Save Yourself

How much time did I spend as a kid thinking about the man, the money, the house I would have one day? Disney wasn’t much help, was it? All of the fairy tales about the disadvantaged girl being rescued and whisked away to her castle and financial freedom seems a lot to wish for. I can’t even be bothered to buy a lottery ticket.

I saw the Sex and the City movie this weekend and there was a scene where Carrie was reading Cinderella to Charlotte’s daughter. After the story finishes, she remarks to the little girl that her life won’t likely turn out the same as the story she just read. It seems like a cynical thing to say to a 5 year old who just wants to be a princess, but it doesn’t make her wrong.

I guess what I am wondering is when I knew that no prince was going to come rescue me and that I was going to have to save myself. Sure it’s a fun girlfriend kind of topic to talk about finding the billionaire that realizes he can’t live without you, but winning that kind of love lottery that comes with an endless supply of money seems like the worst sort of delusion. Why do I need someone else to rescue me?

Part of this attitude also comes as I sit and anxiously watch the economy as I’m sure most all of us are doing. Gas prices, food prices, housing fiascos, all make the rescue fantasy a lot more appealing. Still, as I sit and watch my dollars cover less of my expenses, the last thing I want to do is drag someone else into my nightmare. Misery may love company, but my attitude is to keep that part of my life my own burden to bear. I created my situation, so I don’t expect anyone but me to fix it. And I am fixing it. I have to fix my financial resume the same as I would for a job.

It feels like I am embarking on a weird diet. Changes have been made to cut costs where I can and this summer should be an interesting experiment in living more frugally. I have never been a big supporter of the word “budget” but it is a necessary evil now. I have a very uneasy feeling about becoming a bargain hunter. It’s like trying to become a vegan after a lifetime of meat. One of my most ridiculous and dangerous expenses is smoking. Soooo….once again I am going to quit. I have a trip coming up for work followed by a visit from my sister. That should give me a whole week of smoke free time to get me started. That first week won’t be the problem. The problem will come once I am back in my routine. Smoking is my stress crutch.

So maybe it’s time to pull out the post-it notes and start plastering everything with reasons why I am quitting. If you want to chime in with any, feel free. Here are some of the more obvious one to me.

1. Health…Duh. It‘s bad for me. Breath, skin, lung capacity, blood pressure, cancer…honestly, it’s beyond stupid to know I am consciously killing myself every day.
2. Money. I am estimating to save almost $150 a month. A month!! When you add it up and look at it on paper, it’s amazing to see where you are just hemorrhaging money.
3. Smell. It would be nice if my stuff didn’t smell like smoke. Even if others don’t notice it, I do.
4. Alcohol. Granted my consumption is very little. However, it will decrease even more if smoking is out.
5. Savings. I am saving money to buy a house. So now I have to ask myself the hard questions for every dollar I want to spend. Do I really need this? Can I find it cheaper? What will happen if I don’t buy it?
   

So, there it is. I have a rescue plan. Still, like anyone starting a new diet, you have to be realistic. Going cold turkey with this budget idea will backfire on me if I don’t schedule a “cheat” day now and again. I’m not talking about the smoking part here because there is no such thing as a cheat day. No, this is thinking about the other things I like to buy like books and music (I know you all think shoes should be listed here too, and I don’t blame you). Since there is no way I am going to do without either, I have to be better about planning it out.

I’m not exactly sure what that planning will look like although I have some ideas. I know when the books I am anticipating are coming out and in most cases I get sent coupons for discounts regularly, so maybe it means I don’t buy it the day it comes out but wait for the coupon first. I also have a library card, so I could go the route of checking it out rather than buying it. Or buy it second hand. Ok, I think I am starting to hyperventilate…..I’ll have to think about those options later.

As for music, Keane is coming out with an album at the end of this year and I’m sure the tour will be sometime the following year. Since I know its coming and I know I will go see them, I should start setting money aside for it now. How cool would it be to put that “smoking” money into the Keane fund? Now that’s what I call motivation.

So, we’ll see how it goes. Putting this all out here on the blog makes me feel more accountable. It’s a bit uncomfortable to share, but maybe I need the extra exposure to keep me honest. It seems ironic to me that my “save myself” plan involves letting other people know, but I suppose even if no one says a word to me about it, I’ll still know that you know.

