mountainFrugal Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
sky
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by sky »

What is your Epicurean dinner? What is that like?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

@sky the epicurean dinner has evolved over time, but basically my partner and I cook a nice meal and invite folks over for dinner, community, and merriment on ~20th of every month. A throwback to the ancient Epicureans who were mostly minimalist, but only to then to more fully be able to enjoy the finer things. Some iterations have revolved around a book club, other times it there are small passages that everyone reads ahead of time for a shared discussion. Other times folks have brought art/music or a skill to share. Wide ranging. Most recently people are just excited to be hanging out in person so we focus on food and wine. :). Highly recommended because it does not always fall on a weekend and it gets sort of known that there is an open invitation. Sometimes people bring sides/deserts/wines, but it is not necessary. It takes about 3 years in a place to really get it going with regulars.

sky
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by sky »

Sounds like a good way to get people together again after the isolation of covid.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by Western Red Cedar »

I really dig the idea of the epicurean dinner. It is great to create traditions like that centered on community.

I can also relate to the challenges with the heat and the smoke. Another triple digit day in my neck of the woods with the worst air quality yet this season....but, there is rain in the forecast for the next couple days. It is great you and your partner made the move to a rural area with more living space. Smoky summers are awful, but they are definitely not fun in a 1 bedroom apartment.

Keep up the good work. You're almost to the FI finish line.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

thanks @wrc
-----
A few thoughts.

I was reminded this morning how great it is to write out a detailed list of all things that you are grateful for as a way to focus on the things/skills/relationships/time you already have. One problem with new skill acquisition for me is I have a tendency to obsess when trying to level up. I tend to tunnel my focus and loose sight of the bigger picture. I can stay grounded in the moment for the process of the activity, but that comforting feeling that things are generally good becomes a bit hidden behind the discomfort felt by learning or doing hard things. It is harder to get into a state of flow when the task is too hard given your current skill level. Striving is a good trait (in my opinion), but can become a hindrance if it becomes the only way of living and displaces happiness and contentment with simple things. The past, the present, and the future all in some sort of balance that is achieved through trying to be grounded in the present at least 51%... leaving the remainder for all other activities. Whether we know it or not, we are actually living in the three seconds of the past or three seconds in the future for a majority of our lives. A relentlessly rolling 6 second window. I am most happy when I sit in that window and let it roll on by, but planning/reflecting take me out of it.

A few summary ideas that stuck out from books on "time" that I enjoyed and recently re-read:
Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time by Marc Whittman. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/felt-time
Scarcity-Why having too little means so much by Mullainathan and Shafir https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250056115

Felt Time was a good reminder that meditation techniques are training us to be more aware of the fluidity of time and our emotional experience. Also, how we relate to the world of space (a shorthand for time), and how our Western cultural obsession with time really changes how we might experience reality both inter- and intrapersonally.

Scarcity argued that when people have limitations on money, time, resources, etc. it amplifies their potential for biases because they tend to tunnel their focus and not think about alternatives. They argue the same type of cognitive tunnel is is true for both money or time if someone does not have slack built into their system. The money analogy they use is the size of a suitcase to pack for a trip. If you have a larger suitcase you need to be less careful about how things fit inside. If you have a small suitcase you need to focus on exactly what will fit and may have to leave important things behind. Not a perfect analogy, but an interesting one for this crowd to contemplate.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

I started tracking my activity while doing yard work on our 0.25 acres. It is amazing how it can add up! 2.5km of walking around the yard picking up sticks, mowing with a push mower (soon to be drastically reduced as we replant with native flowers and raised beds), and doing some weeding. Acorns are starting to come in so will soon start collecting them with an nut roller. A perfect evening activity. If only I could ensure clean air every day I could incorporate this yard work as a specific recovery activity on those days.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image

August Review. Good outcomes all around, but a ton of hard work this month.

Fall trail races have been cancelled for fire/covid concerns. Pretty bummed, but still going to try to keep up my distance base in case some other race comes along that looks interesting. I redirected some of the long run time into building these money making side projects. I will redirect planned long run weekends for September to a fall/winter garden and adding some solar panels to our van.

