Mister Wibbles Sez. . .

NPR just had a story that just made my heart sing. They’ve discovered the color of one of the dinosaurs (Sinosauropteryx), and they weren’t green & brown! In fact, as an added pleasure, it seems that they were orangish. So, take that children’s books from the 1980s!

Original Story: NPR

So I’m home this month. My next show doesn’t start rehearsals until Feb 9th, which means I’ve had plenty of time to help get the new apartment situated. Ben has been working like crazy all over the place, which puts most of the household chores on me at the moment. Which is totally fine, because when I’m in tech, he takes care of it all.

So this weekend, I did five loads of laundry. I vacuumed the apartment. I did the grocery shopping and ran some errands and put the pot rack up on the wall. I organized the spices and planned out the living room. I added a new lampshade in our bedroom and put pictures on the walls. I took the recycling up to my Dad’s since we don’t have it here. I packed a fantastic bagel sandwich for myself and one for Ben. And I made tuna noodle casserole in lunch sized portions stacked neatly in the fridge. And then I had myself an existential crisis on the upcoming wedding and the meaning of the word “wife”.

I woke up on the verge of tears because I skipped my shower yesterday, and by the time I woke up, the apartment had begun the scheduled water shut off so not only could I not take my overdue shower, I also could not make my morning cup of coffee. Ben had a couple water bottles in his car and I had a little water in my water bottle, so we scrounged up the two cups of water I needed. Once caffeinated, I was doing a bit better, although still in the middle of this etymological mire. So while I waited for the maintenance man to show up and install our new programmable thermostat so I could just go take my goddamn shower, I read a bunch of absolutely beautiful pieces by brilliantly powerful women, and it helped.

My grandmother called and we had a nice long conversation. I spent some time at the library today as well. I’ve got a stack of books that came highly recommended. I really don’t know where I am with this yet, but I’ll try to keep updating here as I figure things out. Meantime, I’ve got some reading to do.

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write anything here. Mostly, it’s been for positive reasons: I’ve been working a lot of hours, going straight from one show to the next, and all the free time I have in between, I tend to devote to offline endeavors. I’ve been baking like a fiend (more on that in a moment), learning how to cook better, and BSKit and I have been finding ways to improve the quality of what we eat without breaking the bank.

My mother is the queen of kitchen gadgets. If there is a kitchen gadget out there, she not only knows about it, there’s probably one stashed in the cabinet under the island. What this means for me is that I rarely have to buy anything for my kitchen. The most recent acquisition from my mother’s kitchen is a KitchenAid stand mixer. It had been sitting on her counter for a year and a half and she had used it only twice, so it relocated to my apartment on the condition that the two times a year Mom wants to use it, she can come over and bake with me. In the first week that it resided to my counter, I made two loaves of bread (one challah, one white bread), Blackberry Cabernet cupcakes and frosting, Eggnog snickerdoodles, lemon bars, and meringue cookies (twice). While working a fifty-hour week up in Baltimore. So there’s been a lot of baking going on around here; expect more on that in the future.

The most recent work has been on the meat we consume. Last season, we split a share of a CSA with my grandparents and mother. Towards the end of the season, we ordered bulk meat, and in December, we picked up a pork package and a lamb. This weekend, we added half a cow to the inventory, which is good because BSK & I have almost finished our pork & lamb. Mom also brought down some venison and chicken from her freezer, so we’ve now got that added to our section of Grandma’s large freezer. And we just secured a source for more meat once we’ve run out of what we have.

There’s a lot of stuff I’ve been wanting to write about lately; there’ll probably be more on that soon, too. I’m hoping to actually resume writing here on a regular basis. March will bring another attempt at my 365 Photography project in a hopefully more manageable format of 31 days of photos. If that works out well, I may try expanding it into a longer term project, but I’m not committing myself too soon. We’ll see what the coming months bring. Hopefully, more out of me rather than less.

