I just got my last purchase of the month in—a $2.31 Magnum 40 to help kill this caffeine buzz (don’t read as: pain) that I suddenly have—at 11:33pm, 07/31/2007, and here’s how the monthly totals for July look:
Bills: $422.00
As stated at the beginning of the month, this included rent, utilities, phone, student loans and a minimum payment on my credit card. This probably won’t fluctuate all that much, at least not until winter when we have to actually use heat, though for the next three months we have to pay a portion of our last month rent that I guess we didn’t pay before. But even that divided by four is only $60 or so more.
Alcohol: $139.90
This includes two shows at the Mohawk Place, one free show at Thursday at the Square, at least one night out per weekend and a surprisingly low one trip to La Luna for its open bar on Wednesday. Averaged out this amounts to about $35 a week, which sounds pretty standard to me even though this total also includes a bachelor’s party and a graduation party that I don’t envision being in my regular monthly expenditures. However, I’m bound to take up a couple more Thursday at the Squares than I did last month and spend another night or two out on the weekends to keep this in about the same range.
Sub-total, Free Beers: 47
Like I said, you can’t put a price on good friends. Or free beers for that matter either.
Food: $107.97
As outlined in an earlier post, my diet consisted of nothing different should I have been spending five times more money: there’s only so much I know how to make and, of that, so much that I want to eat. Between the staples of my diet I managed to mix and combine them enough to last an entire month without getting sick of any of them. Nope, not even the 5am goulash that I made last Saturday night.
Dine-in/Take-out: $32.59
Separate from the food bill because of its unnecessary (except late at night) nature, almost guilty pleasure status and its, well as the kids would call it, “being a treat,” this mostly includes small trips to McDonald’s, though it also includes two great breakfasts—one at Nick’s Place and one at its cousin restaurant, Sophia’s—and, when including my credit purchases, two trips to SteakOut. Generally, I’m surprised I behaved myself so well in limiting myself to only this many meals out of the house, especially considering the regularity of being out late. Maybe I do, deep down, possess some form of temperance after all, though hopefully not so much. Like grace, you don’t want too much temperance or else you won’t be able to stand.
Miscellaneous Expenses: $34.62
This includes laundry and cover charges for the shows I went to over the month, though I also charged some purchases on a wrist brace ($18?) and $21 on gas ($21 more dollars on gas than I thought I’d spend). Thought I realize this is the category that can make or break my goal—no health insurance and a propensity to go out and ride my bike home, not to mention my already possibly broken or severely sprained wrist—I don’t see this being all that much higher: by getting rid of my car I had hoped to eliminate such expenses as much as possible. Though I know how, like nature abhorring a vacuum, life has a way of despising idealistic ventures, so I can’t say I would be surprised if I am wrong about this hunch.
Purchases on Credit: $123.17
To prevent double counting these purchases in a later month’s bill payments, I will keep this as a separate category though not figuring it into the monthly total. In all criticism of myself, I certainly do not intend to ever again crack the $100 credit mark and hope to eliminate the use of credit—surely I am un-American to say such a thing!—completely if at all possible.
TOTAL: $737.08
Total with Credit purchases (minus the payment made for previous credit purchases): $840.25
General outlook: the month wasn’t much different than what I envisioned, even if I have been slightly more of a hermit than I had hoped to be. Hopefully that will change in the next month. Still, I managed to go to two shows at the Mohawk, one at the Square, ate breakfast out twice, made a couple SteakOut visits, and, on the free side, constantly hang out with my friends (even had a great two hours of laughing and sitting on the porch with two of my roommates tonight), play Bid Pitch on a bi-weekly schedule, took multiple bike rides, enjoyed the garage sales resulting from the Garden Walk this past weekend, read under a tree at Bidwell Park and even found the time to finish reading (only) a couple of books.
Even if counting the credit purchases, which will obviously catch up with me and be accounted for (if I was to only pay the minimum over the course of the year and finish the year with credit card debt, I would then (obviously, I hope) include those purchases in my final yearly expenditure total), this would put me on pace to spend $10,083 over the course of the year.
