Arts

A Day in Denton!

| jamiefeinberg

After our Forth Worth adventure, we returned to the City of Lewisville campground, which is absolutely gorgeous, affordable and worth a stay. The wifi was even usable in off hours. They also don’t take payment until you arrive! 

We had one more outing in mind. The traffic to and from Fort Worth through Dallas had really been brutal and turned us off, but we had heard good things about Denton, a college town north of Dallas. As we were staying in Lewisville and had a rental car, we decided to avoid highways as we drove, which took us on a lovely drive through fields, forests and lots of horse farms. Besides the campground, it was the prettiest place we had seen in Texas. 

If we hadn’t had a rental car, we would have had train and bus options to get us to Denton. Public transit also connects to Dallas, which would be helpful if you were flying and needed to connect to the airport. 

As we drove to Denton, we realized even the strip malls were much nicer and less crazy than we had seen closer to Dallas. It was pretty great! I even felt comfortable driving into Denton and I am the opposite of a city driver, so that impressed us. Ross described the city as “the right amount of dingy” and that seemed apt for the charming place. 

We had chosen three destinations for our trip – the post office (nothing exciting), the natural food store and a music store.

The Cupboard is phenomenal. They have an awesome cafe with wifi and have sections for health, cosmetics, gifts, a salad bar and for gluten free baked goods. The music store next door also seemed very cool with honest folks – Ross was able to trade in a pedal for a pedal bag here. 

We were prepared to head back, but we were both charmed by the downtown and decided to stop and explore. We were so glad we did! The downtown has a beautiful historic courthouse at its center, and they lit it up for the holidays. Downtown is pretty big with tons of options for shopping and dining and it’s fun to walk and easy to navigate and park. There are also multiple theaters, presumably one for film and one for performing. We enjoyed the great record store with a used t-shirt section and loved seeing their visitor center with a radio station inside. Other businesses included a great comics and game store (they have another location too), a candy store, and Recycled, a fabulous store selling used books, CDs, records and more at affordable prices with an absolutely amazing selection. Sheet music? Plays? Scores! Theater history? Comics? All of the above and so much more. I haven’t seen a selection this good outside of New York! The local ice cream parlor is also a gem. 

We can definitely see ourselves in this college town, at least for a few years. We’d want to research it more – I am ideally looking for a place with professional music, theater and dance and I think here it’s just community theater and the college – but nearby Lewisville is a pleasant drive and seems to offer these things. Also, the drive to Fort Worth is close enough that this might not be an issue, and at least one of the universities, Texas Woman’s University, offers graduate music and theater programs, which could be very appealing. 

We loved Denton. We even loved visiting Target on the way back – they had 15% off almost everything the day we were there so we saved big on groceries!

Denton gets added to the list. Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Forward to Fort Worth

| jamiefeinberg

Ross and I had heard great things about Forth Worth, so we made plans to take advantage of our rental car and visit. I found lots of fun things we could do, some on the advice of friends. The Stockyards give you a chance to see a cattle run, but the area also has lots of shopping, arts and nightlife. There are other touristy areas as well, and some of them seemed intriguing. But we knew we wanted to walk a bit, so when I found there were free museums and a botanical garden in the cultural district, our decision was made.

As with so many of the places we have visited this far, we didn’t have much time  (or money) to see the city, and we know we’d probably like it a lot more if we stuck around! That’s why we are looking forward to taking our time in southern Arizona in the upcoming weeks. All caveats in place, here’s what we actually did with our afternoon in Fort Worth. 

The Cultural District is nice. It’s really spread out, which is great if you like long walks, but there is plenty of parking for cars and there was tons of space for an RV when we were there too, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We parked in a public lot (max rate is $10) across from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

There are a lot of other free museums in town, which is fabulous, but I was attracted to this for its contemporary art and its western art and it didn’t disappoint with either. One of their temporary exhibits is called Border Cantos and it is a collaboration between a visual artist and a composer who created musical instruments made from material the visual artist found along the Texas/Mexico border. Both Ross and I were stunned by the powerful exhibit, which also includes music written with the instruments on display, and we made sure to watch the short films of the composer’s pieces too.

