I had written about freezing your pillow if you have allergies when this blog started last year.  Since then I’ve had various people link in looking for some sort of technique.  I guess I assumed that everyone would know to do the following:

1. Remove the pillow case from the pillow (if you have no case on the pillow skip to step two)
2. Acquire a plastic bag such as a kitchen wastebasket trash bag and hold it open while making sure that your head goes nowhere inside of the bag to avoid suffocation
3. Insert the pillow into the plastic bag making sure that it fits in smoothly and is comfortable.  It’s going into the freezer so we have to at least be humane about the pillows placement in the bag
4. Clear out space in the freezer that is big enough to squish the pillow into.  You may consider turning off the ice maker and removing the ice tray if that looks like it may fit some of the space of the pillow.  If you have a firm pillow you will probably want to fit the pillow in a width wise direction rather than causing lots of tension in a depth wise orientation, it could open the freezer and reduce the effectiveness of pillow freezing.
5. Freeze the pillow for a work day while you’re out earning money
6. Remove the pillow from the freezer and bag about an hour before you go to bed so as to let your head lay down on a warmish pillow
7. Sleep well

Dear Power Company,Sorry for the huge increase in power consumption last night.  Neither myself or my wife happened to shut the windows in the front room when we went to bed and as the temperature dropped to around thirty-four degrees the heater ran all night.  Fortunately we caught it this morning and all of the temperatures appear to be balancing out as well as a reduction in heater use.Doh!Randy Petermanhttp://www.watchmymoneymaker.com

I read this quote from Merlin Mann…

 Starting a blog to solely make money is like learning ventriloquism to meet girls.

… and it reminds me why I do this: I enjoy it.  In the last couple years folks have moved from being employed to self-employed bloggers and I think its great.  It just doesn’t happen to be my personal aspiration.  I barely make a cent on this blog and I love doing it.  What do you do for money?  What do you do for fun?

My credit score is evil because at present it is 666 :)  Proof with the screen capture of the most recent credit score as reported by my bank.

I realized that I was a bit of a junky when I was at the Denver International Airport and I saw a guy sitting, waiting in a seat for a plane… and I thought it was Dave Ramsey.  It wasn’t, but I had to take a double take.

How do you know you’re a junky?

My wife and sister came up with the idea of the Pantry Survivor competition wherein they would attempt to go to the store once in an entire week (at the beginning of the ’stunt’) and then combine that with whatever was already stashed in the pantry to create meals for the family for as long as possible.  The super-challenge in all of this is that it is four adults and two children (plus one on the way - no, not us, my sister).  As previously stated somewhere my sister and her husband are staying with us until they can move into a new condo they’re buying.  So the food needs to feed the whole family and last as long as possible until they just have to go to the store.  The competition stands to see what they can create, what they can make stretch, and what they can concoct out of substitutes as needed.

The first step was to organize the pantry and make sure that there was an inventory.  My sister handled this, which was good because we had a pretty crazy pantry.  I unfortunately only have pictures of the post-organizing results.  My sister, whom I will refer to as ‘Preggers’, had a pad of paper and listed item-by-item what was in the pantry and fridge so that when she and my wife went to the store they could only buy what was needed for some basic meal preparation.  Preggers is actually a great cook, as is my wife, so this isn’t a huge challenge because they have a lot of ideas between the two of them.  The challenge is that they had to have enough of a plan to have bought enough food at the store to complement what we already had to make up enough meals to last a targeted ten days with one meal having company of another family of three.

Day One:  Smoked Pork ‘Que
Alton Brown of the food network enticed me to put together my own frugal smoker last year and so we smoke meat every couple months.  This last week we smoked some Pork Butt and it has been a cheap way to add protein to salads, sandwiches, and in this case, a barbecue pork sandwich.  I have directions and recipes for those who are interested - just shoot me an email to randy@watchmymoneymaker.com.

Day Two: Chicken Pot Pie a la ‘Preggers’
My sister made a tasty variation on chicken pot pie, but instead of making an actual pie, she made a chicken soup type dish and some tasty, tasty crust rounds with a cookie cutter. You placed the soup in the bowl and garnished them with the crust ‘cookies’ (not sweet, but oh, so tasty. Have you noticed I think they’re tasty?).  Preggers did a great job with this dish, but since she made it up I have no recipe.  It did contain white pearl onions which are one of my favorite soup ingredients.

By the time anyone reads this we’ll be on day three with a week left to go.  I don’t know what we’ll run out of, but I’ll post the results as we go through the experience.  I challenge you to try the same and see if you can clear out any old ’stuff’ that you have in your pantry to keep your budget frugal, and your frugal budget interesting in the kitchen.

This could totally apply to debit cards for those of you who, like me, are not huge fans of the credit cards.

Please Don’t Taste My Credit Card!

I have noticed that the employees who have to handle my plastic often are careful with the card to avoid looking like they’re doing bad things with it.  However, there’s always a nut somewhere

The government’s attempt to give you an early tax refund (even if you don’t need one) which they’re calling ‘economic stimulation’ is a farce for the most part: I may get $600.00 for my family, but I’ll be paying it back in my quarterly taxes. Oh, boy! Here’s a list of things that will not stimulate the economy and bust the intended use for the checks:

1. Stick the check in the bank
2. Pay the check back to the government as a quarterly tax payment the following quarter
3. Pay credit card debt (and not regain that debt on the card)
4. Go on an international spending spree
5. Buy Anime on eBay… from Japan
6. Frame the check and put it on your mantle like the head of a dead dear
7. Give it to a charity that will buy goats for Haitians
8. Invest in lead testing kits for the Chinese toys your children have
9. Drive to Canada and buy cheap meds
10. Use it to move to Canada where their looney money is worth more

What are you going to do that’s financially wise, but not necessarily intended by the Gov’t.?

I’m a whiner.  Here’s a goofy poem from my trip to the doctor this morning.

For symptoms I went to the doctor
Looking to get some help
What I told her just shocked her
Or that’s what I’m telling myself

She gave me a script for some ointment
Something to deal with signs
I’ll have to make another appointment
If my skin blisters or whines

Each trip to the doc is covered
A thirty dollar co-pay
“Happy Holidays,” she muttered
As I sadly shuffled away

Give me a diagnosis for the problem
Don’t just hand me a fix
I don’t want to mask yet a symptom
So that figures I’ve paid number six