Finished the art/design portfolio website. I am working on a small illustration job for a podcast logo for a major outdoor brand and started consulting with a small start-up about hiring a technical team. Diversifying the income stream!

Met a local banjo picker that agreed to teach me some new licks in exchange for someone to jam with as I get better. I have played on and off for the past 6 years, but having an external motivator for something as social as music is a big win. :)

Work is going well now that I am fully immersed in my project. With zero commute time and just a few meetings per week my days are flexible enough to fit all these other side projects in. Building complicated models often requires so much "marination of ideas" time I can work on other small physical things while my brain works on the model in the background. Similar to relaxing the mind while taking a shower.

I picked up a new yearly recurring expense this month, Clip Studio Paint. It is $24 per year and does everything in comics creation compared to photoshop which is $20 per month (+ Illustrator if you want to letter your books). Anyway, I use CSP daily now for comics projects, layouts, coloring, lettering and the illustration above. I tried the open-source alternatives prior to committing to this route but at the moment they do not perform with the same sensitivity for drawing tablets. I think that case *could* be made as compared to creative suite at $54 per month, but not $24 per year. I also think it would be different if I was using Blender for 3D stuff, because that program is becoming an industry standard for games, animation, etc. (right @axelH?).

[edit} made a very dumb programming error. Had a hard coded number in the Python calculator I made to quickly game out different scenarios with estimates for my aging parent's needs. This was left hard coded a few months ago as a very high number instead of the variable FIValue that was commented out next to it in the print section. I got suspicious that it was hardly budging from ~80% the past few months. Should be 90%. Would have been instantly suspicious if I had plotted the various parameters. The months to FI is calculated correctly based on portfolio value and savings rate/spending rate. Pull request to myself accepted.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Image

Posting a few days early because internet will be spotty this weekend.

My partner and I reduced our grocery bill significantly ($200) this month through accumulated surplus in the pantry, by doing a single large grocery run, pre-making and freezing some items, trading house watching/checkin for excess produce (tomatoes, peppers, onions, and some eggplant). We also decided that limiting alcohol consumption to our Epicurian dinner party (see also Cult of Dionysus) once a month was also good rule of thumb as we did not really have any rules/thoughts around this before. We had 5 shared meals with folks this month which was just the right amount. This included an impromptu dinner after a MTB ride and an impromptu lunch after a training run. Finally, we have friends comfortable enough to drop on in and share a meal. Huge social win.

On the inward growth side of the equation I have taken a few simple steps to be more present in the activities that I do. During my sabbatical I would often listen to podcasts or audiobooks while practicing drawing (or running). While that works for learning by copying or using reference images, it does not work when you have to draw from imagination, do page layouts, draw from memory etc. Drawing and painting simple observations in the backyard has been really fun while listening to the jays chatter instead. While running without music/podcasts, I have been focusing more on breath work and treating each solo training session as a moving meditation. I focus on my breath, bodily sensations and see how well that maps to my heart rate and speed. More outwardly, I also use my runs and drawing to make nature observations. I often see black bear tracks/scat on my various running routes (have seen 2 in the flesh!), but I always think it is funny to imagine them begrudgingly following a stinky human trail. haha. I have also found fresh mountain lion tracks, but have yet to see one. They have seen/smelled me I am sure.

Outdoor Adventure: I had a lot more trail running base miles this season and beat my personal record on a 19k (~11.8 mile) course with 167m (550 ft) of elevation gain at a sustained 4:15-4:22 min/km pace (~6:50-7:05 min/mile) depending on local elevation gradient. I realize this is middle of the pack as far as mid-thirties male endurance athletes are concerned, but personal progress is good anyway. Riding high from this I went on a "training" run with a recently retired pro-ultra runner just coming off an injury. I joined him well rested with fresh legs during the middle 1/3 of his training run for 25K with 1267m (4156ft) of gain/loss starting at 1645m (5400 ft). He had already put 1200m of gain on his legs from the first 1/3 of his run. Humbling and inspiring when someone's hiking pace on steep trail is faster than your redline running (to be fair he is a running specialist, but still... so badass!). I love getting crushed physically just barely holding on when someone is an order of magnitude better than you at something. This is something I keep in mind always when reading these forums. There are so many silent (and not so silent) crushers on here for all sorts of skills, ideas, lifestyles, perspectives, or levels of abstraction. It is often better just to lurk and try to absorb/hold on.

