Hallelujah! The air is finally clear today! And the rain has returned. I swear, there has never been a year where the whole of the Western Pacific Northwest has been so excited to see the rain. It has been weeks and weeks of mostly awful air quality and temperatures 10-20 degrees above normal. Today is…
It's mid October, and it hasn't started raining. It's been in the 70s almost every day this month, including two that hit or came close to eighty degrees. And we might have another eighty degree day coming up. By this time, temperatures are usually only in the low sixties, and October usually sees 4 inches…
It is now the end of the first week of October, but we definitely haven't had October weather yet. The first two days of the month were eighty degrees, and we've been hovering in the mid seventies the rest. The lingering warm weather might be nice, except for the fact that because of no rain…
The city of Kirkland where I live hit 111°F on Monday. After topping out at 106°F on Sunday and 102°F on Saturday. We’ve only ever hit triple digits here a few times, and never two days in a row, let alone three. Two thirds of homes in our area don’t have any air conditioning. And…
Today I have a different kind of post, but a "series" I would love to continue in the future. I got a reader email earlier this month with a question for me that I felt needed more than a quick response via email, and one I thought could use some advice from more than just…
I first heard some of Tami's story before she was a blogger herself. A couple years ago, she recorded an episode on FIRE Drill Podcast. Disability and chronic illness is rarely discussed in the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) community - oftentimes it seems to be overlooked on purpose because it flies in the face…
A couple weeks ago, I began reaching out to friends to ask about the status of their food and supplies at home - if they had the minimum two weeks as recommended as a standard rule of thumb for emergency preparedness. For the most part, I got lightly brushed off and business continued as usual,…
When I first started blogging back in summer 2017, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and knew no one in the online community. Months before I had even figured out that Twitter was where I would find the majority of my personal finance friends, I'd somehow connected with a few other new…
Plastic is one of the ubiquitous pieces of this century, and the idea of being fully "plastic free" even for a single week isn't something that can really be done for those of us who live fully ingrained in our society. Our cars and transportation options are full of plastic. Most of our shoes and…
Growing up, I always expected to have two children. I even had it in my head that I would maybe want more than that, but biologically I knew I would be done at two so that I wouldn't do more than replacing myself and my future partner on this earth. Before I had any clear…