Eat your veggie waste; it's good for you

Supposedly, the French are healthier than Americans despite eating diets higher in fat, cigarettes, and booze.  This is the so-called French paradox, and led to research that discovered health benefits from drinking red wine.  Yet I sometimes wonder if the French paradox is likelier due to how French cooking makes use of seemingly every last scrap of a plant or animal.  Bone marrow is a fatty delicacy, while the bone solids make lovely broth and scraps of vegetables can be tied into a garni, simmered to infuse their flavor into a dish, and then removed.

When we grew broccoli in our garden, they produced so may huge leaves (and our cabbage & bok choy crop performed so poorly) that we began harvesting the broccoli greens to use in place of cabbage & bok choy.  We froze the broccoli stalks to feed to the dog, until my beloved found a recipe for broccoli mimolet (pureed soup) in an old French cookbook.  Fresh-from-the-garden veggies are especially yummy and, if you compost, they add almost nothing to your weekly trash load.

Indeed, many of the food scraps we discard are actually rather nutritious.  December's Oprah Magazine highlights 5.  Celery tops, for example, have more magnesium & calcium than celery stalks. Onion skins are rich in atioxidants (particularly quercetin).  And broccoli leaves are loaded with Vitamin A.
Looks like my ultimate french cookbook was a healthy eating guide, too.

WSJ: The Dog Maxed Out My Credit Card: Pet car costs

From a purely dispassionate perspective, dogs are expensive to replace.  It's not the $25 adoption fee (or more, depending where you live); it's the well-puppy visits, spaying, neutering, and, more importantly, the training.  I have an espresso machine that knows exactly how I like my latte, how hot, how fine to grind the beans, how long to steam the milk.  I paid almost $400 to repair it. 

I have a dog who knows I don't like him to pee in the house, and he doesn't.  He's trained to travel, so he knows he can't run up to strangers (they may not like dogs), he can't bark in the hotel room, and he'll have to spend some time in his crate peacefully.  The basic obedience stuff costs about $150+, and several months of regular classes and practice.  What's an hour of your time worth?  You can hire somebody to do all the training (no matter what, you've got to spend some time practicing with the dog, though), starting around $600.  The basic obedience "program" is relatively cheap.

If we choose to think of a dog as a replaceable commodity, we have to recognize the customization that makes each product unique.  My dog knows that a closed office door means "be quiet, dad's on a conference call."  He knows when "down" also means "leave me alone" and when it means "if you bring me your stuffed animal and lean against my leg, I'll find it adorable and companionable."  No guarantees than a replacement model will even have the hardware for that program.  This one rides quietly in the car - no worries that he'll freak out and jump under the clutch pedal like the last one (eventually trained away, but it took 10 years and buying a convertible before she was comfortable riding in the car).  The puppy years cost one speaker wire and a whole lot of vigilance that I, honestly, don't have time for today.  He stalked my favorite (and most expensive) pair of shoes and seemed to take it to heart when I told him I would use his hide to make a replacement.  A new dog, who knows if the message would sink in before or after the $(20? 50? 150? 450?) shoe replacement?  After 7 years together, I know for a fact that, if he ever did snap at someone, he'd be sick, because he hasn't got an aggressive bone in his body.  I might find a well-trained, mellow, adult dog in a shelter, at minimal adoption cost, but that dog would not be a replacement.  He'd just be a different dog.  Maybe better.  Maybe worse.  Probably just different.  A mysterious new friend to learn about and bond with.

It's like marriage or dating or step-parents.  The subsequent ones aren't replacements.  They're just different experiences.  And, like human relationships, you can't really give a new experience its due unless you know in your heart that you did right in the last one.  Because pets aren't commodities; they are unique exemplars (like art?) with mammalian brains.  They learn from us and train us.  They emit chemical signals and read our chemical signals.  They communicate with their furry little faces, and they read our faces and body language.  They know us, and, through knowing them, we know ourselves.  We know if we're generous, loving, caring beings.  We know if we're selfish, materialistic, shallow beings.  We know if we're practical ($5000 to extend his life for 3 more months of agony? no thanks) or just stupid in love ($4000 and he'll live out his natural life? Sure.) or good investors ($2000 to save a good, broken-in dog? I'd spend that on training, neutering, shots, and chewed-up shoes). 