After that, we began walking to the Botanical Garden. Unfortunately that was kind of silly – Google Maps didn’t know about the Will Rogers complex – at least enough to tell us we couldn’t walk through it – and we saw upon arrival we would have had tons of room to park. But we got a great workout at this huge garden (we did the free one, not the Japanese one, which costs $7), Ross caught lots of Pokémon, and we enjoyed our visit.

Once the trek back to our car was complete, there was some debate on whether we should visit a game/comics store or find Ross a taco. Ultimately Ross wanted to make me happy, so we headed toward Sundance Square to see some Christmas lights.

Parking around the square is free nights and weekends, so we found a parking garage and explored the area, full of restaurants, high end shopping and many theater companies, on foot. I love seeing urban areas lit up for the holidays and this charming area didn’t disappoint. We even found a gelato place I’d heard a lot about, so I sampled some wild berries and milk chocolate flavors while Ross had coffee. (Keep up with my ice cream adventures here.)

We had a great afternoon and evening in Fort Worth. Although the traffic outside it is atrocious, the city itself has lots to offer. We hear it has some nice public transit options too – had we parked the RV at the Will Rogers complex campgrounds, a trolley could have gotten us to the lights. Next up – a trip to Denton gets us more excited about Texas!

It’s All Fun and Games Until You Meet a Deer

| jamiefeinberg

Well, I was thinking I should update you all on our adventures in Iowa. This past Friday Ross and I had an amazing adventure in Minneapolis. After getting the boring stuff, like prescriptions and mailing things, out of the way, we headed to the Mall of America before enjoying an amazing AIP-approved dinner and an original show with friends. (Incidentally, my friend is a Smithie like me, and although we worked with each other a few times in college, I didn’t know her well. This trip is proving to be a wonderful way to meet new people and strengthen existing connections!) 


Saturday we left their gorgeous home to explore downtown Minneapolis. We had tons of ideas but the focal point became a historic tour of the Old Stone Arch, ruins and the land bordering the Mississippi here. There are also amazing free things to do in this city – Art museum! Zoo! Botanical Gardens! – but the walking tour was perfect for this gorgeous, cool fall day. 

Afterwards, we headed to Pumphouse Creamery because they offer coconut milk ice cream and lots of gluten-free options, and although you should follow my ice cream blog for the full story, suffice to say that we had an absolutely phenomenal experience we will be shouting about for a long time. We even took some with us! 

Our last plan was to head to Build a Bear in the MOA. Ross had gotten me a $100 gift certificate for my birthday, and he’d received one for $50 from his mom so he could build something too. I got to be a child for a few hours (I was able to build a bear and a bunny) and I seriously had the most wonderful time. It was so fun that when they offered me a $50 gift certificate for only $25, I said yes!

After grabbing dinner (we kept it under $20, yayyy!) we grabbed coffee for Ross who had a two hour drive ahead of him. 

It was an uneventful drive. Well, until we were four miles from our destination. Ross turned off his high beams as a car approached – just as a deer decided to launch itself into our car. 90 minutes later we were towed back to our friend’s house, and now we wait to see what’s next. We have great coverage but we do wonder if they will want to total the car given it has over 200,000 miles. And if they repair it, I imagine it could easily take a week or two, so we may be spending Thanksgiving in Iowa after all. (So much for avoiding the 20’s as we head south!) 

Whatever happens, we are extraordinarily thankful that we are safe and that we have a comfortable, free place to stay with friends. Our RV steps aren’t working right so we will try to fix them while we are here. Stay tuned for more adventures with Ross and Jamie!

A Place to Live – But No RV?

| jamiefeinberg

I’ve drafted so many blog posts in my head recently. Blogs about dealing with the extra levels of stress of planning combined with chronic illness & the related battles to figure that out. Blogs about how hard things are. Blogs about simplicity. Blogs about pulling through adversity. Blogs about the fact that Ross was rear-ended and now on top of RV repairs, we have to car shop, but I am really uncomfortable buying a car when we don’t know the status of our RV.

