June 22nd through June 30th, 2008 Plus Expenses

June 22nd: Sunday hi 84/low 62 - Mom fixed us a great breakfast the next morning, scrambled eggs in tortillas and blueberry pancakes. I was so full when we left, I did not have to have lunch. I went to work still full! Found out that one of my co-workers was sick, so I would have to come in on Monday, my day off. That was fine with me, I was planning to work in the garden, I would just do it in the evening rather than the morning. 

June 23rd: Monday hi 82/low 61 - weather has been great, with low humidity, although I am sure it will change soon. I worked today, did not get to water the plants until afternoon. They were looking a little thirsty. But I was able to do some weeding and watering as well, so that was good.

June 24th: Tuesday hi 82/low 54 - Had our book club meeting today, so after watering the plants, I took a shower and drove us to Sasha's work. We arrived there at ~ 10 am, a little later than normal because I did not get off at the right exit.  I am more used to using Route 7 rather than the Greenway, so I got confused as to where to get off.

I shopped at Wegmans Food, it is very close to Sasha's work. The prices are better in Loudoun County rather that where we are. Plus, the sales tax is less. So I stocked up. I brought us back lunch and then I went over to where we had bought our tires for the car and got an oil change ($17.99 with a coupon!) and rotated the tires. So I dropped off the car and walked back to Sasha's work. At least I got some exercise....There is no sidewalks in that area so people do not tend to walk anywhere. I think some of the guys at his work might walk to the deli down the street, but that is it.

Got the car (after a couple of hours!) and went to Whole Foods Market to get some extra stuff, then came back to Sasha's work, read for a while and then headed over to Delia's Restaurant for our book club meeting. The meeting went great, I believe everybody was there plus we have a new member. I think everyone enjoyed the book "Roberta's Woods" as it made people think what may happen if the gas does go to $10 a gallon. Considering it was published this year, and prices are at $4 a gallon, $10 a gallon does not seem that far off. Scary though it is.

We had a great discussion, a great meal -everyone got something different and it all looked very good. They only have beer and wine right now, but I'm sure they will have liquor soon. But beer and wine are fine for dinner out. It was great seeing everyone as well.

We got home very late last night but I plan on working in the garden tomorrow before work.

June 25th: Wednesday - 86 hi/59 low:  Put more seeds into the garden, radishes, carrots, and lettuce. I am hoping, even though it is late June, that because they are close to the tree, the squares will get more shade and therefore not bolt. I have started picking the basil (larger leaves) and the nasturtium flowers. After getting such nice leaves at Sasha's parents house, it would be great to get some here. I don't know if it will be too late or not. But this is a summer of experimentation and trial and error.

I watered, weeded and got rid of rocks (outside of the square foot gardening - most of the fenced in part of the garden is weeds, so I try to do my part to get rid of them naturally, by pulling them out.)  There are a couple of weeds that are small trees, trying to take root inside of the garden. They were the hardest to get out.

After getting real dirty, I went back and took a shower. I try to go in before the cleaning gets done at 1 pm, that way the shower is only dirty for a short while. I had something to eat and got ready for work.

June 26th: Thursday - 92 hi/68 low: I have found that if you pick, more will grow! I started picking the flowers of the nasturtium plant now, and each day I come back and there is at least another one there. It is so cool to see. I never really paid attention to the garden when I was growing up, most of the plants seemed to overpower the garden, with weeds and big leaves. Plus, except for tomatoes, I did not like eggplant, radishes, and squash. And we had tons of those. Now, I like radishes, maybe because of they are spicy in a root type of way, and I like zucchini if it is grilled. And I still like tomatoes and peppers. I hope we have them.

Thursday is the last day for people to call and cancel for the Fourth of July weekend. We have started to get cancellations because of the economy. There are still those that are diehard RVers that are not going to let a little thing like $4 for a gallon of gas get to them, but many families are not going very far. In this area, we are close to many highways and again, close to many states that still have people camping.

Regarding the Fourth, as soon as someone cancels, we have at least one or two people that could fill that spot. But it is not like Memorial Day weekend, where we had overflow parking and people on water/electric sites. Those sites are not filled like you would think. But there are definitely the big rigs coming out here. HUGE rigs, over 40 feet in length. I would think that the gas or diesel on those rigs would be outrageous. And most are towing a car behind them, so that they can tour in a smaller vehicle.

