I’ve worked with manufacturers/purveyors on promotions (usually review copies/products) on the pencil blog, but never on this blog in its nearly 8-year existence.  But Kishan from Maxton Men has an offer that’s too good to refuse.  Maxton Men is a new online shop featuring gifts for men that has free shipping and is just starting out.  Anyone that sells Field Notes with free shipping has a place in my bookmarks.

Buy anything from the “Office” section and use the promotion code PRAGMATIK to get 15% off until the 20th.  So what? you say?

Field Notes, brothers (and sisters), 15% off, free shipping.  They even have a few special editions and only charge $9 for regular ones.  (Also Le Pens, which seem to be making a welcome come-back.)

Go forth, and get the best deal on Field Notes I’ve seen.  And tell ‘em who sent you.

(For giving  you the deals, dear readings, one of you should send me a pack of the American Tradesman edition for home improvements at the house we’ll be purchasing in the coming months.  Just saying.)

Also, and this is no insignificant thing, I received a food dehydrator as a birthday gift from my parents. “What the hell would a 31-year-old want with one of those?” you ask?

Well, immediately, I can dry a lot of the chilis and basil I grew/am growing this year. Also, well, holy shit, those babies are awesome! No more trail mix full of crap I hate and also without fruit because the stuff at the market is not great (not enough to spend the cash on anyway). Meals ready to eat? Yes. When we go camping, I take my own food so as not to be a pain the ass, since I’m the only vegetarian. This means that I have to lug it all myself, with a cooler to boot. Not if I learn to make my own dehydrated vegetarian cuisine!

This is not to mention that Charlotte and I can make all sorts of delicious things.  I’m picturing her taking bags of dried fruit all over Baltimore during  the winter, from delicious things I got at the farmers market in the summer.

I was raving to my mother a few weeks ago that I grew too much basil this year and had to freeze a lot of it and even murder a plant.  I said I wanted to diversify next year and get a food dehydrator to keep myself (and family) stocked with home-grown herbs all year.  What I didn’t think of until last night is that the chilis that don’t normally dry well and get frozen instead can be dried this way and used for all kinds of excellent goodness!

My mom listened.  My mom rocks.

It’s tricky, thinking of what you might need, what you want, what you’re willing to admit that you want, what you’re willing to “let” people buy you, etc. Mama and I are generally not wild about people going all out on our behalves. Not that we’re ungrateful. You know what I mean. So we feel like there’s supposed to be some kind of balance. We’ll register for expensive diapers and glass bottles, but not a playpen and glider rocker. Etc. But, you know, we have to make sure we have everything we need. Yesterday, that meant clothes, toys and cool socks that Grandpa picked out.

Tomorrow, we visit the OB for a follow-up to the abnormality that was there last week when Mama was very sick. If you’re the praying kind, the metta kind, the positive energy kind, the luck kind — and you want to share it — that would be lovely. And you would be lovely. And I will owe you coffee, tea and homemade cookies one day.

And of course having a bunch of new stuff makes a lot of people (myself included) re-examine their relationship to material possessions.  I really love my new gloves and fenders and Thermos, but it’s the cycling in winter weather and not dropping five bucks a day to have good coffee at work thing that I really like.  I suppose that’s a healthy relationship to gear, right?  Using it?

I do have the tendency to pet my things though and often get very upset when a new scratch joins the dozens of others on my bike or when dust gets under the screen cover of my camera.  Then I think about my bike and not riding and my camera and not taking pictures.  Then, as Tyler Durden would say, the things I own end up owning me.

I’ve always struggled to have a healthy relationship to possessions, my body, my health.  You can’t just ignore your pains or bike maintenance, but you can’t get attached to them, either.  Tricky, I tell you.  Tricky.

Photo Friday: Meditation.