October Nothingness

Rent and bills have been paid and so I know I will live yet another month (though I certainly hope I remember to file my taxes as my six month extension is rapidly expiring) and what better time to be alive with so much nothing to do on my horizon. While I have gotten lazy with the research I was working on in relation to one of my favorite books, I am still reading, playing music (is there a way to not make that sound vague and corny?) and riding my bike frequently, as well as finding the time to not watch television. Though, that might not be the case for long with the Bills suddenly showing the vaguest signs of life as well as the baseball playoffs and Sabres seasons starting very soon. Additionally, my friends and I are supposed to be restarting our Thursday Night Bubble Hockey league this week with a couple of expansion teams and there is also some talk of a pick up game of football in Delaware Park either this week (thanks to the Monday Night game) or next (Bills’ bye week) which all but guarantees a house reeking of Ben-Gay the following three days after that.

And who can do anything when they’re so sore that they’re reeking of Ben-Gay?

Nothing shall come from nothing.

Bills due...

Watching football is about as collective as this country gets in doing nothing together. (Or anything for that matter.) Rather than play our own pick up games or participate in any event that we can directly influence and are more than just a spectator in, we stand unified in saying that we would simply rather sit around and drink beer and watch others have the fun.

And while I would rather play my own pick up games, I do like the sound of hanging out and drinking beers with the possibility to crack each other up for at least three hours just as much. If not more.

And so, even though this Bills team is godfuckingawful (and I get shit for saying that) and I vowed to stop scheduling my entire Sunday around their games, I was nevertheless baited once again this past Sunday into watching them "play" all because of my addiction to said hanging out (our house is the central locale for Bills' road game get togethers).

It almost makes me long again for a town like Portland where if I did watch a Bills loss it would be over by 1pm and I had the entire day to reclaim those three wasted (pun intended) hours because I wasn't surrounded by an entire disappointed fan base.

Portland or Buffalo. Pluses and minuses. You win some and you lose some.

Except in Bills games. Then everyone loses.

Goddamnit.

Bills Due, Bills Paid

Even though it’s been nearly two weeks since most of my monthly bills were due, I’ll finally post about them now. I again managed to scrounge up enough money to pay my monthly debts to society—even reluctantly dipped into some of my cash savings that I prefer not to touch—and covered the $448.98 that went towards rent, utilities, my student loan payments, phone and the $20 minimum towards my credit card (which will be paid in full assuming Uncle Sam’s money goons give me my tax return soon).

That said, I have been going out a little more lately and have spent almost as much so far this month as I did all of last month. Though, looking at the stats more money has been spent on random items such as gas (I’ve been cheating and borrowing my cousin’s car lately) and a few more meals have been dined out upon (like how I avoided saying “eaten out” there?). Still, more than likely, even this month I will stay below the $1000 average and will avoid completely depleting those cash savings any time soon.

I Think I'm Going to Live

This past weekend my friend living in New York City notified me that he wound up in an ambulance after falling off of his bicycle [details withheld to protect the guilty].

As I have said previously, the largest lurking danger that could immediately destroy my goal of spending less than $12,000 over the course of the year would be needing medical attention of any kind—especially emergency—for I, like my NYC friend and 45 million other Americans I believe, am without health insurance.

This is rarely a concern for me and never would be except that I am also a bit of an occasional closet hypochondriac. In the past I’ve survived a fractured sternum; lupus; skin, lung and liver cancers; and even a small bout with Lou Gerhig’s Disease. And I always seem to have a medical condition just strong enough to keep me worried. After the ingrown toe nails (read: Turf Toe), there were my wisdom teeth and then my sore shoulder that I was convinced needed arthroscopic surgery. Now I am even nursing a sore hand whose self-diagnoses have ranged from nothing at all, a slight sprain, a sever sprain to (now, possibly) a small fracture.

So naturally after hearing my friend’s story I was bound to come up with something new. And today I got stung by a bee. So even though I knew I wasn’t allergic to them, there was a good thirty minutes that I figured it was a severe enough sting to travel straight up my spine and into my brain to eventually kill me.

But I toughed it out (read: called mom to ask her how to make it better) and the pain eventually went away.

After contemplating how sad it is that even after seventeen years of schooling I haven’t been equipped with even enough basic medical knowledge to know a home remedy for an as common occurrence as a bee sting—and I doubt I’m the only one—I eventually, as I always do, came to my senses and realized that I was going to live.

But I also realized that, in consciously deciding to live in a way where I don’t have health insurance I am only able to do so thanks to my general clean bill of inherited health. Thank Life I am not allergic to bee stings or peanuts, or gluten products or any other allergies that could randomly be triggered and require immediate attention, or that I do not even have seasonal allergies that require medicine. If it wasn’t for these things perhaps I would constantly require the burden of health insurance.

(I am technically allergic to penicillin but thankfully I am protected from that by our caring government since it would require a prescription to get that—which come from doctors that I can’t afford just to add another layer of defense for my health.)

The human body is frail sure enough, and I can see the obvious sense of having and wanting health insurance. But, in not having it, after those initial paranoid attacks of hypochondria, ones that require only the now still free medicine of time, I do not feel the need to live in constant fear and expectation of the worst happening to me. (Though it is weird how we almost instinctively, as if we are raised to act in such a way, immediately expect the worst.) If it does, I’ll survive. I have before. But if it doesn’t—and more than likely won’t—I’m not going to miss out on everything else that I do have that is good that can so easily be overlooked and go unappreciated in a unnecessary hysteria and panic. I’d like to believe that I would rather die as the mathematical abnormality than live my entire life thinking I will be but only at the end realizing I was one of the lucky ones.

