Recovering from a visit to the oral surgeon. Luckily, I can steal a post from Frugal Son's emails from Nantes. Not exactly on frugality, but a glimpse into French student life. His meals are about 3 euros (obviously, these are subsidized), which means they cost about half of what a meal goes for on an American college campus. So, to continue with my cafeteria theme.....
After the tour it was lunch time and since we were already on campus, we decided to eat at the Restaurant Universitaire for the first time. The line for tickets was HUGE so one of us waited in line to buy a carnet of 10 to split amongst the group. Once we got our tickets we went upstairs to the dining area and I WAS IN HEAVEN. Remember that up until this point I had only been eating two small meals per day, usually bread and cheese, so I was craving a big warm meal. I chose the “Cuisine Traditionelle” line, which featured a pork chop, couscous, and steamed string beans. On the side I had a plate of sliced, dried sausage products, a petit pain, and a little salad. Ohhhh it was so good.
At each meal you are allowed to get bread, two side dishes (like a cheese plate, pate plate, cold salads, fruit, etc.) and a main hot dish. In addition to “Cuisine Traditionelle” there were also lines for Pizza and Pasta, the Grill (steak hachee), Cuisine du Monde, and Poisson. Since my first lunch, I’ve eaten things like ray, paupiettes de saumon, paupiettes de veau, lamb moussaka, gigot d’agneau with couscous, caramel pork, saumon “americaine”, brochette de dinde, and ratatouille to name a few. The side dishes are equally exciting and almost every day I have a little plate of pate de campagne or a cheese plate. The French are obsessed with thinly grated (julienned?) carrots and other vegetables and at first I was confused by this obsession with a seemingly boring item. One day, however, seeing no more exciting side dish options, I took a small plate with julienned carrots, celery (or maybe celery root?), and red cabbage. It was so good and now I eat it almost every day! The carrots are served with no topping but the celery (or celery root) has a sort of mayonnaise sauce mixed on top of it and the shredded red cabbage is in a bit of vinegar.
Continuing in the vein of food, after lunch I went to the little grocery store by my dorm. There I bought a few necessities like cornichons, mustard, bread and chocolate. I found an 86% cocoa chocolate bar here and it’s really good. I already had some meat, cheese, and tomatoes (tomatoes are oddly cheap here, one euro for a kilogram) from my trip to Leclerc the day before so I was all set to make sandwiches.
Bon appetit!
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Monday, September 28, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Cafeteria Ladies and Other Ladies: A Frugal Resource
After my post about recognizing an old friend in a book, I had to take a few days to recover. it is truly awful to re-experience all the conflicted feelings--pleasure, affection, anger, insecurity and so on--that emerge when reading about an unresolved relationship from college days. Not that I knew it was unresolved.
Now on to my next topic: cafeteria ladies. There is a wonderful cartoonist--Lynda Barry--who has a cartoon somewhere or other that shows two scornful high school students on line in the cafeteria. They look upon the ladies dishing up the food and one says "She coulda been a brain surgeon."
Doesn't that just capture the scorn of high school students and their assurance that they will get what they want--and that people who don't just didn't want it.
I do try to be mindful of the complex interplay of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and so forth in the pursuit of happiness and prosperity. I must be doing something right (in the mindfulness department), because several times at school open houses over the years, Mr. FS and I have been approached by cafeteria ladies. They wanted to thank us for the fact that our children thanked them. They would beam, "Your kids are among the few who say 'Thank you.'"
So even though my sense of etiquette is shaky (to put it mildly) and I violate many rules written and unwritten, I at least encouraged my children to thank cafeteria ladies.
And, now that I think of it, you do get something back. Not from cafeteria ladies, though a good relationship might assure you of getting lots of crusty top on your macaroni and cheese. No, from other ladies.
Like the lady who puts out the food at Big Lots, which, of late, has been a key component of my frugal life. She always points me to the best deals. She also told me that a BIG shipment will be coming in next week.
