Donna Freedman

I fought the log and the log won.

by

th-1We now have an 8-by-8-foot shed nearly filled with firewood. The good news: It’s free heat, from about 20 trees felled on a couple of different properties.

The bad news? We’re not done, because after about seven hours the rented log-splitter broke.

After about six hours of trundling and stacking firewood my arms and shoulders feel very, very surprised. I expect tomorrow’s workday will be very challenging indeed, given that I make my living with my hands as well as my head.

Now I know why people had so many kids way back when: free labor.

Read more

Fish, fossils and really awful puns.

by

image-1If loving Ray Troll is wrong, I don’t want to be right. The Ketchikan-based artist is best known (up here, anyway) for his fish T-shirts, prints, pins and such. But he’s branched out to sharks, fossils, dinosaurs and evolution, all of it imbued with unmistakeable graphics and some truly atrocious puns.

Three of those mini-masterpieces, in the form of fridge magnets, make up this week’s giveaway.

Read more

Using up the stockpile.

by

After a particularly aggravating shopping trip back in late March, I suggested that we buy as little as possible for the month of April. We’d live off what was stored in the cupboards, freezer and basement, filling in with vegetables, fruit and dairy as needed.

At the time I meant to report the findings here. That didn’t happen. In fact, I can’t find the envelope with our April receipts. However, I do remember that DF added them up and they came to about $91 – which shows that vegetables, fruit and dairy for two people can be pretty darned expensive up here. (Hint: We’re not buying organic or out-of-season stuff and we use milk for cooking, not for drinking.)

How’s our stockpile looking? Surprisingly unaffected, dammit. 

Read more

Share your thoughts, and maybe win prizes, at a pair of Twitter events on July 23.

by

thI’m participating in a pair of Twitter events tomorrow. You should, too, because you likely have something to contribute and/or you might learn something.

Did I mention the prizes, including Visa and Amazon gift cards?

Now that I have your attention, let me describe the fun:

Read more

Giveaway: Two $10 Starbucks cards.

by

th-1Seems that we finished our vacation just in time, escaping the Lower 48 barely ahead of a serious heat wave. (And I thought it was hot while we were there…!) Sorry for all of you whose feet are sticking to the softened asphalt.

This week’s giveaway won’t make the hot weather go away, but it’ll help you cope: I’m selecting two winners to receive $10 Starbucks gift cards. I’m not a coffee fan myself, but I understand the iced variety is quite cooling.

Coffee isn’t the only option, of course.

Read more

Down the shore.

by

I got home from the two-week East Coast trip at around 1:30 this morning, exhausted and suffering from Weird Pattern Sunburn. The back and front of my neck and about three inches of shoulders were scorched stop-sign red where the sunscreen washed away. I’d been wearing a T-shirt and shorts over my swimsuit for a trip to Ocean City, NJ.

It’s really starting to hurt – it may blister, dammit – and my shoulder and arm muscles are seriously wrenched from holding my younger great-nephew in deeper water so we could jump waves. The heavy backpack cutting into the ache/burn during our long day of travel certainly didn’t help matters.

Wish I could have a professional massage, but nobody’s touching that sunburn. When DF put aloe gel on it last night I shrieked like a smoke alarm.

Totally worth it to have gone to the shore again, after decades away. I’d forgotten how lovely it feels to be cradled by the ocean.

 

Read more

Signs you’re in South Jersey.

by

thSorry to have maintained radio silence for the past week. Getting ready to get out of town, the overnight journey (15 hours door-to-door), doing Philly stuff for a day and a half, taking the Megabus to Manhattan, doing NYC stuff in heat ’n’ humidity with my niece and her kids, getting the bus back to Philly and then the bus to South Jersey, writing for my day job….Well, it took more out of me than I’d expected.

I’m still pretty flattened even though I’ve been at my dad’s place for two days. It didn’t help that the Megabus out of New York was late, which meant extra standing around in the aforementioned H&H. It also meant that I missed the Jersey bus I wanted to get.

Did I mention the sudden high winds that powdered me with Philly grit while I waited near the corner of Broad and Vine? Or the thunderstorm that rolled in immediately afterward? And for extra credit, the NJ Transit bus was late, too.

Why not get a rental car? Two reasons:

I didn’t need wheels for the first two days, because I was too tired and too busy (I’ve had to write two MSN Money columns since I got off the bus) to want to ram around much. Dad let me use his pickup for short visits with my Aunt Dot and my brother.

Also because I’m cutting corners where I can. We’ve had a great time so far but we’ve spent a boatload of bucks. When Alison and her boys arrive tomorrow I’ll pick up the rental car and we’ll divvy up the usage.

Besides, on the bus ride I saw my first real sign that I was back in South Jersey.

Read more

Beat the heat with “Tundra.”

by

tundra 100It’s high summer. The heat and humidity are racing each other to the century mark. Your shirt is sticking to your back like a sweaty decal. The air is so thick you could drink it.

Here’s one solution: Look at a cartoon that involves polar bears, snowmen or dog mushers. You’ll get a vicarious chill and the laughter-induced endorphins will distract you from the fact that you’ve got a few more months of this kind of weather.

Yep, it’s another “Tundra” giveaway. This will be the third time I’ve featured a collection of Chad Carpenter’s comics, and the reaction is always tremendous. Why? Because he’s freakin’ funny, that’s why.

Carpenter’s strip is syndicated all over the U.S. and also in other countries. If you’d like to know more, read this post from last year, which contains a link to a profile of the artist.

Or just take my word for it: Chad is a sick and twisted man, which makes for awesome (and occasionally wince-inducing) cartooning.

Beat the heat with “Tundra.”

by

tundra 100It’s high summer. The heat and humidity are racing each other to the century mark. Your shirt is sticking to your back like a sweaty decal. The air is so thick you could drink it.

Here’s one solution: Look at a cartoon that involves polar bears, snowmen or dog mushers. You’ll get a vicarious chill and the laughter-induced endorphins will distract you from the fact that you’ve got a few more months of this kind of weather.

Yep, it’s another “Tundra” giveaway. This will be the third time I’ve featured a collection of Chad Carpenter’s comics, and the reaction is always tremendous. Why? Because he’s freakin’ funny, that’s why.

Carpenter’s strip is syndicated all over the U.S. and also in other countries. If you’d like to know more, read this post from last year, which contains a link to a profile of the artist.

Or just take my word for it: Chad is a sick and twisted man, which makes for awesome (and occasionally wince-inducing) cartooning.

Beat the heat with “Tundra.”

by

tundra 100It’s high summer. The heat and humidity are racing each other to the century mark. Your shirt is sticking to your back like a sweaty decal. The air is so thick you could drink it.

Here’s one solution: Look at a cartoon that involves polar bears, snowmen or dog mushers. You’ll get a vicarious chill and the laughter-induced endorphins will distract you from the fact that you’ve got a few more months of this kind of weather.

Yep, it’s another “Tundra” giveaway. This will be the third time I’ve featured a collection of Chad Carpenter’s comics, and the reaction is always tremendous. Why? Because he’s freakin’ funny, that’s why.

Carpenter’s strip is syndicated all over the U.S. and also in other countries. If you’d like to know more, read this post from last year, which contains a link to a profile of the artist.

Or just take my word for it: Chad is a sick and twisted man, which makes for awesome (and occasionally wince-inducing) cartooning.