Crikey. I forgot to make a January Net Worth post and I forgot to update my Net Worth IQ graph too.

This is gonna wander y’all so bear with me, as you always kindly do.

1. St Louis has amazing food. I’ve ate fantastically at The Shaved Duck, Niche Restaurant, Sidney Street Cafe, Vin de Set. It does help that work has paid for two of those meals and the rest fit into my per diem.

2. If you are delayed on Delta for more than 4 hours due to a mechanical problem, call them and ask for airline miles to compensate you for the wait. That happened once on a direct flight that was supposed to leave before 8am. Instead I ran off the plane to a 12:30pm direct and still got 5K miles for my troubles.

3. Got a weird call from my sibling regarding a new home purchase and possibly helping out with down payment money. Well, well. I do love being able to help my family and my nephews and niece. So Aunty Mapgirl toted up all her available cash and credit. I figured out that I can actually produce about $35K in 14 days if needed. That’s kind of cool. I just wish that was all cash.

4. My tenant is killing me. She likes to not pay the rent till the next month’s rent is due. Argh. Landlording is a pain in the neck.

5. Car is great. It’s taken me 13 months to drive it 9000 miles.

6. Cooking this winter has been amazing. It helps that my boyfriend made *cassoulet* the other week. He is truly wonderful. We’ve been wining and dining well at home and I’m happy.

It’s boring as hell and takes forever, yet I feel compelled somehow to make it after watching Food Network endlessly through the holidays. How else am I going to get rid of that extra pound of ox tails but to make demi-glace?

Korean people have a traditional New Year’s food of rice cake soup that comes with a very simple beef broth. Basically you boil ox tails in water, skim the fat and add rice cake slices with some chopped scallions and shredded seaweed. (Yes, it’s nori, but that’s a Japanese word.)

For me, that same broth is used for udon noodles. (Another Japanese word, but it’s for Japanese food.) I was struck by the urge to buy some the other day while I was buying some specialty Korean flour for bao. (I know, it’s a Chinese word!) So off I went to find some fish cake, vacuum-packed udon noodles and ox tails. I was sad because I could only find frozen noodles which ended up ok, but the vac-pack ones are better. At any rate, making the broth is easy, but I had a lot of smaller ox tail segments that I wasn’t interested in using for the rice cake soup. Rather than give them to the dog and have her possibly choke to death, I decided to make demi-glace.

Demi-glace is a rich, deeply flavored broth made with meat, bones, and vegetables. The key is to roast all of it in the oven for maximum flavor before boiling everything in huge amounts of water. (Say like 3 gallons down to 1/2c of demi-glace.) This makes the house smell great, the dog crazy with the good smells, and generally makes me feel like some smug foodie.

There’s all this skimming of fat from the ox tail broth for the rice cake soup. There’s more skimming of fat off the broth for the demi-glace. I usually put the pots in the fridge overnight so it’s easier to skim. Then there is a lot of boiling and waiting. And more boiling.

It takes me about 48 hours to do all this, but I find it worth it from a satisfaction standpoint. It’s sort of cheaper than buying demi-glace by the jar if you don’t charge yourself for the cooking time, gas or water. You can do it with leftover turkey from Thanksgiving for a poultry demi-glace that’s a bit lighter in color and taste.

There’s really no actual way to save money doing this unless you are using leftover bones and vegetables from something else, which is what a lot of chefs do with the meat trimmings, carrot peels and celery tops from prep work. I have found that the local major chain supermarket actually has loose ‘bulk carrots’ and celery stalks. I suspect these are carrots and celery pieces that feel off of large bunches so they put them into the bulk bin instead of the trash. Whatevs, they’re cheap and good for this sort of thing. As long as they aren’t too flabby (i.e. soft from lack of moisture and therefore not fresh) they are ok for making stock.

In the end, the ox tails were stupidly expensive at the Korean market, but they were some of the meatiest I’ve ever seen. So compare $29 for a 10.5 oz jar in the link above vs $7 for a pound of ox tails and say $5 more for vegetables for about a half cup of demi glace. (Could have been a full cup if I stopped cooking it sooner.)

