Where has the time gone? We have been very busy this summer with only one or two full weekends at home. Otherwise we have been traveling and wrangling an ever more energetic Frugal Boy.
On Thursday of last week one of the two Aldi stores in town had a grand reopening.
The renovated store has a larger footprint and a wider selection of goods. It will take some time to figure out where things are in the rearranged layout.
We’ve had some very hot and muggy August days. Our garden did well for the first half of summer, but insects have decimated all of our second plantings of lettuce, spinach, and carrots.
On Saturday I made lamb ravioli for Shae’s birthday dinner. My mother-in-law helped to speed things up. A two pound lamb loin made about 35 large ravioli. It only took about three ravioli to make a filling meal. We fed six adults and had plenty of leftovers. The total cost of ingredients was about $50, making it very economical, even for the specialty meat.
Frugal Boy got his first taste of corn on the cob courtesy of his grandparents. I think he liked it, as we had to hide the box of un-shucked corn to keep him out of it.
And here is a picture of the birthday girl.
On Sunday, Grandma put up the remainder of the corn they brought down while Grandpa played with Frugal Boy. Here Grandma is imparting some wisdom to the youth.
I worked some more on our front porch. I have been keeping track of receipts and will do a post with the total cost of that major renovation when I am done (sometime this year).
Frugal Boy and Grandpa enjoyed watching from the window. Those two are thick as thieves.
A big thank you to all of Shae’s family for coming and helping out. We had a fun weekend despite the heat.
About a month ago I was going through our mail and I spotted a Nielsen envelope. Giddy, I ripped into it like a kid on Christmas morning and freed the wrinkled single dollar bills from the envelope.
For those of you living under a rock and wondering what the hell I’m talking about, let me explain. Nielsen is the private company that is universally known for researching and compiling TV ratings. The process is pretty simple. They mail out diaries to random people and ask them to record what shows and movies they watch over the course of a week. Some of the diaries are mailed back and they compile all of the information and determine what’s popular and what’s not. They then sell that information to advertisers who use it to better target their ads to the proper demographics. Shows with low viewership, don’t attract many advertisers, and usually end up getting cancelled.
What I had received in the mail a month ago was a simple survey asking me if I wanted to do a week long viewing log/diary. Included in that initial survey was $2 in cash to encourage me that it was worth my time. Well, I spent all of 2 minutes filling out the survey online and went about my day.
Yesterday, I saw a thick Nielsen envelope in the mail. To my delight, there was $30 inside along with the extended survey forms. We could have tossed the forms in the trash and kept the $30, but a part of me cannot resist supporting (and crushing) certain tv shows. So if you are a fan of reality tv, you can blame me when your favorite shows get the ax.
He was between 2.5 to 3.5 years old (depending on how old he was when we bought him). Betta fish have a lifespan of 2-6 years and that is heavily influenced by the conditions they are kept. These solitary tropical fish prefer a 5 gallon or larger heated, filtered, tank all to themselves. The colorful males will fight to the death with other males and show aggression towards other flashy species as well.
Fishy was older than Frugal Boy, and started life with us back when we lived at our apartment. We adorned his space with live aquatic plants that gave him places to rest and hide. The living landscape changed as plants grew, died, and were replaced.
Frugal Boy enjoyed watching fishy, and one of his first recognizable words (apart from mama) was “isssh”.
Fishy had a variety of tank mates over the year. It felt a little absurd to let him have an entire 15 gallon tank to himself. He murdered half a dozen ghost shrimp.
Fatalities usually happened when the shrimp molted and smelled like food. Other times he would snack on them when we were gone for the weekend instead of eating the time released pelletized food we provided him.
He also had a never-ending supply of snail companions. We added several large nerite snails to help control algae. Fishy enjoyed eating the eyestalks off these cleaners. Later on, one of the live plants we added carried a different type of snail eggs and the tank has been infested ever since. We could add some copper to kill them off, but it would also kill off the cleaner snails. It doesn’t help that the small snails can produce asexually. Leaving just one behind results in a complete re-infestation within a matter of days.
The latest tank mates was a school of harlequin rasboras, or as I like to call them, pork chops.
The rasboras are peaceful community fish. Sometimes the betta bruiser would chase them around, but his long showy fins made him much slower than the streamlined pork chops.
Fishy has been slowly deteriorating for the past few weeks. We noticed that he was no longer eating as much, and then not at all. He spent most of his final days resting on plants or hiding out below them. Every morning we would check to see if he had expired until one day he did.
Shae made up a fishy coffin for him. Contrary to popular belief, you should never flush aquatic life down the toilet (unless you have a septic). Most aquarium species are exotic foreigners and the damage they could potentially do to the local ecosystem if they survived could be devastating. It is better to toss them in the trash or bury them in the yard.
After a few words, fishy was buried under our (future) front porch right below the electrical outlet.
So long fishy, you were a good pet (when you weren’t eating our other pets).
Our garden is coming along. Everything is planted, but the back row has just started to germinate.
