Garden Update...

I’ve written a couple posts about my first foray into vegetable gardening… starting my tomatoes and peppers inside and then planting a square foot garden outside. I figure it’s time to update since it’s not so much a garden anymore, but a jungle!

The green beans were the first to explode. They sent out their shoots and started climbing and when they reached the end of my 5 foot trellis they just kept going! They actually started wrapping around each other to make them stable enough to grow taller and when they couldn’t support their own tower any longer they fell over and started winding themselves around the railing of the back steps. One shoot keeps grabbing onto my clothes when I try to go in the back door… I’m currently not sleeping to avoid nightmares about Audrey 2.

The cucumbers are also out of control. The leaves are huge! Tons of flowers are sprouting on there… I had no idea that cucumbers are actually the stem of the flowers. There are literally itty bitty little cucumbers growing on this plant with yellow flowers at the end. Not all of them… only the female flowers. Thanks to Kate, my resident expert and the only person I’ve ever met that majored in Ornamental Horticulture, for explaining to me the ways of the plant world. (This conversation about male and female flowers also led to the revelation that the Grease 2 song “Reproduction” is all wrong. A female sings “make my stamen go berserk” but in reality the stamen is part of the male flower. Just goes to show you that movies are no replacement for education. Come on lyricist… do your research!).

And just today Steve and I picked our first three cucumbers!!  I couldn't believe it, but a couple of full-sizers were hiding way underneath all those branches.  We were soooo happy, as you can see!

The tomatoes and peppers were actually the slowest growers, which I thought was strange since I started those inside in March. Imagine how long they would take if you didn’t do that! But now we have little hybrid tomatoes and little pepperoncinis growing so they’re on the right track.  Woot!

Act 18: Paddle Chatting

My friend Carrie, who I know will be reading this (Hi Carrie!), came out to see me run a triathlon in mid-June and saw that the lake that we swam in also rents paddle boats. Being quite excited about this, we went back and rented one the next day. Getting onto it without being dumped in the water was a bit of a trial at first but once we figured that out it was a breeze. It’s a pretty good workout really… my legs definitely got tired. We had it out for an hour and we were able to circle the whole lake and have some time to just float. It was a beautiful (read: hot) day… perfect for being outside on the water.

My favorite part about it? The talking. When just the two of you are on this little boat paddling around a usually pretty empty lake, there’s nothing to do but talk. About everything under the sun. Of course you can talk about anything, but it seemed like such a great place for those deeper, more personal conversations. The kind of conversations where you really share and connect; really catch up. The kind that can be hard to have when there are other people or things going on all the time. On the lake it’s just you and the other person and whatever is on your mind. I love that.

I also think it would be a great activity for a date. It would allow you to get to know the other person (instead of sitting in a dark movie theater and not talking) and if you run out of things to talk about 15 minutes in, take it as a hint ☺

Act 17: Don't Tri without the Train... and Magic Drinks

Okay, I’ve done a triathlon before. I trained solidly for a few months and it went really well and it was awesome.

Fast forward two years. I sign up for another triathlon. I don’t train. I run it anyway. This is my new thing that week. Running a triathlon without training. I know, it’s a stretch, but it’s all I had.

Surprisingly, it was not as terrible as it could have been. I could have passed out. Or collapsed from exhaustion. Or fell asleep on my bike, fallen, and broken a bone. Or pulled all of my muscles and been unable to walk for days.

So considering everything that could have happened, the fact that my foot went numb for the last mile of the run and my time was 17 minutes slower than 2 years ago is really pretty good. A little disappointing on the time front but overall I was just excited to finish. Still, I can tell you… I won’t be running many more races in the future without training (hopefully). Maybe it’s a “anything worth doing is worth doing well” mentality, but hey, that’s me!

Oh! So you know those energy gels (GU, Hammer, etc) that are thick and pasty and really hard to swallow but are recommend for all kinds of endurance or multi-sport athletes? I don’t like those. I have found something I do like though! Thanks to my local bike shop I found GU Electrolyte powder and GU Recovery powder. These are powdered drink mixes, meant to be mixed in 16 of 20 ounce water bottles with… you guessed it… water! Two of us put the electrolyte mix in our bike water bottle and drank that on the bike leg of the race and then drank the recovery drink right after the race. Considering my lack of training, this is the only thing I can possibly think of that would explain how I wasn’t terribly sore for days after. In fact, I was never really sore. Tired yes, but my muscles had the best recovery of their lives. I highly recommend this stuff… it’s like magic!