First off, I hate audio books, but if you are a crazy knitter like myself and my pal Lanea, there is some charm to the spoken word whilst you knit. Lanea runs a site called Books For Ears. It’s an audio book review site and it’s specific to the recorded genre. There are several reviewers and it’s grown quite a lot. I really trust Lanea’s taste in literature is the kind of person who has a library at the house and it’s filled with stuff I want to read. Go to her site if you want to buy an audio book.

Second, I really, really dig my new Kindle. I’m not just saying that. You have to understand that I am a speed reader. Compared to most people, I appear to be skimming. I took a speed reading class in college and with it comes to light fiction, paced well, with an exciting plot and characters, I turn the pages really fast. In a word, I am impatient.

This being so, I really disliked the first iterations of the Kindle, or any e-reader. So slow on the paging and so unsatisfying with glare that kills my eyes! The newest Kindle really does have faster paging and better contrast so your eyes don’t get quite as tired. This is really important when you’re reading hundreds of pages as week.

In my desperation to have some better in-flight entertainment, I asked for a Kindle this Chirstmas and I was really lucky to get one. I am usually in the vicinity of wi-fi at home or at the hotel, so it made sense to save money and get a wi-fi only version.

It’s currently January 11th as I write this and I’m still on my first charge having read the following books:
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Cryptonomicon (with supplemental Wired Mag article)
Love on a Dime (Free trashy novel. Terrible stuff. Don’t bother)
The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It
Dead Until Dark

I think that is pretty good since I got to open my present early on Christmas Eve two and half weeks ago. (Over three as of this publishing date.) Don’t expect write ups or reviews. Just know that if something is really terrible, I’ll let you know.

Some things I have learned:

1. It’s true the contrast, paging and battery life are all pretty awesome. Just look at how many books/pages I’ve read in 2.5 weeks! I have only turned on the wi-fi two or three times since it’s not needed unless you pull down more books.

2. Kindle just announced book sharing, but sadly I can’t find anyone who wants to share them!

3. Fancy official Kindle leather cover is not needed. Often I pull it out of the cover since that halves the weight. That Jeff Bezos guy* was thoughtful enough to make the page buttons on the side ambidextrous, which is great. I find myself as a rightie using the left-hand buttons to page while I take a sip of water or stir a pot at the stove. *-it’s a private joke amongst some friends calling him that

4. I have found that I am spending TOO MUCH MONEY ON BOOKS. But that the Kindle will elt you read documents and e-books if they are emailed to your Kindle account. This is good since I have friends who are sharing with me. But geez-Louise, I’ve spent easily $50 on books so far and I know that will get worse if I don’t clamp it down.

5. My Kindle needed a reset quite a lot. In the first 48 hours I kind of freaked out because it needed a manual reset 3-5 times after I de-registered it from boyfriend’s Amazon account. Expect this to be normal if you don’t configure it right at first. (I should have done some steps in the prescribed order instead of diving in intuitively.) However, after the first 2 days, I have only reset it once out of need and once because I held the button too long when I got distracted.

6. Reading footnotes/endnotes kind of sucks. I like to read notes as go and that is vitally important in Stephenson’s writing since he has other very funny stuff in his footnotes. But on an academic monograph, it’s an old habit I have and it’s sort of wonky because the e-book does not bookmark the last note you looked at and it repaginates the notes as you flip back. That moves the note you want to the top of the new screen, and if you want to skim back over the previous notes you skipped, you have to page back. It’s just odd and takes some getting used to. It’s going to make me stop reading the end notes. Which I guess is ok if it makes me less nerdy. But not ok if you are a doctor who wants to read a medical journal and those footnotes have actual meaning for you. (I showed it to a pathologist friend of mine because he’s interested in not carrying around tons of medical journals in his backpack.)

Other than my two complaints about resetting and end notes, it’s a pretty awesome gadget.

N. B. This was drafted last September. But it’s still good to make in the winter if you have a basil plant inside on the windowsill.

