I Might Be About to Hit Bottom

The good news is, I got a sweater today. It's pink (to replace the one that I ruined three years ago by storing it in my washing machine off-season; washing machine then filled up with water so over the course of many weeks the dye in nearby sweaters bled -- who'd have guessed?) and it's not made of wool (I'm part autistic and can't wear itchy fabrics).

The bad part is that it's from Ann Taylor. So it might just be easier to give up.

French Toast Post II

Okay first off, I'm not feeling bad about not cooking anymore, since tonight I decided to make French toast and the ingredients cost me $25. And that wasn't even for the eggnog kind, since it's not eggnog season yet so I couldn't find any.

Does anyone need 10 eggs?

Also I think I might be pregnant with a rage baby. It would explain my incessant craving for French toast and my rage-baby bump. Details about my rage-baby shower TK.

Bad, Bad Economic Times

So it's not just that I know three people who've been laid off from three jobs in the last week, or that my former employer totally folded the week before that, or that my current employer is constantly thisclose to being sold, or that I accidentally looked at my IRA statement.

But recently my mailbox started filling up with something I hadn't ordered. Yep, my subscription to Positive Thinking magazine has been rolled over to a publication I haven't seen since I lived at home with my mom who got it.

Check out what happens when you go to www.positivethinkingmag.com. That is some sad irony, friends.

$70 Medication Side Effect

Every fourth Tuesday, my sense of smell becomes superhuman. I can smell random people on the street, the two-days old weed in my yoga teacher's hair, someone's lunch three cubes over, whatever.

So yesterday I went outside and smelled lilacs and the scent was so strong, I had to stop and calculate what month it was. The smell kept going for an entire block and I finally realized I was following a woman who must be the source of the lilac smell.

I asked her what fragrance she was wearing (SUPER CREEPY of me, BTW), and she said it was a Jo Malone lotion, so I went to the store and smelled things until I found the lilac smell, which apparently is actually a French lime blossom smell which apparently is actually a linden smell. But hey, it was my front yard and my childhood so I'll call it a lilac smell if I want.

And I didn't even blink at paying $70 for an 8-ounce bottle of lotion (WTF?!) because a) I'm about to live on loans for a year my IRA lost 20% there's no economy we're all doomed anyway and b) it smelled SO GOOD. And I blame the Pill for the hormonal fluctuations that give me my olfactory superpowers.

The end. Now go submit a journal article about that. Lates.

Post-Fire Update

In my line of work as an estate attorney, I'm frequently asked about how one's possessions will be handled post-passage. Something I hear probably six or seven times a month is, "What happens if I die in a fire?"

Well, here are the basics. First, all your burnt stuff goes into trash bags (toward the right of the frame in the pic below). This is taken from above so it's tough to capture the real scale but basically there's a gigantic hill of bags. Then the fire marshals come dig through it for your bed frame (over on the left) and reassemble it to try to track down the origin of the fire. Click if you want a sense of just what a mess this is.

That sits around for a few weeks until all the insurance stuff is dealt with, and then finally a crew comes and hauls all your stuff into a two-car-long Dumpster.
Said Dumpster is then filled to overflowing, emptied out, and then filled to the brim again, this time with all the burnt debris from your apartment, which now looks like this when you walk in the front door.

In terms of both legacy planning and general horribleness, this is not advisable. So please, don't die in a fire.

Secrets of Free Cone Day

Because I'm an out-of-the-closet ice cream fan and overall disgusting hog, I got a lot of emails from people asking if I was going to Ben & Jerry's annual free cone day. So I'd like to break it down for you using something I like to call math. An ice cream cone the rest of the year costs like, what, $5, max? Seriously.

Step one: Divide the amount you make annually by (the number of hours you work each week times the number of weeks per year you go to work). That's your hourly wage.

Step two: Multiply the number of hours you'd spend finding, getting to, and standing in line at a free cone locations by the number you found in step one. Is that number more than the $5 paying for you cone would cost? If so, you just lost money on the deal. Especially if you then factor in the square root of standing in line with a bunch of tourist families and wacky college students.

This is actually some advice I took from consumer advocate Ron Burley, who says to stop fighting a retail dispute if the value of the time you've spent arguing your side threatens to become greater than the amount you stand to gain. It's also the argument I use when I want to justify not doing my own laundry.

By that token, btw, community college is a bit more expensive than it seems, because you have to go there in person during business hours to have someone sign a piece of paper saying you can take a class... then return in person during business hours to be allowed into a room where you use a public internet connection to sign up yourself up for said class... thanks, school!

Idea for Saving Money

So I have a hard time with financial goals, mainly because I'm a loser, but I think I came up with a solution. All I have to do is sue myself for overspending (on charges of gross negligence or somesuch), and I'll lose, and the judge will mandate that I have to follow a budget or else I go to jail or have my wages garnished or something else that will really whip me into shape. I mean sure it might be a burden on our government's resources but c'mon, it'd work! So let me know if you know any lawyers who'd want to take on this groundbreaking case.

PS I'm actually such a loser than when I first wrote "saving money," I actually typed "saving Monday," because the former is so foreign to me that my fingers can barely tap it out.

Business Idea II

So, like, I don't exactly know the specifics of the factors at play, but whatever. My understanding is that if you're even a part Native American, you get a biiiig chunk of your education subsidized. So.

We open a sperm bank, pay Native American dudes way more than the usual amount for their donations, and then charge ladies who want to buy the sperm, like, $10,000 instead of $500 for their dose. The donors win big, the sperm bank wins big, and the overpaying parents win big because they save tens of thousands of dollars on higher education.

JUST SAYING. I'm sure there are absolutely no legal issues hindering the development of this idea.