My mom came over today to give me my Father's Day present. She gave me an Orka oven mitt, the really nice silicone ones. I've looked at them for years but never splurged to get one.

She also gave me a batch of her homemade pizelles. Yum.

After she left, DW said she had to give me something too. I said she could wait until tomorrow to give me my present but she said I had to have it today. Turns out it was another Orka. One oven mitt isn't enough and I was about to start dinner (eggplant parm) so she knew I'd need two.

Great Father's Day so far.

We had our garage sale today. The weather forecast was iffy but wrong and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

We woke at 5am to start setting up. First sale was at 6:50am and we were pretty busy almost the entire morning. We started packing up just after 2:00pm because we were pretty much done and the weather was starting to turn. We didn't want it to start raining while everything was still out.

Our goal for this sale was to get rid of stuff, not make big bucks. With that in mind, it was very successful. We sold lots of stuff, including some larger items that were taking up a lot of space in our garage. Usually, we are much firmer on our pricing but this time we took almost any offer on things.

Total for the day was about $250. We spent $30 for the newspaper ad so netted about $220. Not a lot of money considering the amount of work involved, but we're satisfied and, like I said, we were more focused on freeing up garage space which we did nicely.

I just e-mailed the ad for our garage sale next Saturday to our local paper. I brought up the old signs from the basement and just need to change the date on them.

All the stuff we will be selling is already packed up and ready to go in the garage. In fact, we have tons more stuff than we can possibly put out in one day. My plan is to have this sale and then have another at the beginning of September. Anything that doesn't sell next week goes to Goodwill, NOT back into the garage. It is time to clear this stuff out once and for all, one way or another.

Now we just have to hope for good weather.

Sometimes it is the simple things that excite us.

About a year ago, my daughter accidentally swung the front storm door open a bit too far and stretched the hinges out of place. Ever since then, the door wasn't quite right but we hardly ever use it as we enter through our garage, so I never did anything about it.

Then a couple of weeks ago one of the spring closers broke. Now the door really wasn't right as it was hanging down a bit and not flush with the frame. To close it, you had to lift up on the handle to get it back in the frame.

Well, I finally went to Home Depot and bought a new closer. That fixed one problem but not the hinge problem. I was able to fix that with a hammer and a nail punch to tap the hinge plate back into shape.

Now the door is good as new and it cost me all of $10.50. And I had been procrastinating because I really thought the door was trashed and I'd have to replace it for a few hundred dollars. Wasn't I pleasantly surprised?

We took the plunge and bought DD her first cell phone. We've been researching it for a few weeks. We checked the prepaid options but finally decided to add a line to our Cingular/ATT family plan. On the surface, the prepaid option looked cheaper. However, with her on our plan, calls she makes to our cell phones (or us to hers) are free. Also, any friends she calls who are on the Cingular/ATT network would also be free.

We never use all of our plan minutes and, in fact, have about 4,000 rollover minutes stored. So even if, with her, we now use all of our plan minutes, we've still got a cushion of rollover minutes so we wouldn't generate any additional charges.

We did opt for the phone insurance for now until she gets used to carrying and caring for the phone.

Of course, while we were there, DW started looking at all the nice new phones. Her phone is almost 3 years old. I upgraded last year after losing my phone. The clerk said she was eligible for a free upgrade - just had to pay for the new phone. She looked at the options and liked one that was $29.99. We decided that would be her Mother's Day gift. She's been wanting a new phone for quite a while. We rarely splurge like that or upgrade things that are still working okay, so it was actually a hard decision, but she's happy to have a nice new phone with more modern features.

A very active day today.

I spent about 3 hours cleaning in my garage. I managed to consolidate a lot of stuff, stack things more compactly, fill two 30-gallon trash bags, fill 2 carton boxes with recyclables, put a couple more cartons on the yard sale pile and find a few things for the ebay pile.

When my wife came in to check on me, I asked what Saturday we had free in May to do a yard sale. She checked and we are free on the 19th, so that's the day. Last year, we never managed to have one so stuff has really piled up, even more so since we cleaned out my mom's house before she moved last June.

Until today, we had just enough of a path to walk through the garage. Now it is a few feet across and more open feeling even though I really didn't get rid of much.

Finally, I just listed 2 items on ebay and wrote up descriptions for a few more that I'll post tomorrow night.

Oh, and I also did another medical survey for $50 (see prior post about those).

Time to go crash for the night.

We got the heater serviced today (see previous post). Actually, I didn't call until today because it seemed to be fine all week, then went out again last night (in the midst of our Nor'easter storm).

Of course, the unit is out of warranty.

