Dreadful Penny

Things are actually calm here for a few days.  I have to run a couple of errands and I may turn it into a field trip: browsing the library and taking my laptop along to Starbucks for a latte (prepaid) and wifi (free with my card).  I’ll be making one stop at a drugstore today, […]

This morning, I looked outside and saw a small black squirrel climbing around on our (as yet unsealed) cedar deck.  No big deal; while the squirrels haven’t seized the deck as their own, I see them there occasionally.

I watched to see where he would go next and was surprised to see him remain in place, […]

In the past month or so that I’ve been getting back into acting, I’ve pursued all sorts of audition possibilities.  Auditions for the show that inspired my return are coming up this week and yesterday I made a tough decision: I’m not going.
I love performing in musical theatre.  I enjoy theatre people, I like the […]

This was our weekend harvest from the garden: delicious cherry tomatoes and the second batch of sugar snap peas.  Today I’ll pick a bunch of sage to roast a chicken and some basil for freezing.  We’ll have more cherry tomatoes soon, too.
Lessons learned so far:
- Next year I’m not planting pole beans.  They got gigantic […]

Last week’s total was nice and low.  Now, I’m feeling dissatisfied with my prior attempts to keep our weekly spending on groceries and household items around $100.  Lower!  Lower!  The meat for our meals this week is coming straight out of the freezer, so I could get by with picking up nothing but a few […]

Hmm.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently featured an article about coupon usage by region that made me think about my upbringing (via Common Sense with Money).  Check out this list:

I grew up near Buffalo.  Not far from Rochester or Syracuse.  Only a couple hours from Pittsburgh.  Those are four of the ten most coupon-using cities!  […]

Over at Northern Cheapskate, Christina wrote about book rentals and pointed out that (hello?) most areas of our fine country have free public library systems.  This reminded me of something my husband mentioned earlier in the week.
On Saturday while our house was being used as a movie set, he spent some time hiding out at […]

I was at the movie shoot from 11:00 pm until a little after 8:00 this morning.  It was a normal night for an extra: I was actually needed on set twice as background (two different angles of the same scene), but most of the night was spent making small talk, reading, doing crossword puzzles, or […]

I’m an extra in a scene that’s shooting overnight tonight, with a call from 11:00 pm-10:30 am. Our home schedule is going to be awfully strange for the next couple of days.  I’ll prep two nights of dinners this afternoon — tomorrow will be slow cooker pepper steak, so I can get it ready and […]

Our film for the 48 Hour Film Project is slotted to be shown in the middle of the first batch, at the 7:00 showing on Thursday, July 24.  C’mon by.
The experience made for a manic Saturday.  I had signed onto a team as a PA, then added catering into my duties, and then the whole […]