I decided to wait until winter to pursue the banjo more. There are just too many other projects to get the garden, firewood, and van finished before winter to pick up something else right now. The acorns are really starting to drop now and we have been collecting them, but still undecided what we want to do with them. Current plan is to dry some of them and decide later. I was expecting the acorns would be falling all at the same time similar to leaves, but this is currently not the case. Too many projects that need to be finished before winter... acorns might have to wait until next year to have some time to salvage some screen doors to build drying racks. We are repurposing the lumber from a small chicken run in the backyard (previous owners) for some raised beds right in the point in the yard that gets the most sun. Our 0.25 acres is generally shaded by our oaks, but I think this on location could be an ideal micro-habitat for tomatoes and peppers (or other sun loving veggies). I am glad we waited to see how summer was going to play out or we might have missed this spot! The chicken run dirt/manure is gradually being mixed into the compost. We are considering some vermi-composting setups for the spring, but now we are focused on bulk compost building to at least partially fill the raised beds with onsite compost.

We decided to get the other van systems in place before installing solar right before winter. These include: battery-to-battery charger to charge while driving off the alternator (currently only shore power), heater, kitchen/water storage redesign (had simple design before), swivel chairs (incredible improvement interior living space!), a storage/sitting/daybed bench, and some trim/finishing work. All van sub-projects are in various stages and a bulk of my time is spent gaming out all the different use cases/activities/etc. to make the van system is as flexible as possible for us, or friends, or if we sell it someday. Made significant progress, but will bleed into next month at least. Integration is the hardest part and the last 10% of the project takes 90%+ of the time.

I was emailed about some consulting work for a firm that representing a client that I did not agree with value-wise, so I politely declined. The hourly rate was good, but would rather do something that served multiple goals. I used the equivalent amount of requested time to sit in the backyard and sketch the changing evening light/shadow on a tree instead. Be the change.

Work is going well. Even though I will be in really great shape financially once my contract ends in early 2023, I am stoked about potentially staying on. The folks I work with are smart and thoughtful people and continue to encourage me to explore alternative solutions while also making project progress. The job is keeping my modeling skills sharper than they would be if I only worked on personal projects. I find this work engaging and hopefully the modeling outcomes will influence environmental policy down the road. The balance I have right now with work and all my other projects is ideal. Freedom-to.

@AxelHeyst suggested he was exploring Obsidian App for a personal knowledge base. It has come a long way since I first took a look last year! This is a great app so far and I converted my old markdown notes into the LIVE, MAKE, THINK, EXPLORE structure outlined in previous journal posts. Obsidian has been extremely helpful in putting all of my research projects in one place. It is VERY easy to get caught up in the *Yak Shaving of making ever more intricate workflow adjustments instead of doing the actual work itself. Obsidian as a cutting tool is extremely sharp when first flaked, but quickly dulls and does not hold an edge. Obsidian (real and app) is thus the perfect Yak Shaving tool. Useful when first flaked, but new edges must be constantly reformed for it to continue to be effective. I love process oriented Yak Shaving so this is the perfect App for that. :).

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I'm sorry to be negative but my very limited experience is that acorns are not a good investment of time or energy unless you are living a subsistence lifestyle. If you are collecting them as an experiment or experience I understand, I've been there. Otherwise I think it burns more calories to collect and make acorns edible than they provide. I've eaten acorn "coffee," acorn pie crust, I don't remember what else. I'd like to recommend a tiny test run before collecting, drying, etc. a lot of acorns. My take on black walnuts is the same.

