Saskatchewan

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Garage Saleing

I went over to Laura’s at about 9:00 this morning and we headed out to Willow Bunch to check out the garage sales. There were several and there was a map available so you could cross out the ones you’d been to.

I didn’t bring any Canadian cash with me, but left $7 in US bills and change in the wallet for an emergency situation. ‘Emergency’ was clearly defined here: if I found something that I absolutely need and was planning to spend full price on when I got to a town with real stores.

First garage sale had some goodies, but I was happy to window shop. Second garage sale threw my whole ‘just going to look’ plan out the window. Sometimes, you find something you REALLY need and you just have to pull out the wallet:

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Jody and Gary have one of these port-potties and I knew that getting one of those would buy me a lot of time before getting the black tank replaced. They are perfectly sanitary and work just like an RV toilet, except the holding tank is smaller and you can take the whole thing to the dump.

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It’s scratched and dusty but otherwise impeccable. I imagine the seals will need a little lubrication.

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The toilet flushes with the handle. You can attach a standard RV hose to the unit, upright it, and then dump it.

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You put water into this part and then pull up the knob to pump the water into the bowl.

The RV toilet is so low that I’m hoping I can just set the porta-potty over it and use it that way.

When the unit is full, I’ll dump it into a five-gallon bucket, and when the bucket’s full, it’ll get dumped at the lagoon.

The porta-potty was marked $10. I said to the lady, “I have a 5USD bill on me. Would you take that for the toilet?” She thought about it for a bit and said, “Oh, sure.”

I was going to pick up one of these toilets at Canadian Tire next month. They are about $100. I can be forgiven for breaking the ‘just looking today’ rule, right?

The wallet being out once, the promise was broken, and then I shopped up a storm! Cooking yesterday (parsnip fries), I once again got frustrated that I don’t have a slotted serving spoon or a grease splatter guard for my pans. I found those items at two separate sales, for 10 cents each. I am such a big spender!

By the end of the tour, I was feeling rather parched, so I spent a whole 50 cents on a cold glass of lemonade being sold by an entrepreneurial little boy. Got to encourage those kids!

We finished our morning at the thrift shop where I picked out a bunch of clothes and then put them back. I did grab two magazines for a total of 50 cents.

Grand total spent this morning: $6.20. Grand total saved, at least $100. I guess some promises are just meant to be broken.

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Toasty

Not having had dinner, I came in from canasta feeling rather peckish. Toast was definitely in order.

I eat quite a lot of toast. It’s usually in the form of English muffins, which I like because one English muffin equals a slice of bread, but you get two pieces, plus the texture is just divine. I’ve been having an English muffin for breakfast at least 15 days out of 30 for the past 20 years or so.

When I am plugged into power, I use my toaster to cook my English muffins. I might even replace the toaster if it ever goes out. What’s nice about it is I’ve found the perfect setting on it for my English muffins, so I can just put one down and go do something else until it pops.

Not so when I’m boondocking. Like when I’m stuck cooking rice on the stove, making toast while boondocking means I have to stay in the kitchen and watch my cast iron pan very closely. It doesn’t taking long to go from delicious to charred beyond salvation. This muffin is not quite done, but oh, so close.

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I prefer the taste of my toast made in the cast iron pan, although the texture isn’t quite as crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, as you get with the toaster. So both methods have their pluses and minuses. I don’t care as much for toast made in any other sort of pan.

For those wanting to try toasting their bread in a cast iron pan, heat the pan until very hot and then put the bread on it. My pan is well seasoned, so I do not add any fat to it. If the pan is hot enough, the bread won’t stick. I let it get brown on one side, flip it, let the other side get brown, and then repeat the exercise to get a little charring on both sides, but that’s optional.

End result, with a little peanut butter and some of Laura’s jam:

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I’m off to bed. Laura and I are hitting the Willow Bunch community garage sale tomorrow. I’m only going to window shop and to get a change of scenery. 🙂

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A Quiet Couple of Days

This post is just so no one sends the Mounties out after me as I really have nothing to report. Yes, there are pixels below, but only proceed if you’re bored.

The weather’s been really grey, cool, and windy the last couple of days (although the sun seems to have decided to come out), so I’ve just been staying in and getting work done.