Act 16: Skiing Trials and Tribulations

Backwater Gamblers are a water ski team. They put on two free shows each week that act as their practices for the competitions that they compete in all summer. They have jumpers, pyramid teams, two and three person groups that do gymnastic/cheerleading-esque lifts and turns, and girls that do fancy ballet-like things like turning around on their skis and holding the handle with their foot. It’s all very impressive and fun to watch.

The downfall is that they only have a few boats and there is a decent amount of downtime between acts. Actually the downtime isn’t the problem, but what they fill it with. It’s a little skit that continues throughout the whole show. It’s a radio station (the sound equipment work nicely for playing appropriate music during the ski acts) and three people pretend to be a station manager, DJ, and call operator. These people try so hard to keep you entertained and keep it funny and interesting, but the script is really ridiculous. I think the downtime would be better filled by music and possibly interviews with the skiers that aren’t setting up for the next act. That’s my idea!

The one things that I couldn’t get over while watching the show was how incredibly jealous I was of them. I am insanely jealous of everyone who can water ski. I just can’t ski. CAN NOT. This is one of the major failures of my life. Not kidding.

My mom and her siblings grew up on the water and some of them were on a water ski team. They were awesome. For most of my childhood we had a newspaper clipping from the 1950’s hanging on our fridge; a picture of one of their pyramids. Also as a child, my family had a boat and water skiing was a big deal. We were always out skiing, tubing, or knee boarding. In fact, my parents still live near a lake and this is still the norm when I go home.

The first time I remember trying I couldn’t have been more than 5. I remember trying to start off the dock and I remember people being in the water with me teaching me what to do. And I remember not being able to figure it out. My sisters and cousins got up and pretty soon they were slalom skiing or skiing two at a time and weaving back and forth around each other. Not me. Never even really got out of the water.

This continued until… well… about 4 years ago. That’s when I stopped trying. Because after you spend nearly 20 years of your life trying to do something and failing miserably and then minutes later watching others do it effortlessly and have a blast, it gets frustrating. I do still have visions of going home one future summer and deciding to try again. In the vision I finally get up out of the water and ski, fulfilling a life-long desire and eliciting beaming smiles of pride from my family…

It’s good to have goals.

Act 15: Comedy Sportz

Back in May I attended a bachelorette party in Chicago and went to Second City. If you live near one (lots of big cities have them) and you haven’t been, you should go. It’s a rollicking good time! They are an improv and sketch comedy group that has turned out some of the most famous comedians in history including Bill Murray and Tina Fey. In fact, this time around I could’ve sworn Tina Fey was there. One of the comedians playing in Chicago might as well be a clone. Scary thought.

The show this time around was funny but I remember thinking that I wished they did more improv. I think that every time I go actually. They are currently about 80% sketch comedy, which makes sense since they basically exist to supply SNL with their next lineup. And while sketch comedy can be really good, I’ll take Who’s Line Is It Anyway over SNL any day. Seriously, how does Wayne Brady come up with this hilarious songs off the top of his head?? (If it’s all a fraud and it’s not really improve, well, don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss in this case.)

Anyway, out of my hankering for some more live improv I found out about Comedy Sportz. It’s an all improve comedy troupe in the area. I went the next weekend, with 6 or 8 of my closest pals. The place was packed and the performers were pretty hilarious. They did a normal improv show with several shorter ‘games’ and had an extra show after the main show that was long-form improv. In long-form one performer tells a story about anything he wants, all off the top of his head, and when he’s done the rest of the people do all kinds of funny jokes and skits inspired by the story. This was the really good part. My favorite was a story that mentioned a restaurant called Orchard Green and a skit that ended with “Orchard Green is people!”. ☺

Thank goodness I saw them when I did… they’re currently looking for a new venue and not performing again until they find one.

Get Ready because...

I’m baaaaaaaaaaackkkk!

Well, that was a nice 7 week break! Turns out the last thing I want to do in the summer is sit inside on my computer. I do that all day for my job… why would I do that at night? So basically I’m saying that the reason that I haven’t written anything in so long is because I’ve been out DOING things! Just in case you don’t believe me, I’ll even tell you about some of them. These posts (separated so as not to overwhelm you with one monstrous novel on seemingly unrelated topics) are going to come hard and fast over the next few days, so get ready!

