Almost everything I was given for christmas was either cooking-related or money. A cast-iron skillet was the most notable and useful thing received, as it is something I use everyday, throughout the day, in the preparation of most of my meals. I've been investing the money in a veritable plethora (as my high school latin teacher would say) of other useful items -

• The Berkey Light water filter, as recommended by deconsumption. It doesn't filter out fluoride, but it filters out just about everything else to below detectable levels, so I intend to use it primarily in conjunction with caught rainwater as much as possible.
• Montrail Torre GTX hiking boots, on sale and fitted at REI (size 14, btw).
• a Corona corn mill, for unspecified but potentially wide-ranging grinding purposes (perhaps even to grind corn! I bought seed for blue corn recently, which I plan to grow this year)

This past fall, I also picked up a Leatherman "wave" multi-tool and a two person, 3 season tent, made by Eureka.

My bike (an old Univega 10-speed, with 27" wheels) is in the shop right now, getting repairs done that I couldn't do with the tools I have available to me. I'll be glad to finally retrieve that later on today. Besides that, I intend to upgrade to more puncture-resistant tires and set myself up with front and back panniers, looking ahead to future road trips.

And if you haven't looked through that wiki of mine, you wouldn't know that I have a wishlist of material desires left unfulfilled. But I'm intending to go ahead and buy a sleeping bag (and all its accompaniment) sooner rather than later.


It feels rather strange to be spending so much money on things. I've been buying books (ones I can't find at the library) a lot too, but I can pass that off as being a fraction of the cost of what I would be paying for books if I were in college still. It feels strange because of my aversion to commercialism. But this isn't commercialism. This is materialism. I love the bike I use. When I saw that I had received that cast iron skillet, I think I yelped with glee. I have attachments to material objects, not to brands, and not to the shopping/spending itself. I'm looking around me and asking myself what would be good to gather around me to enable me to live more deliberately. To live with more freedom. It may feel strange to be spending so much money, especially as a freeter, but it certainly makes a lot more sense than holding onto abstract numbers on a server somewhere. Those numbers are simply potential useful things, but that potential could disappear so easily. When the dollar collapses, I hope I won't still be dependent on that potential.

Technology is certainly not neutral (scroll to lie #4), but there are some tools I really love.