Sometimes they leave us with doubts.  My former dog died of - well, I'd like to say kidney failure, but she was really murdered by a contract killer I paid.  Or we kindly ended her life in a humane way, depending how you look at it.  It was surreal to realize that I was playing God with my dog's life.  I don't know if I did it to give her a more peaceful end, or to save my own family the agony of watching her die a slow and painful death.  Her last day, I sat her down and told her that, since she hadn't eaten in days (I stopped forcing her to eat when she bit me and gave me a long, meaningful look to say "I meant that in the most loving but serious way"), and she was in bad shape, I was going to put her down unless she started eating again.  She glared at me and walked away.  Did she understand?  Even if she could understand, she had kidney failure - her body was floating in toxins and she was, essentially, drunk.  She avoided me all day.  In the car, she tried to jump out the window while we drove.  It is so natural for a dog to go off alone to die, why was I forcing her to do it the easy - but unnatural - way?  It was only at the vet's office that she crawled into my lap and snuggled.  She was a selfish dog - a survivor of the mean streets and the rough conditions at the animal shelter.  But she was capable of affection on her own terms.  Her last day, she opted to give affection to me, the one who'd been with her for more than a decade.  The puppy, the rest of the people in the family, she gave them some love, but then she crawled into my lap and just snuggled with me until it was time.  We made up, she accepted my decision.  I like to think she accepted the wisdom of the decision, but maybe she just accepted the futility of her situation.  She went peacefully to the table and died.  The puppy stayed out of the way until it was done.  Then he stood up on his hind legs and looked at her for a long moment.  I had a lot of doubt, contracting for my dog's death, choosing her execution date.  But after some time passed, I looked at pictures from her last few weeks and realized that I had been in denial about how far gone she'd been that last week or two.

The dog before her died before I got to the vet's office, but came back just long enough to say goodbye.  Another stray.  It meant something to me for her to die surrounded by love.   (She was a special and amazing dog, but that's a story for another day.)  She was sedated, but when I put my hands on her, her legs twitched and her mouth moved and she quivered until she could look me in the eye.  I held her and told her what a good dog she was and tried to give her all the love she missed during her years on the street.  She gave me one last lick and just went peaceful and dead in my arms.

I'll tell you, I've felt sad about throwing away a favorite but worn and tattered t-shirt, and it's nothing compared to the feeling of losing a pet.  They aren't commodities.  They are living creatures, our fellow travelers in this strange universe, beings as capable of hating us as they are of loving us - yet they almost invariably choose to love us.  Or else they run away. :-)  I suppose a proper financial decision on pet health care costs would look at the depreciated value of the asset.  Yet animals appreciate in value over the years, as the human-animal bond strengthens, the associated shared memories accumulate, and the emotional attachment grows.  Some people keep their college or even high school sweatshirts and yearbooks through old age.  Our furry friend assets just don't last that long, but, sometimes, money is the only thing standing between another year or a vast improvement in the quality of the remaining years, and saying goodbye. 

And yet, that same money could take a healthy dog off death row at a shelter.  Or put a kid through a year of  community college.  Or fly us home for the holidays.  Or keep us out of a shelter, ourselves.  How far to go, financially, is a tough and very individual decision. 

I spend at least $500 for the latest (ish) and greatest (good enough) computer.  Every time, I talk myself into forgetting that I'm gonna have to buy new software licenses for the products I use the most.  You bet I'd pay $500 to keep my outdated canine technology in good running condition.  I paid a bit more than that to repair his ACLs (on both sides) to keep his remaining years healthy, relatively pain free, and low cost (arthritis meds aren't cheap, and the damage they do over time isn't cheap to treat, either).  My dog is far more entertaining than cable TV, more comforting than a hot toddy, more aesthetically pleasing than a cashmere sweater and a limited edition print, combined.  And he's a furry little pain in the butt, always wanting to play when I'm stressing about a deadline (but isn't that when I need to play), wanting to go for a walk when I'm tired (you've got to make time for exercise), wanting to be with me when I just want to be alone (but alone with good company is the best kind).  If my computer ever develops dog logic to give me what I want most of the time, but to give me what I need the rest of the time, well, I guess it will be worth thousands, too.