I love how the carrots look like a forest.
The lettuce and spinach has been growing like weeds. This picture was taken a few days ago and it has already doubled in size.
We’ve been eating fresh salad greens almost daily. My birthday was at the end of May and Shae grilled lamb bacon burgers. It was her first time grilling and I think she enjoyed it.
DIY projects have taken center stage again. This time we will be rebuilding our front porch. Here is a before shot.
It is shaping up to be a busy summer. Aren’t they always?
It has been a jam packed weekend for us with lots of freebies!
A Free Chair
Here is a free chair that I found on Friday. The upholstering is a bit rough but it is a solid chair. The label on the bottom says Fairfield, so someone probably paid a few hundred bucks once upon a time.
Free Movie Rentals
Redbox is running a deal right now (PLKMP982) where you can get five free DVD rentals for each account that you have with them. The deal runs until 4/30 and you must reserve your DVD online (the code won’t work at the kiosk).
So far we have watched Interstellar and The Imitation Game. Both excellent movies that you should watch if you haven’t already!
Free Laundry Detergent +
On Saturday, there was a cloth diaper expo in town. The first twenty people got goodie bags. We happened to be walking nearby so we stopped in and got a large bag filled with detergent, an insert, various balms, and literature.
Free Charcoal Grill!
Also on Saturday we won a free charcoal grill as part of a city wide scavenger hunt.
Our local library has been promoting National Library Week and the rollout of their brand new bookmobile by posting a scavenger hunt on Facebook every day for the past week. It has been really fun to try and figure out the clues and race across town to get to the destination before other treasure seekers. The prizes were usually claimed within 10-20 minutes of the first clue being posted and twice we were in sight of the goal line just to see someone else get their first. The last prizes clue started with:
Subtract the number of dwarves from a baker’s dozen
Add the number of blind mice to the loneliest number
Subtract the number of calling birds from the number of gold rings
My gut told me that it was a call number so we went to the library. We had books to return and they were having cake to celebrate the new bookmobile so even if I was wrong we would still score some free cake!
After getting to the library the second part of the clue was posted
.LVII
Add the value of two quarters to Walter Payton’s number
“Bam!” You got it!
I’ll leave the answer at the end of the post so you can see if you figured it out.
Here was Shae with the prize envelope. We were so thrilled to have found one and win a prize!
Then we took a group selfie to commemorate the occasion. Frugal Boy was obviously not as excited as his parents, but he’ll come around after he gets to eat some meat seared over red hot coals.
After eating some free cake and checking out the snazzy new bookmobile we headed home.
Free Garage Door Fix
Arriving home I pressed the button to open our garage door and the door shook a lot on the way up and then stopped 3/4 of the way. In the words of Frugal Boy, “Uh Oooh!”
The culprit was easy to spot. One of the rollers had dragged and bent its hinge completely out of alignment.
I grabbed some tools and pulled the broken hardware off the door.
My first attempt to fix the door was to go to Lowes and buy a new hinge and ten new rollers. Our garage door dates back to the 70s and as this little incident proved, it is on its last legs. Returning home, I lined up the new hinge where the old one was and discovered that it was incompatible. The replacement hinge was far too tall and if I screwed it into place then the roller wouldn’t line up with the track. I would have to move the entire track back at least 1/2″ to accommodate the replacement parts. To add insult to injury, the new rollers are too thick to fit into the old hinges.
In a last ditch effort, I resorted to Great Depression tactics and laid the old hinge on the garage floor and beat the snot out of it with a four pound hammer until it was straightened out again. I also tightened up and replaced any missing nuts that had shaken loose from 40 years of operation. So far so good and the fix was free!
Free Car (Blocks Sold Separately)
Saturday night, Shae asked me if I wanted to come with her to walk around the neighborhood to find any curbside deals. A couple of blocks away we found a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. I asked the man outside of the house if we could have it and he was more than happy to let us drag it away. He said that they had inherited it with the house and his kids had ridden it pretty hard. The front wheels were bent and one of the columns had been ‘repaired’ long ago.
This morning we went back to Lowes to return the incompatible garage hardware and to pick up some new wheels for Frugal Boy’s pimpin ride.
A couple of casters, long carriage bolts, some scrap wood, and a little ingenuity had Frugal Boy’s ride back on the street, err alley, err garage (it was raining today).
So there you have it, our freebie filled weekend! I still have to assemble the grill and break it in sometime, we have three more redbox movies to rent, leave a recommendation down in the comments, and our garage door is running on borrowed time.
Scavenger Hunt Answer
641.5784 which refers to a section of grilling cookbooks in the Adult Services Department. The reference to “Bam!” was intended to narrow down the options to Emeril Lagasse’s cookbook “Emeril at the Grill: A Cookbook for all Seasons.”
I worked some more on our front porch. I have been keeping track of receipts and will do a post with the total cost of that major renovation when I am done (sometime this year).
A big thank you to all of Shae’s family for coming and helping out. We had a fun weekend despite the heat.
