Money-saving tips for the middle class Part 1: Transportation Unless you work from home, transportation is a necessity. But it need not be expensive. You don’t need three cars. You probably don’t even need two cars. And you could likely get by with no car at all, especially in the city. If you live in [...]

Money-Saving Tips for the Middle Class – my take on the “depression” I’m not really feeling the disastrous effects of the “depression” that we’re experiencing.  Yes, things are tight, but for someone like me, they’re always tight.  In the news, I keep seeing all these sob stories about comfortable white people feeling sad because now [...]

One-dish harvest stovetop recipeThis is one of those great recipes that I made up on the spur of the moment to use up ingredients I had on hand. Hope you like it. A great way to use up Thanksgiving leftovers. 1 medium cooking apple (use golden delicious if you have to. Or check your local [...]

Cash 4 Books – turn your old books into folding money.I just found a great program to earn some quick money. Most of us know that we can make money on E-bay or Amazon, but that takes creating an account, fees, dealing with customers,and so on. Cash4books will pay you for your books, and pay [...]

The River Why by David James DuncanThis is one of those rare perfect books that I will want to keep forever to loan out to friends in need of enlightenment or encouragement. It has everything: a good storyline; characters that are real, complex and that you would want to meet in real life; it’s funny; [...]

Ice Cream – The Natural AlternativeThere are hundreds of ice cream flavors on the market. And many of them taste very good. Unfortunately, most ice cream is full of fake stuff… high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, preservatives, etc. Yuck. I have found a great alternative. No, not some fancy expensive alternative. Just Breyer’s Natural [...]

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette WintersonThis is a neat little book that I read almost in one day. I found a lot of myself in it. Some of you may think that this statement is odd. After all, it’s about a British girl growing up in a small town under a severely [...]

Melvin Durai, the Rajah of HumorI subscribe to a lot of newsletters, but my favorite is the “Funny Columns” from self-described “writer Melvin Durai, who was born in India, raised in Zambia and brainwashed in America”. He apparently now lives in Canada (go Canada!), and most of his columns have a sarcastic political message, often [...]

A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner by Khaled HosseiniI was already interested in the book based on a friend’s recommendation, but then I opened it up and found it was written by the same author as The Kite Runner and I was hooked. I loved both of these books. Both novels are about [...]

Kindle – What I Want for Mother’s DayHave you heard about the new “Kindle” from Amazon? This is a great little product, and I just love it! It’s a little device, about the size of a paperback novel, that let’s you download and read books, newspapers and magazines, as well as audio books, word files [...]