Yes, I know this is similar to the title I used when I wrote about the hardwood stump borers I find every now and then. But these bugs are just as damn scary, and this time they are inside the house.
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I loved living in southern Oregon. The weather was perfect for me, the way of life was slower without seeming backwater (unlike the South), and it symbolized a big tipping point in my career in Web junk. It also started my path towards self-sufficiency, and was a good cultural setting to learn about the three “Rs” of waste reduction: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

As indicated in my article about plastic bags almost a year ago, I like reusing stuff. That’s the easiest way for me to reduce the stuff I toss into a landfill. I keep a lot of the plastic containers that food comes in, try to reuse plastic or paper bags at least once before binning/recycling them, and re-use boxes and shipping components. I’ve stopped using paper towels almost completely in favor of rags.

Most of my “reduce” activities center around water and power consumption. I shave out of a big coffee mug instead of letting the water run the whole time. I use compact fluorescent lamps instead of incandescent bulbs where I can. I microwave my kitchen sponge for two minutes every time I run the dish washer to avoid tossing out a perfectly serviceable sponge and reaching for a new one.

Recycling was a part of the conservation triad that I always refused to participate in. Recycling was a major pain in the ass when I lived in Oregon. I had to separate plastic from paper (subdivided into newsprint, magazines/glossy inserts, and then other paper products), glass had to be divided up into clear and green (they didn’t take brown bottles … or was it green ones? I forget). I had to remove labels from all containers. Cardboard was accepted, but only if it was thickly corrugated. Who has time to wash, sort, and judge all that shit? Plus you had to pay.

So, fuck that. Fast forward almost six years, and the niece is living with me. She looked at all the other conservation shit I was doing around the house. “Why don’t you recycle?” I told her about my Oregon experience. She asked me to check into recycling here, and I did, just to appease her. I was completely surprised.

The Central Virginia Waste Management Authority runs a (free!) curbside recycling program that is dead simple for lazy people like myself. Their rules are simple:

1. Wash out your nasty stuff.
2. Throw away lids.
3. Only recycle plastic items with a 1 or 2 on it. When it doubt, throw it away.
4. Huck all your recycleables in one big ass bin. Or more bins, if you need it. No sorting necessary.
5. Tote big ass bin(s) to the curb every two weeks.
6. Don’t pay anything extra.

Apparently it’s all sorted out at a facility. I couldn’t be happier with the program. My fiscally conservative self is satisfied knowing those people aren’t sucking money out of the welfare system. I am putting less stuff into the garbage bin, even with the niece living here. Double the occupants yet only 2/3rds of my original waste going to the landfill? Score.

Instead of a sorting chore, recycling is a game now. I like filling the recycling bin up with junk mail envelopes and the magazines I’ve finished reading. I enjoy looking at plastic containers to see if I can recycle them or not. I was pleased to put my gigumbo-sized empty detergent bottle in the recycling bin instead of throwing it into the trash.

The moral of the story: check to see what your community does for recycling. You might be surprised at how easy (and effortless) it is.

It probably seems odd that a guy who loves buying stuff so much wants to eventually move as far off-grid as possible, but it’s true. If I had a hojillion dollars I’d refinish a retired nuclear missile silo and make room for my bestest friends in case the Avian flu comes a-callin’ behind the wheel of a monster truck.

But I don’t have a hojillion dollars, so I have to think of less money-intensive ways to have a little patch of land to call my own.