I always enjoy your journal posts, thank you for sharing.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Gilberto de Piento wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:13 pm
If you are collecting them as an experiment or experience I understand, I've been there. Otherwise I think it burns more calories to collect and make acorns edible than they provide.
We will collect them regardless to keep the garden/yard from being full of Oak seedlings. Did you have a nut roller when you did collecting? It has become an easy active recovery activity walking around rolling up acorns. I realize the extreme time investment is not worth it calorie wise, but we want to have at least "one shared meal day" sometime in the future that is entirely from our small plot. Acorn flour would just be using what is here, even if for a single pie crust. Also, we were recently put in touch with a hog farmer that will buy/trade for dried acorns for hog feed during the later winter months.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

No nut roller, it was by hand so far less efficient. I'm sure it makes a big difference. Just for fun report back on how it all works out if you get a chance.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

I will keep everyone posted. I am guessing that after the collection, leaching the tannins is going to be the most labor intensive process based on a small amount of internet research.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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# WL7 - Systems Level Ratchet v1.0
It has been inspiring reading @AxelHeyst work through his situation. Here is my attempt to add to the conversation through my own situation. For me, attempting to write or draw concepts shows me what I actually know or need to work on. I have a long way to go. Let's do this!

Image

----
This is the start of my deep dive into moving toward ERE-WL7 starting with a first pass sketchnote/visual thinking/written description. Note that I already think about all of these things as a system of physical, emotional, and social needs, that all have pluses and minuses for money, time, energy, resources, etc. If anything this has been an exercise in attempting to linearize my specific scenario to be communicated it in words/visuals. I think it is quicker to communicate multi-dimensional things visually, but how the image has been built up requires descriptions of the individual components. All comments, ideas, constructive-criticism, discussion welcome.

The three levers to be integrated further are the housing, food and mental subsystems.

The most direct path is to just move into our van and rent out our house. After observing the housing/rental market in our town for the past year, we could rent it for a positive cashflow (averaged over time) no problem. This could solve a few problems, but would create many more. This is especially true for my partner's optimized work from home situation (high-speed internet, consistently quiet work space, stability of environment for deep work, etc.). Performing at high-level for her requires these. Extended van trips lasting more than a month pushes the boundaries, especially when we both have to work. This is not impossible, but seems unnecessary. We are completing our "Perma-travel upgrades" to the van for some upcoming travel/fieldwork I have work in the spring/summer of 2022. The payback period for these upgrades (and maintenance) would be about 5 weekends of rentals for similar vans on the various websites including mileage/depreciation. Furthermore, we are REALLY enjoying the benefits of having more space in our ~1100 sqft house and adjacent property (0.25 acres) for woodworking, food prep/storage/fermentation, gardening, and building a non-transient community around shared interests. A more likely path is finish out my current contract (into spring 2023 for a job that I thoroughly enjoy with great colleagues/coworkers) and then start aggressively paying down the mortgage (3% fixed) in a tax efficient manor. I could technically pay it off in full and still have enough to support myself after paying cap-gains taxes over a few years. I have not figured out exactly how to do this, but the savings is semi-liquid in various investments. The main problem I have at this time is that it would drastically reduce my flexibility especially when it comes to offsetting the cost of an aging parent. We are child-free so that makes things easy in that department.

The second major lever is to further insource food/flavor production over the coming few years. We love most food (and lentils)! Tastes, smells, intoxicants are such a delightful part of life. My partner and I are combining forces on this using past skills to further increase the pantry wealth and close off some consumption of store bought goods. Kimchi, hotsauce, energy bars, nutbutters, and beer for me. Saurkraut, yogurt, granola and kombucha for her. Our old neighbor had an elaborate fungiculture system in his garage and he has agreed to teach us for help with inoculations. We do not have the space for a setup like his, but we do have the waste streams (coffee grounds, spent brewing grains, and sawdust) from other activities. We have foraged edible fungus species (morels, hen-of-the-woods) while out on runs, but have yet to devote time to foraging specifically. So much to learn! Despite our epic auto-matic watering failure this summer, we were still able to grow a steady supply of lettuce and other leafy greens. We will prioritize various cabbage varieties this spring for kimchis and krauts. I have a hunch that a new raised bed in a different area with more sun will allow us to grow consistent tomatoes (other than cherry). I think that we could do some hot peppers for the hot sauce if we had a pot based system for them to move indoors when summer nighttime temps are going to dip below 50-55F (not uncommon at this elevation). Seems like hot peppers will be my gardening bonzai. Furthermore, I want to experiment next season with a few hop varieties and another member of the same family. It will be interesting to observe the similarities and differences in flower/trichome development between these species. This could be broadly grouped into a "6 kingdoms of life" theme and how they support my (your) existence.

