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On Vox: Tax bemusement
Common wisdom says that owning a house is a great way to save on taxes. I've generally considered that idiotic, since instead of paying the tax man you pay the bank interest instead. Savings is a very distorted subject, clearly.
But I recently projected my next year's taxes which will be minus $15,000 in mortgage interest and property taxes and ( Read more... ) -
On Vox: Climate Smart Charity
I'm passing this along:
PG&E’s ClimateSmart program makes it easy to reduce your home or business' environmental impact. When buildings use natural gas and electricity, they produce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
As a ClimateSmart contributor, you balance out those emissions by making a tax-deductible contribution to fund GHG capture or reduction ( Read more... ) -
On Vox: Tourists
One of the things that periodically makes me smile here in my seaside town are bicycle tourists. We are only a street away from the main west coast cycle route and in the Spring and Fall I often see them, bikes with tidy panniers and loaded, cruising southward.
This morning a fellow with very tidy red panniers was meandering slowly by the side of ( Read more... ) -
(Untitled)
Okay, I give in. Vox is my official blog. Some cross posts may still occur, but I'm not going to bend over about it. I'll still be catching people up here at Livejournal, but you can find me at deschampsia.vox.com.
Cheers! -
Blog test
I am adding exponentially to my never updated blog insanity by trying out the Blog It feature at Facebook. Because, you know, I have lots of extra time on my hands to spend blogging. -
Of the earth
Something that has been bugging me for years came up again in my recent food reading and that is the idea of terroir, the sense that something is of the place that it comes from. I find this idea to be both tremendous and challenging. It is the utter opposite of our global homogenized world culture ( Read more... ) -
Television cooking is history
Bill Buford: Heat
Julia Child with Alex Prud’home: My Life in France
Reading these two books nearly back to back was a fortuitous accident. Buford chronicles life in the kitchen of Mario Batali, a chef made famous by the Food Network and cut in their recent drive to eliminate all read cooking from the network. Julia Child starred in the first ( Read more... ) -
Literary bankruptcy
Thank goodness for the library.
Elizabeth Moon: Vatta’s War 2-5 (Marque and Reprisal; Command Decision, Engaging the Enemy; Victory Conditions)
P.B. Kerr: Blue Djinn of Babylon; Cobra King of Kathmandu; Day of the Djinn Warriors
Libba Bray: A Great and Terrible Beauty; Rebel Angels; The Sweet Far Thing
C.E. Murphy: Heart of StoneLois McMaster ( Read more... ) -
Sleeping firm
drinkumbrella and I had a free afternoon on Sunday and spent it mattress shopping. We bought our last mattress when we bought our house, around 11 years ago, and my back is killing me with the big hole in my bed from two pregnancies. I turn the mattress every six months, but it had finally had it. The new mattress was delivered today and it is so tall! I got ( Read more... )