Gas Prices

Ok, this post is going to have two parts:
1. Why I am glad that gas prices are going up
2. What I am doing to still keep my gas costs down, despite the rising prices

Why I am glad that gas prices are going up

I believe that we are way too dependent on foreign oil. That is (I believe, and there is evidence to back this up) the main reason why we are in this war with Iraq, and about to be in a war with Iran. We need oil. With oil prices going up, Americans are going to have to change. Immediately, I think that we have to change how we drive, which I am going to talk about in the second part. Eventually, we are going to have to find other sources of energy. Now, I know people have been screaming for new sources of energy for years now. Up until now, the reason for this has been global warming. But global warming seems like such a far away concept. I personally don’t really believe the theories. There hasn’t been enough motivation for an overwhelming majority of people to really push for better energy sources because the majority of people have not been directly affected by this shortcoming. But now it is affecting the overwhelming majority, actually, the overwhelming majority’s wallet. If you think about it, there have been no major breakthroughs in automobile technology in DECADES. You would think that with all of the technology we have, that we should be getting at least 100mpg. But no. We are still manufacturing cars that only get 10mpg! All because we have had such low oil prices. Many countries in Europe have had $6 gas (or more) for years now. How is it that they can cope with this, but Americans, the richest people in the world, are crying their eyes out? Europeans have cars with better gas mileage, and their towns are usually built so that driving is not a constant necessity. In a majority of towns and cities in Europe, everything you need is only a couple minutes walk or bike ride away. In America, hour-long commutes to work are typical. The American way of life has evolved with the mindset that we would always have cheap gas. Now America is going to have to wake up, and I think that is a good thing. I think there will be more competition to make cars with better gas mileage, which I think they should have been doing years ago.

2. What I am doing to still keep my gas costs down, despite the rising prices

I am changing how I drive. I am trying to drive less. I am also increasing the MPG that my car gets. How am I doing this? It is called hypermiling. I have gone from 25mpg (which I thought was pretty good for a 17 year old car!), to over 30mpg (which is still only half of what the typical European car gets). Here is what I have been doing to achieve this:

• Accelerate more slowly from a stop*
• Go into neutral (I do this when I am coming to a stop light or getting off the interstate)
• Drive 65mph on the interstate*
• I don’t always drive below the speed limit. If the limit is 45, then I will go 50. I do this because my car (an automatic) doesn’t shift into the last gear until about 48mph, and since you get better gas mileage in the higher gears, I go 50 to kick it into that higher gear. This might be different in your car. They say that you get the best gas mileage between 55 and 60 mph (source)
• Place a lot of space between yourself and the car in front of you, so that you don’t have to slam your breaks when they hit theirs.

*Fair warning, if you do this, you are likely to tick some people off.

By slowing down more (for the most part), I find that I do not get as stressed when driving. Before, driving at least 75 down the interstate, I would get mad a people not even doing the speed limit. Now, I am the one not even going the speed limit. So not only am I saving money by increasing my gas mileage, but I am also healthier, because I do not get as stressed.

Another art show

I have another art show coming up, and while I am showing a lot of the same stuff that I showed at my last exhibit, I am also showing some new stuff, which means buying more frames, mat board, and plexiglass. Again, I am doing all of this by hand to save money, but I just found a great way to save some time also. Cutting plexiglass according to most directions is HARD and TIME CONSUMING. You have to score it with a special cutting tool (read: dull butter knife) 7 to 231 times, place the plexi on a table with the score on the edge of the table, and pressing firmly, snap the plexi (not at the score line that you just spent 20 minutes making). It took me (actually Jake) forever to cut the plexiglass this way. Eventually, we took a bandsaw to it, which worked wonderfully. Unfortunately, with me out of school, I no longer have access to a band saw. Fortunately, Lowe’s cuts plexiglass. Free.

Starting a garden

I live in an apartment. I am living on a part-time wage. And I have tons of free time right now. So I have started a garden. Well, sort of. I decided that I was tired of having to go to the grocery store every other day when I wanted to make a sandwich. For some reason, tomatos never last that long in my apartment. So I bought some seeds. And a pot. And some soil. Actually, I still haven’t bought the pot yet. I took part of an egg crate (only part, because we still had some eggs left), put some soil in it, and planted a few seeds. Along with tomato, I also got cilantro and basil. No fruit yet, I only started a couple weeks ago, but it is almost time for me to get a pot! They are actually growing! This is the first time that I have actually tried growing something! It is kind of cool.