The last few pieces around moving towards ERE-WL7 involve deepening my meditation practice and by more systematically understanding the externalities that I impose on the world through my lifestyle/consumption. In the past I was more dedicated to longer meditation sessions and closer to being in "meditation shape" to better benefit from a longer silent retreat (using extended focus as a proxy). There is just another level of focus/awareness that I have experienced in the past more commonly when spending the time doing the hard work of observing my mind. As a first approximation I think that if you were creating new things in the world, mindful of resources you were consuming, and that ratio was always trending towards 1, then you are good shape. However, reducing the consumption further requires more intellectual overhead to connect all the pieces, set up the connections between the systems, and internalize all of the pieces/connections. I am working on thinking through what sort of feedback measures that could be observed and the full lifecycles of various items by combing the various threads to pick out the relevant ones for our situation (more illustrations on this topic specifically soon).

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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# WL7 - Revisit my roots
I grew up bushcrafting. My family was heavily involved in the http://americanmountainmen.org/ and the buckskinning/muzzleloader/primitive skills communities. The main themes that organized these communities was making items yourself, gaining knowledge, and practicing skills first hand. These are generally the list of skills we were training for:
http://americanmountainmen.org/membership/requirements/ . When he was laid off from work (carpenter), my dad would pull my brother and I out of school and go to rendezvous over long weekends, or during summer and winter breaks, we would do extended trips/treks. We lived in a tipi, tanned hides from deer that my dad hunted, made clothes, practiced making fires in various ways in various weather conditions, made shelters, shot arrows, threw tomahawks, threw knives, ran races in leather shoes we made, and generally just enjoyed the time outside. We did this from when I could barely walk in the 80s until I was in high school.

My "bible" at the time was *Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. I have done most of the activities described in this book in various contexts. I am sure there are much better resources now that I hope to explore over in the Bushcraft thread.

In the mid-nineties we noticed a shift in the group and regular cast of characters that participated. It became more about consumer competition (see paper below). Usually, it was considered best practice to trade your time in work parties to maintain properties, specialize in a craft that you could trade for the items that you could not make, or become extremely good at marksmanship (black powder, archery, tomahawk, knife) to win hand made prizes in competitions. There was even camp currency tokens depending on how large the event that you could trade in your craft items for tokens. It was generally looked down on to use American dollars for "leveling up" to something you may have needed/wanted as this was not being resourceful. My dad specialized in leather bags and wooden boxes for organizing and storing black powder gunsmithing materials. And so while it started as a niche melting pot of people from different walks of life seeking some escapism through cosplay, it became a reflection of the greater 80s/90s excessive focus on accumulation based status. Basically, the 'flatlanders' (our term for the outgroup/muggles) ruined it by joining and bringing their flatlander ideals to the clubs. Or to put it another way, we were the insufferable buckskinning hipster family before it was cool! ;)

Here is the code of conduct that most people followed:
http://americanmountainmen.org/about/ob ... -and-code/

Easy to see the self-improvement and self reliance thread throughout my entire life when revisiting this code of conduct.

Image

Negatives:
Following the above code of conduct with a community that respects those rules gets you into trouble in real life when people take advantage of asking for help, when they do not actually need it. This took me until the end of middle school to figure out. Different ideas and values about the world.

Our subgroup was pretty egalitarian about ideas and were SES diverse in our normal lives, but the greater community was fairly misogynistic and closed minded about evidence. The website literally says "A Brotherhood of Men" even though there were badass frontier ladies. I was not raised religious, but was raised to respect and learn from nature through observation, books, and a vaguely "Native American spirituality" that followed on from participants in these circles. While the principles in general are sound, some of the obvious cultural appropriation, reinforcement of long disproved stereotypes (i.e. noble savage) and lack of rigorous research was what ultimately made me leave this community in high school. I think that it means well, but at the time in the early 2000s was not open to counter narratives to some of the ceremonies that people "had direct Native American ancestry" when very clearly they did not. I am fine for people to worship whatever god(s) they want, but this was before the days of genetic testing. My main gripe is that obviously caucasian people of European descent were relying on "family history research" to claim ancestral authority/status within subgroups of these organizations to preside over and make up ceremonies "based in research" for local group members. Further, it could become a game of one-up-man-ship with accumulation of items rather than skills. See this very good empirical critique of the community as a whole:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ng_Fantasy