It is interesting though, in both this area and when we were in Prince William Forest Park, there were not the buses or train stations to take people into DC. You still have to drive at least 30 (or more) closer in before you could get to a commuter train.  And many people are asking for the train stations - but the infrastructure is not here. There is a train but it is for moving stuff, not commuters.  Too bad. 

June 27th: Friday - 91 hi/69 low: We were running low on dried fruit...there is a little lag between strawberry season and blueberry season it seems. I called up the place where I did pick strawberries and they did not have blues, but they did have cherries, however, they said that people had come in the day before and picked it clean. She stated that I should come back on Saturday. Cherries would be $3 a pound. But no blues.

As we were very low on gas in the Saturn, I finally went online, checked to see who had the lowest price, and hurrah! Costco was the lowest at $3.86 a gallon. So I got gas there. This month gassing up for the Saturn has been over $40 for the tank each time! Yikes! So I combined the trip for gas with buying provisions at Costco. You will see the Food & Household amounts are going to be really big this month, because I am using the "Bribe Check" from the government for a return on our investment to go to food. Whatever is left, goes into savings.

June 28th: Saturday - 88 hi/70 low with Thundershowers in late evening: I always have a hard time getting up in the morning, to get to work by 8 am. It is especially hard when Sasha does not have to get up too. I do not make oatmeal like during the week, because he does not usually get up until 9 am. It would be a rock hard mushy goo for him if I made it. But thankfully I had bought provisions of granola and dried fruit this past week and blues yesterday, so I had that for breakfast. It was a yummy treat.

After work, I came back to the camper, had lunch and took a nap. Although I am not doing physically demanding work, I sometimes need to snooze. Especially if the day is really warm. So I did.

When I woke up, we worked on the trailer, and I looked over the provisions that we have. I try to keep us stocked with at least a month's worth of breakfast stuff, including coffee/tea and dried milk. Each time we go to get our mail, I go to Aldi's and get dried milk and pasta, as the prices are better than anywhere else.  I wrote down what we had, and what we need, as I will go in a couple of weeks to get coffee and other provisions. I think that it is important to be prepared for whatever happens out there. One of the girls from the book club was also prepared for whatever...she said that they always had the cars gassed up, just in case of emergencies. We, of course, have other stuff as provisions, just that the breakfast food is an important part of the day, so it is good to have that in large supply.

While I was working, Sasha went on a little trip with his motorcycle to George Washington Forest. He checked out a bunch of forestry roads and a couple of towns, like Capon Springs. We checked out the resort (on the web) when he  got back - $150 per person based on double occupancy per room. They even charge for kids!

I went over to the garden to "water" and a storm came up, and watered it for me. I managed to get a flower and some basil leaves before it poured. I think this evening, Sasha and I will watch a movie that I have either on my computer or on our hard drive. We have to get the trellis stuff up, of course, I still need the trellis nylon stuff (I had to order it from Burpee, no place else had it. But we could put up the metal parts first. Once I get the trellis, I can put that up myself. Then we need to get picking Cherries (I made an appointment with one of the places - they are not open during the week.) I will let you know how that went tomorrow.

June 29th, Sunday 89 hi/68 low: We got up as early as we could (basically did not set an alarm clock, just got up naturally), and did a couple of things before we left to go picking. I was wrong, it was not for cherries but for BLUEBerries! Love those blues, can not ever get enough. I think on July first, I will get a dehydrator at Wal-Mart - that is the only place I have see one. At least it is clear plastic, so that we can dry up some of these berries, to use in the fall and winter.

So we went to Blue Ridge Berry Farm in Toms Brook, VA, you can find the farm on www.PickYourOwn.org we were in the northern Virginia area to find blueberries. This particular farm just sells blueberries, no other berries. They make appointments for people to pick as they do not want to overwhelm their trees. It is a nice idea, although a little offsetting when I first heard it. They also only allow picking on the weekends. We got 10 quarts of berries for $30. At Costco, it is $7.49 for 2 quarts so we "saved" $7.45 but really, it was the chance to get out and explore the area that was the real reason.

