Frugal in the Fruitlands

This lovely New England March has come in like a lion and out like… well, a feral kitty with sharp claws. It will still be several more weeks before the garden goes in, but I spent a good portion of my weekend at Home Depot, preparing seeds, pots, and all those goodies. I’ve also been working on a costume for the Festival of the LARPs this weekend, a weekend-long (free!) live-action roleplay convention at Brandeis University. I will be running my first LARP here, too, though it’s not one I’ve written. I’m prepared for adventure!

Here are some the best posts from March, in my not-so-humble opinion:

• No Kids, No Debt, No Problem
• The Mystery Cash Box and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
• The $20,000 Manicure Question

And here’s a little bit of link love for you, not all related to personal finance or frugality:

• An oldie (April 2007) but a goodie: Unclutterer’s Tough Questions for Your Things. My favorite one is not on this list: will I have to dust this?
• Write to Done’s Research Sources for Writers: A Guide to Backing Up Your Words. The availability of peer-reviewed journal articles to unaffiliated individuals is a major issue in making research relevant to the masses. This article helps you to seek out those resources that are free to everyone.
• H&R Block’s Tax Calculators. I like these better that the governments’ (and the last time I checked, the IRS’ withholding calculator was down!)
• Fancast: a free, legal repository of TV and movies, past and present – so you can, yanno, relive your childhood with Doogie Howser episodes.

Hoping to catch up on some of my health and fitness related goals, my April goal is to exercise every day for thirty minutes. I tried this last year at around this time and was only able to accomplish four days at a stretch before losing the habit. I’m just a Morlock by nature, alas. I also have absurdly high cholesterol by nature, too, so that’s nothing to be proud of.

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I am a little PUNCHY tonight.

• Lo, for I am Sir Now Appearing in the 89th Festival of Frugality, with my article The Economics and Philosophy of a Spending Trigger. This week’s festival had a strong focus on thriftiness vs. moral decrepitude. On that note, my favorite article was Golbguru’s Is This Frugal… Or Just Not Quite Right? The worst example I’ve seen of thriftiness at the expense of generosity is a Dollar Stretcher tip I once saw that recommended stuffing hair from barbers’ floors into used pantyhose to make gifts for your gardening friends (apparently human hair keeps deer away). Nothing says love like a flesh-colored bag of human hair!
• Coming up next on XORsted: Dirty Facts About My Finances, Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo Housing.
• Next week classes start up again. I’m taking Systems Programming, in which I Will Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Pointers; and Database Design, which might actually teach me something immediately saleable. This means I will either be somewhat sluggish to post or I will take the opportunity to procrastinate and write madly. Whatever I do write, it will be well-commented and there will be no null pointer exceptions.

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A couple of points of note about my life right now:

• I’m on day 8 of my no caffeine challenge and still going strong.
• I’m once again participating in the ZenHabits monthly challenge (see the ZenHabits forums for more information). My challenge this month is to do something everyday to move my career forward.
• One opportunity that I’m exploring is the possibility of doing a community blog for my local newspaper – they still need one for Lunenburg, and I think I know enough about blogging, and the area, to make it successful. It’s an unpaid opportunity, but I believe it would be a smart move toward building my own profile.
• I’ve put together a list of 101 goals in 1,001 days, a la Triplux and many many others. Its purpose is more inspiration than a step-by-step plan – I still intend to make progress in these habits largely via monthly challenges.

And here are some of my better posts from this month, if you haven’t read them already:

• The daily miracle of time
• Five cheap ways to feel rich
• Pants don’t need a mission statement

If you haven’t subscribed to XORsted yet, I invite you to do so.

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