Fantastic afternoon today. B & I went out for a walk to the bank to deposit checks, and took a shortcut through the woods behind the development next to ours. I dropped my sunglasses (of course — I lose more sunglasses than anybody else I know), and we turned back to go find them. Something in the back of my brain started tingling a memory at me, and by the time we found my sunglasses (only a few paces back), it struck me. The thorny branches we’d been weaving in and out of were wineberry bushes, like the ones up at my grandparents’ house. Being the beginning of July, the berries were just beginning to ripen up, so in I dove, headfirst among the bushes and started bringing up these lovely little rubies. On our way back home (after stopping for lunch, so we now had an empty soda cup with us), we picked as many as I could carry, then started filling the cup. I’d say we probably picked about twice as many as made it home. Truly a profitable afternoon.

One of my favorite easy breakfasts, pretty inexpensive depending on the exact ingredients you use, is Fruit & Rice. This morning, I used banana, since that’s what we had on hand (on sale at BJ’s for ridiculously cheap). It’s super easy, which is nice when I’m tired and hungry and don’t want to get started on my day.

I start with rice, either fresh from the rice cooker or leftovers from the fridge. If I’m using leftover rice, I’ll microwave it till it’s nice and warm first. Either way, it goes into a bowl. I add plenty of sugar — about two tablespoons or so, I believe. The next ingredient is soymilk (because I don’t eat any cow-dairy, but I’m sure it would taste just fine with regular milk if that’s what you prefer), which is poured over the rice till it just begins to pool at the bottom. I mix it up thoroughly, and then top with fruit. Mango is my favorite when it’s on sale, but frozen berries do nicely in a pinch (just put them on the bottom, under the steaming rice to thaw them). Today, I had banana, which I sliced up on top. Since I was using leftover rice, I tossed the banana slices in the micro too, and they taste quite delectable when warm. To top it all off, I added a sprinkling of cinnamon to the whole thing, then called it breakfast. Tada!

I’m not completely happy with my chopped liver recipe and how it turned out. It’s in the freezer for when I’ll get a chance to go see my grandmother and get her to help me fix it. In the meantime, I still need things to eat, so this afternoon, I broke out my old stand by: fried rice.

It’s nothing too complicated. I open up the refrigerator, and when I see a container of leftover rice from a previous meal, I know that my lunch will be fried rice. The next task is to search through the fridge and pick what else will go in it.

I always have garlic around, so two or three cloves of that get chopped up. There’s usually onion hanging out in a drawer somewhere (this week, I happened to still have some organic spring onions, a gift from my mother!). Of course soy sauce, which we use in so many things and therefore buy by the gallon. And then an egg for added protein. Beyond that, I just toss in whatever happens to be lying around.

Basic Ingredients:
Leftover Rice (about 1 ½ c.)
2 cloves garlic
1 spring onion or ¼ small onion
olive oil
soy sauce
1 egg

Today, I started with the onion and garlic. Chopped up and tossed into the skillet of hot oil. Saute those for a moment or two, then toss in the rice and carefully stir. After it’s been allowed to warm up a little, I drizzle it with the soy sauce. Today, I still had leftovers of the homemade teriyaki sauce we like to keep around, so I used that instead. Later, when it seemed like it needed more sauce, I added plain soy sauce. I tossed in a little Frank’s wing sauce for some kick, added the cooked egg whites (leftover from making lemon bars last week), and stirred some more. It was still lacking something, so I added some miso paste (yeah, I know, these are not the sort of things most Americans keep lying around in their kitchen — use what you’ve got). Stir it around and throw in some more soy sauce, and then turn off the heat. In less than five minutes, lunch is ready and quite tasty. There was enough for lunch and plenty for leftovers.

Dinner tonight (pictured above) involved cooking up a chicken breast, slicing it once cooked, and tossing that in with some of the rest. It was supposed to be just sliced when cooked, but I discovered when slicing it that I’d managed to cook it about medium-rare, which for steak is acceptable, chicken not so much. Back into the still-hot pan it went to saute for a moment more, and then all done. The chicken, by the way, is pre-packaged, boneless skinless breasts, premarinated in teriyaki. Normally, I wouldn’t do this, but I got to the store on the same day as their sell by/freeze by date, which meant the store had put a 50% off coupon on the package, making them cheaper than the ones with bones and skin.

Total cost: less than a dollar for two meals, with leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast or lunch.