Now the Goodwill ladies are not allowed to do special favors for customers. But Donna, who puts out the books, is always happy to see me. She said, "I put out a lot of books yesterday. I wondered where my little friend was." That's me, by the way, even though I am about 5 inches taller than she is.
The lady at Walgreens always helps me figure out the proper order of checkout, when they have those confusing Register Rewards.
My late father, with his PhD, always had long chats with cafeteria ladies and other ladies. I guess that's where I get this predilection.
So let's all remember to appreciate cafeteria ladies and other ladies.
Now on to my next topic: cafeteria ladies. There is a wonderful cartoonist--Lynda Barry--who has a cartoon somewhere or other that shows two scornful high school students on line in the cafeteria. They look upon the ladies dishing up the food and one says "She coulda been a brain surgeon."
Doesn't that just capture the scorn of high school students and their assurance that they will get what they want--and that people who don't just didn't want it.
I do try to be mindful of the complex interplay of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and so forth in the pursuit of happiness and prosperity. I must be doing something right (in the mindfulness department), because several times at school open houses over the years, Mr. FS and I have been approached by cafeteria ladies. They wanted to thank us for the fact that our children thanked them. They would beam, "Your kids are among the few who say 'Thank you.'"
So even though my sense of etiquette is shaky (to put it mildly) and I violate many rules written and unwritten, I at least encouraged my children to thank cafeteria ladies.
And, now that I think of it, you do get something back. Not from cafeteria ladies, though a good relationship might assure you of getting lots of crusty top on your macaroni and cheese. No, from other ladies.
Like the lady who puts out the food at Big Lots, which, of late, has been a key component of my frugal life. She always points me to the best deals. She also told me that a BIG shipment will be coming in next week.
Now the Goodwill ladies are not allowed to do special favors for customers. But Donna, who puts out the books, is always happy to see me. She said, "I put out a lot of books yesterday. I wondered where my little friend was." That's me, by the way, even though I am about 5 inches taller than she is.
The lady at Walgreens always helps me figure out the proper order of checkout, when they have those confusing Register Rewards.
My late father, with his PhD, always had long chats with cafeteria ladies and other ladies. I guess that's where I get this predilection.
So let's all remember to appreciate cafeteria ladies and other ladies.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Things Found in Thrift Store Books: An Old Friend (?)
I have this plan--so far unrealized--to write a whole series of posts on "things found in thrift store books." I am always amazed at how I often find JUST the book I want to read, if not now, then in a month or so. Or even a year or so. Often, this is a book I never would have heard of. That's how I found The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, some time before it was made into a film.
Then there are the physical objects I find: airline boarding passes, notes, receipts, photos.
But recently I found a book that--fortuitously--bought to me someone I haven't seen in about 30 years. The book is called French Lessons. Published by the University of Chicago Press, it was written by a professor of French--Alice Kaplan--who is about my age, but is a fantastically successful academic, with a position at Duke University. The book, with ecstatic blurbs by reviewers in highbrow media outlets, is autobiographical: the author's father was involved in the Nuremburg Trials; the author meditates on such subjects as language, identity, and academic politics, ambition, and success--all things I would find rather interesting.
How could I resist? Especially since Habitat for Humanity was having an "all books 25 cents sale." Also, who else who frequents the Habitat for Humanity thrift store would buy this book? It was positively my duty to purchase it.
As it turned out, I found the book kind of a letdown. In spite of the author's interesting life and topics, the book was kind of boring. Oh well. I did read through the sections on her time in the graduate program at Yale, where she was involved with a fellow named Bill Golden, and suffered through the anxieties and politicking of a small and very political department. So I wended through the book in a rather desultory way. (Sorry about my poor review. Maybe it's me. The blurbs really ARE ecstatic, e.g. "most engaging Bildungsroman" blahblahblah)
Then, I perused the Acknowledgements, in this book at the end, rather than the beginning. There, in the middle of the top line of a page was a name that jumped out at me: Nicholas -------. Oh my: an old friend from college, who had gone to Yale in French, and who had--so I heard--left academics. We did not part under pleasant circumstances.