But I finally have some good news to share, so that’s more fun, right?

Jean’s Playhouse agreed to allow an ad trade for a discounted or free campsite for us this summer. Part of the compensation when we work there is housing, but the idea of living in dorm style housing, presumably single-sex and with other people, didn’t seem that appealing to us given that we’re married and much older than many or most of our co-workers will be. So finding a campground seemed like the perfect thing – we get a place for our RV and can try things out and learn with less pressure, and Jean’s gets to save money by not having to house us.

So I sent out a bunch of emails, beginning with the campgrounds in Lincoln and North Woodstock (the next town over), about housing us for a few months. Two out of my three top choices replied – one was positive, but didn’t have any space left (maybe next time); another just couldn’t accommodate a longer-term visitor (KOA). So I emailed our other choices, who were 20-30 minutes away but mostly great options. One of our top choices in terms of livability, Tarry Ho Campground in Twin Mountain, called me within a day or two of sending the email. I was so excited! The more we talked, the more we realized we’d met at a networking events a couple of years back, she knows my father, she had fantastic memories of our conversation, etc…

So after meeting her in person with Ross and touring the campground, I’m thrilled to say that we have a home for the summer! God willing our RV will be drivable and livable so that we aren’t tenting it. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. As soon as our RV is ready (or as soon as we want to move in), we’ve got a campsite with our name on it. And get this – we’re working for our site! No cash at all. Their seasonal sites rent for $1,950, so between Ross and I, we’ll be putting in 195 hours before the season is over on November 2. (We hope to leave by the beginning of October, but it’s awesome to know we can stay longer if we want to.) We’ll be doing a mix of marketing/social media work (me) and music/working the new food truck (Ross) and possibly whatever else needs to be done. We know it’s a lot of hours to fit in, but we’ll be coming up with a plan to make it feasible, and we can absolutely stay for a couple of weeks at the end to knock out the rest. (After all, if we each put in a couple of 40 hour weeks, the work would be almost complete!) Although there’s a 30 minute commute to Jean’s, it’s only 11 minutes to Ross’ studio, which is great for him and great for us if we need to escape camping for a bit.

IMG_2741We hope some of you will come up and visit us. They have gorgeous river front campsites with water and electric as well as other sites for tents and RVS, plus bath houses, a pool, an ice cream stand, a food truck as of late June and supposedly great wi-fi. They’re also being super-nice about accommodating both of our vehicles. So besides metered electric, which I think we’ll be paying for, we will be living rent free this summer, which will really help justify our 30 minute commute on a tiny salary. 🙂 My goal is to keep saving money even on our tiny income. Whether that’s possible or not will largely depend on what our health insurance costs are. Really hoping they’ll go down significantly when our income changes at the end of the month!

My last day of work at my current job is May 27. I’ll be so glad to be able to move on. Thanks so much for reading, and please send us happy & inspected quickly RV vibes, as well as a good cheap car for Ross!

Planning and Plotting

| jamiefeinberg

It’s out! The word, that is, about my departure from the Arts Alliance. I am also deeper in the planning stages of our tour. After some dramatic back and forth with Judy, I have learned that the Carpenters booking hasn’t gone as planned. So we have two gigs in September, hopefully followed by a performance at Contact East, a booking showcase in New Brunswick. After that, we leave New Hampshire. Whoo-hoo!

Our itinerary is purposefully loose right now. My brother lives in Kalamazoo, MI, so if it isn’t too cold yet, we hope to drive through upstate New York (or maybe Canada) and visit him. After that, we will head toward Iowa to visit our friends. Depending on the weather and our mood, we will stay for a few weeks or even a month. After that, we continue south. We will stay in Arizona for December, primarily the Phoenix and Tucson areas if everything aligns, and then I’m thinking the San Diego area for January, which is typically the coldest month. Plus my sister lives there! After that our options open up as it warms, so our exact path can be adjusted based on booking and our interests. We also may need to visit Florida to become residents there at some point….time will tell. We’d like to make our way towards CO, OR and WA in the spring or summer as we think there are a lot of towns with potential there.