PS. Happy Birthday to Bruce and Lori!!!

Blank Pages

Is there anything more daunting to a writer than a blank page? I am going to try and multi-task for a minute and write something here while part of my brain tries to figure out how to start my latest spreadsheet. God, I hate spreadsheets.

I started off with hand written notes and now I am itching to put it in a Word doc. It’s just more busy work and a blatant excuse to avoid Excel once again. Why haven’t they invented some sort of brain scanner yet to just dump what’s in my head onto paper? I just can’t see the right organization yet in my mind.

Maybe I am just letting my frustration of other things take up too much space in my head today. It’s been one of those days where trying to track down information all leads back to me to figure out. What is the point of having resources to go to when all they do is shrug their shoulders, tell me to ask 6 other people, or tell me they are looking to me to figure it out?

There are just a lot of tiny pieces to this giant puzzle we are trying to put together. Right now if feels like one of those 3-D puzzles that people just stare at forever trying to find the dinosaur or wolf on a mountain or whatever. As I recall, it took me awhile to get the hang of how to see what I was supposed to see. There’s a lesson there somewhere, I’m sure.

Today I feel like I am looking at the blank page titled “cow in a snow storm.”

Moo….

Heading west was all that was left…..

This past weekend I took a trip out to Los Angeles. Once again, I loaded up the car rather than fly. Luckily, like the trip to Phoenix, this was a relatively short drive. A friend of mine came in to town and we decided it would be fun to go ride roller coasters for the day. We headed out to Six Flags Magic Mountain and proceeded to do just that.

For those of you that have never been to the park, this is a great place for roller coasters. In fact, it often ranks as THE coaster park in the US, although it seems to trade titles every so often with Cedar Point in Ohio. Currently, I think Cedar Point holds the title. Still, I’m not about to take a “quick” trip to Sandusky any time soon, so LA was it.

I realize this may sound a bit whiny, but it was so HOT at the park. The Southwest is breaking some temperature records right now for this time of year, so although I wasn’t melting at home under triple digits, the upper 90’s in LA was still pretty uncomfortable. The good news was that since we hit the park on a Friday, the lines were relatively short. The other whiny description of the park is that they call it “Mountain” for a reason. At many points during the day it felt like all we were doing was walking uphill. It was quite a workout.

So after collapsing in exhaustion Friday night, we decided to do something a bit more low key on Saturday. First, we headed out to Universal City and walked around City Walk. This is a funky little shopping area located right outside the Universal Studios park. After that we decided that since we had come so far, it only seems right to head to the beach. We decided on Santa Monica. It is a cute little town with lots of shopping, restaurants, and of course, the pier. After finding parking we headed out to the pier and then down to the beach. The water was ice cold and felt great since even on the beach the temps were still in the 90’s. We walked out to the end of the pier and watched the boats sail by. There were also a number of people fishing off the pier. I am really hoping they were doing it for fun and not hoping to snag dinner, although I can’t be sure. I just can’t imagine eating anything that came out of the water so close to shore. I realize it’s the Pacific Ocean, but it just doesn’t seem very um…clean, I guess. Whatever.

We drove back here on Sunday and chilled out until it was time to take her to the airport. We went to dinner at Firefly (of course) and a good time was had by all. Seriously, come visit me so I can eat there again. I love it. My next big event coming up is a visit from my sister in June. We are going to go see George Michael in concert and I am sooooo excited I can hardly wait.

With this last trip I have now headed out in all 4 directions from here in the last 5 months. Ohio for Christmas, Reno in April, and Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. Heading west was all that was left. Now what??? Apparently, it’s time to start over again. I have a trip to the East coast coming up in June. It’s a work trip, but I have a feeling I’ll still be able to sneak in a visit to ThreeL. Get ready! I am already trying to figure out how I can make it out to Virgil’s for dinner.

The Music Between Us

Well, it’s only Thursday but I have already had a really fun start to this week. I took the first part of this week off to go down to Phoenix and visit Baby. We had tickets to see Duran Duran on Tuesday night! It was such a great time! We have now determined that this is our 5th concert together which clearly puts her squarely in the “concert buddy” role.