So, of course, I returned to the Yale section to see if there were any references to him. After a while, I realized that Bill Golden (whom she also calls Guillaume
Dore), the sometime love interest of the author, MUST have been Nick. Who else was "painfully thin," aggressively workaholic, had a New York father who had mysteriously lost all his money, had a beautiful French mother, who left her very young son with his father, so eager was she to get a divorce and return to France. Oh yeah--and who else also went to the Lycee Francais in New York City.
So I found out that Nick, who, last I saw him was in graduate school desperately desirous of becoming a protege of the famous professor Paul De Man (who was later revealed to have written for pro-Nazi newspapers in Belgium), wrote an overly detailed and lengthy dissertation,quit a teaching job mid-class, was doing something with computers, married someone who "understood" his complete self, and had an indeterminate number of children. And apparently was wearing overalls as he surveyed his yard post-academics.
Well, I'm not sure why I wrote all this down, except that it was a weird experience. I almost emailed the author to ask if Bill Golden was Nick! Then I realized the book was published in 1993--more than 15 years before I read it.
Of all the things I've found in thrift store books, this was the strangest. Perhaps my next installment will detail the inappropriate email a professor sent a student, that was folded into Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory.
So Readers: any interesting finds in books?
Then there are the physical objects I find: airline boarding passes, notes, receipts, photos.
But recently I found a book that--fortuitously--bought to me someone I haven't seen in about 30 years. The book is called French Lessons. Published by the University of Chicago Press, it was written by a professor of French--Alice Kaplan--who is about my age, but is a fantastically successful academic, with a position at Duke University. The book, with ecstatic blurbs by reviewers in highbrow media outlets, is autobiographical: the author's father was involved in the Nuremburg Trials; the author meditates on such subjects as language, identity, and academic politics, ambition, and success--all things I would find rather interesting.
How could I resist? Especially since Habitat for Humanity was having an "all books 25 cents sale." Also, who else who frequents the Habitat for Humanity thrift store would buy this book? It was positively my duty to purchase it.
As it turned out, I found the book kind of a letdown. In spite of the author's interesting life and topics, the book was kind of boring. Oh well. I did read through the sections on her time in the graduate program at Yale, where she was involved with a fellow named Bill Golden, and suffered through the anxieties and politicking of a small and very political department. So I wended through the book in a rather desultory way. (Sorry about my poor review. Maybe it's me. The blurbs really ARE ecstatic, e.g. "most engaging Bildungsroman" blahblahblah)
Then, I perused the Acknowledgements, in this book at the end, rather than the beginning. There, in the middle of the top line of a page was a name that jumped out at me: Nicholas -------. Oh my: an old friend from college, who had gone to Yale in French, and who had--so I heard--left academics. We did not part under pleasant circumstances.
So, of course, I returned to the Yale section to see if there were any references to him. After a while, I realized that Bill Golden (whom she also calls Guillaume
Dore), the sometime love interest of the author, MUST have been Nick. Who else was "painfully thin," aggressively workaholic, had a New York father who had mysteriously lost all his money, had a beautiful French mother, who left her very young son with his father, so eager was she to get a divorce and return to France. Oh yeah--and who else also went to the Lycee Francais in New York City.
So I found out that Nick, who, last I saw him was in graduate school desperately desirous of becoming a protege of the famous professor Paul De Man (who was later revealed to have written for pro-Nazi newspapers in Belgium), wrote an overly detailed and lengthy dissertation,quit a teaching job mid-class, was doing something with computers, married someone who "understood" his complete self, and had an indeterminate number of children. And apparently was wearing overalls as he surveyed his yard post-academics.
Well, I'm not sure why I wrote all this down, except that it was a weird experience. I almost emailed the author to ask if Bill Golden was Nick! Then I realized the book was published in 1993--more than 15 years before I read it.
Of all the things I've found in thrift store books, this was the strangest. Perhaps my next installment will detail the inappropriate email a professor sent a student, that was folded into Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory.
