Just a few short years ago, it was nothing to dump ten bucks in the gas tank and drive five hours for a two night vacation in the northwoods. Today that trip, financially speaking, is no longer a great idea. The trip burns about 20 gallons of gas for the round trip and today that will run over $78.20 (and rising) leaving much less cash for food and entertainment.
Unless you have a large stash of disposable income, vacationing away from home is fast becoming less practical for many families. So what’s the solution?
Take a Staycation! Staycatioing is fast becoming the “green” way to save green while investing your money into home improvements. Stay at home and invest the money you’d normally spend on a vacation into an unused space in your home; like a basement home theater or for summer months your backyard. Sure many people feel trapped by their daily grind and just have to get away for a vacation, but what if everything you ran 100 miles away to enjoy was right in your own backyard?
Taking a staycation has many advantages:
- No long “are we there yet?” drive.
- No speeding tickets.
- No traffic hassles.
- Clean facilities nearby.
- No crowds.
- Quick escape when weather turns ugly.
Taking just one staycation per year can not only save money, but also helps the overall gas problem. With the number of people out there today, we all need to start doing our part.
Once we got to our vacaton destination, the things we enjoyed the most were simply sitting under the tent and next to the fire, so rather than spend hundreds of dollars each year on the long trek to increasingly congested campgrounds and resorts, we decide to bring the best of the resorts to our back yard. Now we have our own relaxing gazeebo, jacuzzi and fire pit right in our backyard.
Money spent on a vacation is gone the day your vacation ends, but money spent on items you can continue to use keeps providing fun and enjoyment year after year.
We decided a few years ago to start using the money we normally put aside for vacationing for improving our back yard. We first erected a fence, which for our rather large back yard was equal to a winter Mexico vacation we had planned to take. The next year we again stayed home and installed a Jacuzzi hot tub. Now we can feel like we’re in Mexico every day of the year!
This year we are continuing our staycation tradition adding more trees and a 12′x24′ garden garage with an attached 10′x12′ greenhouse. The greenhouse will help us offset the rising price of fruits & vegetables, allowing us to become less dependent of store bought produce.
This year, try taking a staycation, you’ll find it more relaxing than an expensive trip!
Tell us about your staycation experiences.
With Gas Prices Soaring our of Control, we’ve been cautiously looking at way to improve fuel economy in order to save gas & money. The obvious way is to SLOW DOWN! But even at $3.75/gallon I still see idiots tearing down the road at 80mph in their SUV or pickup truck. My neighbor’s kid just pickup a Cadillac Escalade with a 26 gallon fuel tank. Good thing he still lives at home with Mom & Dad because it’s going to cost about $100 to fill that beast.
So, how else can you increase gas mileage?
The answer is not gas pills, fuel additives or other “snake oil” solutions, they just don’t work.
But we did find a site that claims you can use ordinary water to extend your fuel economy. It’s based on the old science project which demonstrates how electrolysis breaks down water into it’s component gases, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. The ingenious device we discovered simply uses your cars electrical system to generate hydrogen gas “on the fly” and injects it into the intake manifold.
The $49.95 plans, which claim to work on 99.9% of cars is a fun tech project that will teach you all about this cool new fuel while extending your cars efficiency by 40 percent!
Wake up! – this is nothing more than a scam! – Please don’t waste your money on these gimmicks.
The only way to really save gas is to SLOW DOWN, Brake Gently, Carpool and drive only when needed.
If so, put down the bottle and step away, although gas prices are getting out of hand, there is some GOOD news to report! Lumber prices are at an all time low! The housing crash has resulted in stock piles of lumber and the lowest prices in years. Now is the perfect opportunity to load up on building materials and add that indoor or outdoor home bar or rec room addition. Here is the best deal on home bar construction plans.
Entertaining at home will help save gas and with the recent rise in grain prices, will help save money from the higher cost of beer at your local tavern. It also keeps you from being liquored up behind the wheel, and that’s a good thing! So, entertaining at home will not only help save gas, it will help increase the value and enjoyment of your home. So get busy! And as always, stay safe & have fun!
How many times per day does your Internet Explorer web browser lock up, crash or freeze? Internet Explorer 7 wastes hours of productivity and is hands down the worst piece of software we have ever experienced.
When casually browsing the web, IE 7 lockups every other session. Firefox on the otherhand rarely locks up at all. It kinda makes me wonder what is going on over in Redmond. They produce the operating system, yet they can not produce a stable internet browser. Is this a problem that they are unwilling or unable to fix or perhaps a monopoly designed to hold back competition?
We have tried the new IE 7 Pro browser add-on, but the only thing it appears to do is catch IE when it falls and while it worked fine for a few days, it too eventually bogged down. This problem has been going on for far too long. IE version 8 is on the horizon, but reviews of the beta version provides little promise, as does Vista.
Symptoms of IE crashes include:
1. Hard drive starts chunking & grinding for several minutes while nothing happens.
2. Task Manager > Applications tab shows “Internet Explorer Not Responding”.
3. Entire PC freezes for extended time while it sorts out it’s own mess.
4. The words about:blank appear in the address bar.
5. Utter frustration sets in.
In a world rife with so many other problems, ain’t it great how one company can make you so incredily unproductive? Let’s hear how MS IE problems affect your work day.
The home building slump has created the prefect price conditions for home improvement projects by lowering overall demand for lumber. The result has been a steady decrease in the retail price of lumber that you’ll find at home centers like Lowe’s, Home Depot, 84 Lumber and Menards.
Lumber futures prices have been on a decline since mid 2004 when new home construction slowed with rising interest rates. In some areas, materials produced for new housing is stacking up in lumber yards , dropping prices to the lowest point in five years and forcing many mills to cut production.
If you are planning a home improvament project, now is the time to take advatage of this opportunity.
Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre announced his plans to retire after 17 years. Every Packer fan will miss him. Good luck Brett, now it’s on to Canton!
For the record books…
5,377 completed passes for
61,655 total yards
442 touchdowns
288 interceptions (doh!)
9 Pro Bowls
160 wins
started 253 straight regular-season games
3-time NFL MVP
Word is, Green Bay wants to honor Brett by renaming Ashland Avenue to “Brett Favre Boulevard”. We think “Brett Favre Pass” would be more appropriate.
Thanks 4 the memories Brett!
Maybe after a few hundred miles on the JD, you’ll come back…
