@AH - thanks for the poke! Just this morning was just lamenting the challenges of wanting to be active in this very important community and forcing myself in-front of my laptop to post and engage!
Let's see.....
* Life is frickin great. Just on my way back south after 10-ish days in the states. Oh my the consumerism hit me extra hard this time around. Duck and run!
* I'm unemployed for nearly 5 months. I'm looking for work but it's tough going for my demographic and historical line of work. I think the economy, AI and automation and my age are impacting things more than I thought they would.
* Colorado Dept of Labor and their Unemployment program is absolutely despicable. It's been nearly 5 months and they are so overwhelmed/understaffed/undertrained/who knows what that they haven't even been able to unlock my account so I can file for unemployment. Its astonishing. Thankfully I don't need it to feed myself/my family. I could rant for a couple pages about this. Including how they are asking for 7 or 8 identify verification things, some of which don't even exist. Not to mention my social security card. Thankfully I've had plenty of time to request a new one. puta!
* I'm building a 10x12 make that 11x12 studio (using an awesome mobile app called Magic Plan that is very simple to use/learn!) that I can live in and rent out my main house. It's also a practice run/prototype for a 14x16 in the future. Some pics of work in process
* Working on some goals for 2024. Will post em here about Jan 1. One of them is "attend EREFest 24"
* Skillathon sounds awesome. Need to read the thread on that and think about it.
* Went to Peru. Swam in the Amazon, played with monkeys, had some intense ceremonies with the local shamans, saw Machu Picchu, ate killer ceviche at the coast. Great 2 weeks.
* Went to the beach, drank beer, ate shrimp, fish and lobster, maybe accidentally watched a gorgeous sunset with narcos.
* crushed some roasted vegetables
* It seems I'll be hosting my first EREFest visitor in early Jan!
* Finished reading How To Want What You Have - thanks to @theanimal and am currently reading Radical Simplicity. Great stuff.
* Joined a MMG - made 2 of 3 meetings so far!
* Answered "Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker" when asked for my favorite book of the year! Made "good book" jokes.
Sodatrain's Journal
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
Whoa, epic update! Keep em coming. That studio looks great. Thanks for all the pics.
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grundomatic
- Posts: 436
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2021 9:04 am
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
We read Radical Simplicity in our MMG book club. Let me know if you want to discuss it after you finish it.
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
Oh geez. @WRC - thank you. I really love 180 degrees south and Mountain of Storms felt like a warm hug almost. I love Doug and Yvon and seeing more of their stuff is always welcome! Thank you for the suggestion.Western Red Cedar wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 1:44 pmIf you enjoyed 180 degrees South, I'd encourage you to check out Mountain of Storms. This was the trip that inspired Jeff Johnson's journey and film. Still free on Youtube:
viewtopic.php?p=234446#p234446
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
I would! I'm done!grundomatic wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2024 8:46 pmWe read Radical Simplicity in our MMG book club. Let me know if you want to discuss it after you finish it.
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
so.... one of my goals for 2024 was to make sausages. Skillathon credits?! Late last year I procured a refurbished sausage stuffer, and a meat grinder. Recently braved my way to the local market in Guatemala to find the meat I needed (my Spanish is basic, and the cuts of meats here are different - not to mention just hanging on a hook in the market. You cant walk in and buy a 'pork shoulder' and 'brisket')
I took the plunge the other day and spent the better part of a day cutting, grinding, mixing, stuffing, twisting, and cold smoking 10-ish lbs of pork and beef. I made bratwursts, some smoked bratwurst, and jalapeno cheddar (and some jalapeno cheddar with some honey) sausages. It was a rewarding process. The sausages turned out OK for my first time. It was quite a bit of work and I was tired after it all. Future batches should be easier and tastier. (My scale was giving me grief of when trying to measure single digits of grams of spices).
.Fresh off the smoker
.Final product
It was a satisfying project! I'll certainly do it again. I'm tracking the cost per lb of sausage making (with equipment, supplies etc) and also using this opportunity to use my smoker and track my cost of smoking meat per lb... haha is that like stacking functions but different? Double accounting?
I took the plunge the other day and spent the better part of a day cutting, grinding, mixing, stuffing, twisting, and cold smoking 10-ish lbs of pork and beef. I made bratwursts, some smoked bratwurst, and jalapeno cheddar (and some jalapeno cheddar with some honey) sausages. It was a rewarding process. The sausages turned out OK for my first time. It was quite a bit of work and I was tired after it all. Future batches should be easier and tastier. (My scale was giving me grief of when trying to measure single digits of grams of spices).
.Fresh off the smoker
.Final product
It was a satisfying project! I'll certainly do it again. I'm tracking the cost per lb of sausage making (with equipment, supplies etc) and also using this opportunity to use my smoker and track my cost of smoking meat per lb... haha is that like stacking functions but different? Double accounting?
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Western Red Cedar
- Posts: 1247
- Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:15 pm
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
Glad you enjoyed it. That whole thread is a field of rabbit holes waiting to entertain, educate, and inspire.
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
I was already going to comment just after seeing the photos of your sausages 
But then I scrolled up further and saw your plans for your studio.
