Sunday was a day for the books. There were crepes made (for me, not by me), during which I got the house vaccuumed, picked up, fire made, and the dishes done. The crepes were fantastic, exactly like I remember having from the Crepe Truck on Penn’s campus, sans the choices of fillings. Sigh, food trucks — I miss you but not your cholesterol elevating sauces. Thanks babe for cooking!

After the gorging was done, sat down in “my chair” by the fire with a nice hot cup of java, watching the TV, reading the WSJ. Doggie was the usual cute morning self – lounging around and sleeping. Football was on soon and I spent the better part of the day making sure my butt had ample time to caress the leather.

It was one of those days where you sit there watching TV in the middle of the morning completely content (and quite warm, thank you Mr. Fire) with the mornings progress on household chores and just enjoying the relaxation. I even did a bit of work, well work in the sense that it was work related, but I was really just fiddling around with debugging some arcane problem I hit, just to see if I could get it figured out. I did, at least to the point where I emailed the original author of the code asking “WTF is this supposed to do here?”

Tangent .. so the birds. Yes I have birds. Deal with it — I have. Since moving back, and honestly getting the dog, I’ve been less than thrilled with them. The make a damned big mess. I had resolved to take less than full care of them (I’m sooo not cleaning the cage every week, etc). It turns out I was just being a bad person. I’ve started to enjoy them again, even cleaned up their cage and bought them some new shredding toys and nesting house. They are pretty cute and seem to be enjoying themselves a bit more now. Even the dog will sit in the office and just watch the birds — not sure if he is just curious or watching them like we do the lobster tank in a seafood restaurant. “Mmm, that looks good, gonna have to order that one day”. End Tangent

So — the gf is out of town this week. This likely means working late every night — a secret and disturbingly fun event for me on occasion and eating poorly. Not that I eat healthy just when she is here — I ususally cook good food anyways — but more the ‘heh, gf out, boys play’ kind of mentality that I’m going use as an excuse to make steak or deep fried mumblmumble some night. I’m likely going to be bored with myself too — Mom & Sis watch out, I’m probably coming up for dinner one night to stave of the alone-ness (different from lonliness). I’m not sure what I amd doing next weekend other than watching more football (playoffs are getting good). I should find something good to do — probably going to launder the Harley cover and give it a good bath if the weather holds above freezing. It needs it and I don’t want to ride out a dirty bike the next time it is warm enough. I just got the new J&P cycle catalog and I am having a tough time finding something that I want for the bike. There are a few minor things, but I’m sadly lacking in the gratuitous spenditure area. Saaad.

Ever since the second semester of freshman year at Penn, when I was rooming with the Rascob, I’ve laughed my arse off at this song. It really is funny. It was even better seeing it live too — and man we were HAMMERED (ok, side tangent from original post for a second) at that concert. “Handle” of Dr. Jimmy Bean, 30pk of Busch, and some other recreational substances make for a good weekend. Sigh, mispent youth and all. No wonder I got fat that year.

Anyways.. there is a lyric in there that is “give me back my money, you bitch” or something like that. So, I’ve always had a wee bit of a problem managing money. I can spend like you wouldn’t believe. Yes, I do have some very nice furniture, guns, computers, Harley (that wasn’t a impulse buy…), kitchen stuffs, etc from my shopping trips — but most of the issue is the amount of cash I can blow through. You’d think I have a serious drug problem, where in fact I have only a small one. Err, had. I do make a pretty good chunk from my job but I never seem to be able to save much, and always seem to be scraping by that last week of every month. As one of my housemates put it “You can program the Linux kernel, run clusters, and get through school but can’t balance a checkbook???”. I always imagine him saying that with the Genie from Aladdin – ” Phenomenal cosmic powers! Itty bitty living space.” Yeah. Good times. BTW — Thanks mdog for the fun times, too bad you couldn’t make it to Spain for the conference — as much your work as mine!

SO! I’ve taken the initiative (once again..) to use a computer program to manage my moola. I’ve made past attempts with M$ Money and GnuCash to keep track of expenses, loans, retirement accounts, etc. I started with the best intentions each time, but only to fade out of sync after a few months. I think this was due to how badly lacking each of those programs was in ease-of-use. To tackle this problem again, I have installed Quicken Deluxe 2006 and…well to make a very long story a little shorter – it rocks. I am able to download my credit card, retirement and checking information with one click — right over the web (This Internet thing is SO going to be cool once it takes off). There are fantastic tools for visualizing your balances over time, including a completely amazing (for me!) transaction scheduler. The TS allows you to put in all of your deposits and bills, giving you a graph of the daily balance. The retirement account (Investment Center) interface is fantastic. It collates all of the monthly purchase for each security and shows the loss/gain and %return for each one — so you can see where your return is coming from. There are also built in interfaces to hit Yahoo! for charts and research — not to mention comparing performance against the big market indexes.