The income from a career in theater has been, well, much as I expected. Unfortunately, that isn’t high. I’ve been struggling lately between bills and income and the balance between the two, quite frankly, has not been what it should be. Two months in a row, I’m running in the red, and finally I decided enough’s enough. I can’t seem to get my income higher in a way that suits my lifestyle, that means I need to get my expenses lower.

Mind you, currently I do not live extravagantly. Many are shocked to hear I usually live on somewhere around $900 to $1000 a month. But I can do better than that. I *should* be able to do better than that. So that’s my current goal. I plan to track here exactly how I go about doing that. It’s all part of the life in theater, after all, and it seems like so few people actually are aware how easily one can live on almost nothing.

Granted, I have several advantages in my favor. First of all, I’m naturally cheap. There’s a big difference between being frugal and being cheap, and I tend to err on the side of cheap. I’m slowly working my way over to frugal, since cheapness has its own expenses (for example, buying a $15 pair of shoes every 6 months to be cheap, or a $60 pair every 4 years to be frugal — the good shoes save me $60, as well as being better for my feet). Secondly, I have my loving, supportive family. If things get to be too tight and I just can’t afford a healthy meal, my family is local and I can always call up Mom or Dad to meet them for lunch or dinner. Occasionally, Mom buys me groceries (more on that later). Dad spoils me by helping my gaming habits. These are wonderful, amazing people, without whom not only would I not be in this world, but I would never be able to securely take the risks I need to in pursuing a career in theater.

My first task to tackle is my eating habits. That means recipes on the cheap, cheap ingredients, and bumming money, food, and groceries off of people. Next (in no particular order) is entertainment expenses, then household expenses, pet care for a finicky old cat, and other miscellaneous expenses as I come upon them.

In general, I’d like to get into a writing schedule of at least once a week. I feel that when I’m writing stuff here, it improves my communication skills in other areas, especially in sending coherent emails. As I find myself on a serious job hunt every three or four months, it is imperative that I be comfortable in just sitting down to write an email to a total stranger. If, along the way, I can possibly help others who are trying to live on low incomes to live a little better, then that just brightens my world.

My overall philosophy as far as the way I live now? Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to live in poverty. I don’t mean live extravagantly, because ultimately that will catch up with you faster and harder than living in squalor. But the finer things in life don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. I can have a comfortable place to live and entertainment expenses and good, healthy food, and all of it without giving up my dreams of pursuing theater. I don’t have to be rich to live well.

I was on my way to an electrics job, when I was already halfway out from home and realized I’d forgotten my wrench. Since I was driving past my mom’s house, I just stopped by in there to see what I could find in her toolbox (an adjustable c-wrench shouldn’t be too hard to find). Instead of a normal c-wrench, I found this little 4″ “stubby” wrench specifically designed for people with little hands. It was all I could find and at this point, I was running too behind schedule to stop at a hardware store without being late to the job, so I just took it and figured it would have to do in a pinch. Well, it turned out to work better than I thought even on lighting instruments that have been clamped to the same pipe since the Reagan years, even without the leverage you get from an 8″ wrench! I’m in love with this wrench, and my mother may not get it back.

Anyways, to the point: I called Mom to find out where she got it so I could get my own (when I showed it to my housemate, who works more than I do as a theater electrician, she coveted it too). Mom said she got it “at BJ’s or Costco, I don’t remember which”. So I went to the websites of each, just to check. Found hand tools at Costco, although none of the stubby wrenches. So I checked BJ’s website. No obvious categories for hand tools, so I used their handy little online search for wrenches.

You see my confusion. So it looks like we’ll have to check BJ’s in person, because their web search, well, not so useful. Oh well.

As I am currently in the process of deleting three thousand some spam comments because I neglected the site for a whole week, the comments will be disabled. There really isn’t enough comment volume to demand this kind of attention anyways. If you’d like to get in touch with me, send me an email to wibbles at digital - sunset dot com. Seriously, the spam problem is getting out of hand.

Of The Dead: DIE ZOMBIE, DIE!! (Update: purchased!)

Ceci n’est pas une pipe: not the version you might have known.

Hypotamoose: Totally Need This. (Update: purchased!)

Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems: I have much desire for this tshirt.

Stabby McKnife: Need I say more?

We’ll be safe in this dark creepy barn: See Zombie, above.