California AND Bust @ Vanity Fair

Interesting article at Vanity Fair by Michael Lewis* on California's financial woes. 7 rambling pages, but highly readable and totally worth the effort.

“How does the United States emerge from the credit crisis?” Whitney asked
herself. “I was convinced—because the credit crisis had been so different from
region to region—that it would emerge with new regional strengths and
weaknesses. Companies are more likely to flourish in the stronger states; the
individuals will go to where the jobs are. Ultimately, the people will follow
the companies.” The country, she thought, might organize itself increasingly
into zones of financial security and zones of financial crisis. And the more
clearly people understood which zones were which, the more friction there would
be between the two. (“Indiana is going to be like, ‘N.F.W. I’m bailing out New
Jersey.’ ”) As more and more people grasped which places had serious financial
problems and which did not, the problems would only increase. “Those who have
money and can move do so,” Whitney wrote in her report to her Wall Street
clients, “those without money and who cannot move do not, and ultimately rely
more on state and local assistance. It becomes effectively a ‘tragedy of the
commons.’ ”

I have left California. I do not want to say where I went, because I don't want Californians following me. They messed up California, I don't want them coming here and messing up a state that still paves its streets and polices its neighborhoods. For several years, I have been expecting the California exodus, like the Dust Bowl exodus of the Great Depression era, to result in tensions against the modern-day Okies. There came a point, living in California, when I realized that California voters will approve ANY gift from the taxpayers (as long as it's paid by somebody else) and ANY new tax increase, as long as it taxes somebody else.

Partisanship is killing this country. Psychologically, it is in-group/out-group behavior. Californians have enormously fractured social identities, with little observable loyalty to the greater good. You can't get Californians to forego a light rail project in the midst of economic catastrophe, because they don't recognize that the whole society will pay for it. Instead, the majority sees their own little group (democrat, progressive, social activist, whatever name they choose) as responsible for approving "progress" while the outgroup (the rich, corporations, or anyone else they can label as less deserving of having earned money) is responsible for paying.

***********
Below are several quotes from the VF article, but the whole 7-page enchilada is well worth a read.

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan
legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then
required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or
meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some
common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the
initiative process. Throw in term limits—no elected official now serves in
California government long enough to fully understand it—and you have a recipe
for generating maximum contempt for elected officials.

But when you look below the surface, he adds, the system is actually very good at giving Californians what they want. “What all the polls show,” says Paul, “is that people want services and not to pay for them. And that’s exactly what they have now got.” ....
San Jose has the highest per capita income of any city in the United States, after New York. It has the highest credit rating of any city in California with a population over 250,000. It is one of the few cities in America with a triple-A rating from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, but only because its bondholders have the power to compel the city to levy a tax on property owners to pay off the bonds. The city itself is not all that far from being bankrupt.

The problem, he explains, pre-dates the most recent financial crisis. “Hell, I was here. I know how it started. It started in the 1990s with the Internet boom. We live near rich people, so we thought we were rich.” San Jose’s budget, like the budget of any city, turns on the pay of public-safety workers: the police and firefighters now eat 75 percent of all discretionary spending. The Internet boom created both great expectations for public employees and tax revenues to meet them. In its negotiations with unions the city was required to submit to binding arbitration, which works for police officers and firefighters just as it does for Major League Baseball players. Each side of any pay dispute makes its best offer, and a putatively neutral judge picks one of them. There is no meeting in the middle: the judge simply rules for one side or the other. Each side thus has an incentive to be reasonable, for the less reasonable they are, the less likely it is that the judge will favor their proposal. The problem with binding arbitration for police officers and firefighters, says Reed, is that the judges are not neutral. “They tend to be labor lawyers who favor the unions,” he says, “and so the city does anything it can to avoid the process.” And what politician wants to spat publicly with police officers and firefighters? ....

