I took this photo from the front steps at 3:36 p.m. today – six minutes before sunset.
Then I sent the picture to a few family members and friends. My stepmom wrote back to say that it was beautiful, but that “it looks like the world’s on fire.”
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Monday miscellany: Disastrous beginner mistake edition.
The delightful but definitely NSFW (in a good way!) personal finance blog Bitches Get Riches has tackled a topic that needs a perennial takedown: what to do with retirement funds. “PLEASE tell me you’re not making this disastrous beginner mistake with your retirement funds” is an essential read if you’re just starting out, but also … Read more
Giveaway: “Tundra” calendars.
Every time I give away something from the Tundra family, there’s always a lot of response. So why not keep that energy going?
Besides, it plays into my “support the local economy” series of giveaways quite nicely. I ran into Tundra creator Chad Carpenter recently and bought two of his 2021 calendars. The idea is to give one and keep one for yourself.
Or maybe you’ll give them both away. However you handle things, that’s at least one holiday gift checked off your list – for free!
Bonus: I might even be able to get Chad to personalize the calendars for you. He generally throws in a cute li’l sketch of one of his critters, too. Some day those signed calendars could be worth…Well, I have no idea.
What I do know is that Chad’s work is known literally around the world. It’s syndicated in nearly 650 newspapers in the United States, Europe, Jamaica and Trinidad. I guess that moose, bear and bug humor is universal.
Not that Chad is limited to static images. He and his twin brother, Darin, have also been responsible for two films shot entirely in Alaska. The first was “Moose: The Movie,” about an ancient curse that awakens a killer ungulate. Mayhem ensues. Funny stuff also ensues. When I gave away a copy of that movie I described it as having been made with “a tight budget and a loose grip on reality.” Pretty much.
The second is “Sudsy Slim Rides Again,” which centers on an Alaska lawman who heads to a tiny off-the-grid town to investigate a missing person. That “person” is the mummified remains of a notorious criminal – and since he’s a big tourist draw, the town fathers and mothers want him back. However, he’s been corpse-napped by a couple of escaped convicts who want to leverage the stiff for safe passage out of town.
Just FYI: You can buy those films at the Tundra website, or rent them on Amazon. I won’t get any kind of remuneration if you do. It’s just another stab at supporting the local economy.
But back to the giveaway.
Our daily bread.
Bread-baking became a U.S. preoccupation during the pandemic. In some regions you couldn’t buy flour or yeast, not even for ready money*.
That wasn’t an issue for us, as we’d stocked up on both at Costco before the lockdown began. In fact, DF had been buying flour by the 50-pound bag for some time now. After all, he’d spent some of his formative years living in the Alaska Bush, with groceries delivered once a year. Having 50 pounds of ground grain just made sense.
In early summer we finally got around to trying a recipe I’d been meaning to check out for years: no-knead rustic bread. After we took our first bites, we understood exactly what the Internet has been bleating about since back in the oughties.
Damn, is it good. And damn, is it simple: four** ingredients, a bit of stirring, an overnight nap, a quick shaping and into a superheated oven.
The result is the best bread I’ve ever had. And we’ve become happily addicted to the stuff. “Daily bread” isn’t that far off: DF has been known to bake six times a week, depending on whether his grandkids have visited. Those two girls can eat more than a quarter of a loaf between them, with a slight gloss of butter (the preschooler) or with olive oil, salt and pepper (the sophisticated 8-year-old).
They stop eating only because we stop offering it. Yep, it’s really that good.
Extreme frugality: Holiday attitude edition.
(This is another in an occasional series of articles focusing on saving serious dough. A little background can be read here.)
Part of me thinks it’s a bit late to bring up the holidays, since some people have already finished their shopping and have their decorating plans well underway.
Then again, I expect lots of people have barely begun, because 2020 has sucked as relentlessly as gravity. Heck, April lasted something like 22 weeks and the pre- and post-election antics have left my head spinning. How about yours?
Money is a bigger-than-usual issue this year. #ThanksCOVID Layoffs, work slowdowns and dismal business returns have left some people frankly terrified. Should they spend on gifts and tinsel when they’re worried about being able to make the rent next month?
Spoiler alert: Some do. CreditCards.com surveyed 2,369 U.S. residents and almost half were willing to acquire debt (or sink deeper into it) to prepare for Dec. 25.
Here’s another sign of the times. Recently the Buy Nothing Facebook group to which I belong split into three smaller groups. One former member reports that her new group has very few giveaways but is replete with requests – many of them for food.
That led me to wonder how many of those Buy Nothing giveaway items are going to constitute a big part of Christmas for some households, both in that group and in my own. Certainly I’ve seen responses like, “This would be a great Christmas gift for my son” or “We’d love to get those decorations because we don’t have any and it’s been a tough year.”
So maybe it’s not too late for me to write about this topic. Maybe it’s the perfect time.
Why I threw away my underwear.
Five years ago I wrote a post called “Why I sewed my underwear.” That piece still gets good traction; either people want to be justified in sewing their own smalls, or they want to read just why someone would bother repairing when replacement undies are so cheap.
(Well, cheap the way that I buy them: six- or eight-pack cotton drawers from Hanes. I’m well aware that solo scanties can cost $30 or more. I would never deny any woman – or any man, or any non-binary person – undies that make them feel pretty. Personally, though, I’m built for comfort, not for speed.)
Today I threw out five pairs of unmentionables. And I feel just fine with that, for a couple of reasons.