*Tom Brown also wrote various books about his experiences with his best friend and friend's "Native American Grandfather". Neither of these people have been confirmed to exist. This perfectly illustrates what I am talking about.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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WINS
My current partner met the family of my late wife. It went really well even though most parties involved were understandably nervous about the situation. I no longer feel like I need to speak in seemingly partial truths when talking to the more sensitive members of DW's family. It was hard, but I had no idea how much background social/mental tension had built up that I no longer feel. A huge relief!

The house is now fully ready for winter. Gutters cleaned, full woodshed, and insulation for the crawlspace.

Overall, I feel grateful and calm about life.

IMPROVEMENTS
I have been spending more time meditating and this is directly correlated with my calm mind.

A large unknown on the money side of the life system is the expenses associated with continuing to help out with my aging parent. There have been some recent threads started relating to this that I hope to contribute to and learn from. This (potentially) large (ongoing?) expense is on the medium term horizon without a good solution. I did have a detailed financial discussion with my parent and sibling individually, but now to get everyone at the same table at some point.

NEW DIRECTIONS
As part of integrating my various life goals and systems, I am doing some recipe research for replacing common packaged goods such as "energy food for long exercise".

"What would quality of life look like through 100 years of life?" Something that I have been contemplating dealing with my parental issues, supporting a friend that has a 96 year old mother that moved in with her full time recently, and eventually my partner and I's end of life.

More deep thought devoted towards integration of flows of resources, information, money in the mountainFrugal system. :)

DRAWING
Plugging along on my DIY art school curriculum. I made some refinements to the DIY comics masters that I will start in Feb 2022. There is a bit of overlap between these two, with the former focused on art skills and the later focused on visual storytelling skills. My partner wrote a 6 page action comic and we used a date night to translate the script to thumbnails and pages. It was a fun (if not slightly contentious) activity! We have collaborated on many projects before, but not one where it is almost completely in the creative visualization realm. I have translated scripts before that I did not write, but to have the author there was a new level of refinements and productive disagreements. I also did inktober with my sister-in-law (drawing daily in ink following a prompt). My sister-in-law is an incredible illustrator so it is always fun to see how we are interpreting the same one word prompts and how much more energy and refinement she can accomplish on the first pass by drawing from imagination in ink directly (no under sketch).

OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
I paced my friend for the last 35k in her most recent 100K. She paid for the trip and food in exchange for making sure she finished on target for a Western States 100 qualifying time. She crushed and on the final climb it was 20 steps run 20 steps walk. I was amazed at how much of a gap to the next group of runners she gained in the final 10K using this technique. A lesson for all hard things I suppose.

WORK
Models, reading, and programming. I am going to start a technical book club with a co-worker in Jan 2022. Seems fun because we are trying to pick some topics we want to both learn.

SOCIAL
(see major win above). I was finally able to meet my niece. She is funny and cute (biased of course). We had a pumpkin carving and chili fest this month instead of the Epicurean dinner. Freshly roasted pumpkin seeds with salt, pepper, and curry powder for the win! We donated all of the pumpkin innards to our friends with chickens in exchange for some future eggs.

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Ego
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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mountainFrugal wrote:
Mon Nov 01, 2021 12:58 pm
My current partner met the family of my late wife....
I completely missed your original post about your late wife's passing. I have now bookmarked it as something to return to regularly when I need a reminder of what is important. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

viewtopic.php?p=243285#p243285

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

Ego wrote:
Mon Nov 01, 2021 4:13 pm
Thank you for taking the time to write it.
You are very welcome.