Buying land and then building on it always seems extremely expensive. My father and his wife built their “dream house” in Colorado and drilling their well cost more than they budgeted for. Like, 200% more. Then they had to have their house built, a road cut, etc. etc. They wound up so jaded on their dream house that they sold it a few years later and moved to an even more remote location in Colorado. Their new home is a lot smaller, and they seem much happier. Dad has always been good at teaching me by example, so I started researching “start small” options.
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I keep at least two weeks’ worth of food in the pantry that only needs heat and/or water to prepare. I have a fair amount of canned goods — beans, mostly — and I have always been concerned about stacking them too high. I also have to remember to rotate my stock every time I buy more beans from the store. I was looking for home storage products and found the Three tier can rack shelf from Get Organized. I thought I could use the rack to save space, store my cans more safely, and more easily put new cans into rotation.
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Once a year, a mighty battle is waged at the DrFaulken abode. The forces of man clash with the forces of nature in what can only be described as a fight to the death of epic proportions. The combatants: me and seventeen oak trees in my front and back yards. Last year I disposed of nearly 4800 gallons of leaves, and this year the photosensitive scourge was back with a vengeance. I was determined not to repeat the days upon days of work required to pick up and bag the leaves by hand, and the gnarly aftermath of ripping the bags open at the town dump. I had a secret weapon up my sleeve this year: a trailer-contained leaf vacuum.
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Almost a year ago I wrote about giant mutant beetles (okay okay, they’re Hardwood Stump borers) that had surfaced in our yard. I killed another one of them this year already, so I know they’re around. At the time, we figured as long as they stayed outside they were harmless. It turns out that their incursions may have resulted in one of our oaks contracting slime flux.
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Thanks to my Curio & Relic license I have been acquiring more and more firearms. I used to just leave my guns underneath the bed in gun cases. I kept my Mossberg shotgun loaded and in the corner in case of a home invasion. Even though I have my concealed carry permit and am armed when I leave and return to the house, I was worried about someone gaining access to my weapons while I was away. I fixed that problem and bought a gun safe recently. Now all of my children are locked away.

Solving one problem led to another. Situation: Lady Jaye and I are asleep. Either the main, monitored alarm goes off. Maybe the secondary door and window alarms activate. The dogs jump from their sleep and start woofing. Someone’s in the house. Would I be able to get to the shotgun quickly enough?

Just like my sex life, sometimes a few extra seconds is all you need.
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Check your mail. We’ve gotten some Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons for 20% off any item. Until recently, these coupons have excluded Dyson — but the last two we’ve gotten have no such restriction. If you’ve read about or seen me use my Dyson but have been unwilling to drop the scratch on one, here’s your chance to save around $100.

If you don’t have a coupon, let me know and I’ll send you mine.

Lady Jaye and I finally got rid of our metric shit-ton of leaves that we acquired today. We’d been setting out five to ten bags of leaves a week with our garbage until we broke down and put the remaining 130 bags of leaves in a seventeen foot U-Haul truck and took them to the dump. Between our bags and the cedar trees Duke and his wife Pixie cut down, we completely filled the truck.

I’ll save you the blow-by-blow on how we got rid of them all. I’m just happy they’re gone, and the remaining leaves should be much more manageable.

Edit: after discussing this with my stepsister The Red I’ve decided a few details were worth mentioning:

• We had maggots in at least one bag of leaves. Mmm.
• We disposed of approximately 4800 gallons of leaves.
• The water that poured out of the bags was the color of Coca-cola, and had a sweet skank that almost made me wretch a few times.

And to think of all the money we saved this year by not having people come out and do all of this for us!! :groan:

Lady Jaye and I filled another 70+ 33 gallon bags of leaves yesterday. That brings our two week total to somewhere around 145 bags of leaves. This picture doesn’t do it justice. We have bags lined up all around the base of our deck (which goes the entire length of our house). There are bags lined up against the back of the fence, two deep; another row of bags half the length of our driveway. We have built a bulkhead of leaf bags between us and our neighbors in the side yard. We even put a dozen bags on our front porch. Our next problem to solve is disposal: our trash company will only take five bags a week, which puts us somewhere in May or June. We have considered renting a UHaul truck and going to the dump — except we would have to empty out all the bags at the landfill.

We talked with our neighbors and are going to use the same fellow they like to cut down our trees next spring. I don’t have the cash to do it right now; the estimate is between $300 and $400 per tree, including stump grinding. Aw yeah. Stump grinding. We’re going to cut down at least a dozen oaks in the back, plus maybe one or two in the front and an equal number in the side yard.