The repair was $361.60 including the service call. The other option was to extend the warranty for another year. That would be $369 and cover the service call and twice/year routine maintenance visits on the heater and AC, plus 20% off any needed parts. So including today's repair, it would come to $545.53. I don't normally believe in extended warranties, but in this case I figured it was really only costing us $184 to be covered for the year instead of $369. Plus we'll get the 2 service visits included for that price. So we decided to take the warranty just in case something else breaks. And even if nothing breaks, we'll get 2 service calls for $184 which isn't such a bad deal.

We noticed Sunday night that our heater wasn't working quite right. It is coming on and it is blowing hot air but it isn't quite keeping up with the temperature it is set for. Last night, it was set at 70 but according to the thermostat it was only 68 in the house. I just put in a new filter and to my untrained eye, everything looks okay, but I know it isn't right. So I'll put in a call to the service folks today. Wonder what that will cost me?

Ok, we weren't exactly housecleaning. We were searching for my wife's wallet on Thursday. She had put it somewhere while cleaning earlier in the week and couldn't remember where. She thought she had stuck it in a drawer or cabinet because we had guests coming and she didn't want to leave it out in the open.

Anyway, we were going through every drawer in the bedroom and hallway, among other places. While we didn't find her wallet (which did eventually turn up - at the bottom of the washing machine), we did find quite a few items that we agreed we had no use for. Three of those items have already gone on ebay. Two already have bids totalling $95.99 and they don't end for 5 more days.

So take some time and go through those drawers and closets. You never know what hidden value you might find.

I admit it. I squandered $1.00 today. Actually, with tax, it was $1.07. We went looking for some things DD needs for the Renaissance Fair her class is doing. I came across compact fluorescent light bulbs. I figured the ones they are selling for $1 probably couldn't be as good as the ones sold everywhere else for 10 times as much, but I decided to gamble and buy one.

Guess what. They're not as good. First, it is a white fluorescent, so really can't be used to replace an incandescent bulb as it is a totally different type of light. Also, the package said it lights instantly. That isn't quite true. There is a couple second delay when you turn it on. Finally, it didn't seem very bright, though I didn't leave it on long so it might have brightened after a minute or two as some bulbs will do that.

Of course, it isn't a total loss as it is a working light bulb. I just can't use it where I was planning to.

In preparation for Passover, we are in the midst of our annual major house cleaning. A couple of days ago, my wife said she wanted to make a very frivolous purchase. I could tell from her tone that she was kidding, so I asked what this frivolous purchase was going to cost me. She said it would be more than the new bathmat she bought last week - that was $5. Now I knew I was in trouble - LOL! Turns out she wanted a new kitchen trashcan since the one we have is quite dirty. She figured about $15 to replace it. Being the cheapskate that I am, I promised to clean it for her and if it didn't come out clean enough, then she could buy a new one.

I just took it outside and scrubbed it with a Brillo pad and it is bright white, as good as new. Wife is satisfied and said, "Boy, you'll do anything to save $15, won't you."

Yup!

I've used Half.com several times in the past but hadn't listed anything lately. The other day I was packing old clothes to give away because Purple Heart was coming. I found my wife had put a book in pile. Rather than give it away, I listed it on Half.com. It was a novel with the dust jacket. I priced it at $2.89 which seemed to be the going rate. Less than a week later, it sold! Certainly not a big windfall, but it couldn't possibly have been easier so it's found money as far as I'm concerned.

We happened to be watching America's Test Kitchen last weekend and saw a recipe we wanted to try ourselves - Pot Stickers. They made theirs with ground pork, which is out in our house since a) we're Jewish and don't eat pork and b) we're nearly vegetarians and hardly ever eat meat. So I took on trying out the recipe with a few modifications.

Thursday is my short day at work, so I stopped at the store and picked up supplies: shitake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, scallions, won ton wrappers (wanted gyoza wrappers but couldn't find any - have to go to the Asian market next time).

Using the ATK recipe as a guide, I chopped, salted and drained the cabbage, chopped the scallions and mushrooms, added a couple of egg whites and, in place of the pork, mixed in vegetarian ground beef substitute. I assembled the pot stickers and froze about half the batch - it made lots! I held the rest aside for us to eat tonight. I also made the scallion dipping sauce that ATK had the recipe for.

While I was cooking the pot stickers, I also cooked up a pot of brown rice to eat on the side.

I was fully expecting my daughter not to like them. I even told her she could make Ellio's pizza as a back-up dinner if she didn't like them.

Well, there was no Ellio's eaten at our house tonite. My daughter ate 7 or 8 of the pot stickers, as did my wife and I. I even had to get up part-way through and cook another batch. One more recipe to add to the family dinner list. Plus, we have a ziploc bag full of frozen pot stickers that we can make next time. I have to figure out approximately what the whole batch cost to make, but I'm sure it wasn't a whole lot.