The fixes weren’t holding. Either I’m a lousy sew-and-sew or some garments simply can’t be repaired over and over. DF thinks it’s the latter: “After one fix, out it goes.” And this is from a man who has been known to repair just about everything. Once, when the elbows of a shirt were threadbare, he cut the fabric above the elbow and started hemming his new short-sleeved shirt.
It’s okay not to wear tattered tighty-whities. I can afford new, whole briefs rather than having to slide (carefully!) into a few loosely connected underwear molecules. After all, I do have a job and that job lets me replace things that need replacing.
So yes, I bought new bloomers. But I did it frugally, because of course I did.
Giveaway: Alaska-made jewelry.
You’ve heard me mention my friend Linda B. a lot on this site. I do this because she’s the best friend ever. And since she’s also a jewelry artist, I decided to make the next Alaska-themed giveaway all about her work.
Jewelry is a great holiday gift because those who wear it never seem to have quite enough. A new color, texture or pattern, or a change in metals, can stimulate the eyes during this dark time of year, and turn a plain outfit into a canvas for wearable art.
Jewelry is easy to wrap, if you’re giving your presents locally, and easy to mail if you’re shipping your gifts. It can be given to folks of all ages. This particular batch of pendants and earrings is probably not right for toddlers with newly pierced ears or elementary-aged kids who’d likely be happier with pop-culture themes or shiny shiny rhinestones.
Linda came to jewelry art relatively late in life, beginning with freeform bead-weaving in her 50s and later developing a fondness for hammered metal embellished with beads and metal shapes. For a time she dabbled in what I think of as “resin captures” – putting shells, dried plants, charms and other oddments into forms and sealing them in clear resin. (Think of the mosquito in Amber from “Jurassic Park,” although nowhere near as deadly.)
But she made her living as a journalist and editor here in Anchorage, and since retiring she’s also become a playwright who’s regularly featured at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, the 8 By 10 Theater Festival in Fairbanks (she’s the only person to have been selected – in blind judging – all 15 years), and even in an off-Broadway new plays festival.
The winner of this giveaway will get his or her choice of one pendant from the six pictured below, and also half a dozen pairs of earrings (only one of which is pictured – I’m not one of those bloggers who likes to make people scroll and scroll and scroll).
It was hard to choose even half a dozen from the many pendants Linda has on hand. Normally at this time of year she’d be selling them right and left at local crafts shows, but the pandemic put paid to that custom in 2020. Her work is available at several gift and art stores around the state, too.
But finally I bit the bullet and chose these:
Monday miscellany: Holiday hiring edition.
“Get a side hustle” is a common personal finance suggestion, whether it’s for paying off debt or building wealth. A whole bunch of those side-gig options went away when COVID-19 struck, according to veteran PF writer Kathy Kristof.
But “several industries are now picking up steam,” Kristof writes on her SideHusl website.
“Some are back from the dead, while others are simply ramping up to new highs for the holidays.”
Among them: warehouse work, delivery, pet-sitting, mystery shopping and, of course, holiday retail. In her article, “Jobs that are revving up and reviving,” Kristof doesn’t just make the observations – she also gives links to the sites where you can apply for these gigs.
My first virtual funeral.
It happened one week after my first Zoom farewell. Dad’s funeral took place today at 10 a.m. Eastern (6 a.m. Alaska time), with a family viewing starting at 9 a.m. My sister-in-law called me via FaceTime so that my niece and I could attend.
In fact, she called at 5:45 a.m. so that we could attend the viewing as well. Obviously itwas painful and jarring to see Dad in his coffin. Yet it was actually an improvement over the last time I’d seen him, unconscious and on a ventilator. He looked the way I expected him to look: recognizable as my father, yet not much like him. There, but not there.
My niece and I were also there, but not there, thanks be to technology. I’m not being sarcastic. It was hard, of course, and we cried, but we also got to be part of this ritual from afar. Funerals aren’t actually for the dead. They’re for the living. The dead don’t much care what you do to them. The grieving survivors, however, need some kind of ceremony to come to terms with the reality in front of them.
It was of course surreal to hear the eulogy from 4,300-plus miles away. And it was heart-wrenching to see family photos displayed: Dad as a kid with his siblings, as a teenager with his brand-new ham radio set, as a high-school senior at the prom with my mother (both of them looking sophisticated yet impossibly young, like children playing dress-up), as a father of young kids (us) and then as a father of adult kids.
Dad with dance friends. Dad standing out in front of his Christmas-tree farm. Dad at his wedding to Priscilla.
And nearby, Dad in his final repose. Watching Priscilla kiss him goodbye and gently tuck a light blanket around him brought me to my knees: I will never see my Dad again in this life.
Giveaway: Alaska-made chocolate.
Because just about everybody likes chocolate, or knows someone who does. Right?
Because the holidays are approaching, when people like to give sweets. Naturally!
And because I am trying to feature Alaskan-made products in at least some of these pre-holiday giveaways. #SupportLocalEconomy
These aren’t just any old bars. They’re small-batch, dark chocolate (55% cacao) Chugach Chocolate bars – and some of the flavors are very, very unique.
The winner gets to pick four 1.75-ounce bars from the following list:
Chocolate with Alaskan Birch Syrup Toffee
Chocolate with Prince William Sound Sea Salt
Chocolate with Mat-Su Valley Potato Chips
Chocolate with Espresso Beans
Chocolate with Pink Himalayan Salt
Chocolate with Alaskan Kelp and Cayenne (not making that up)
Why four bars? Because that’s how many I can fit into a small flat-rate USPS box.