The tomato came up first after a little more than a week (which I thought was too long, I was afraid that I had done something wrong!). But a couple a days later, the cilantro and basil had come up and were twice as high as the tomato. I haven’t figured out which is which. I forgot to label them when I planted them. The only way that I knew the tomato was I planted two of them, and they came up at the same time (and they look the same). So I hope to have some nice juicy tomatos sometime soon, along with some nice flavoring, all for only a few dollars.

Tomato seeds: Free from a local greenery (they were last years seeds that never sold)
Cilantro and basil seeds from walmart: both packs were less than a dollar
Soil: a small bag for starting seedlings $1
Pots: the small clay pots are less than a dollar

For the tomato, I will have to get a bigger pot, maybe a couple of dollars, and more soil, another couple of dollars. All in all, a very good investment, I think!

Being frugal as an artist

Being an artist is expensive. It doesn’t really matter what you do, whether it is painting, photography, drawing, printmaking, etc. I, myself, am a college student, art major, photographer. Last night was the opening reception for my first art exhibit, and I had almost 30 pieces of work on display. Since all of my artwork was either photographs or prints, I had to frame everything. To have somebody else frame everything for me probably would have cost close to $2,000. I say that because I did everything myself, and the biggest expense I had was the frames, and I got those half off. My total cost was a little over $600. So you can see that having someone else do all of this for you would be well over twice that. So, how did I do it?

First, I bought sectional frames, which means that I had to put the frames together myself, but I had more flexibility with the sizes. These I bought at Hobby Lobby half off. Their frames are not always half off, but about every other week, or every three weeks, you can score pretty big on framing. Prices on the frames varied depending on how big the frames were. The 12 inch sectional pieces were a lot cheeper than the 40 inch pieces (yes, I had a couple of images that, when matted, were 40 inches long, 5 pieces were 32 inches long). Of course, if all your pieces are a lot smaller, then you will not spend as much on frames as I did. My total cost for frames was ~$380.

Second, plexiglass. I cut all of my own plexiglass, and when I say “I,” I mean “my boyfriend.” I did save quite a bit of money here, but I am not sure that it was worth it, because it is really hard to cut plexiglass. I ruined one whole sheet (30×36 inches) trying to cut it myself. I bought the plexiglass from Home Depot, and I got a 10% discount. Note: if you need to buy a lot of stuff, and you are buying locally, always ask for a discount. You may not get it, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I told the guy at Home Depot that I was a college student, and I needed to buy quite a bit of plexiglass, and he gave me the discount. Now, after all is said and done, I think it might have been worth it to spend a little bit more to have somebody else cut it, and save myself a lot of trouble. But this is totally up to you. My total cost for the plexiglass was ~$150.

The rest of my cost came from matt board, which I also got at Hobby Lobby half off, hanging wire, and two plexiglass scorers (the one from Home Depot was crap, so I got another one from Lowe’s). My professor had a matt board cutter, which I used to cut the matt board down to size and to cut out the window. I also used a thinner, cheaper matt board for the backing. If you don’t have access to a matt board cutter, and you want nice bevelled windows, you might have to pay somebody to do this. I know that Hobby Lobby does this, but I am not sure how much they charge.

So, that is how I saved a bunch of money by switching to…I mean, how I managed to save quite a bit of money by being smart, asking for discounts, and doing stuff myself.

Ways to save money and the environment!

I am on a very tight budget at the moment, and have been looking into different ways to save money. It is interesting to note that many of these things that save me money also save the environment. So on to ways to save money and the environment tip #1:

Buy a dryer rack.

This is a small initial investment. The best one I found was $30.

How it saves you money: An electric dryer takes a lot of electricity to run. So you save on your electricity bill. Your electric dryer also wears out your clothes. With a drying rack, your clothes will last longer, thus you will not have to buy as many clothes, saving you money. A dryer also releases a lot of heat, which is bad news in the summer when you are trying to keep your house or apartment cool. (This is assuming that you have a dryer in your house or apartment.)

How it saves the environment: Same as above, you are not using any electricity with a drying rack. Also, you have no trash with a drying rack. Think of all that dryer lint you have to remove from your dryer and throw away. (Actually, there are ways to recycle that dryer lint.)

I will let you know how it works.