This may not sound all that far below my allotted goal, but trying to spend $160 more a month, consistently, would be far more difficult for me than even Brewster (think Richard Pryor, not the Punky kind) would think. I’d have to buy new shoes and shirts to get that lavish.
Though that purchasing instinct of mine has been telling me to buy some new(er) shoes. Still, as the saying goes, I’m not buying. Right now I’m just hoping that medicine I bought tonight will help kill that caffeine buzz so I can sleep in this humid room.
As always, one night at a time.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The Eight Hour Fallacy
All last week I road my bike 40 minutes (9 miles) each way just to get to work. Just in order to work. And even though I loved the biking (that’s my mind speaking, not my thigh muscles), and even though I appreciated the fact that it didn’t cost me money in getting there (unless one wants to take it to the extreme of counting the food to fuel my body in order to ride that far), it did cost me time. And in doing so, it reminded me of the fallacy of the eight hour work day.
By uttering “eight hour work day” one only means the time you are paid for (ie: the amount of time you are required not to fall asleep and are required to look busy). But most full-time jobs give you an unpaid half hour for lunch that must be accounted for during the work day. With the average one-way commute (and that right there is just poor, or lazy, linguistics) nationally being just over 26 minutes [1]—which, doubled to account for the round trip, is 52 minutes or more than 5/6ths (83%) of an hour—between just getting to work and eating lunch one has accounted for nearly 9½ hours of their day. Further figuring that one will probably take the time to shower and groom themselves beforehand, one is probably looking at at least thirty minutes (or somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half hours for females as near as I would guess) more dedicated to the work day itself, the total is now approaching ten hours. If one makes a lunch to take to work as I do, or has to wash their clothes for the next day, there’s even more time lost to a work day total now nearing even closer to a ten and a half, or maybe even an eleven, hour work day.
And if you’re anything resembling a normal human being (and Life help you for it), you’re probably tired out by the time you finally make it home and feel the need to unwind with a drink, a nap, or some television. If you only take an hour to do these activities there are now nearly twelve hours—half the day—lost to the day all in relation to the supposedly necessary act of work.
Add on the more than likely seven hours you’re going to sleep to make sure you’re not sleeping on the clock and we are now more than 3/4ths the day through while spending time only dedicated to the act of work.
This isn’t even to mention the money one spends on just getting to work. If, in a rough calculation, one spent on average $.48/mile in getting to work ($.48/mile being the national reimbursement rate [2]) for the average 32 miles one commutes (16 miles each way, [1]), one would spend $15.36 a day, round trip, just in getting to and from work. Over the course of the week that comes to $76.80. If one made $10 an hour—middle ground to the minimum wage and higher paying jobs on the other end of the spectrum—this would mean that 7.68 hours (nearly an entire day of work every week) were spent working just to be able to get to work. Thus, immediately, no matter what one might lack or possess otherwise in the way of bills to pay, one’s paycheck would be worth only slightly more than 32 hours of work.
I wouldn’t so much mind—well, maybe not—the eight hour work day if it was only an eight hour work day. But instead the eight hour day is nothing more than a terrible fallacy. If one were paid for all the hours and money spent in preparation for and in getting to work in an average day, over the course of an average week one would be paid for 67 hours.
But in being paid only 40 hours pay for 67 hours work, one begins to see the deal the check writers are getting in the so-called eight hour work day. And too maybe makes my preference to work less a little more reasonable.