This adventure requires a lot of faith…particularly in my own abilities to pull this off. It’s a good thing I have never lacked for self-confidence….

In the coming weeks, we need to start pitching ourselves to local campgrounds…discounted site for program add at Jean’s and maybe a bit of work is the hope. Keep us in your thoughts, and thanks for reading!

The Big Reveal and the Beanie Baby Purge

| jamiefeinberg

Well, it’s done. I gave my notice at my full-time job. While I am not yet ready to announce my RV plans to the world yet – we need to wait until the summer so I can keep my church job – I am delighted to announce that after May 29, I set arts administration aside, at least for now, and can focus on other things.

Am I excited? Ridiculously so! I wouldn’t say a giant weight has been lifted yet – much of the weight was definitely caused by financial stress – but for whatever it’s worth, I am not as tired or quite as stressed. So yay for that.

I am also happy to report that last night, as I ran a purchase by my mom (fleece t-shirt quilt to use all my old tees) and talked about how much progress I am making with purging old clothes and my grandmother’s beanie babies, she sees genuinely happy for me. She encouraged me, congratulated me on my progress and asked thoughtful RV questions. I am so glad I got the telling her part out of the way to give her room to do her mom thing. She’s a good mom, even if she doesn’t always understand my way of thinking, and she’s usually right about things. 🙂

Handling Ross’ finances is proving to be exciting, in that we can try new things to pay down debt, but also disappointing in that there isn’t nearly as much room to trim our budgets as I’d like. So I need to get back to work for Judy and hustle some more lessons ASAP. My first north country voice student (minus a few vocal coaching sessions) is tomorrow, so I am looking forward to that.

It’s also hard to make frugal food purchases when you are trying to lose weight (both of us) and hoping your diet can help fix your body (me). I have been doing a great job so far – trying to keep my food budget to $30-40 per week – but Ross is buying a lot of his own food too…and it is just a lot of work to choose which fruits and veggies you can afford if you need a lot of dairy products, for instance. I know we will keep refining it though…lots of things will get easier when we are on the same schedule too.

The next step for Ross is promoting his solo album. Meanwhile, I need to not only make more money, but start getting on top of RV planning. Hoping we can set up an RV appointment this week for the spring.

That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading!

The Money Machine

| jamiefeinberg

I’ve been thinking a lot about money. Mainly because my blog of the month reading has consisted of financial blogs – mostly Mr. Money Mustache, which I highly recommend if you are interested in getting serious about saving or even retiring early. 

For my entire adult life, I have considered myself to be succeeding if I was breaking even each month, with a little left for fun money. I have never made big bucks, but I  have always figured out a way to make things work…but likewise, even when I was making 45K or so a year, my expenses were so high (living solo, driving too many miles, etc.) that my savings rate was never great. 

When I went to graduate school, I really thought I could get a significant pay raise with my degree, so I thought 20K of debt was no problem and didn’t even bother trying to pay any of it off during school. After all, I didn’t have any undergraduate debt (thanks Mom and Dad!) so I was better off than many. 

Of course, I didn’t foresee struggling for over a year to find work in my field, settling for a boring desk job, and then taking a pay raise that was really a pay cut because it came with no health insurance or other benefits (besides vacation)…also, no opportunity for a raise…and very limited opportunities for my husband to find work nearby. 

And meanwhile, Ross’ amazing success story of going back to school, working in radio, building his own teaching studio etc. is not nearly as amazing when you realize how much debt he picked up at school….and a decent portion of it in private loans. 

So while Ross has payed off his credit card debt (!!!) and I have paid off my cat medical bill debt and I’m almost finished paying off my own medical bills thanks to charitable care, we still have a huge amount of debt between us. 

So my new obsession has become getting really serious about finances. Saving more and paying off debt will be the focus for the foreseeable future. And I am posting it here, for accountability. Ross and I have big dreams, dreams of achieving a level of financial independence where we only need to make 15K or so a year to live – which would let us pursue our creative projects with abandon. 

