today's tip: don't spend $67,000 on cappuccino machines

Especially for a school district that doesn't even know how to use them.

It may sound like common sense, but, as the nightly news the past few weeks have reminded us, things are different in Chicago. This time it's the public schools, which shelled out $67,000 for 30 cappuccino machines for schools. Luckily one person has been fired so far, but this response is awesome:

"We also look at it as a waste of money because the schools didn't even know they were getting the equipment, schools didn't know how to use the machines and weren't prepared to implement them into the curriculum," Sullivan said.

The curriculum?! God knows if the kids learned how to be baristas they'd graduate at least one useful skill. The rest is bunk. But we know they had no intention of teaching the kids jackshit about espresso.

On a related note, I want to give a shout-out to my tea lady, Darlene. I drink a lot of tea every day of the loose, chai variety, and these fancy tea places like Teavana want to charge me $16 for 8oz of a Masala. I buy it by the pound and store it in a big glass kitchen container, so $32 a pop hurts too much.

Luckily I found Darlene's Tea Port on Ebay and I get a pound of her Indian Spiced Chai or Kama Sutra Chai for $19.99. Even with shipping its much less than Teavanna and she somehow always gets it to me within 2 days of my order (she's in Wichita).

When you get high quality loose tea you can use the leaves twice, so i get two nice strong cups out of each 2 tbs helping i put in my steeper.

Another tip to help you run your budget better than public school districts or any other government arm. *ChaChing*.

UPDATE: to put it into perspective, i calculated that each cup costs me about 25 cents if the pound of tea lasts me 2 months and i drink 2 cups basically every day. This is why I choked the other day when I saw "organic" tea on a cafe menu for $3.50, which most certainly would have been an inferior bagged tea.