Remember when I used to take pictures all the time? What happened to that? My blog’s third year anniversary passed two days ago…
More pictures in the fotos side of this site. For those that don’t know, again Jesse = awesome.
I saw that meme going around about the photograph of yourself and my paranoid self immediately thought, “oh, how clever super-secret internet spies; putting faces to anonymous monikers.” so I ignored it. But then I came across grey ghost’s participation in an improved version, a version I can get behind.
First, the meme:
From Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler which is sitting on top of the ottoman along with my feet:
I felt a kind of vertigo, as if I were merely plunging from one world to another, and in each I arrived shortly after the end of the world had taken place.
I passed the belvedere again half an hour later. From one chair, its back to me, a little ribbon was flapping. I went down the steep promontory path, as far as a shelf from which the angle of vision changed. As I expected, seated in the chair, completely hidden by the wicker shields, there was Miss Zwida, in her white straw hat, her drawing pad open on her lap; she was copying a seashell. I was not pleased to see her; this morning’s negative signs dissuaded me from striking up a conversation; for about three weeks now I have been encountering her alone in my walks on the cliffs and the dunes, and I want nothing more than to address her–indeed, it is with this intention that I come down from my pension every day, but every day something deters me.
That book is on top of chef Jo A. Kaucher’s The Chicago Diner Cookbook. Had the order been reversed, I’d give you this:
3/4 cup dried split peas
3/4 cup barley
3/4 cup rice
1/3 cup dried navy beans
1/2 pound onions, diced
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1/4 pound celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic
Awesome. I hope the miraculous Jesse participates in this meme.
A follow up to an ode to fallen brown things? No, but an ode is due to Jesse and his infinite generosity, for it was his gift to me that made the following deliciousness possible:
Yes, those are moist, delicious, vegan brownies, what’s more, they are specially packaged for my new dear vegan friend:
Yes, wrapped around that homemade origami box is a comic, albeit a disjointed comic, that you can read if you click below:
Happy Fallidays!
First day of Fall and everything is falling apart! Or is it all going according to plan? Genius.
On an unrelated note: stay tuned for an interview with the all around awesome experimental particle physicist Jesse.
This is probably going to be one of the most shameful of the personal revelations I make on this blog.
Something my super intelligent friend Jesse and his lovely wife Kyeorda really know how to do is manage their income. My attempts at managing money are usually a result of accidents. For instance, I used to be a paying member of a particular big box bookstore. The membership gave me discounts on all my purchases and valuable coupons. The membership was 30 dollars a year. When my membership renewal came about, I asked a cashier if it was worth renewing. She called a number to get my total savings for the year, it was some ridiculous amount, like hundreds of saved dollars. In other words, the card had paid for itself in spades. So naturally, you would think that I would renew my membership, but no, instead, I turned to her and said, wow, I spend way too much here, I am going to stop coming here and hopefully that will curb my spending. It worked. The growth of my music and book collections slowed and, perhaps most importantly, I kicked the habit of those sweet, Godiva-chocolate, double-shot mochas I had the book store baristas create for me.
Then today rolled around, a warm and humid day, the kind of day where you just wanna stay indoors, read, play on the internet, maybe clean a bit. I decided to play with my expenditures, for no particular reason, I wasn’t trying to budget, I just wondered what it looked like. I came up with the following figure (one among many interesting figures I made today); it is a plot of accumulated expenses from the past three months with purchases above the three sigma range (i.e. train and airline tickets, and my new TV) filtered out:
Egads! Once again, I am faced with my outrageous spending habits, upwards of 55 dollars a day! Except, this time there is no store to avoid–though that might not be entirely true–there is only me and my habits to deal with.
As you can see from the density of data points, I pay mostly by credit card, however, the big reoccurring payments (i.e. rent, utilities) pile-up bringing my bank account transactions to par with the credit card transactions. Using my credit card has benefits in the form of points that turn into gift certificates and I seldom carry a balance on the card. Now, let take a look at what I have been spending on:
Splendid, most of my costs are essential(i.e. rent, utilities,groceries), but I can probably reduce in some areas and reshuffle to others. What is staggering is the fact that I spend similar amounts on groceries and coffee (to be fair, coffee gives me some sustenance and the coffee total also includes the cookies and bagels I often get). I like fresh coffee, that is, freshly roasted and brewed, I’ve found that I cannot keep the coffee fresh enough when I store and brew my own, so I don’t know if I can effectively cut down the coffee consumption, but I can eliminate the cookies and bagels… this should be an interesting adventure.