I decided to drive down to Phoenix. It’s funny to me to think that now that gas prices are skyrocketing that I have suddenly decided to drive more rather than fly. What’s up with that? Between Reno last week and Phoenix this week, surely I am out of my head. The drive to Phoenix was considerably shorter and much more pleasant than the drive to Reno, thank God. I think the most interesting thing I saw on the way was passing through the Joshua Forest. I came around a mountain and suddenly there was this weird stretch of what I would describe as shaggy cactus. Luckily, there were signs that helped identify what I was seeing. It was such a different terrain driving south. It was greener and much more varied than the small scrub brush that I passed while driving north. I set the iPod to play all of my DD and a short 67 songs later I found myself in Phoenix.

The other reason I decided to come down to Phoenix is because Baby is getting ready to have another baby. Since she is so far along, she wasn’t going to able to come up to Vegas to see them perform here, so I came down to her. We saw Barry Manilow here a few months back when she first told me she was pregnant, so this is my second concert with the baby too. Plus, the concert hall where they were performing had seats which is definitely a plus when you are 8 months along. They are playing here in Vegas this weekend at the Joint which is standing only. Not so great on the body under normal circumstances let alone when you are carrying a basketball in front of you.

We had dinner and then headed over to the concert hall. The opening band was a group called Your Vegas. They were pretty good. The singer had what appeared to be a broken leg and yet he was still standing for a good part of their performance. There was a stool in front of him where he would rest his leg from time to time. It was weird because he kept hopping around on one foot anyway. I don’t know how he managed to keep his balance.

During the first part of their set Baby and I were standing in line to get our concert t-shirts. Neither one of us are fans of the new album, although we really did listen to it to give it a fair shot. It’s just not one of their better albums, regardless of who they collaborated with (the duo of Timberlake and Timbaland). So we were in agreement that the t-shirt we wanted didn’t mention the current album. We found a great shirt that said Planet Earth on it with a date (1978) and a message (The Music Between Us). Baby was sure it was a song lyric but we couldn’t place it at first. Thank goodness for the Internet, right? We got to work on our phones to figure out the reference and sure enough it was a lyric from the song Sunrise. (I’m sure you are all glad to know). The date of course referred to when the band formed. How weird is it to think they have been around for 30 years?

With that done, we settled in to our seats and waited for the boys to show up. The crowd was an interesting mix, as you might imagine. Mostly older people, some of whom brought their kids with them. We saw a number of older DD t shirts, including a young girl wearing her mother’s t shirt from 1984 Seven and the Ragged Tiger album. It was really cool. So many people stopped her to look at it.

Baby and I had already looked up the fan sites to see the set list so we knew what songs they were going to play. Of course there were a number of songs from the new album (which we took the opportunity to sit down and rest) and then the rest of the fan favorites we couldn’t wait to hear. The songs you will most likely know include:

Hungry Like the Wolf
Planet Earth
Come Undone
The Reflex
Save a Prayer
A View to a Kill
Notorious
Girls on Film
Ordinary World
Sunrise
Wild Boys
Rio

They also had this interesting part in the middle which was referred to as the Electric Set. They took a brief break while the stage was set up with all this equipment lined up in a row across the front of the stage. When they came back out, they were all lined up and they did this medley of a bunch of different songs that had been stripped down. It was really cool. The electric set included:

Last Chance on the Stairway/ All She Wants/ Warm Leatherette
I Don’t Want Your Love/ Skin Trade/ Tempted

What was an added surprise to me was the song Warm Leatherette. It isn’t one of theirs. I know the song from Grace Jones. As is true with all of her stuff, it is a really bizarre yet catchy sort of tune about sex and cars. I love that they included it. I know they have a bit of a history with her but I guess I didn’t realize the extent. (There is the obvious View to a Kill connection and she also sings background on a couple of songs from the Arcadia album- Election Day and The Flame).

I was sad to see the night come to an end and I have been tempted to perhaps try and get tickets to one of the two shows here this weekend, but I probably won’t. I have yet another trip coming up in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more ramblings from the road.