Internet Down

The Internet has been down lately (well, correction: Internet service at my house; everyone would have known had the Internet itself been down) and has helped curb my posting rhythm.

Funny though how we’ll still have to pay for the service in its entirety despite the lack of the very thing we will be paying for.

Nothing worse than being the victim of your own dream of getting paid for not doing anything. Maybe I should have started my own cable/Internet service instead of going to college.

I'd Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me...

If food and bills will be my biggest expenses, then alcohol will fill out the top three. If there’s any honest reason why I have no desire to completely remove myself from society and “go live in the woods” it would have to be because where there are people there is alcohol (and where there is alcohol there are people) and, certainly, where there aren’t, there isn’t (and where there isn’t, there often aren’t; at least not the type of people I enjoy being around). And both foolishly I know, but I like them both. I just can't help myself.

Not that I couldn’t make my own (booze) I suppose. Hell, I’m already back on the Steel Reserve diet—at least until someone back West, probably a bum, sends me some damn Camos—and no matter how bad homemade booze is it really couldn’t be that much worse could—Yes, actually, yes it could. Because Steel Reserves aren’t really that bad. Honestly. And I’m not just saying that as a person on a budget who stubbornly believes that a “young at heart” mindset is worth keeping always. Really.

So far this month, due in large part to a bachelor’s party that I had to attend—holidays, birthdays, etc will surely come up again and be dealt with in more detail—and last Thursday In the Square’s Sam Roberts show and the resulting night of going from the square to some of Buffalo’s finest bars like Mohawk Place, The Golden Swan, Founding Father’s Pub, Gabriel’s Gate and then The Pink, I’ve spent more on alcohol so far this month, $67.74, than I have on food, $54.71. Sparing one the exuberant list of quotations in support of alcohol ranging from Benjamin Franklin, to Tom Waits, to Homer Simpson, I will simply but firmly state that I have no intentions of changing this habit any time soon, if at all or ever, and feel no further need to justify myself.

(I’d be willing to bet, even if unwilling to do the research myself to support the claim, that far more people—even respectable people!—do the same than the general public would initially guess or maybe even like to think.)

In going out one will almost always find himself, when amongst good company (and I’ve always managed to find myself lucky enough to be around some of the best), on the beneficiary end of a free drink or shot. When discussing this project to spend as little as possible with my friend Pat, we discussed the grey area free meals, drinks and the likes create and how one in my position should include the benefits of hospitality.

We both agreed that I should at the very least keep as accurate a count as possible—and anyone who has drank in Buffalo knows exactly how inaccurate that count will immediately be—of the free drinks given to me. The argument going that I could go without those drinks being bought for me so they will not count against my spending; I did not ask nor beg for them, they were given to me. At the same time, since I am receiving something for nothing, it would be nice to at least note that someone, having previously done some work themselves, did something for me while I was attempting to do nothing myself. Quite obvious really.

The current count of free drinks that I have been given, not counting the abundant amount at the wedding, is 16, which, at this point, is working out to more than one a day.

But, for example, in the instances of my friend Fuzz’ wedding last week or my cousin Jake’s grad party the next day, it is a social agreement that, in showing up, one will eat and drink on someone else’s bill. Still, in bringing the all but expected gift—or in the case of the wedding, using the custom to have a year to present a present, much to my present disadvantage’s advantage—an exchange is nevertheless made that would otherwise not have been made. Therefore, those drinks or meals will not count against my spending, but what I spend on the gifts will. Just as well, any rounds of drinks that I would buy for my friends I will count towards my own spending.

Though, as one might imagine, such spending is currently at $0.00. And since none of the good company I am surrounded by has ostracized me for this fact, I’d have to say I’ve at the very least proved myself no liar in previously saying that I have always been lucky enough to always be surrounded by some of the best company.

Still no surprise to me as to why it was I came back to Buffalo really.

Bills Due, Bills Paid

I originally started counting my expenditures on July 1st for the simple reason that it’s the day bills are due. At least where I come from they are.

With four of us living in a large upper apartment in the heart of Elmwood Village, rent and utilities will be split into an easily digestible portion for each of us. And while many my age have tired of roommates, I still gladly take the cheaper cost of living and the inspiring energy that comes from living with three of your best friends. As an added bonus to my own personal history, we are paying less now for a four bedroom, two living room place in Buffalo than a I did last year living in a comfortable three bedroom house in Portland, OR.

All told, bills and utilities came to $272 apiece this month. The only other bills I have to regularly account each month are my phone, my student loans (which just went up $7 this month), and my credit card (which just last year was approaching $1000 but that I now have down to only slightly more than a $100 and that is only because of the bike I recently purchased). With each of those bills respectively costing $55.96, $69.04 and $20.00, added to the aforementioned $272, my bills for this month, and which can comfortably be budgeted for a similar amount each month, came to an even $417.

If I was to spend in full the allotted $1000, this would leave between $500-$600 a month to spend. Far more than enough for me to have fun.

Also far more than I probably will spend in any of the next twelve months.