Seems like you already have your priorities in order:
Ego wrote:
Wed Sep 01, 2021 7:32 pm
Priority #1 is building and maintaining my relationship with Mrs. Ego as it is prerequisite to everything else and cannot be purchased at any price.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: mountainFrugal Journal

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# WL7 housing/resilience v1.0
We want to go deep on our house and continue putting down roots and making connections in this community. The greatest improvements that can be made as far as environmental impact is related to our two shelter options: house and van. Some not fully formed ideas about various systems, energy, money, and information flows follow through sketch notes and writing. I think gradually visiting, revisiting and refining these over time will help to crystalize the mountainFrugal system more in my mind. There is an inherent tension in this project between anti-consumerism and some semblance of self-reliance due to some upfront capital costs. I think it can be done in a smart way overtime.

Any suggestions are welcome.

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The local history of the land where our house was built was conifer forest, cabbage farm, and then 1950s "suburban" development even though we are 150+ miles from the nearest large city. Our house has had many retro-upgrades including extra insulation, new double paned windows, and a large wood burning stove with large brick thermal mass (fireplace before), sky light ports for kitchen and pantry (previous owners). The previous owners (family of 4) used ALOT of wood for heating and the wood took up most of the side yard on the West/Southwest side of the house (5-6 cord). Our heating needs are estimated to be 0.5 or less so the physical wood footprint is dramatically reduced.

The West side of the house is mostly devoid of plant life. We want to plant edible shrubs out to the property line to make use of this space and if they grow tall enough to also reduce the afternoon solar load on the West wall. We put up a sun shade on the window on the West side of the house and it immediately reduced the afternoon temps in the living room by a few degrees. The sun is much lower angle now as we head into winter so there is less solar heat gain. An interesting observation was that we had an early October cold spell that lasted a few days and the house was much colder then compared to now even though the average outside temps are colder now. The Southern aspect trees on our property and the neighbors' property had not lost their leaves yet. This blocked all of the nice morning and early afternoon fall sunshine our house would have gotten.

We plan to put a solar panel on the roof of the woodshed and set up a small charging station in the office room next to the shed. The manifold and electric switching system for the drip irrigation is located between the shed and the house. Power outages during the heat wave this past summer while we were away drained the small back up 9v battery to the manifold and the small pumps ultimately killing most of our early season garden plants. The manifold and pumps will be able to run regardless of the electric to the house with a backup system. I plan to make the system large enough to provide a small charging station for our phones, watches, headlamps, LED desk lamps, kindles and bike lights. I found some cool designs online using rolling tool boxes as the box so we could bring this with us in the van during winter trips when watering is not needed. This will provide a sun tracking (aka I move it) panel collecting lower angle sun.

We view the van as a small subunit of the home system where the inputs are fewer in number, but we will have to solve more problems in the market place (e.g. food, fuel, etc.).

I have a pretty good idea of the physical aspects of human physiology at my current age and health level due to constant feedback of low pain, high energy, etc. It is much harder to design a system that looks at what normal aging does to both males and females. This aspect is a moving target, but one that we have to engage with regardless if we have perfect information. What does life in either our house or our van look like at 80+ years old? Impossible to know, but a ripe area for personal research and probabilistic estimates.

It is also interesting to consider the information flows into and out of the house. Internet, culture, discussions with my partner, guests, neighbors, the mail. I suspect there is a deeper insight here as it is one of the major leverage points for systems change, but I will have to think more.

Taking a different paradigm, such as the one outlined in RetroSuburbia and overlaying on our current physical house, van, body and social systems is going to be a very fun challenge. As an example, there are human environment interactions that are occurring likely just how our house is laid out with respect to the rooms, the plot, the street, the neighbors, the municipality, the surrounding forest, the region, etc. Or alternatively, the connections between greater electricity use during summer nights that do not cool down AND there is polluted air from distant (or near) wildfire smoke.

Acorn update: So far we have collected ~12 lbs of acorns. If the hog farmer will in-fact trade for these (even just bones for broth...tonkotsu ramen... yum) it would be a good trade for something we cannot produce here. All of the leaves falling has made acorn collection more challenging because they are now mostly under the leaves. My original conception that the leaves and acorns would fall at the same time was correct. Abscission of the connective cell layers is apparently timed. This makes collection more difficult, even though the total number of acorns has increased dramatically. Will provide another update after the big fall rake into the compost pile. I plan on layering the leaves with the already "cooking" compost in my three bin system for the winter. Hopefully this will provide a nice base for the bottom of the planter bins.