I have a transcription client who pays me peanuts, but lets me choose projects from a pool of available ones with no minimum to complete in any set period. So I turn to that client when things are slow with my better paying clients. This week, I got some really interesting ones, including some interviews that are likely going to be part of a ‘making of’ bonus feature on a DVD of a movie starring a famous Hollywood actor. Interesting ones like that make up for the poor rate of pay since it’s something I would have listened to for nothing!

But I’m not getting as much work done as I’d like because of my slow connection. It takes ages to download my transcription files and I can’t work on anything web-based, like Squidoo or the new site I will be launching shortly. There’s no rhyme or reason to what I can connect to or not, no Youtube, but Netflix is working way too well for me. Most annoying is Google, which hasn’t worked about 95% of the time since I got online at Haven. Bing works fine, though, but boy are its results crap!!!

So the connector for my booster’s high gain antenna can’t come fast enough. It’s been in Markham, ON, for days. I really should take this time to figure out how to get the antenna cable into the office more permanently than just bringing it in through the window, but the high winds haven’t made me want to get up on the roof!

In related news, I got my Verizon bill today and it really confused me, which was a tad frustrating since I haven’t figured out yet how, or if, I can even call them Canada. I had cancelled my data plan before returning to Canada, but kept my Nationwide + Canada voice plan, which is $60 a month. My bill was $44. I thought they goofed and took me off the Canada plan (ouch, I’ve been making calls!), but then I found a link to where I could download a PDF of the bill, which had more details and allowed me to go ah ha!

What happened was that I had essentially prepaid for the next billing period, but canceled the data plan before the end of that billing period. So they credited me a pro-rated portion of the data charge. Wow, these guys never cease to amaze me. There’s no way that would have happened in Canada, at least not in my past experiences with telecom here.

My phone is problematic out here. I get enough signal with the Mifi to check my messages, but not to place calls. The field where I can get online doesn’t give my phone enough bars to use. I had to make a call the other day and wound up driving 16KM (one way) to get 2 bars. I hope the high gain antenna can make the phone usable here. But I mostly use it to speak to my mother regarding work projects, so if I get here the internet speeds I got in the field, then we will just switch to using Skype or some other VOIP solution. With a good internet connection, anything is possible!

So that’s all the thrilling news out of Haven. I’m off shortly to attend Canasta night. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Little RV On the Prairie! *snorts*

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Starting To Look Like a Homestead

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I got 11 gallons of water at C&C’s this afternoon and used 5 to wash my work and around the house skirts. I am just so tired of wearing jeans! I think pants are unnatural and they are soooo uncomfortable. Fine for the odd night out, but for doing actual physical work? YUCK.

For all the trees I have, none work particularly well for a clothes line, so I’m using a rather pliable sapling branch and the RV’s ladder. Good enough for an emergency wash session! I can’t wait to up a proper clothes line once I find the perfect place for it. There’s a lot of shade on this lot and the line would be in the way in most of the sunny spots. I’m sure the perfect spot will make itself apparent once I get Miranda moved.

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Netflixed

Netflix is one of those things people rave about that I thought wasn’t for me. I mean, it requires tons of bandwidth and high speed internet; right? I had the following thought yesterday.

Well, I now have 15GB of bandwidth a month, which is more than enough for what I absolutely need to do in a month. Once I get my high gain antenna, the connection is going to be pretty fast. Linda‘s Dave says that you can choose the quality of the video to use less bandwidth. Maybe it’s time to look at Netflix at little more closely.

So I did. The first thing I did was Google was how much bandwidth a typical Netflix movie uses up. To my immense surprise, I discovered that Netflix Canada movies are up to two thirds lighter than an equivalent movie in the US because even hardwired internet up here has ridiculous bandwidth caps.

I signed up for a one-month trial membership and got some recs from my best friend about what to watch. To my disappointment, Canadians don’t get the same options as Americans (but of course) so I can’t check out about 95% of her recs.

I eventually found a movie to try, it played smoothly even with my slooooooow connection, and I discovered that it used up only about 250MB (the Mifi actually updates usage in real time!). I obviously can’t watch a movie every night and do other interneting stuff, but it’s not like I have time to watch a movie every night anyway.

If I watch two Netflix movies a month, it’ll be cheaper than raiding the $5 bin at Walmart ($7.99 versus $10). Their selection, even in Canada, is pretty good. So I’m fairly sure I’ll continue with a paid membership.

Is there anything else I need to discover now that I have a good bandwidth cap in Canada?