A Long Overdue Thank You

^{Sunday, 20 Sweltring 2010}

It's been a long, hard slog here at the Funny Farm for the past year and a half or so – adjusting to paying (roughly) $1800 worth of bills with $1500 per month of income*. As long as I don't eat, put gas (or maintenance) into my car, and nothing goes wrong with any of the old junk that I'm keeping together with duct tape and baler twine**. One of these years decades millennia days I'm going to get around to cleaning things up and having Toms' Great Junk Purge Garage Sale, but until then there's a lot of mathoms piled up all over and a few things that I can kluge together to make the old junk that I need for whatever I'm up to at the time.

So, basically, I'm trying to get by on dwindling resources and keep things going for as long as possible with what I've got. In efforts to cut back on things, I began to cook more often, and I noticed that my electric stove was causing a bit of a ding in the power bill. As any cheap-a$$ skillbilly would do, I began to use my little baby Weber grill more for cooking as much stuff as I could get on the grill, which is slightly larger than a regular dinner plate. It certainly was an adventure grilling sweet corn on it with out resorting to actually tossing the ears into the charcoal.

Now, one of the main reasons I am so keen on trying to hang on to my current domicile is that I live in a very nice zone of southeast Michigan. My neighbors are nice quiet people who get along with each other as well as Your Humble Narrator while struggling with their own situations and adventures in life. It is probably the nicest set of digs I've been lucky enough to live in. I am able to set up areas that allow me to be able to do some computer repair work (now that I might actually manage to find a few jobs in that area). My car is garaged year round, which I can say from personal experience is a lot easier to deal with than outdoor long term parking, and might add significantly to the life and value of my vehicles (the jury's still out on that one).

I've also been here longer than almost any other place I've lived at; a lot of stuff has accumulated; having already moved over thirty times by the time I was thirty, I now have a somewhat different perspective on the whole moving experience; and I don't want to have to tear down/wade through/set up a lot of the houses of cards I've kept so precariously balanced.

Well, as you may well imagine, even though under this particular roof an economic crisis was underway, life went (and goes) on just the same. So it was that my neighbor, a relatively new surgeon (having just completed his internship in Pontiac) with a newly born child, went to the place he was finishing interning at and asked for a surgeon's salary. And then, shortly thereafter, found a place that would pay him surgeon's wages.

So now he's working in Florida, with a place to walk his dogs on the beach less than a block from his house, and hopefully enjoying the new situation (along with his wife and the youngling and the two aforementioned dogs). And, why, dear reader, did I tell you this in the middle of my tale of woe? Well, we had had a few discussions over the years (I'm not all that social by nature until I get to know someone, and rarely have I engaged in a lengthy conversation with my neighbors), and he was aware of how tight the purse strings are stretched over here. So, just before he moved the last of his stuff out of the house next door, he wheeled his old gas grill over to my place, helped me lift it onto my deck, and gave it (along with a full tank of propane) to me.

A whole new world of culinary adventure has opened up to me with this acquisition. No more double power expenditures (mondo electricity to power the stove, then mondo power to cool the house down from all the extra heat). And a different methodology and way of thinking about the job of cooking makes things a bit more interesting.

I've already explored a few avenues previously unimagined to me: I made my first beer can chicken, put together some awesome kebobs, and had grilled beer soaked sweet corn. But the best is the grilled veggies. I've never been a big fan; but mostly I was getting my veggies in the convenient canned form. The bland, soggy, salt-and-preservative-filled canned form. Now, I put together a nice chicken marinade, cut up some fresh veggies, make a little grilling pan with a veggie griller and some tin foil, add olive oil and marinaded chicken, and start grilling. Add fresh veggies as desired – carrots and other tougher veggies should get grilled longer than things like tomatoes and peppers. Usually things are done to my satisfaction within fifteen – twenty minutes or so. I can make a small pan of rice on the side burner at the same time to complete the basics of the meal. And there's usually enough leftovers from one grilling for the rest of the week!

Along with this fine parting gift, Your Humble Narrator also managed to pry this out of their hands when they had their garage sale:

I don't know where he got the original from, or the Plexiglas cover he got for them. And I don't want to know. All you need to know is that I have an (almost) 3'x4' framed picture of the Three Stooges, each holding a bottle of Three Stooges Beer. And that I am sincerely thankful to my ex-neighbors for their kindness and friendship.

Share And Enjoy!

* - the rough numbers:

mortgage – 825
auto - 225
phone - 70
cable/internets - 55
water - 40
gas / electric - 350 (summer=high electric;winter=high gas)
prescriptions - 150

unenjoyment benefit (after taxes, FICA, etc.)*** - 362.94 / week

** - spare the duct tape, spoil the job! Oddly enough, the lawn mower decided to take a crap this weekend and I'm trying to figure out what parts to get and where to get them so I don't have to drop $300 plus on a new lawn maintenance device.

*** - that's right, gang, Your Humble Narrator is still paying all of his taxes, lazy DFH that he is...