Having a few runners in the family, we can sometimes wind up with a clogged toilet. It seems to happen more frequently now that we have our own house than it did when we were in the apartment, but that is probably a function of the toilet being pink. I’m not really sure though.

Tonight, I could not get the toilet unclogged. Normally, I just take the plunger to it, and in 5 minutes to a half hour I will usually have everything working normally. Plungers are very easy tools to use. You cover the hold at the bottom of the tank with the bottom of the plunger, and then you just push it in and let it pop back out until you unclog it or until the water level in your toilet gets so low that that it does not create a seal around the plunger. In that case, you can dump more water in or try flushing to see whether it will work or not (and fill your bowl up with water to try some more if it did not work.)

Tonight, that just was not enough. A trip to Home Depot and we now have a toilet auger. Basically, it a plastic tube shaped so that you can get the cable up into your sewage line. You just push the cable through the tube and rotate the handle to dislodge whatever is clogging up the works. Then you carefully pull it back out and everything works the way it is supposed to. Just be careful not to scratch your toilet bowl.

This week is the Cumberland County Fair, and I managed to get over there this evening. When I was growing up, I lived about a quarter mile from our town’s local Lion’s Club, and would always spend most of the week at the fairgrounds when they had their harvest fair. The Cumberland County Fair is not quite so large, but it does bring back a lot of good memories.
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Our cat has made a new friend this evening. Well, not really; the beaver ran off and hid as soon as she got in the window. I managed to snake around the deck to get some pictures of it, but it was getting to be pretty dark and I couldn’t get a really good shot of it.

He seemed to be a little bit skittish. Freja is hoping that he comes back; she hopes any of her friends on the other side of the window come back.

This is the first time that I have seen a beaver at the house. I wonder if they have a dam nearby? The one down stream a bit is man made.

The 41^st Festival of Frugality has been published at My Money Forest, and includes my article about meat and cheese ends.

There are twenty articles in all ranging in topic from enjoying a cheap baseball game to packing a cheap lunch.

On an unrelated note to home ownership, my running career has gotten me into the local newspaper, the Portland Press Herald. I wrote about this at my other website, Run to Win. Feel free to drop by and take a look.

The article is also online, but without the picture, at Maine Today.com.

I finally got around to calling our mortgage lender today at lunch time, and it turns out that they already had my tax bill and have it scheduled to be paid in a couple of days.

I did not actually have to do anything, which is a huge plus. I am still going to call next week to make sure that the town has my payment, though.

I originally called my mortgage broker to ask him what I needed to do, and he suggested I just call to make sure I don’t need to fax something over. Once everything is set and going it seems to work out fine, and there is no need to inform them every time you have a bill coming due. It’s still better to make sure and be safe than sorry, though, especially for your first payment.

At the grocery store, you can save quite a bit of money on your deli meats in two ways. The best way is to just buy a full ham or turkey, cook it yourself, and then slice it. You get the most bang for your buck, but then you have a lot of food that will need to be eaten fairly quickly.

The better way is to get meat and cheese ends. Around here, deli meats usually cost around $8 per pound or so, but the meat and cheese ends cost only $2.99 per pound. Well, they did until today. Now they cost $3.49 per pound.
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Our property tax bill has arrived, and not surprisingly we do not have the cash in our checking account to pay it. Not that that is anything to worry about; it is what the escrow account that is bundled into our mortgage is for. Every month, our mortgage is divvied up into principal, interest, and escrow payments; the escrow payments are for insurance premiums and property taxes.

I am not sure if I need to do anything to get that money out of escrow, however, or whether the bank where our mortgage is held takes care of it. I have been meaning to call them and ask all week, but I have not had an opportunity to do it yet. I am going to try to remember to call tomorrow to find out what I need to do in order to get our tax bill paid. We still have nearly a month, so I am not too worried about it yet.

One thing that I love about living next to a body of water (even if it is only a tiny brook) is listening to the rain. I always loved being at my mother’s camp (and now her house since it can not really be called a camp anymore) when it was raining, because in the summers especially you got to fall asleep to one of two things: the sound of rain on the water, or the sound of loons calling to one another. I find both very relaxing for some reason.

At least until it starts getting too cold, I tend to leave my window open when I am sitting at my computer. My computer puts out a lot of heat, and I like having fresh air. I work in a windowless room next to a server rack most days, so an open window is nice. Times like now I get to listen to the rain hitting the water and it is very relaxing. Rain landing on your lawn or on the road just does not sound quite the same.

One of the great things about having our own house is that I no longer have to walk down two flights of stairs and then around to the back of an unlit building to try to grill my food. This summer, we went through about a tank and a half of propane grilling our dinners. We also ate outside a few times, which meant that the local insect population got to have a pretty good go at us.

Citronella candles certainly make eating outside much more enjoyable, especially now that it is getting darker earlier and twilight is much more likely to come while we are outside. The citronella candles keep most of the insects away. About the only thing that is not bothered by them seems to be the ants, which are much fewer and farther between lately.
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