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mountainFrugal
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 2:26 pm

Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

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# November 2021 -WINDOWS
## WINS
5 years with my partner! Woot! We took a road trip to catch up with some friends in Bend, OR and then headed over to Utah for T-giving in Moab. Long desert driving gave my partner and I a ton of time to flesh out the next 5 year, what we are currently working on as a couple and as individuals. There was a lot of discussion about ERE and how to make our homestead/lifestyle achieve higher Wheaton levels, but also balance the desire to travel at least part of the time. Tension between these two goals, especially as my partner is a few years behind on the FI journey from her student loans and is itching to travel. Anyway, we are composting the massive pile of leaves that were collected as part of THE BIG RAKE of '21 in a few areas in our yard and mixed in current compost in layers to speed up the process. In May of next year we will have lived here for 1 year and will start to make some more permanent garden/permaculture changes to the yard.

## IMPROVEMENTS
My partners company will now pay for our shared phone/data plan. I will take advantage while this exists as I was thinking about ditching the phone plan as lots of folks are experimenting with on here and just using wifi.

## NEW DIRECTIONS
My partner and I usually have a theme for each year. 2021 was the year of the ratchet. Not knowing how open things would be at the start of the year, we just planned to hunker down, save, and work on efficiency in our lives. For the most part we worked towards this, but our life is more complicated owning a home now, but in the best sort of way (pantry, freezer, workshop, garden, art studio in spare bedroom, neighborhood access to trails etc.). 2022 is the year of joy and completion. It was hard to predict how much extra maintenance time a house would demand, but making small improvements and settling into a space is a joy in it of itself.

I plan on finishing out my work contract into early 2023 while spending a few nights a week on selling some art and design skills. This is also a way to write-off the art space as a way to further reduce tax burden. I have a vision forming of a self-supported adventure art business that could offset the costs of travel, supplies, and health insurance (see MTB below). I think as we learn more about the practical aspects of permaculture and gardening (which takes at least a few seasons regardless of book knowledge), WL7 is possible but WL 6.5 is more realistic if we want to not be as constrained when traveling. The house has given us more opportunities to make longer term investments to further reduce base COL (freezing meals, pantry storage space, etc.). The long-term living upgrades on the van are going well (more on this and the art biz in a future post).

WL7 is a much longer term project to build up the connections and being able to deal with the complexity.

## DRAWING
28/30 days. Sketched and painted some great desert landscapes and sunsets. I am working through some photos of previous adventures and sketching the underlying 3D forms of people in the images. This is prep for the 2 comics I am working on and a good way to revisit some old memories.

## OUTDOOR ADVENTURE
98% FI. 31x spending. Was +100% mid-month, but market sell-off these past few days changed that. More reason to continue beyond and max out the tax advantaged accounts that are stock heavy this next year.

Sent most of (with some walking on large drops and ONLY 2 over the bars crashes!) classic Moab MTB routes: Whole Enchilada and Hymasa/Captain Ahab. The Whole Enchilada was a relentlessly technical downhill route that was *PURE FLOW BLISS* that easily beats down the monkey mind. Found a good balance this month between trail running, slower exploratory hiking/painting, and MTB. Most of my running was shorter harder runs prepping for XC ski season and to see if I could increase my VO2 max as part of @scott2's challenge.

## WORK
A lot of data, modeling, and coding. Yeah! 'Nuff said.

## SOCIAL
Met up with some friends in Bend on our trip for some beers and catching up. Turkey day in Utah with friends and adventurous family members. Played disk golf with a friend that is stoked on it that was visiting from Colorado. I now see the appeal as a social/recovery activity, or if you are a huge stoner, your main activity.

Western Red Cedar
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Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: mountainFrugal Journal

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Great updates over the last couple of months. Creating a vision or concept for the upcoming year seems like a great way to stay connected to your partner and working toward shared goals. "Joy & Completion" sounds like an excellent approach to 2022. Godspeed!

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