Eight hour work day? We should only wish it was.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098
[2] http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentId=9646&contentType=GSA_BASIC
By uttering “eight hour work day” one only means the time you are paid for (ie: the amount of time you are required not to fall asleep and are required to look busy). But most full-time jobs give you an unpaid half hour for lunch that must be accounted for during the work day. With the average one-way commute (and that right there is just poor, or lazy, linguistics) nationally being just over 26 minutes [1]—which, doubled to account for the round trip, is 52 minutes or more than 5/6ths (83%) of an hour—between just getting to work and eating lunch one has accounted for nearly 9½ hours of their day. Further figuring that one will probably take the time to shower and groom themselves beforehand, one is probably looking at at least thirty minutes (or somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half hours for females as near as I would guess) more dedicated to the work day itself, the total is now approaching ten hours. If one makes a lunch to take to work as I do, or has to wash their clothes for the next day, there’s even more time lost to a work day total now nearing even closer to a ten and a half, or maybe even an eleven, hour work day.
And if you’re anything resembling a normal human being (and Life help you for it), you’re probably tired out by the time you finally make it home and feel the need to unwind with a drink, a nap, or some television. If you only take an hour to do these activities there are now nearly twelve hours—half the day—lost to the day all in relation to the supposedly necessary act of work.
Add on the more than likely seven hours you’re going to sleep to make sure you’re not sleeping on the clock and we are now more than 3/4ths the day through while spending time only dedicated to the act of work.
This isn’t even to mention the money one spends on just getting to work. If, in a rough calculation, one spent on average $.48/mile in getting to work ($.48/mile being the national reimbursement rate [2]) for the average 32 miles one commutes (16 miles each way, [1]), one would spend $15.36 a day, round trip, just in getting to and from work. Over the course of the week that comes to $76.80. If one made $10 an hour—middle ground to the minimum wage and higher paying jobs on the other end of the spectrum—this would mean that 7.68 hours (nearly an entire day of work every week) were spent working just to be able to get to work. Thus, immediately, no matter what one might lack or possess otherwise in the way of bills to pay, one’s paycheck would be worth only slightly more than 32 hours of work.
I wouldn’t so much mind—well, maybe not—the eight hour work day if it was only an eight hour work day. But instead the eight hour day is nothing more than a terrible fallacy. If one were paid for all the hours and money spent in preparation for and in getting to work in an average day, over the course of an average week one would be paid for 67 hours.
But in being paid only 40 hours pay for 67 hours work, one begins to see the deal the check writers are getting in the so-called eight hour work day. And too maybe makes my preference to work less a little more reasonable.
Eight hour work day? We should only wish it was.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098
[2] http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentId=9646&contentType=GSA_BASIC
Monday, July 30, 2007
Traffic Lights
All these years driving in Buffalo and hitting, seemingly, every goddamned light red, I finally realized what the lights were timed for: 12mph bikes. I hit 22 out of 30 lights without having to stop on my last bike ride. On my most recent car drive I probably came to the same number of lights and there was no way I hit more than a 1/3rd of them green. Who says cars are always quicker?
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A Short Open Letter: to the Sunoco at the Corner
Dear Sunoco at the Corner:
You are a convenient store and this isn’t fucking Portland. You can stay open past 9pm. I am now blacklisting you for good.
(Can we still use the word “blacklist,” or has the been buried too? )
Either way: For Good.
Thanks,
naitrey
(P.S.—and I usually am against “p.s.’s”—In reading this, please disregard the previous post that had something of an anti-convenience slant. I am a self-admitted and self-accepted hypocrite. Though I only admit this when it is convenient for me and to do so now would be inconvenient, thus please ignore the previous sentence as well. [One which makes me an even further hypocrite, but to which I no longer care to defend myself.] Thanks.)
(P.S.S.—and I know, I’m being a hypocrite on my anti-p.s.’ing—what would the P.C. form of blacklisting be? Any ideas? Get back to me. I know you can do so quickly because you don’t stay open past 9:00 and so probably have some free time at night.)
You are a convenient store and this isn’t fucking Portland. You can stay open past 9pm. I am now blacklisting you for good.
(Can we still use the word “blacklist,” or has the been buried too? )
Either way: For Good.
Thanks,
naitrey
(P.S.—and I usually am against “p.s.’s”—In reading this, please disregard the previous post that had something of an anti-convenience slant. I am a self-admitted and self-accepted hypocrite. Though I only admit this when it is convenient for me and to do so now would be inconvenient, thus please ignore the previous sentence as well. [One which makes me an even further hypocrite, but to which I no longer care to defend myself.] Thanks.)