I have been loving 5 Ingredient Fix lately. Last weekend we saw an episode for a picnic where she made Green Goddess Rice. The recipe was damned easy. My boyfriend isn’t Asian so he finds plain rice really bland and unappealing, so I decided we should give this recipe a try. We had all the ingredients on hand since I’ve been growing 3 basil plants at home. I did pretty much denude a plant for the recipe, but it was quite good.

This weekend, I made the rice again, but without the basil. I wanted it instead for a basil compound butter for a salmon dish. Everyone should learn to make a compound butter. Simple, easy, flavorful. But you really should thaw butter out before you use it for compound butter. Makes life a heck of a lot easier. (Frugal tip #0934, Butter freezes well for months! Buy it on sale and freeze it!)

Ingredients:

Salmon part:
2 salmon filets, skin on is best
Lots of basil
Garlic
2-4 Tbs butter
Salt
Pepper
Lemon

First, bring the butter to room temperature. Chop a few leaves of basil and a clove of garlic. Toss into a bowl or mixer with some salt and pepper to taste, and combine thoroughly. Put into a small serving bowl and throw it back in the fridge. This is best done a day in advance, but of course, I do it 10 minutes before dinner.

In a bamboo steamer basket, lay down some basil leaves and put a salmon filet skin side down. Toss some basil leaves on top. Do the same for a second steamer tray. Stack up and place over simmering water for 10 minutes. Pull off the salmon and sprinkle with lemon. Dish up with rice and a veg.

Rice:
Follow the recipe, but leave out the basil this time or substitute another herb.

Veg:
Make whatever you like. Something orange or red looks nice on the plate.

Nom nom nom. Steaming salmon is really good stuff.

I’ve been traveling like crazy for work. I need tons of reading material and I asked Santa for a Kindle this year and Santa Boyfriend came through. It’s the 3rd Generation Wi-Fi only version. It is so far, teh aw3s0m3. It really is, but more on that another day.

I’ve been reading magazines like The Economist and Fortune (especially when sex and crime scandals are on the front cover). For fun, I’ve been reading Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. I had to check out Mr. Colfer’s work since he wrote the 6th book of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilology. (I know a trilogy is only 3 books, but the original author died after Book 5 and that is why a Book 6 by someone else is a big deal.)

Artemis Fowl is children’s reading for late elementary school kids. He’s a master villain who can’t even shave yet. Colfer has structured the series a little bit like Harry Potter, where the later books delve into Fowl as an adolescent, easily distracted by girls and evolving and maturing in his life choices.

It’s got fantasy, science-y stuff, twisty plots, sinister villains, family sentimentality, fights with bombs and lasers, and toilet humor. It’s extremely light reading for adults and a great diversion from travel delays.

I found the third book at a used bookstore, Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code and started to read it. I quickly realized that I’d better start at the beginning with Book 1: Artemis Fowl. I blew through a book a week during my first weeks of travel. Now I’m waiting on Book 7: The Atlantis Complex, which is just out in hardback. I cannot wait so I might just have to get it anyway.

Full listing:
Book 1: Artemis Fowl
Book 2: Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident
Book 3: Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code
Book 4: Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception
Book 5: Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony
Book 6: Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox
Book 7: Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex

January 12, 2011

Let’s Play a Game

How far underwater is mapgirl on her condo?

I don’t know. How far underwater am I?

I had my realtor run comps for me in October because I was thinking about selling my condo. I had no idea what the numbers were like in the DC area these days. I live towards the center of the DC metro area and that’s supposedly still doing ok compared to the suburbs.

Not so. I’m about $5K underwater per the numbers in October but realistically, I would have to come to the table with about $20K cash to take care of closing costs and pay the realtors.

We shall see what happens with the county sends my assessment in the next few weeks. That should be good for a laugh. Or a cry.

The latest and greatest:

1. My cousin’s wife had a baby in December. So happy for them since my uncle finally got his male offspring married and now has a grandson which all my uncle really wanted. LOL. I’m working on a baby blanket for them now. It’s super exciting stuff. More babies are on the way in my family in February so more knitted gifts.