So Readers: any interesting finds in books?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Could We Stop Working RIGHT NOW?: Financial Independence
Those of you looking for facts and figures for the goal of EARLY RETIREMENT: this is not the right place. That's never been my goal. But I've always been attracted to the idea of FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE, a la Your Money or Your Life, not so I could quit my job, but so I could say every morning: I'm going to work because I WANT to, not because I HAVE to.
Now I don't actually know how much is in our retirement accounts, because I only glanced at a statement once over the past year. (Surely, I'm not alone in this possibly self-destructive behavior). Following the laws of averages, I know I was WAY down, and now am part-way up.
Yesterday, while taking a stroll through the neighborhood, I saw a yard sale sign by a pretty house with a FOR RENT sign out front. I wandered in and overheard the discussion: tenant is not owner, but renter. She's moving to Baton Rouge because she lost her job here and just got one in Baton Rouge. The reason she's renting is that she and her husband still own a house in Arkansas that they cannot sell. She and her husband live separately because of jobs.
Obviously, this is a snapshot of the upper middle-class version of the financial meltdown.
But here's the part of interest to ME. The house is owned by the Poole family, an old money family that owns a lot of the prettiest houses in the neighborhood. So it will NEVER be for sale. At least not for many years. If then.
The rent is $1800.00/month! Sorry New Yorkers: that sounds like a lot. The house is about 2/3 the size of mine, with a smaller yard, though with updated bathrooms.
Let's say we could rent our house for around that much. We OWN it free and clear. Hey! We could live in Costa Rica, where many Americans are now retiring, for between $1500.00 and $2500.00 a month. We would barely need to touch our emergency fund, though we would use it for family visits to and fro.
Then in 10 years or so, we could start tapping our retirement accounts, which surely would have recovered somewhat.
Mr. FS thought for a minute after my report. He queried, "What would we do in Costa Rica?" Well, take walks, appreciate beauty, cook. Sounds good.
But what would we do ALL DAY? Read. Walk. Talk to people.
That's kind of what we do now, though not in such beautiful surroundings. Plus, who would listen as I hold forth on this or that literary work? Could I find someone in Costa Rica who would want to know how beautifully constructed is a poem by George Herbert?
Isn't it nice to know we COULD do it? That, even now, we are going to work because we WANT to, not because we HAVE to.
Now I don't actually know how much is in our retirement accounts, because I only glanced at a statement once over the past year. (Surely, I'm not alone in this possibly self-destructive behavior). Following the laws of averages, I know I was WAY down, and now am part-way up.
Yesterday, while taking a stroll through the neighborhood, I saw a yard sale sign by a pretty house with a FOR RENT sign out front. I wandered in and overheard the discussion: tenant is not owner, but renter. She's moving to Baton Rouge because she lost her job here and just got one in Baton Rouge. The reason she's renting is that she and her husband still own a house in Arkansas that they cannot sell. She and her husband live separately because of jobs.
Obviously, this is a snapshot of the upper middle-class version of the financial meltdown.
But here's the part of interest to ME. The house is owned by the Poole family, an old money family that owns a lot of the prettiest houses in the neighborhood. So it will NEVER be for sale. At least not for many years. If then.
The rent is $1800.00/month! Sorry New Yorkers: that sounds like a lot. The house is about 2/3 the size of mine, with a smaller yard, though with updated bathrooms.
Let's say we could rent our house for around that much. We OWN it free and clear. Hey! We could live in Costa Rica, where many Americans are now retiring, for between $1500.00 and $2500.00 a month. We would barely need to touch our emergency fund, though we would use it for family visits to and fro.
Then in 10 years or so, we could start tapping our retirement accounts, which surely would have recovered somewhat.
Mr. FS thought for a minute after my report. He queried, "What would we do in Costa Rica?" Well, take walks, appreciate beauty, cook. Sounds good.
But what would we do ALL DAY? Read. Walk. Talk to people.
That's kind of what we do now, though not in such beautiful surroundings. Plus, who would listen as I hold forth on this or that literary work? Could I find someone in Costa Rica who would want to know how beautifully constructed is a poem by George Herbert?
