The fall has not been great for blog productivity. I can feel that mid-December is when it’s all going to turn around. So, dear reader, please leave an annoyed comment if there are not three shiny new Frugal Jon posts on this site before the new year. Now, here’s everything that’s been going on for the last couple months.
October is one of my favorite months of the year. This year, the leaves stayed until mid-November. It gave some extra time to get walks in the woods in. The weather was nice on Halloween and of course we had to dress the boys up. Marisa wanted them to be skunks, but they ended up being ducks. They tolerated the costumes long enough to walk down the street for a few houses and to take plenty of pictures.
Back to Fenway
In October I had the opportunity to go to a Red Sox playoff game with friends. It was my first time back at Fenway Park since 2019. While they lost to the Astros (on their way to losing the ALCS), it was my first time at an ALCS game. The experience was great, the weather wasn’t too bad, and I didn’t spend $10.50 on a Bud Light. Overall a great success.
Enjoying the Fall
But fall is a time for simpler pleasures as well. In addition to walks with the boys, my wife and I got to take some solo walks through the colorful woods. New England is really at its best in the fall. One particular trail that I like goes along a small river and out around some defunct cranberry bogs. It’s a quiet trail, especially in mid-morning when we’d go. The walks gave me some opportunities to pretend to be artsy and take some fun photos, so here you go.
November: Thanksgiving and Pierogi
November really passed like a blur. The two biggest highlights were Thanksgiving and my family’s annual Pierogi Fest. It was the boys’ first Thanksgiving and we gave them some squash. They’re really loving the solid foods now. We split the holiday between my family and Marisa’s. Her family’s Thanksgiving took us to Plymouth, which was very seasonally appropriate. Even though we planned on waiting until the drive home to listen to Christmas music we couldn’t help ourselves and listened on the way there. I’ll post a cute picture of the boys from Thanksgiving if you’ll forgive us.
While I don’t seem to have any pictures of the pierogi, I’ll tell the story of how Pierogi Fest started. When my Polish Great Grandmother was getting very old, she began to forget things. This included her recipes for Polish foods, which she never wrote down and always made from memory. It was really hard for her. So my Grandma (her daughter) tracked down a recipe for pierogi from her Polish Women’s Club. And we planned a family day where the two of them came over and made huge batches of pierogi. The amazing thing is that once my Great Grandma saw her daughter making pierogi, she started to remember that she was doing it wrong. She corrected my Grandma with the “correct” way to make pierogi.
Ever since, members of my family gather together the weekend after Thanksgiving to make a large amount of pierogi. The tradition continued after my Great Grandma passed away and it continues to keep her memory and our Polish heritage alive.
One thing that always strikes me during Pierogi Fest is how you can tell who made each pierogi. My grandma’s pierogi are perfect with little waves on the edges. One of my sister’s are not too far off from these. Then almost every else’s have the normal pierogi shape without the fancy edges. And finally, we have the ones made by my 9 year old sister, that look like squished crescent moons.
What I've Been Reading and Wrap Up
I’ve really only gotten through two books these past two months. The first is The Richest Man in Babylon (affiliate link), a personal finance classic written back in the 1920’s. Overall, the advice really holds up and the anecdotes used to give them are amusing. It’s an easy read so I highly recommend it. The other book is a little bit headier. It’s called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (affiliate link) by Robert Cialdini. It details how salesmen, scammers, and other “persuasion professionals” trick us into buying their junk. It’s an absolutely illuminating read on how these semi charlatans operate and how to stand up to their psychological tricks.
Well, that’s about what’s transpired over the past couple months. The boys are getting everywhere now. They find trouble wherever it lies about in the house. Wires are a personal favorite of theirs and no short table is safe anymore. Now the real challenge begins and luckily they’ve been giving us the sleep that we need to rise up to it. By now and the end of the month, expect a couple more Frugal Jon posts, including a celebratory one on a major milestone for the blog!