2. My mom thinks she is going to liquidate everything in 2011. I’m not sure that everything will work out where my mom thinks it will. I think she is wildly overoptimistic about the home she lives in. It needs major work and I think she won’t get anything close to top dollar for it. Because of this, I am going to try and hoard a lot of cash this year.

3. I got screwed again by the weather for my California vacation. Except this time I had an old man in tow and it was sort of sad that we only got to spend about 36 hours with my family in California. All we got was a lot of exhaustion and driving all over the east coast. But I am super grateful for wheelchair escorts. Vacation damage was kind of minimal since I didn’t cover the hotel and the plane ticket. The plane ticket was free with family air miles that were expiring. The hotel was pre-booked & paid for so my family insisted they didn’t need to paid back. I covered one big family dinner and all the meals while traveling, short car rental, as well as a last minute Amtrak ticket due to all the snow storms on the east coast. It was ugly, but only about $450. It could have been a lot less and a lot more.

4. I am committing myself to going to Madagascar hence more cash hoarding. An old friend and I are planning on going. I have an obsession with lemurs so this is going to be really exciting. Tickets are not cheap, but I really think this will be worth doing and I haven’t been out of the country in 10 years. I just renewed my passport so I want to use the damned thing at least once before it expires again. Madagascar will be my 2011 splurge.

5. Financially, where am I? Well I think I’m doing ok. Of course I could always be doing better. I’m hoping to increase my net worth by $10-25K in a single year depending on how the market does. I’ve handed over my condo to a property management firm and will let them deal with everything with my tenant. It’s pricey, but worth it since I’m traveling constantly. I just want to collect the checks for now.

6. Cash flow is not that great. I feel like I’m bleeding cash out but now that the holidays are over, this should improve by February when the rental income starts coming in from the property management firm. (The two months of rental income go to expenses so I won’t see any income for a while.)

2010 Goal #1
Pay down credit card debt by $5000

An oldie but a goodie. I have some financial challenges coming up this year, so it’s not a good time to accelerate paying off debt unless I liquidate some stocks. (Which is not off the table right now.)

2010 Goal #2
Fill the Save-O-Meter to $5K

I would like to add a thousand dollars to my Save-O-Meter this year. I go through fluctuations in what I have saved because of my folks and dipping into my savings to help them. 2011 might get a little crazy on me so I will be happy if I can hold the line on this at $4k, but why not reach a little?

2010 Goal #3
Save $8K in my 401k plan

I’ve modified my ambitions on this goal. I don’t know that I’ll be able to save this much in 2011. I definitely won’t be able to save $10K since my new company does not match as well as my last company.

January 4, 2011

2010 Goal #1
Pay down credit card debt by $5000

I paid off $3546 in debt. It’s ok. Not great. It’s sort of like a stretchy rubber band. Since I do have a charge plate that goes to zero every month and that balance is $1400 so that would get me close to the $5000.

2010 Goal #2
Fill the Save-O-Meter to $4K

Technically, I am short $310 because I moved a lot of cash out to pay for a plane ticket to Africa for next year’s vacation. But it’s close.

2010 Goal #3
Save $10K in my 401k plan

If I include the employer match, I saved $10,589.23 in 2010. I have a more modest ambition of saving about $8K for 2011. That will ensure that I will get the employer match when I’m eligible. (But I have no idea when that actually is.)

Happy New Year everyone! I hope the holidays were a lot of fun for everyone.

I will post something later about the holidays and another update. Main thing now is to take a look at December’s net worth and compare that to a year ago.

So far, things are looking very well for December 2010. I did some adjustments with some accounts and brought my auto loan up to date which it why it looks like I paid off $800 in one month. It was actually an adjustment which includes November.

Same goes for the home mortgage. Normally I don’t pay off that much in one month.

Retirement is way up due to the end of the year and that makes me happy. I am really low on cash since I sent off a payment to a friend of mine who is buying our tickets to Madagascar. I re-evaluated my car after one year of driving with Kelley Blue Book since they don’t offer favorable values compared to the NADA Guides. I also made sure to rate it as ‘Good’ condition instead of ‘Excellent’. There’s less than 10K miles on my car. I almost wish I had leased the car but that’s ok. The car is still lovely and I know I’m going to keep it for years.