He hands me a chart. It shows that the city’s pension costs when he first became interested in the subject were projected to run $73 million a year. This year they would be $245 million: pension and health-care costs of retired workers now are more than half the budget. In three years’ time pension costs alone would come to $400 million, though “if you were to adjust for real life expectancy it is more like $650 million.” Legally obliged to meet these costs, the city can respond only by cutting elsewhere. As a result, San Jose, once run by 7,450 city workers, was now being run by 5,400 city workers. The city was back to staffing levels of 1988, when it had a quarter of a million fewer residents. The remaining workers had taken a 10 percent pay cut; yet even that was not enough to offset the increase in the city’s pension liability. The city had closed its libraries three days a week. It had cut back servicing its parks. It had refrained from opening a brand-new community center, built before the housing bust, because it couldn’t pay to staff the place. For the first time in history it had laid off police officers and firefighters.

B y 2014, Reed had calculated, a city of a million people, the 10th-largest city in the United States, would be serviced by 1,600 public workers. “There is no way to run a city with that level of staffing,” he said. “You start to ask: What is a city? Why do we bother to live together? But that’s just the start.” The problem was going to grow worse until, as he put it, “you get to one.” A single employee to service the entire city, presumably with a focus on paying pensions. “I don’t know how far out you have to go until you get to one,” said Reed, “but it isn’t all that far.” At that point, if not before, the city would be nothing more than a vehicle to pay the retirement costs of its former workers. The only clear solution was if former city workers up and died, soon. But former city workers were, blessedly, living longer than ever.

This wasn’t a hypothetical scary situation, said Reed. “It’s a mathematical inevitability.”

*Lewis was an accidental Wall Street trader before he became an author and columnist. He is a humanities guy who understands finance, and he lives in California.

Clever way to mark studs when remodeling - Painter's tape

We had a fellow doing some work and I noticed he was using painter's tape to mark studs. Very clever. More visible than pencil marks and doesn't require cleaning or painting over the marks. He put the painter's tape just outside where he was mounting the wood, so it would still be visible when he lifted it into place, and the smaller tape is almost exactly the same width as a 2x4, so it can be used to mark exactly where the edges of the stud are.

An Ode to Craigslist and Freecycle (or how to save the world with your garbage)

We decided to remodel our original 1973 bathroom, and most of the pieces were well-maintained despite being well-worn. This was the ugliest stuff you've ever seen, and not even in terrific shape (not abused, but, come on, 30+ years of gentle use leaves its mark). But it was SOLID and it seemed a shame to haul it to the landfill. So I decided to post everything to Craigslist's Free Stuff board, just to see if anyone would want it.

Remember my mantra - America's bums eating garbage STILL eat better than 80% of the world's workers. What we think of as garbage still has use to someone. And, sure enough, my tacky, nasty, crappy old bathroom stuff was somebody's gold. The closet doors were big, heavy, and ugly as sin - a landlord with the same model took them with GREAT gratitude - seems he was facing a huge bill for a custom replacement, or else a renovation to make standard doors fit. I only posted those ugly things because I wished someone would take them, and save us from having to carry them. Everything we posted, somebody wanted. There were artists who wanted to rework them, poor-but-handy folks who were willing to re-finish them, even a guy who used old doors as work benches (the door knob hole is perfect for running cords down to an outlet).

We also - finally - got rid of the bathroom etagere (a shelf thing that stands over the toilet). It was rusty, outdated, ugly (and it blocked a window, but we needed the storage in the old bathroom). Sad, sad little thing - an elderly fellow claimed it. His wife wanted one, but, on their fixed income, even a used etagere was out of their price range. With a free one - and free time in retirement - he could afford a can of paint and some sandpaper to make it shine. His wife e-mailed me the next day to say that he gave it to her for her birthday, and she loved it.

It does take a little more time to give your stuff away vs. hauling it to the dump. But if you spare the time, you can help an industrious neighbor and reduce the volume of the local landfill (plus reduce the amount of stuff leaching chemicals into the ground). I have been amazed at how many people (retirees especially) make a side income repairing or refurbishing stuff to resell. So if you're thinking about making a dump run, you might consider an alternative. For home building and improvement supplies in good condition, check whether your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore will take it. For things in bad condition, snap a picture, post it to craigslist or freecycle, and see if it can find a new life in a new home.

Some tips I've learned over the years:
- Describe your general location in your post (nearest major intersection) so people know how far they'll have to travel BEFORE they contact you.