(P.S.S.—and I know, I’m being a hypocrite on my anti-p.s.’ing—what would the P.C. form of blacklisting be? Any ideas? Get back to me. I know you can do so quickly because you don’t stay open past 9:00 and so probably have some free time at night.)
Bummin' a Ride; or, Decidedly Inconvenient
Twice now in the last five days I have accepted an offer to borrow a car. While driving I was reminded both of a car’s convenience and just how much I enjoy the act of driving (or at least in a non-existent bubble where there would be no bad drivers). And, admittedly, over the last couple of weeks I’ve even a few times considered the possibility of buying a cheap clunker in order to open up my job options.
I would love to say that I never even think of buying a motorized vehicle, that I am one-hundred percent bound to the idea that I do not want a car. But I can never fully overcome reverting to the ingrained instincts of convenience that I have acquired my whole life—to suggest that I could fully overcome them is to suggest that I am not human (and a stinking good one of those I happen to be).
But ultimately I know that I won’t buy a car because I don’t need one; because of the very fact that not having a car is decidedly inconvenient and too much of our way of life is based on convenience. Too often we describe luxuries as necessities—the necessities, at their furthest reduction, being only food, water and toilet paper (especially toilet paper). From the conveniences of technology we can now be reached anywhere at anytime, barely lift a finger to cook (or nearly any act for that matter), and can be entertained the entire day without ever having to attend to our annoying little minds (to cut a very long list offensively short). But from these inconveniences we have grown impatient at the slightest delays, ushered in the 24 hour/7 day work week, 52 weeks a year in the customer service industry and are unable to entertain ourselves for the slightest moment should we be deprived one of these pieces of technology for the slightest moment (repeating the offense of the previous statement). Even quitting a demeaning job is commonly avoided should it prove to be even the slightest bit inconvenient for the short interval of time of the near future.
(For me, late night infomercials act as the comedic epitome for the vast library of the products on the market that are offered—for a fee—that one may “need” a convenient and specific tool that serve nothing more than an absurdly minute and infrequent moment. And rather than improvising a solution on their own with tools they might already have, some people actually buy these products. The humor!)
But in committing acts of inconvenience one can often times find unknown benefits. I don’t own a car because the slowness of the bike gives me access to the outdoors cars don’t; I don’t go back to school to get more education to make more money because I can learn everyday on my own if I am so inclined (and trust that I am able to learn on my own); hell, I don’t even try to make more money because of the benefits of free time and being able to go more at my own pace. I understand exactly why cars were invented and became, and remain, overwhelmingly popular: the convenience of the acquired mobility from them. And in occasionally using cars, for instance (by continuously using cars as an example does not mean to imply a condemnation of them and those who use them), I recognize those conveniences. It’s just that, in a collective mindset so obsessed with convenience, it is thought nearly impossible that the scales can be balanced away from such conveniences so constantly and instinctively. It would not be my wish that everyone share the exact same definition of such balance, but only that people would be more willing to approach the so-called inconvenient a little more freely, a little more frequently. Should a man require to be like water and always find the easiest way to the sea he will only find himself a meaningless drop washed along by a torrid current he is unable to steer.
I would love to say that I never even think of buying a motorized vehicle, that I am one-hundred percent bound to the idea that I do not want a car. But I can never fully overcome reverting to the ingrained instincts of convenience that I have acquired my whole life—to suggest that I could fully overcome them is to suggest that I am not human (and a stinking good one of those I happen to be).