Isn't it nice to know we COULD do it? That, even now, we are going to work because we WANT to, not because we HAVE to.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Beggarman, Thief?: Updates on Numbers
I did "Rich Man, Poor Man" yesterday and so have to finish the rhyme. I'm not sure if what follows is a good fit, but....
Talbots: Do you people remember when I thought about buying Talbots stock at around $1.80? I was struck by the divergence between the mainstream "male" view (Motley Fools named it their "Scary Halloween Stock") and the upstart "female" view (women bloggers "of a certain age" started admiring the new styles and the new president). Well, shoulda done it. As of yesterday, the stock was $9.25. A quintuplement!
Edmund Andrews: Remember him? Author of a book on HIS mortgage crisis within the context of the financial meltdown? Only he neglected to mention crucial financial information? I thought of him again because i saw his book at the public library. It's been checked out 4 times. I'll probably read it one of these days. Sales rank on Amazon: around 29,000. I'm not sure what these numbers mean, in terms of royalties etc.
Talbots: Do you people remember when I thought about buying Talbots stock at around $1.80? I was struck by the divergence between the mainstream "male" view (Motley Fools named it their "Scary Halloween Stock") and the upstart "female" view (women bloggers "of a certain age" started admiring the new styles and the new president). Well, shoulda done it. As of yesterday, the stock was $9.25. A quintuplement!
Edmund Andrews: Remember him? Author of a book on HIS mortgage crisis within the context of the financial meltdown? Only he neglected to mention crucial financial information? I thought of him again because i saw his book at the public library. It's been checked out 4 times. I'll probably read it one of these days. Sales rank on Amazon: around 29,000. I'm not sure what these numbers mean, in terms of royalties etc.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggarman, Thief: Update on Frugal Favors
Update of Frugal Favors: The "poor woman" from Goodwill pressed a $20.00 bill in my hand the other day. "I couldn't live with the stress," she said. So I gave her the leather jacket that has been residing in the trunk of my car.
Duchesse noted in a comment that she would have taken a check for $8.00 from my "rich[er]" co-worker. Well, I don't know. New bank fees often involve a punitive charge to the depositor as well as to the writer of the bad check. And I had heard many a discussion of creditor calls and hidden shopping bags and multiple accounts and post-dated checks from this person. Having over a month to come up with $8.00 in cash seemed like easy "terms."
I don't have a moral to draw from this, except to say that some people--like my Goodwill pal, and like me, for that matter--find indebtedness intolerable.
Duchesse noted in a comment that she would have taken a check for $8.00 from my "rich[er]" co-worker. Well, I don't know. New bank fees often involve a punitive charge to the depositor as well as to the writer of the bad check. And I had heard many a discussion of creditor calls and hidden shopping bags and multiple accounts and post-dated checks from this person. Having over a month to come up with $8.00 in cash seemed like easy "terms."
I don't have a moral to draw from this, except to say that some people--like my Goodwill pal, and like me, for that matter--find indebtedness intolerable.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Credit Card Perks
I'm writing on this topic because a commenter on a previous post marveled at my receiving $20.00 in gift cards from the LL Bean Visa.
I have plain vanilla rebate credit cards. The American Express has a sliding scale of rebates and gives me back a few hundred dollars a year and the Chase Freedom Card gives me 1% back. Then I have the LL Bean card, which I got to get free shipping and monogramming on the de rigeueur backpacks when my kids hit middle school.
I charge just about everything because I am lucky to have a built-in limit (built in, that is,to my brain or consciousness or something). So I never have a finance charge. I did a rough calculation and decided that airline miles linked credit cards were not better than what I already have. Plus, I figure that anything hawked with such enthusiasm by the purveyors (car leases, variable rate mortgages, variable annuities, whole life insurance) must be better for the purveyor than for the consumer.