The big new feature for me is the budget planner. I have NEVER made a budget before, and let me tell you — it is a painful process. One of my fatal flaws is the complete hatred at being restrained — personally, physically or mentally. Want to get me mad? Just prevent me from doing something with out talking to me about it. Very unpleasent, as I can be quite mean. So, restraining myself in the forms of spending when there is still 100s of dollars in the account is just hard, we are talking a completely foreign idea here folks! I started with what I usually spend per month on things and then with some fantastic help I started to prune down the discretionary items. It turns out that a few things are obvious — I have a metric ass-barn load of “mandatory” bills – Harley, student loans, utilities, rent, insurances, gym membership, pet food, etc – that I had no idea took up that much of my salary. I honestly had more bills than I realized. At the end of the day — I’ve pruned out spending totaling 25% (!!) of my net salary. Holy Shit. If I can (and I really realll really want to) stick to this budget, I will be able to pay off all of my credit cards by July and start to save for things that I want — like a surround sound stereo and leather coffee table. I might even pay off some other bills a bit early too!

So — cheers to Quicken, I guess that is my personal N.Y resolution, besides shagging more.

So… in the interest of keeping this alive – I’ve shamlessly stolen this idea from someone else

What’s your favorite thing to do when no one else is around? Work late on computers, watch tv, read, scratch,take a long bath with a bottle of wine.

Name a guilty pleasure. Ordering delivery pizza when I don’t feel like cooking; staying up til 3 or 4am reading.

What’s your greatest fear? Being alone forever.

What’s your favorite part of your body? My brain, though after a year of working out my arse is making tracks.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Better money management.

What’s your idea of perfect happiness? To do what I want to at a whim — eternal vacation.

What’s something you’re good at that’s totally useless?Making a mess — one of the best!

What’s your favorite album for a night of steamy monkey love? It depends on the mood — could be Coltrane, Dave Matthews, Korn, White Zombie, John Mayer, Norah Jones, Pink Floyd, Doors, &c. Country — not so much, the beat is too varied for a whole album.

What was your most memorable celebrity encounter? Edward Herman was at the Union League one night — quite interesting and tall. I think that is the only person I’ve rubbed elbows with — his wife was pretty fascinating as well. I’ve been in the same room with Tom Ridge (former head of homeland security — secret service agents are amusing), several big whigs from the powerbroker part of Philadelphia – polictics and such.

Who would you like to trade places with for a day?Brad Pitt. I would be a shameless slut that day — and make a lot of unsuspecting ladies happy too!

Who’s your favorite fictional character? Jack Ryan ala Tom Clancy, Jason Bourne from Ludlum,

What Hollywood star would play you in a documentary based on your life? Wow — a documentary on my life…that would be a snoozer. If I had to choose — someone in the rugged (as in can do farm work yet does know how to shower) good looks category.

What song(s) best represents the soundtrack of your life? Most songs coming to mind seem to short or only address a certain part of my life — maybe that beer comercial “back in the high life again..”

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? Ooooh — one of my favorite naughty jokes! A whale – 14 foot tongue and the ability to breath out the back of my head. grin

When you were a kid growing up, who did you imitate when you stood in front of the mirror? Nobody that I can remember — probably someone tough with lots of muscles.

Name a book you’ve read recently and liked. I’ve been reading a ton lately — right now I am most of the way thought MuCullough’s (sp?) John Adams — before that was the B. Franklin “The First American” — both are FANTASTIC biographies of amazing characters from our American Revolution…and you thought party politics were nasty today! The lily white pussies in D.C have nothing on the founding fathers — espeically when they had to vacate the capital (Philly in those days — D.C was still a swamp) due to Yellow Fever. Modern day pansies… I’ve also got a few new Indian cookbooks that are teaching me well.

Name a film you’ve seen recently and liked. A week of vacation is awesome — Serenity today (great flick), Pirates of the Carribean.

Name an album you’ve heard recently and liked. Portana is right — Nickelback & the John Mayer Trio new ones are great — got a Weekend at the Rocks with Dave Matthews that wasn’t too bad, Brad Paisleys newish one is pretty good too.

Finish this line: “If we can send a man to the moon, then why… ?” isn’t our culture (American) less focused on material possesions and more on character merit?

What will you remember most about the ’90′s?High school and puberty. Fun stuff Wade.