But ultimately I know that I won’t buy a car because I don’t need one; because of the very fact that not having a car is decidedly inconvenient and too much of our way of life is based on convenience. Too often we describe luxuries as necessities—the necessities, at their furthest reduction, being only food, water and toilet paper (especially toilet paper). From the conveniences of technology we can now be reached anywhere at anytime, barely lift a finger to cook (or nearly any act for that matter), and can be entertained the entire day without ever having to attend to our annoying little minds (to cut a very long list offensively short). But from these inconveniences we have grown impatient at the slightest delays, ushered in the 24 hour/7 day work week, 52 weeks a year in the customer service industry and are unable to entertain ourselves for the slightest moment should we be deprived one of these pieces of technology for the slightest moment (repeating the offense of the previous statement). Even quitting a demeaning job is commonly avoided should it prove to be even the slightest bit inconvenient for the short interval of time of the near future.
(For me, late night infomercials act as the comedic epitome for the vast library of the products on the market that are offered—for a fee—that one may “need” a convenient and specific tool that serve nothing more than an absurdly minute and infrequent moment. And rather than improvising a solution on their own with tools they might already have, some people actually buy these products. The humor!)
But in committing acts of inconvenience one can often times find unknown benefits. I don’t own a car because the slowness of the bike gives me access to the outdoors cars don’t; I don’t go back to school to get more education to make more money because I can learn everyday on my own if I am so inclined (and trust that I am able to learn on my own); hell, I don’t even try to make more money because of the benefits of free time and being able to go more at my own pace. I understand exactly why cars were invented and became, and remain, overwhelmingly popular: the convenience of the acquired mobility from them. And in occasionally using cars, for instance (by continuously using cars as an example does not mean to imply a condemnation of them and those who use them), I recognize those conveniences. It’s just that, in a collective mindset so obsessed with convenience, it is thought nearly impossible that the scales can be balanced away from such conveniences so constantly and instinctively. It would not be my wish that everyone share the exact same definition of such balance, but only that people would be more willing to approach the so-called inconvenient a little more freely, a little more frequently. Should a man require to be like water and always find the easiest way to the sea he will only find himself a meaningless drop washed along by a torrid current he is unable to steer.
[bad idea] Bum In a Lane
If bike riders were to get bike lanes for equal access to the streets (and they have), it would stand to reason that the only natural reasonable progression of unprejudiced access of the road for all would be to next begin lining the streets with lanes reserved for shopping carts being pushed by bums. The "bum lane" we could call it (I'm sure I'll even use it one day). I’ve had to pass enough bums and carts—not always both at the same time oddly enough—in the last few days to recognize this fact. Perhaps Buffalo could even be the leader in such progressive thinking. It’d be the first such instance for the city since electricity, but they’re somewhat comparable achievements. And definitely equally worthy of admiration and pride.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Sunday Nights
After a pretty awesome day of hanging out with a bunch of friends at Delaware Park (the food was $5, the hanging out on the soccer field was free), and now getting ready to work tomorrow, the dreaded feeling of Sunday Night is already settling itself in again.
The worse part of the work week isn’t Monday morning but the night before. Sunday Night. The night when one needn’t have any worries for it’s the night when any and all worries show themselves. The work week looming, the weekend lost, and play time over. To make matters worse, everything is closed, dead, empty, vacant, silent, uninviting and lonely. There’s never anything good on TV to distract your mind and, even though Sunday Night’s the best of all nights to drink, there’s never enough people out at the bars to create a crowd to get lost in. Instead it’s just you and whatever decides to ail you.
I hate Sunday Night more than any time of the work week.
The work week. Already infiltrating my thoughts and I’ve only worked 3.5 hours over the last three months.
The worse part of the work week isn’t Monday morning but the night before. Sunday Night. The night when one needn’t have any worries for it’s the night when any and all worries show themselves. The work week looming, the weekend lost, and play time over. To make matters worse, everything is closed, dead, empty, vacant, silent, uninviting and lonely. There’s never anything good on TV to distract your mind and, even though Sunday Night’s the best of all nights to drink, there’s never enough people out at the bars to create a crowd to get lost in. Instead it’s just you and whatever decides to ail you.
I hate Sunday Night more than any time of the work week.
The work week. Already infiltrating my thoughts and I’ve only worked 3.5 hours over the last three months.
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