Frugality

First, I just cost us $25 because Chase has, in their infinite wisdom, a double opt-in on their online payment system.  Credit card payment was due yesterday, so I smartly (I thought) went to set up the payment on Monday.  But apparently I forgot to hit that second confirmation button, so today I found the "Oops, where's your payment??" email.  Ugh.

Last Friday, car wouldn't start.  Battery.  The replacement battery cost about 10% of what my car is worth.  Fun times.

I resisted the Breyer warehouse sale (mostly because the ones that I wanted, like Julien, Cosette, and Sophia, I already bought last year. 

But then someone posted a purple Fruitcake Filly for sale, cheap, and even though I have one purple, I kinda want a second one.  Because purple.  But $25 shipped is a good price. 

So much for cutting back. 

Also, I like the Tightwad Gazette books, and the Facebook group for followers/fans is good, but I wish there were a good science-based frugality group.  The TWG Facebook group is full of pseudoscience and woo. 

For future reference - a test of the library's book system

After sitting on the hold list for a couple of books forEVER, I'm running a little test.  The library seems to have a bog-down somewhere in the cataloging and processing part of the system, since we can sit on the hold list for weeks, for a book that's sitting on the shelves at B&N or the local indie bookstore.

1. I put a hold on the Elon Musk bio on November 19th, I think.  Book released to stores November 27th.  I was first on the hold list, and just got the pickup notice today.  That's 3 weeks, plus 3 days.

2.  Just ordered 2 more books, one released last April, one in 2015.  One is The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip (2018), the other is The Cassini-Huygens Visit to Saturn: An Historic Mission to the Ringed Planet (2015)  I would be able to order either of these online from a dozen sites and have them inside a week.  Could maybe walk into Barnes & Noble and find the Hip book in the store, depending.  (More likely in a Canadian store, for sure.) 

Assuming the library orders either of them, I'll automatically be put on the hold list for them.  Now it's just time to wait and see how long it takes. 

Odd movies

The current winner for slowest movie I've ever seen, and strangest, is Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce,1080 Bruxelles.  Belgian movie, I think, from 1970ish.


I watched it on TCM last week, recorded actually, and it took most of three lunchtimes to finish it.  It's 3 hours and 20  minutes long, no soundtrack music that I recall, and very, very little dialogue.  Two main actors, a couple of bit-part shopkeepers.  There's a 3-minute scene of Jeanne mixing the meat for meatloaf.  I kept going, with liberal use of the FFW button, because the synopsis mentioned a murder, and I was really wondering why and how a murder ended up in this very benign movie.

Yeah.  The murder happens at 3:10, I'm still not sure what the motive was, and the last seven minutes is a shot of Jeanne sitting at the dining table with blood on her blouse and hands. 

I'm glad TCM runs foreign films in the wee hours, but I'm also glad I didn't pay to watch this. Ha ha.

Holiday plants

The holiday zygocacti are blooming pretty well, although the peach one is taking the year off, along with some others.

I did buy another amaryllis today, since I think most of my others have shriveled away to nothing.  I resisted buying any new zygos today, though - no colors I don't already have.  I did bring home a couple of pieces that had fallen off the store plants, and a picture of a massive (and expensive) white zygo at Gerbes. 

Christmas ughs

I do not like Christmas.  Too much stress.  Too much travel. 

Anyway.

One of my big gripes this year was that nothing matches in this house.  (The bedroom curtains?  Four curtains, 3 shades of beige.  Clearance.)  You can tell I bought most of the lights at the after-Christmas clearance, and I was even late for that, because I don't have 2 of anything for lights.  Well, I do have two strings of warm white net lights.  Except that one of them is only half-working for some reason.  So, outside I've got one blue net, one multi net, one cool white net, and one twinkling multi net.  And the twinkle is not changeable. 

So, I just spent $85 on Christmas lights, in spite of just getting the heads-up on middle school tuition for next year.  But, I'll have 4 matching LED nets, damn it.  And they can even do multi, warm white, or blink between multi and white.  But they were 30% off and buy 3 get 1 free, decent brand name (Philips), and have a 3-year warranty.  And while i was at it, I got 4 strings of purple LED sphere lights.  Only 10% off, but also buy 3 get 1 free.