Category: Useful Things

National Cash Mob Day is Saturday March 24 / Concord NH 2 PM

I learned, from NHPR’s Word of Mouth, that there will be a Cash Mob in Concord on Saturday at 2 PM.  And that is just when I’ll be in downtown Concord!

I learned that a Cash Mob is an event organized via social media in which shoppers descend on one area with cash in hand.  The Cash Mob blog says: “The general idea is to encourage people to go into small, local businesses and spend their money, en masse, to give the business owner a little bit of economic stimulus.”

You can learn more about the Concord event and the overall movement, here: Concord to Welcome a Cash Mob.

Keep on Truckin’….

I learned all these things about renting a truck.

You may remember that I learned last year that a U-Haul guaranteed reservation means nothing.  Specifically, it means that they guarantee that they won’t raise the rate when you pick up the truck, but it in no way implies that there will be a truck to pick up!   It turns out that Budget has the same system.  I asked Budget “Then what’s the difference?”.  “The price”,  Zach the Budget Guy told me.  And boy, what a difference!

So I learned:

  • Ryder trucks are only local, so it’s just U-Haul and Budget
  • Budget rental trucks are roughly half the price of U-Haul, for the same thing!
  • You can request features (a third seat, for example), but you won’t know if you get it until the truck arrives at the pickup spot, usually a day before your reservation
  • Even if you think you know what you are getting (a newish truck with an input jack for mp3/iPod), there may be a last minute switch to “or not”.  Ours was due to a Check Engine light.  The next truck was older and had no such gadgetry.
  • Bring your own padlock.  If you are like us, you have a stack of them.  Why buy yet another?
  • Bring your own GPS (but you already figured that out)

Steve is the one who drove the whole Eastern Seaboard in 2.5 days – Steve, what did I forget?

Bedtime Stories

I have learned that it’s always a bad idea, but it’s a particularly bad idea when in a lonely place, for me to read depressing books at bedtime.  Death? Check.  (actual) Dismemberment?  Check.  Dead and/or missing children? Check!  What was I thinking?????

So one yard sale ($1 a bag) and one consignment shop later, I have a  nice pile of books from which to choose something much better suited for reading before sleeping and dreaming.  A Wodehouse, a Westlake, and a whole bunch of Chick Lit.   Sweet dreams!

That Next Step is a Doozy

So I used a lot of minutes this month.  So what?  I know what you do when you go over your minutes.  You just call Verizon and say whoops I went over my minutes.  Then you pay $10 and they give you a whole bunch more minutes for the rest of the month and later you just call them again and set it back to the lower rate.  Easy peasy.  Done this before.

Wait – what?  What’s that you say, Verizon?   It costs $20 to go from 700 to 1400 minutes.  OK.  And $10 more to go from 1400 to 2000.  Cool.  And now I’m over 2000.  OK whatever.  I just want to sign up to pay the whatever few dollars and you just give me the next step up.  WHAT?  The next step up is to Unlimited minute and it costs A HUNDRED DOLLARS more??

I learned that I really should have bothered to get the static-y land line in this temporary home of mine fixed  rather than think that I could just easily bank on my cell phone and buy more minutes!

Oh well.  Lesson learned! Now my family has unlimited minutes for the next two weeks, so feel free to give me a call on my cell!

Where there’s smoke…

there is not enough fire: that’s what I learned!

Steve gave me a beautiful fire in the fireplace for Christmas.  But first he found out how to do it smoke-free.

Somehow he got our neighbor, Bob, to climb up on the roof and check out the chimney, which Bob then declared to be clean and perfect.  So what’s with the smoke when we make  fires?  Bob told Steve that smoke comes from little fires, ones that don’t create enough heat to get the updraft going.

Here is the big roaring smoke-free fire that Steve made:

New Adventures in Rice

After a lifetime of making rice the same old way, I learned a new way: You can make rice in lots of water, like you make pasta!  This is from Carolina Rice – and it worked great!  Did we lose some nutrients in the water?  Maybe.  Hey – did you already know this???

 

Cooking Directions – On the Stove

30 Minute Cooking Method:  To prepare up to 2 cups of brown rice bring 10 cups of water to a boil. Stir in rice. Return to a boil. Cook, uncovered for 30 minutes. If desired, 1 tablespoon tub margarine and 1 teaspoon of salt per cup of rice can be added to the water while cooking. Drain water. Serve.

Return to IKEA: Do the Math

I thought I had IKEA all learned up, in a previous lesson, but on this day I learned to ADD!

Lesson 1: Do the Math

There was a promotion running: spend $100 and your lunch is free.  What we should have done, but didn’t, was add up our joint purchases as we went, so see what to combine.  In this case, one of the “should I buy this or not?” could have been included for less than free!  They would have paid us to buy it – if we had spent $10 more they would give us $26 back.   Unfortunately, we figured this our right after ringing up.  Which brings us to…

Lesson 2: Do the Math

If it takes 20 minutes to go through the checkout line the first time, then it’s going to take at least 20 minutes to go through the checkout line the second time.  If you don’t have another 20 minutes, cut your losses and leave.

And a bonus lesson: Anything that is fun (and we happen to find IKEA to be fun) is even more fun if you add Baby Lillian!  Here she is checking out an IKEA high chair in a demo kitchen: