back about $8. Grabbing an extra large chai tea and scone at Cram Dunk? Closer to $2.50, $2 if they have day old baking. The tea itself is $1.25.
I have a month and a half until class is done. To be completely honest, I'm probably going to let myself fritter on this in the morning.
Frugal? No.
Sane? Yes.
I'm already crazy enough as it is, I don't need money driving me further down the rabbit hole.
Green = No Spend Day
Yellow = Spend Day
Red = Used Credit Card
Here's how it went for the month of February:
February - All Spending | ||||||
Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
| $75.00 | $1.25 | $0.00 | $1.25 | $24.00 | ||
| $0.00 | $2.09 | $0.00 | $2.85 | $3.16 | $117.15 | $13.13 |
| $0.00 | $27.37 | $199.59 | $2.85 | $15.24 | $1.60 | $0.00 |
| $0.00 | $3.57 | $4.20 | $0.00 | $1.60 | $31.66 | $1.25 |
| $0.00 | $1.25 | |||||
*fritter fritter*
*fritter*
*fritter fritter fritter*
You hear that? That's the sound of me frittering away money on a near daily basis buying tea and breakfast items at the university. It occurred to me about half way through the month that I was doing this, so I decided to see what my spending would look like if I took the morning treats out of there. This was the result:
February - Spending, Without Morning Snacks | ||||||
| Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
| $75.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $24.00 | ||
| $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $115.00 | $13.13 |
| $0.00 | $25.27 | $195.39 | $0.00 | $12.90 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| $0.00 | $3.57 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $31.66 | $1.25 |
| $0.00 | $0.00 | |||||
Considerably more no spend days!
However, when I totalled it up, my morning breakfasts out added up to about $30.79 over the course of the month. That's just over a dollar a day. I expected it to be much higher than that once I realized how often I was doing it.
Now I'm trying to decide whether this is something I want to stem for the sake of saving a little extra money, or just let slide for the sake of sanity? I know that the *right* answer is to bring my tea and scones from home and put the savings towards my emergency fund; but right now I am feeling a bit of frugal fatigue.
It sucks. Hard.
The savings grace of having this habit at the university is where I can go to get my snack attack breakfast fix. If I was getting a venti chai latte and scone at Starbucks, it would set me back about $8. Grabbing an extra large chai tea and scone at Cram Dunk? Closer to $2.50, $2 if they have day old baking. The tea itself is $1.25.
I have a month and a half until class is done. To be completely honest, I'm probably going to let myself fritter on this in the morning.
Frugal? No.
Sane? Yes.
I'm already crazy enough as it is, I don't need money driving me further down the rabbit hole.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Cost of a Guilty Pleasure
I know that taking a bath uses more water than taking a shower. I know this for a fact. Put the plug in while you're having a shower and note the water level when you're done, almost guaranteed the tub isn't even half full. From a green standpoint it's abhorrent that I prefer baths to showers, I know. However when I come inside after walking home from the bus stop in -35, a 5 minute lukewarm shower just doesn't get rid of the chill. It really doesn't. Enter long hot bath. I've been wondering for a little while what my baths are costing me though, seeing as during the middle of winter they happen much more frequently.
Excuse me while I geek out for a bit, I've been wanting to do this calculation for a while.
If you're looking for an easy metric unit reference sheet, I'd recommend using this: http://xkcd.com/526/ Geeky, somewhat tongue in cheek, and not necessarily 100% accurate. Perfect.
The temperature of cold tap water here is close to 10 degrees celsius. I wouldn't be surprised if it's colder than that right now, but I'm going to use this as my starting point. I like my baths somewhere around 43 degrees to start, which means the water has to be heated 33 degrees.
So now I know how much energy this is going to take. Kinda. This is assuming everything goes absolutely perfectly, and that every last bit of energy is converted into heat and goes directly into the water. As nice as that would be, it doesn't happen this way. My hot water tank is heated by natural gas, which isn't overly efficient. Lets assume my tank is 65% efficient.
44MJ / 0.65 = 67.69MJ
That's probably a little closer to what is actually being used to heat the water. My gas bill charges by the Gigajoule of energy. Not that they know the exact amount of energy I'm getting, they've just applied an average conversion factor to the volume of gas provided. Anyway, from my last set of utility bills:
$3.97/GJ for the gas itself
$0.53/GJ for the gas delivery
$0.23/GJ for the GST on the gas
$4.73/GJ for heat
$1.59/m3 for the water itself
$1.18/m3 to drain the water
$2.77/m3 for water
Apparently GST is charged on gas and electricity, but not water? Oh well. I'm only taking the variable charges on this, because I have to pay the fixed charges regardless of whether or not I take a bath. I'm also not taking the electricity for the bathroom fan into account, because I don't really feel like looking for the motor rating. That would mean actually finding the label! lol.
So my guilty pleasure is currently costing me:
(0.06769GJ x $4.73/GJ) + (0.32m3 x $2.77/m3) = $1.21
That's better than I was expecting. Cheaper than Starbucks, that's for sure. However, I can see how this would add up over time. Having a hot bath every day of the month rather than a quick shower? That's almost $40!
It's enough to make me think "I'll just have a shower tonight". Tomorrow, maybe not so much ;)
Excuse me while I geek out for a bit, I've been wanting to do this calculation for a while.
If you're looking for an easy metric unit reference sheet, I'd recommend using this: http://xkcd.com/526/ Geeky, somewhat tongue in cheek, and not necessarily 100% accurate. Perfect.