- I hate posts that say "this is the address, come get it" - that means anyone who wants it has to drive out to see if it's still there (gas is $4/gallon!). I post it, promise it to the first person who meets my criteria (first response, or first person to promise to pickup right away), and ask the person for a firm commitment to pick up by a set time. I tell them I'll give it to the next person if it's not picked up by 1 hour after the agreed time (and I do!). I do not provide my address until the person sets a pickup time.

- If I don't feel comfortable having someone in the house, or if I don't want to spend time "entertaining," I put the item outside and tell them to just take it. Usually I just say "We'll be in and out, but if I'm not here, I'll leave it [describe location so they know where to look]." That way any possible crooks don't think they have free reign over the house, but you still don't have to spend time on it or open the door to a stranger.

- I know it's free, but respect the receiver's time. Post it like you were selling it - include a picture if at all possible and describe any flaws (no magnifying glass needed, but general description like "extensively chipped and stained" or "great condition" saves everybody's time and effort).

- As soon as you find someone to give it to and agree on a pickup time and place, update your post to say it's "promised." That way you won't keep getting inquiries on it (saves their time and yours). If the person doesn't show up, go through the remaining replies or update your post to say "still available." When it's picked up, delete the post (on craigslist) or post it as "taken" (on freecycle).

- 100% of the people I've encountered freebie-ing have been great. Still be security-conscious. Don't show them your diamond tiara collection on the way to picking up the free chipped china, and don't tell them that you're home because you're waiting for a delivery of gold dubloons. If you get a bad gut feeling, tell them (through the security chain) that you're really sorry, but [whatever excuse you choose]. No 10 p.m. pickups. And I, personally, approach security from the first e-mail. If it feels hinky, no reply. I don't say "we're giving this away because we just inherited money and decided to splurge on a renovation" when I post it. I use a throwaway e-mail address instead of my work e-mail Rich&Careless@I'mABillionaire.com.

- Include a phone number for fastest response. The people who call are usually more motivated and reliable. If you don't want to use your personal phone number, get a google voice number and forward it to your home or cell.

- People will flake. Just move on to the next person on the list. Get a time commitment, tell them you'll hold it until a specific time and then offer it to the next person. If you're getting a lot of interest and a lot of flakes - check the tips above (especially pictures and description), consider posting somewhere else (In my area, freecyclers can be flaky, but craigslisters are pretty reliable - that will vary by location and type of item), include specific info in your post (i.e. "I would like it picked up today"). When you select someone to pick the item up, play up their competitive spirity (boy, a lot of people want this, but you were first to respond; I'll hold it for you til ___ but any later and I've got to be fair and offer it to the next person). Or decide it's not worth the extra effort. You tried.

Unlocking your cell phone - ask your cellular provider

I am contemplating changing cell phone plans. My current cell phone, long since paid off, is locked to my current carrier. I wanted to unlock it so I could either use it on a pre-paid plan or sell/gift it to someone else. I googled unlocking, and the advice was generaly to pay for unlocking or to have the buyer contact the carrier to try to unlock the phone. The rationale was that the carrier won't want to unlock the phone for a current customer, making it easier for the customer to switch providers. Since calling my current carrier sounded like a long shot, I tried a paid unlocking service, but they couldn't find my unlock code (they did refund my money, though). In desperation, I called my carrier. They provided the unlock code with no hassles other than a few days' delay.

Since I didn't see this method discussed much, I thought I would share how it worked for me. I put my SIM card into another phone and called AT&T. I explained that I was using a new phone and wanted to gift my old phone to someone on another network, so I needed the unlock code. It took some time on the phone with them, and a few days while they waited for the code to come back from the manufacturer. They e-mailed me the unlock code, I typed it into the phone, and it was all done. I did have to have another carrier's SIM card in the phone to do the unlock. I had purchased a SIM card from T-mobile pre-paid to test whether I received an acceptable signal in the places where I use my phone, so having a SIM card was no problem for me, but I could have just as easily borrowed a card from a friend.

I wish this would catch on. I see so many locked phones on eBay, and an entire cottage industry has sprung up to unlock phones; used cell phones would be more useful if they were unlocked. Our monthly cellular bill pays the purchase price of the phone, and it is fully paid off in 2 years. There is no reason for the phone to remain locked to the carrier's network after the 2-year contract period. Before you sell, gift, or donate your old phone, consider calling your carrier and asking for the unlock code. It will make your phone more useful to the next user.