Overall, I have more assets and more liabilities all in the form of that car. That’s really the only change from 2009. Truth is, what is going to be really scary is the county valuation next month from the tax assessor. I have a very bad feeling that the condo is not going to be worth squat. I have a feeling my assets will plummet next month.

1. My old job’s 401k is up 13% for the year as of Wednesday 12/8. That’s pretty good I think.

2. My personal IRA is up about 5%. I’m holding a lot of dividend stocks and it gives me great satisfaction to hold them through December when the dividends get paid out. It’s addictive stuff. There is no way that crack is better than free money. No. Way.

3. I finally bought a new winter coat about 30 seconds before I left for the bitter winds of the Midwest. Ok, fine, I bought it at French Connection Sunday afternoon before I left for parts Midwest on Monday. It was only 20% off but still a nice coat. After 2 years of pickiness, getting any coat is a success. I spent about $325 for it but that was far less than the $800 I thought about spending for a Loro Piano coat.

4. It’s so effing cold here that I’m thinking of taking my mom’s mink coat when I see her at Christmas. That is a very awful thought I’m having, but it’ll be 9 Degrees Fahrenheit on Monday. NINE. SINGLE DIGITS. That’s not even including windchill.

5. I need new winter thermals. My ski silks are in shreds. God bless ‘em. Lands End Overstocks I bought 10 years ago. I’m waiting to see what turns up. My skirt wearing pals are recommending Wintersilks.

6. Sadly my mom told me she’s been **throwing out** the hand knit socks I gave her a few years ago because they have holes. *faint* All that leftover yarn I’ve been hoarding for darning is clearly not needed. No more socks for mommy! Boo!

7. I like dead animals. Especially soft furry ones. I miss having rabbit-lined dress leather gloves that I bought some for myself and my dad for Christmas. But Boyfriend will be giving them to my dad. And he’s buying my sibling’s family another gift basket. He knows the drill. It should have some fruit and candy together.

8. One awesome baby blanket knitted for Christmas. Two more to go. But those aren’t for Christmas. They’re just for family newborns arriving soon. Very happy about this plus I can knit a square every weekend. Two if I have no chores I want to do. I figure if I knit all Christmas holidays, I can get at least one of them finished.

9. Finances are mucked up due to work charge codes arriving late. I will now receive reimbursement so late, I will miss a credit card payment. I know I can call the company and they won’t ding my personal credit because of the company card, but I despise my company pushing off the payment onto me like this. My old company just paid it and I never saw the bill. Boyfriend is being lenient since I am really really really poor this month. I make almost 6-figures and in my own way I still live hand-to-mouth. (I refuse to cash out my emergency fund CD and stock fund because this is not actually an emergency. This is fake stuff due to work protocols dealing with the government. BOO.)

10. Flying first class is somewhat overrated when you are short. I only like it because I’m not stabbing other people with my elbows while I type. There’s still no foot rest. I still have blood pooling in my feet. So meh. Free snacks? Free cocktails? They just make you fat. The seat is bigger, but the overhead isn’t. Of course, if I get an upgrade, I’m keeping it…

11. Not every Westin hotel is nice. The best one I’ve been at is the Westin in Chicago on Dearborn Street. My colleagues tell me the one on Michigan isn’t as nice, or is the one out by O’Hare. But airport hotels rarely are.

12. Right now, I am dreaming of Africa and not just because it’s freezing outside. My pals are thinking Madagascar in the spring. I have a serious jones for lemurs and penguins. Let me just ride out the Christmas budget speed bump and I will find the money for it. Coup or no, Madgascar sounds amazing. Heck, if there was a coup, I could say I was there! (If I lived…)

Wish me warmth and if I don’t blog again this month, have a great holiday season and wonderful New Year!

It’s up. Thankfully it’s up.

I’m still not yet caught up to the peak it was in December 2009 right before I bought my car. And the reality of it is that if I put the true valuation of my condo up, I would be way down.

As it is, we shall see what happens when the county sends my newest tax assessment for next year. I am certain that I will be far underwater.