As an amusing sidenote, a person I know slightly exclaimed that she and her husband had earned 2 tickets to Europe with a frequent flyer card in just one year. She was "playing middle-middle class," because she and her spouse had gone to Europe the previous year, also, she said, on frequent flyer credit card miles. When I said, "Wow! That's a lot of miles," she said, "I charge everything. Even groceries." Little did she know that she was revealing yearly spending on her card of perhaps $80,000.00, since you need about 40,000 for a plane ticket. A lot of groceries.
Anyway, I tend to ignore the various offers that arrive with my statements. So how did I acquire the $20.00? I bought my parents some luggage on sale. I got a few other things. I think LL purchases earn 3% back. Other purchases earn only 0.5%. I used the card a lot in Europe, since many places only take Visa, and that's my only Visa card. So somehow, I got $10.00!
Then, out of the blue, I got a $10.00 just because credit. I assume this was just because business this year, as my children would say, sucks. So it is to encourage spending. Hence, my $29.00 tote bag purchase.
If you don't have the card already, I think you get a $20.00 gift card just for applying. Then you get free shipping, returns, and monogramming. I seldom use the card, but even these little freebies are fun, pure lagniappe.
A few years ago, I earned a lot of credits and rebates when we were buying our Honda Civic. I put half on the American Express and half on the LL Bean Visa. We had saved up enough to pay cash since our previous car was 14 years old. But we figured, Why not get the rewards?
I was so scared that the bills would arrive late or that I would forget to pay, incurring a huge finance charge, that I sent the full payments to the companies that very day. And checked to make sure they got there.
So my story of credit cards involves paying them off in full and using them lackadaisically to get rewards now and then.
Do you make wise or clever use of credit card rewards? If so, how?
I have plain vanilla rebate credit cards. The American Express has a sliding scale of rebates and gives me back a few hundred dollars a year and the Chase Freedom Card gives me 1% back. Then I have the LL Bean card, which I got to get free shipping and monogramming on the de rigeueur backpacks when my kids hit middle school.
I charge just about everything because I am lucky to have a built-in limit (built in, that is,to my brain or consciousness or something). So I never have a finance charge. I did a rough calculation and decided that airline miles linked credit cards were not better than what I already have. Plus, I figure that anything hawked with such enthusiasm by the purveyors (car leases, variable rate mortgages, variable annuities, whole life insurance) must be better for the purveyor than for the consumer.
As an amusing sidenote, a person I know slightly exclaimed that she and her husband had earned 2 tickets to Europe with a frequent flyer card in just one year. She was "playing middle-middle class," because she and her spouse had gone to Europe the previous year, also, she said, on frequent flyer credit card miles. When I said, "Wow! That's a lot of miles," she said, "I charge everything. Even groceries." Little did she know that she was revealing yearly spending on her card of perhaps $80,000.00, since you need about 40,000 for a plane ticket. A lot of groceries.
Anyway, I tend to ignore the various offers that arrive with my statements. So how did I acquire the $20.00? I bought my parents some luggage on sale. I got a few other things. I think LL purchases earn 3% back. Other purchases earn only 0.5%. I used the card a lot in Europe, since many places only take Visa, and that's my only Visa card. So somehow, I got $10.00!
Then, out of the blue, I got a $10.00 just because credit. I assume this was just because business this year, as my children would say, sucks. So it is to encourage spending. Hence, my $29.00 tote bag purchase.
If you don't have the card already, I think you get a $20.00 gift card just for applying. Then you get free shipping, returns, and monogramming. I seldom use the card, but even these little freebies are fun, pure lagniappe.
A few years ago, I earned a lot of credits and rebates when we were buying our Honda Civic. I put half on the American Express and half on the LL Bean Visa. We had saved up enough to pay cash since our previous car was 14 years old. But we figured, Why not get the rewards?
I was so scared that the bills would arrive late or that I would forget to pay, incurring a huge finance charge, that I sent the full payments to the companies that very day. And checked to make sure they got there.
So my story of credit cards involves paying them off in full and using them lackadaisically to get rewards now and then.
Do you make wise or clever use of credit card rewards? If so, how?
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