1) Your sausages look more than OK. I just finished breakfast, and you made me hungry all over again.
2) Please keep the updates going on your studio - I'm very excited for you. I'm curious: are you DIYing completely or having contractors do some of the work for you? Or something else entirely?
But then I scrolled up further and saw your plans for your studio. 1) Your sausages look more than OK. I just finished breakfast, and you made me hungry all over again.
2) Please keep the updates going on your studio - I'm very excited for you. I'm curious: are you DIYing completely or having contractors do some of the work for you? Or something else entirely?
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
Woof! Time for an update before 2024 passes by in total! Uff da!
Rapid fire updates:
* I've been trying to more explicitly define my values, goals, etc, to help track towards my longer term desires/goals more intentionally. Like a framework to help make decisions with.
* related, I'm working on a daily/weekly/monthly system to plan and review my days, stay more focused on what is important. I'm using it to track habits I want to introduce and turn into regular behaviors. I'm also using it sort of as a journal - one line per day. April 14 was the first day... so it's been almost a month. I'm not following it 100% of the time, but that's ok. It's been a good tool for me so far. Thought I'd use a moleskin or something similar... until when standing at Target I saw how inexpensive the "composition books" are. $25 vs $2. Also, there happen to be 30/31 rows per page, which is one day per row which was my goal for the monthly view. (Monthly view spans two pages. Each day spans both pages. Left page is for a reflection/comment on the day. The right hand side is to track habits I want to do more (eg sit on the floor for 20+ minutes, reviewing said notebook each morning/evening....) and for setting the top 3-5 things I should focus on that day.
* still using YNAB as an expense tracking system - largely because it will suck in all my transactions and allow me to 100% customize my expense categories. Still spending too much (too many transactions) to have confidence in myself to manually record all them.
* Started work again, 6-12 mo contract. Remote with a little travel. Happy to be getting a paycheck again after 8 months. Fantastic time, but didn't do good things for the net worth.
* I'm grateful for the ERE-sphere and all the changes I did make prior to getting laid off, so my expenses were much lower than they had been. That plus some of the decisions I've made over the last few years really helped making it thru 8 months of unemployment suck less.
* Been having some great chats with @Axel about a variety of topics including community building - related to the ERE City thread. Really appreciating his council and ideas on things. Also GTD, also relationships etc. Oh, I've upgraded my financial tracking stuff now and am working on a version of @AH's FU Stash model. I really like the 4 buckets system, the triggers they have (like " go earn some money you putz") and am now calculating my ttmCoL mas o menos. Looking forward to having more data. Hot damn, I even have some graphs now! I totally appreciate the sentiment that it's best to build your own tracking XLS that makes sense for your situation.
* ttmCoL - still too embarrassingly high to post here, at least for now. Good news is, if I exclude some "capital improvement" spending on my property, my ttmCoL is about half of what it is compared to when I started paying attention in Jan 2023!
* Speaking of the ERE City thread, when @theanimal said something about the land next to them being for sale, it stuck me in a funny way. In the back of of my brain... over a couple of months that kept growing while Guatemala started feeling a little risky to put all my eggs in one basket. So.. I'm in Alaska, asking a million questions of which @theanimal is graciously and wisely answering in the way he does... and I might end up being neighbors of @theanimal and family! It seems like a very friendly ERE sort of place to be with lots of great people who are unknowingly ERE adjacent. As long as you don't mind the cold, the darkness, the mosquitos and the remote nature of the place. Lots to be said about the things that seem really great about existence here. I may be rationalizing, but I'm optimistic that landing here could be a meaningful nudge/opportunity to up my WL a bit without too much struggle.
* Food. Yikes. I average about $900 a month for just me. My goal is $200 at restaurants and $300 for everything else ("grocery stores"). Coffee shops etc are restaurants. @AH suggested 30 day challenges. The idea being you can do lots of hard things for 30 days. And then after you do it once, it's easier to keep going. So May 1st I decided to have a $0 on beverages challenges for myself. I broke it last night with a cocktail ($18
in a social setting to better learn about / explore life in Alaska. No big deal to break it. Starting again today. May 9th. This time it's $0 on beverages and $0 on restaurants. So only food from grocery stores. I hated spending money at the airport on my flights up here. $10 for a BS shitty sandwich from the convenience store. I *love* food and eating, so it will be a little bit hard for me, but it will also not be hard. Just takes some planning. Also, my water consumption is way up! (Also tracking this in my notebook...)
* Lastly... I find myself the most focused and "productive" when I leave home and go to a coffee shop to "work" (personal or professional). Given my $0 challenge, I realized I couldn't go to the coffee shop, but a coffee and use the space. At least not strictly speaking. The local library is closed for construction. So I'm at the local University library, getting the quiet focused coffee shop experience, for $0. A simple/silly little example, but it feels good!
Thats enough for now...
Rapid fire updates:
* I've been trying to more explicitly define my values, goals, etc, to help track towards my longer term desires/goals more intentionally. Like a framework to help make decisions with.