Act 14: If the Price is Right

I made a price book this week!  Woot!  Wondering what a price book is?  A book of prices.  End of post.

Just kidding :-)

I learned about the price book idea from reading Time Magazine's blog It's Your Money.  This blog has been a bit disappointing as it is mostly about ways to save money and not about money management and financial things in general.  I didn't know that at first.  But it did once give me a 30% off coupon to a shoe store so I finally got to replace my worn out boots, so I keep it around.  Regardless, it linked to an article one day about price books.  It talked about how people don't really know what they pay for their goods and don't comparison shop the way they should.  It recommended that each person make a list of items they buy regularly and pick 3 to 5 stores at which you might potentially shop.  Then print out your list and go price your items. 

I had a hard time keeping my list under control.  I think the article recommended the basket of goods be around 30 items.  Mine was 51.  I covered all your major grocery categories... meat, dairy, produce, packaged foods, and toiletries.  The stores I priced at were Hy-Vee, Jewel, Walmart, Target, and Walgreens.  For the purposes of experiment I eliminated Target and Walgreens from the results.  Neither of the ones near me sells produce or meat so the data just wasn't as comparable (no Super Target over on this side of the river!).

It was a little time consuming to price my items at the different stores, but really it ended up only being a couple of hours.  I wanted to upload my spreadsheet but I don't seem to be able to do that, which is too bad because it was pretty cool!  For each item the lowest price is highlighted in yellow and the highest price is in red font.  Unless you have a Mac, in which case Microsoft chose not to include support for conditional formatting in your software and you won't see any of my pretty colors.  Not that I'm bitter.  Doesn't matter though, currently none of you can see the spreadsheet at all.  Moving on.

The first thing I learned from viewing my results was this:  NEVER buy anything at Walgreens.  Holy crap.  Ibuprofen, allergy medicine, and body wash are $3 more expensive there than anywhere else.  Same item size and everything.  They were consistently expensive on all the products they had.  Convenience is not cheap.

The results were as I expected between the big three.

	# of Goods	Total Price	Difference ($)
Jewel	51	$224.73
Hy-Vee	51	$203.56	-$21.17
Wal-Mart	51	$186.45	-$17.11

 I should probably say that I currently shop at Hy-Vee.  I switched about a year ago when my roommate went there and discovered how much cheaper it was.  This kind of proves it.. $21 in savings is probably worth driving an extra half mile.  Turns out though, I could drive a mile farther down the road and save another $17 by shopping at Wal-Mart.  I kind of already knew that.  And it would be worth it.

Here's my issue:  have you seen their produce?  It's possible other Wal-Mart stores have better looking fruits and veggies but I am never impressed when I go in the store near me.  Not by the selection or the quality.  And after looking at it, I'm not all that impressed with their meats either.  Now it's a quality issue.  I buy a lot of produce and I want it to be good.  Great even.  I'm all for saving money but I'm not having financial hardships and at this point I'm not sure I want to sacrifice quality for $17.

 Being the analytical person I am though, I couldn't leave it at that.  There has to be a compromise.  What about shopping at 2 stores?  Experts recommend it to save money and get better deals.  Here's the breakdown:

	# of Goods	Total Price	Savings over Hy-Vee only
Hy-Vee Dairy, Produce, Meat	29	$97.88
Wal-Mart Grocery, Toiletries	22	$94.58
Total	51	192.46	-$11.10

I chose to buy produce and meat at Hy-Vee because of the quality issue.  Dairy is actually the only sub-category that was cheaper to buy from Hy-Vee.  The grocery category (packaged foods like bread, cereal, snacks, pop, etc) and toiletries come from Wal-Mart.  This setup would save me $11 over shopping at Hy-Vee alone.  Not bad.  Worth shopping at two stores?  I lean towards no, but I haven't had tried it either.  They're on the same road basically so the logistics are easy.  It would be the extra time and hassle that will ultimately make the difference.  

Maybe on weeks when my shopping list doesn't have much meat or produce on it, I'll head to Wal-Mart and save a few extra bucks that week.  Or maybe I won't change my actions at all.  The point of the exercise was to become a more educated consumer, and I have.  My behavior, whatever it is, is now a deliberate choice driven by actual data rather than just being driven by whatever store I happen to feel like going to that day.  Which is probably a lot more reliable!