We will have to work very, very hard to get there. But thanks to Mr. Money Mustache, I believe it is actually possible. And if you want to contribute to the cause, let me know. 🙂 We have lots of skills to share. 

Gearing Up for the Long Haul

| jamiefeinberg

Well, the long-shot job was just that, a long-shot, and it didn’t happen. Bad news for the part of me that was nervous about the craziness ahead, but great news for the part of me that is anxious to get on the road and do something different, and figure out what is next for us in this crazy life.

So I’ve been busy in the past few days now that I have a clear goal in sight again. I’ve created lots of spreadsheets, including touring locations, budgets (current and when we’re touring), charts comparing the advantages of a Class C vs. Class B vs. a glorified van, tips for traveling, a packing list (including both must haves and wants, to help us discern just how simply we can do this) and perhaps most importantly for right now, an outline of the money we’re making and how we can save over the next year and four months, if we want to stick to the plan. Which is the goal, of course. I have another job interview on Monday – this is for a local, part-time church gig. It pays well, I’m incredibly qualified for it, and they seem really nice – and perhaps most amazingly, it is practically always a one-day-a-week gig.

I figure if I can get this job, keep up my part-time freelancing for as long as that pays and help Ross get some steady employment for at least a year before we leave (enough that he can sock a little money away and help a little with expenses would be perfect), we can save a LOT of money. If some of those things don’t happen, it will be harder – and in particular, if something doesn’t change quickly, we’re in trouble, as we’re currently losing $300-$500/month.

But I absolutely know we can do this, and boy, it sure seems easier to motivate myself to work (and give up some of the fun stuff) when there is clear goal and start date for the new adventure on the other side! I hope we can both keep each other motivated and be willing to make the tough choices. Ross is almost done his EP (whoo-hoo!) which will give him some extra time to devote to making money in the arts, getting the business side of things up and running and whatever else needs doing to make this thing happen.

So far I think the toughest part is keeping all of this to myself for the most part. I’m seeing big changes in store for the theater (in all likelihood, we’ll stop everything but the tours and special events, like wine dinners, after 2015) so that Ross and I can do awesome things like write shows and record CDs together. Worth it? I definitely think so!

Feeling really thankful for all of the amazing blogs and articles out in the world to help us with the planning. Will have lots of resources to share here in the coming months.

Oh, and did I mention we’re going to Disney in January for our wedding present from Ross’ sister and husband? Cannot wait. One more thing to save for, of course, but we can do this.

Thanks for reading!

Feeling Groovy

| jamiefeinberg

Okay, maybe not Groovy, exactly. But certainly healthier than I was a couple of weeks ago. Today I have a “preliminary” interview for that long shot job opportunity. Still a long shot? Absolutely. But it will be good for me to have a conversation that looks ahead.

The minuses if I were to get this job are obvious – no motorhome tour, at least right away, we’d have to move to a city that at least on the surface wouldn’t be our favorite thing, and I’d have all the typical challenges of becoming a teacher.

The pluses? A built in simplified life that combines my theater work and my need for income (at least for as long as I can keep it that simple) and maybe even a summer vacation, which would make returning to Canada for regular visits more feasible. Not to mention good benefits and a clear next step.

In any case, it’s got me thinking more about teaching and how much I like it. Whatever the ending is, I’m sure teaching will be a part of my work moving forward. Wish I had weeks to devote to cleaning and organizing my life – so much to do, so little time!

My groovy feeling usually involves rainbows -I love them – and my closet is oddly becoming less of a rainbow than it used to be. Why? Well, I’m realizing that my favorite ways to dress now involve a color palette that lets me interchange clothes and dress easily. So I think when I’m done decluttering, my goal is to have two palettes, with only an occasional dress or shirt to mess with the vibe. The colors? Probably blacks (for theater and music, of course) and brown/pink/purple/tans, which has become my go-to and I absolutely love it with my complexion and my vibe. We shall see if this holds, but I think the writing is on the wall.

Have a groovy day!