* related, I'm working on a daily/weekly/monthly system to plan and review my days, stay more focused on what is important. I'm using it to track habits I want to introduce and turn into regular behaviors. I'm also using it sort of as a journal - one line per day. April 14 was the first day... so it's been almost a month. I'm not following it 100% of the time, but that's ok. It's been a good tool for me so far. Thought I'd use a moleskin or something similar... until when standing at Target I saw how inexpensive the "composition books" are. $25 vs $2. Also, there happen to be 30/31 rows per page, which is one day per row which was my goal for the monthly view. (Monthly view spans two pages. Each day spans both pages. Left page is for a reflection/comment on the day. The right hand side is to track habits I want to do more (eg sit on the floor for 20+ minutes, reviewing said notebook each morning/evening....) and for setting the top 3-5 things I should focus on that day.
* still using YNAB as an expense tracking system - largely because it will suck in all my transactions and allow me to 100% customize my expense categories. Still spending too much (too many transactions) to have confidence in myself to manually record all them.
* Started work again, 6-12 mo contract. Remote with a little travel. Happy to be getting a paycheck again after 8 months. Fantastic time, but didn't do good things for the net worth.
* I'm grateful for the ERE-sphere and all the changes I did make prior to getting laid off, so my expenses were much lower than they had been. That plus some of the decisions I've made over the last few years really helped making it thru 8 months of unemployment suck less.
* Been having some great chats with @Axel about a variety of topics including community building - related to the ERE City thread. Really appreciating his council and ideas on things. Also GTD, also relationships etc. Oh, I've upgraded my financial tracking stuff now and am working on a version of @AH's FU Stash model. I really like the 4 buckets system, the triggers they have (like " go earn some money you putz") and am now calculating my ttmCoL mas o menos. Looking forward to having more data. Hot damn, I even have some graphs now! I totally appreciate the sentiment that it's best to build your own tracking XLS that makes sense for your situation.
* ttmCoL - still too embarrassingly high to post here, at least for now. Good news is, if I exclude some "capital improvement" spending on my property, my ttmCoL is about half of what it is compared to when I started paying attention in Jan 2023!
* Speaking of the ERE City thread, when @theanimal said something about the land next to them being for sale, it stuck me in a funny way. In the back of of my brain... over a couple of months that kept growing while Guatemala started feeling a little risky to put all my eggs in one basket. So.. I'm in Alaska, asking a million questions of which @theanimal is graciously and wisely answering in the way he does... and I might end up being neighbors of @theanimal and family! It seems like a very friendly ERE sort of place to be with lots of great people who are unknowingly ERE adjacent. As long as you don't mind the cold, the darkness, the mosquitos and the remote nature of the place. Lots to be said about the things that seem really great about existence here. I may be rationalizing, but I'm optimistic that landing here could be a meaningful nudge/opportunity to up my WL a bit without too much struggle.
* Food. Yikes. I average about $900 a month for just me. My goal is $200 at restaurants and $300 for everything else ("grocery stores"). Coffee shops etc are restaurants. @AH suggested 30 day challenges. The idea being you can do lots of hard things for 30 days. And then after you do it once, it's easier to keep going. So May 1st I decided to have a $0 on beverages challenges for myself. I broke it last night with a cocktail ($18
in a social setting to better learn about / explore life in Alaska. No big deal to break it. Starting again today. May 9th. This time it's $0 on beverages and $0 on restaurants. So only food from grocery stores. I hated spending money at the airport on my flights up here. $10 for a BS shitty sandwich from the convenience store. I *love* food and eating, so it will be a little bit hard for me, but it will also not be hard. Just takes some planning. Also, my water consumption is way up! (Also tracking this in my notebook...)* Lastly... I find myself the most focused and "productive" when I leave home and go to a coffee shop to "work" (personal or professional). Given my $0 challenge, I realized I couldn't go to the coffee shop, but a coffee and use the space. At least not strictly speaking. The local library is closed for construction. So I'm at the local University library, getting the quiet focused coffee shop experience, for $0. A simple/silly little example, but it feels good!
Thats enough for now...
Last edited by sodatrain on Thu May 09, 2024 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Sodatrain's Journal
Thanks @Cam... feeling hungry at the moment tooCam wrote: ↑Sun Feb 11, 2024 11:42 amI was already going to comment just after seeing the photos of your sausages
1) Your sausages look more than OK. I just finished breakfast, and you made me hungry all over again.
2) Please keep the updates going on your studio - I'm very excited for you. I'm curious: are you DIYing completely or having contractors do some of the work for you? Or something else entirely?
2) The studio is on hold, mostly because I am trying to lay low and not trying to attract some attention while some craziness swirls around with the new mayor and rumors on increasing permits/taxes etc on foreigners for this sort of thing. Also I was sick with a couple nuisance colds the first part of the year and didn't make any progress. Hope to resume it at some point! To answer your question, after a back breaking day of digging in the ground with a pick axes on very rocky soil, I gave up on taking the opportunity to learn how to build a foundation Guatemala style. So I subbed out the footings/piers. I'll stick frame from there and finish the rest of it. Will be the biggest DIY project for my yet!