When I was about to leave for my house-sitting/visiting trip to Alaska in mid-May, I had part of a carton of eggs in the fridge. Since I would be gone for two months, I decided to try something I’d only read about: freezing eggs.
Today I sampled the results.
While house-sitting here in Anchorage I took my friend’s recyclables over to the transfer station. It’s a small way for me to help her out.
Turns out it’s a good way to shop, too.
Late one recent evening I stopped at a nearly deserted supermarket. One tired-looking cashier leaned against her counter, and a customer service agent yawned mightily as he kept an eye on the self-checkout area.
No one was anywhere near the coin-counting machine. As is my wont, I glanced into its returned-coin bin as I passed by.
Did I hit the jackpot.
My current piece at MSN Money won’t show up in the RSS feed. That’s because it’s a slide show rather than a column.
“$9 airfare and 9 other travel hacks” offers the skinny on things like “news flash” alerts (e.g., a $9 flight from Boston to New York), ways to get a free flop anywhere from Anchorage to Amsterdam, and how to spend just $1 to journey from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia.
I never cared much for yogurt. It generally seemed too sour to me, unless it was turned into tzatziki sauce on a gyro sandwich.
Apparently I just never had the right kind of yogurt.
I’d heard that the homemade version was better than the commercial kind. I’d also read about people making yogurt in a slow cooker. After looking online for instructions I settled on a slight variation of the process described at A Year of Slow Cooking.
And then I improved on it.
I can remember my grandfather grousing about the price of cigarettes. He swore he would quit when it went up past 35 cents a pack.
It did, and he did.
Now I know how he felt, although my particular vice is brown and fizzy and gives me reward points. At an Anchorage supermarket I was shocked to find Diet Coke selling for $8.19 per 12-pack. Thank goodness there’s no sales tax here.
That works out to 68 cents a can. It won’t break the bank. But really? More than eight dollars for a 12-pack? For something that I can’t even get drunk off of?
I love animals, but I don’t want any pets. It’s probably because I don’t want to be responsible for another living being.
Or to be responsible for torturing another living being.
When I got off the Megabus from Cardiff to London I was weary from a couple of days of hard walking. Fortunately there are markets in Victoria Station so I picked up a bread “baton” (larger than a hoagie roll, smaller than a baguette), some sliced ham and a single carrot.
Back at the hostel I pulled a Rubbermaid container from my suitcase and took out packets of butter and spicy brown mustard to garnish a simple ham sandwich. The carrot provided a bit of crunch. I finished up with an apple and a small container of Devon Custard Rice I’d bought previously.
Sure, I could made the sandwich without mustard and butter, but it wouldn’t have tasted nearly as good. And eating Devon Custard Rice with my fingers would have been the stickiest of wickets.
When I go to Alaska, I travel with mayonnaise. On all my trips I pack some or all of the following items — small, light, extremely practical things that are worth many times their weight in frequent-flier miles. They don’t take up much room but they pack a mighty impact.
I’m getting an income tax refund this year. Well, let me rephrase that. I would be getting a refund, except that I’m applying it toward the quarterly taxes I pay as a freelancer. Whee!
What are you going to do with your refund, if any? My former MSN Money colleague Liz Weston suggests spending 10% of any windfall on something non-essential. So go ahead: Treat yourself.
But don’t let the rest of the money trickle away. Invest it in something, or several somethings, that will benefit you for the rest of the year – or even for the rest of your life.