We went on a little road trip after picking the berries. I got to see some of the area that Sasha has been checking out with his motorcycle. Why oh Why, we did not bring the camera the pictures would have been great. Such is life. Let's just say we were in Shenandoah County, where the air is fresh, the trees are straight, and the roads are not.

We could not explore too much as we had to get back for me to work at 2pm, so we grabbed some fast food and hightailed it back to the campground with about 10 minutes to spare. I washed off, got changed and jogged up to the office. The car's time is off by 7 minutes, so I was able to relieve my co-worker with time to spare.

Work went fine. On Sunday we close the shop a little earlier, but this evening it was hard to close. People kept coming in right before closing time. Ultimately, I got one of the outside coworkers to help move stuff in, then locked the doors so no one else could come.

Sasha was making our dinner - pasta with dried veggies rehydrated - peas, mixed peppers, and celery. The mixed peppers and celery turned out great, but the peas - no matter how long we soak them, cook them or whatever, they still remain hard in the middle. So we still use them, but I do not plan on buying them again.

While the pasta was cooking, we put up the vertical frames for the square foot garden. I have two squares that need trellis makings, but we only had the makings for one, but still, we decided to put them up. I have not yet gotten the nylon tomato trellis to put on the metal frames, but once I get that, I will start training my plants to go up that, rather than fall on their faces. I will put some pictures up in the next couple of days to show you how it looks.

June 30th, Monday: Although this is the last day of the month, the numbers for the interest of our CDs does not come in for another day. I do know that Sasha got gas today, so hopefully that is the only expense. This month has been quite expensive, as we put in the garden and have been buying extra provisions (food that goes into storage to be used in the future.) I have been also going to berry picking places and getting lots of fruit, and that has been expensive, but oh so tasty. So this month's expenses, I am going to change it around a little bit, to show the different costs under the Food & Household.

Expenses: June Can we keep up the low expenses? Obviously NOT!

Expenses: Definitely higher than last month. However, we did sell my ATV, so it was a wash, I guess. Part of the expenses were the extra provisions that I started getting, plus the fact that the prices for food are going up, plus we bought some hard drives for my computer and finally for the garden. The way Sasha and I am treating the expenses for the garden is as though I just paid for an all day class. Around $230 was how much it cost for a class at ExecuTrain, a company I worked for way long ago.

So I broke down the food expenses this month into three parts: regular shopping of Food & Household (stuff that we got at grocery stores and Wal*Mart), Provisions (extra food stuff that we might not eat this month but was put into storage to eat sometime later, like extra dried milk, pasta, oatmeal, oat bran, granola, and dried fruit), and then PYO (Pick Your Own) and Farmers Market. These are local foods for strawberries and blueberries. We spent $30 for blues went we went picking, and they were well worth the time and money to get them. And the Meals to Go was not high this month, but it could be better.

The Transportation amounts went up as the gas prices are hitting all time highs and so our gas and diesel prices reflect that. BUT we only filled up once for the truck, three times for the car, and eight times for the motorcycle. Obviously, Sasha has to get to work, but he is using the motorcycle most often to do so. I am averaging about 35 miles to the gallon for the Saturn, and Sasha is averaging about 47 miles to the gallon. Which is not bad.

We had to do Maintenance on my car and the truck, both of us for oil changes. The truck had the good portion of the money, over $100 while the car was $18. The Bike Maintenance was what Sasha did himself, but he needed the parts.

The Camper Services/Stuff was high, because we bought a hard drive for my laptop (which is still working shhhh - don't let it know I told you....), a solar battery for the truck (to keep the batteries juiced), and keys for the camper (so that we had more than one set.) There were a few other things in there as well, some tools and other equipment for the camper.

The Communication - Cell Phones -I had to get minutes for my phone in the early part of the month and Sasha had to get them late in the month.

Health - My insurance went down because I decided to take out the rider for dental. I was not getting things paid for with the dental, so why should I pay $23 a month if they are not "allowing" me to get certain things done? As it is, I am going to have to wait until January 2009 to finish the dental work on my back teeth because we ran out of the money for the FSA. The prices with dental are getting (and have been) too high.

Check out Next Month: July, Fourth of July, plus More Berry picking and hot weather!