You know how two people can get together and start talking and other people don’t understand? Sometimes, when my husband gets together with my two sisters, they start speaking in some foreign language. It’s related to Saturday Night Live. I never watched the show. Apparently my sisters and my husband grew up with the show. They’ll say obscure things and break out into strange songs at the oddest times. And, I don’t think I’ll ever prepare broccoli in front of the three of them again. They’ll just get a can of corn instead.
Well, I missed out on the Saturday Night Live lingo, but my husband and I share some lingo that my sisters’ don’t know about. Both my husband and I played a lot of ASCII based games in high school and college. I played a lot of rogue, and he played a lot of Nethack. Conquer was another favorite of mine, and as silly as it was, I really liked worm. We still play games; although, our favorites are different. (We do play with each other, though.) My favorite is Settlers of Catan
. Leon’s favorite is Kingdom of Loathing. When it comes to board games, we actually indoctrinated both sisters and their spouses into Ticket To Ride. Leon and I understand each other’s game vernacular.
Game vernacular sometimes invades everyday life. I mean, how often do you get meat and money confused? (Meat is the currency in Kingdom of Loathing.)
In NetHack, originally an ASCII-based Unix game, you battle monsters. You can pick up wands. You can use each wand a specific amount of times. Sometimes, you might get lucky and get an extra use out of a wand, and this is called “wresting the last charge.”
I was very amused the first time I saw my husband squeezing the toothpaste tube to get more toothpaste out. I had opened a new tube three days earlier, thinking the first one was way past empty. Leon managed to keep squeezing more toothpaste out of the tube, and to this day I have no idea how he manages that. Leon told me he was wresting the last charge from the toothpaste.
Wresting charges makes good sense, both environmentally and financially. Here are some other ways to wrest charges. What additional items do you have for me?
- Laundry Soap/Color Bleach: After I’ve drained the container, I add a couple of capfuls of water and shake really hard. I can usually get one or two more loads.
- Toothpaste: I still don’t know. I open the new one and Leon prides himself on how long he can go before using the new tube.
- Lotion: When one bottle is “empty,” we take the top off of it and another lotion bottle. The “empty” one is then turned upside down and placed carefully on top of the non-empty lotion bottle. They stay like this overnight while gravity saves us money.
- Fabric: I save even small scraps of fleece, because fleece doesn’t unravel. You’ll never know when you need a few square inches of orange fleece. I just used my scrap fleece last night as “ornaments” on my Christmas tree Advent calendar.
Labels: frugal, lifestyle, money, Your Money or Your Life
