8 vacation realizations.

Not that this Lower 48 journey has been much of a vacation. It started out as a business trip and morphed into a medical emergency.

I was supposed to have gone home on Sept. 29 but we didn’t get back to Phoenix until Sept. 28. Our original itinerary had included a short post-FinCon visit, and by gum we wanted to make it happen.

Figured I’d go home on Monday but something told me not to make a reservation. Given that lower-back spasms woke me early Sunday morning, I’m glad I listened.

Ice, ibuprofen and stretching have eased the initial holycowthathurtstooscaredtomove, but I’ll likely give it another day or two before I think about a long plane ride.

Here are some things I’ve learned and some random realizations that popped up since I got here.

1. Phoenix is a great place to hang laundry to dry.

The suitcase I used on this trip is big and heavy, and picking it up/opening it is something I don’t want to do daily. Thus I’ve been wearing the same couple of items and hand-washing them each night. They’re dry the next morning. Heck, they’re probably dry the next hour.

(Note: Abby and Tim do have a washer and dryer, and in fact I threw my FinCon duds in with a load of their laundry. But now that they’re folded and back in the suitcase I see no reason to heft that monster any more than I must. (See “back spasms,” above.)

 

2. Still got the apartment-manager touch.

The garbage disposal had quit on them recently. I got it going again. Not sure whether it was the reset button, the Allen wrench or the broomstick-in-the-guts that did it, though. I tried all three with no luck, until I finally realized that flipping the “on” wall switch should have produced some kind of noise.

D’oh! It was the adjacent switch, and how happy I was to hear the machine whir back to life. So I cleaned the sink, which bore the ghostly scum of previous backups, and then cleaned the other sink because why not? Which brings me to the next question…

 

3. Why is it fun to clean someone else’s house?

Since arriving I’ve also washed and folded several loads of laundry, swept the floors, used the Swiffer Wet Jet* and cleaned out the microwave. Each task was fun and I was absurdly pleased by the results.

Rarely do I pay attention to the inside of my own microwave. But seeing their kitchen looking nicer made me happy. Don’t get me wrong: I run a tidy ship at home, doing the dishes immediately after eating and wiping up spills on counter or stove as soon as they happen.

Yet that doesn’t give me the same sense of satisfaction as cleaning up another person’s stuff. True story: When I was a kid I used to clean up my aunt and uncle’s trailer when they weren’t at home. Hey, we didn’t have cable – we had to make our own fun.

 

4. A hotel coffeemaker is also a breakfast machine.

While at FinCon I hung out briefly with my old running buddy Liz Weston, who had taken advantage of a frugal hack from the FinCon Facebook page: Use this coupon code to get free delivery and $10 off your first order from Trader Joe’s. Like me, she believes in keeping food in the room and had a good-sized grocery order delivered on the cheap. Among those things was a box of organic quick-cooking oatmeal.

Since she was leaving early she sent me back to my room with the leftover oats plus some apples, a bag of Pirate Booty, a package of multigrain English muffins and probably other stuff I can’t remember. Following her instructions, I put oatmeal in a cup and added boiling water from the K-cup machine then let it sit, covered, for a few minutes. Then I added a packet of sugar and two of those shelf-stable half-and-half cups provided by the hotel.

That was my dinner once and my breakfast twice. Thanks, Liz; I owe you some more of that bacon-molasses peanut brittle. Catch you at Christmas.

 

5. Rewards credit cards rock.

After a few days at home Abby had a craving for a fresh bagel. Fortunately I had the frugal answer: a $25 Panera Bread gift card that I’d gotten for free by cashing in points from my
Chase Ink business credit card.

I enjoy the baked goods at Panera and since the chain doesn’t operate in Anchorage this is my one shot for the foreseeable future. More to the point, I also enjoy treating people to lunch without denting my travel budget. Some of the card’s balance will go toward another bagel to eat on the plane ride home.

While I tend to use my Chase Ink card points while traveling for business, I have two other rewards cards (CitiBank and Chase Freedom) that help me give Christmas gifts without breaking the bank. Leverage those points, folks.

 

6. Strategic shopping rocks.

Abby and I agreed to stay an extra day (Sunday) to see if she would get better. Yeah, that worked out well.

That morning I made a run to a Vons supermarket and bought some sliced turkey (foolishly thought she’d be able to eat something), a couple of rolls, more fruit and several bottles of Powerade in case she couldn’t eat anything (although she couldn’t keep liquids down, either**).

The day I arrived in Phoenix we stopped at a Fry’s supermarket on the way back from the airport. I bought fruit, a loaf of store-baked wheat bread from the day-old shelf, a carton of 18 large eggs for 99 cents (which price had me calling DF to moan about the prices – in Anchorage you’ll pay at least $1.69 for a dozen medium cackleberries), some salt-and-vinegar potato chips (to replace any sodium I’d lose in this hot, hot place), a couple of kinds of cheese, a bag of flatbread, a cucumber, some dry cereal, some Diet Coke and a gallon of milk. Almost all of it was on sale.

These foods allowed me to eat on Sunday and Monday, and to make up snacks for the cooler for our Tuesday road trip. They also became a couple of dinners in our hotel room when it became obvious that Abby was not well enough either to go out or to be left alone for long.

When we got back from San Diego I made a run back to Fry’s because it was the last day of having a rental car. With that in mind, I shopped carefully: a loaf of store-baked French bread, a rotisserie chicken, some cherry Jello mix (a request from Abby, whose stomach was still wonky), more fruit, potatoes and ice cream. Still eating on that stuff.

 

7. Strategic scavenging rocks, too.

While at the FinCon continental breakfast I picked up a bagel, butter and cream cheese. Wound up eating the butter but not the cheese so into the hotel-room fridge*** it went. A few days later I spread it on a roll and added some of that turkey. The rest of the turkey went on another roll along with the mustard and mayo packets gleaned from the sandwich Abby was given in the emergency room. Bringing my own sandwiches to the hospital meant I didn’t have to go to the hospital cafeteria.

 

8. Chopping the kitchen rocks most of all.

I cut all the meat off that rotisserie chicken and put the bones and the pan juices in the slow cooker with some water to make broth. Added most of a bag of broken-up ramen noodles and some spices and we had homemade chicken soup for supper.

Then I cut up a bunch of the leftover meat to make chili with canned tomatoes and beans from Abby and Tim’s larder. Yesterday I cut up the last of the meat and simmered it with a can of chicken broth, spices and the rest of the ramen, and had more soup.

I’ve also had crackers and cheese and fruit, and a scrambled-egg sandwich (with some of that wheat bread from the freezer). Tonight I’ll have French toast for supper, made with the last half of that increasingly stale French bread.

Since I’ve spent a lot more on this trip than I’d planned, keeping meal costs low has made me feel much calmer. We’ve had takeout only once in the past week, and since it was white pizza I’m willing to shake loose a few bucks.

*Personally I prefer a mop and buckets of water. But you work with what you’ve got.

**Which is why they gave her two liters of intravenous fluid in the ER. She was so dehydrated they had a tough time finding a vein that worked.

***The hotel minibar had a sign warning against any off-book use: Put something in here and we’ll bill you $7.50. Yikes. When the bellman brought up our stuff I said something like, “So you guys will smack us if we use the fridge, huh?” Yeah, he said, looking a little embarrassed – but if you want I can get you a mini-fridge to plug in. (Yes, I wanted.)

Incidentally, he brought up our stuff because the hotel has a policy of not allowing guests to use the luggage carts. I expect they paint it as a liability issue, but personally I think it’s just another way to pay the bellhops less. (“You’ll make up for the low wage in all those tips!”)