The temperature of cold tap water here is close to 10 degrees celsius. I wouldn't be surprised if it's colder than that right now, but I'm going to use this as my starting point. I like my baths somewhere around 43 degrees to start, which means the water has to be heated 33 degrees.
My tub, very crudely measured to bath water level, is approximately 40cm x 60cm x 135cm. I'm not going to take my body volume out of there, we'll just assume that I'm going to warm up the water at some point. This gives us a volume of approximately 0.32m3.
It takes 4.184 Joules of energy to warm up 1 gram of water by 1 degree celsius. 1 gram of water is approximately 1cm3. So, in order to warm up my bath water, I'm going to require:
(0.32m3) x (1,000,000cm3/1m3) x (33C) x (4.184J) = 44,183,040J or 44.18 MJ
So now I know how much energy this is going to take. Kinda. This is assuming everything goes absolutely perfectly, and that every last bit of energy is converted into heat and goes directly into the water. As nice as that would be, it doesn't happen this way. My hot water tank is heated by natural gas, which isn't overly efficient. Lets assume my tank is 65% efficient.
44MJ / 0.65 = 67.69MJ
That's probably a little closer to what is actually being used to heat the water. My gas bill charges by the Gigajoule of energy. Not that they know the exact amount of energy I'm getting, they've just applied an average conversion factor to the volume of gas provided. Anyway, from my last set of utility bills:
$0.53/GJ for the gas delivery
$0.23/GJ for the GST on the gas
$4.73/GJ for heat
$1.59/m3 for the water itself
$1.18/m3 to drain the water
$2.77/m3 for water
Apparently GST is charged on gas and electricity, but not water? Oh well. I'm only taking the variable charges on this, because I have to pay the fixed charges regardless of whether or not I take a bath. I'm also not taking the electricity for the bathroom fan into account, because I don't really feel like looking for the motor rating. That would mean actually finding the label! lol.
So my guilty pleasure is currently costing me:
(0.06769GJ x $4.73/GJ) + (0.32m3 x $2.77/m3) = $1.21
That's better than I was expecting. Cheaper than Starbucks, that's for sure. However, I can see how this would add up over time. Having a hot bath every day of the month rather than a quick shower? That's almost $40!
It's enough to make me think "I'll just have a shower tonight". Tomorrow, maybe not so much ;)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Excuse Avoidance
Yesterday morning should have been a Monday morning. I got up early to catch an earlier bus than usual, then realized as I was brushing my teeth it was in vain because it was the wrong bus. The right bus had already gone by 15 minutes earlier. Then as I was walking out the door to catch the next bus, I looked down at the peanut butter sandwich I had packed myself for breakfast and realized the bread had gone moldy. How did I miss that last night? As I got on the bus and sat down I realized my cell phone was sitting on the table by my front door. Then after popping into work, I went down to the university and found out that my instructor had started the seminar sessions before he had the first class, and I had already missed one.
It isn't actually that hard to do, you just have to actually think ahead to do it. Even if you don't have a desk at work where you can stash a bunch of food, you can stash a full meal in your purse if you think about it! The space it takes to throw a dried soup packet and a tea bag or instant coffee packet is about the space of a make up compact. Add some nuts, dried fruit or a granola bar and you're around the volume of a small wallet. Lets be honest, most of us have enough room in our bags for that. Throw it all in a sandwich bag and you don't have to worry about digging through your bag (as much) to find it. You could add reusable cutlery and a collapsible bowl and mug if you want to or if work doesn't have anything in the coffee room/your situation calls for it, but you can usually get a container and some hot water from a food court vendor for anywhere from 25 cents to free.
Does this sound like a Monday to anyone else?
Anyway, the whole point of this post was avoiding excuses, specifically in the food department. When I realized my packed breakfast wasn't going to do, my first urge was to stop off at Starbucks on the way to work. Old habits die hard. But, I didn't do it. Why not? I had back up. In my desk at work I have a plastic container of Raisin Bran, a small bag of quinoa puffs, dried miso soup, almonds, pistachios and tea. I've also kept oatmeal, dried fruit, other dried soups and chocolate in there in the past, as well as a frozen container of homemade stew in the lunch room freezer. I tend to get hungry throughout the day, so having food available is a must. Instead of grabbing a morning latte and scone, I grabbed a banana out of the company fruit bowl, had a handful of almonds out of my desk, and made a cup of tea. Not exactly a hearty breakfast, but it certainly calmed the beast growling in my stomach. Thankfully I had also grabbed a couple containers of pasta out of the fridge for lunch, but even if I had forgotten those I would have had lunch as well. As the Girl Guides say: Be Prepared.
It isn't actually that hard to do, you just have to actually think ahead to do it. Even if you don't have a desk at work where you can stash a bunch of food, you can stash a full meal in your purse if you think about it! The space it takes to throw a dried soup packet and a tea bag or instant coffee packet is about the space of a make up compact. Add some nuts, dried fruit or a granola bar and you're around the volume of a small wallet. Lets be honest, most of us have enough room in our bags for that. Throw it all in a sandwich bag and you don't have to worry about digging through your bag (as much) to find it. You could add reusable cutlery and a collapsible bowl and mug if you want to or if work doesn't have anything in the coffee room/your situation calls for it, but you can usually get a container and some hot water from a food court vendor for anywhere from 25 cents to free.A little bit of forethought can save a lot of money in the long run.
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