Scattered Thoughts

Ok, so I know I said I'd keep track of what I spent on the blog. I know the $5 a day month was supposed to be March… well… it ended up being April. I gave up on the March $5 program because I knew I would be forced to live in $5 a day the whole month of April. This is because my truck insurance was due and I hadn't saved up any cash month by month to pay for it.

So here I am after surviving the month of April on only $148, $2 under the $5 a day maximum. I'm pretty pleased with that. It took quite a bit of self-discipline and sacrifice, but it is possible. I'm going to try to keep as closely to that limit each month as I can; it will help me get myself sitting on a good nest-egg and will help me get my credit cards, car loan, and student loan paid off in a timely manner.

This past weekend, Shotwell and I took a trip to the Red River Gorge to do some climbing. I didn't bring a camera with me (because it would've been destroyed) so I don't have any photos from the weekend, sadly. He and I left Thursday night, climbed Fortress Wall (Northern Gorge region) all day Friday. It was my first trad climbing experience and I have to say that I'm hooked. There's something about the "climbing on sketchy protection" dynamic that makes the climbs more invigorating. We didn't climb anything super technical or super difficult maxing out on some 5.6 trad.

Saturday, we were going to return to Fortress Wall or head out to Pistol Ridge, but the rain the night before pretty much told us no. So instead of climbing, we hiked almost everywhere in the Natural Bridge State Park. It was a good time, saw some absolutely beautiful land, rocks, and vistas. All in all, it was an amazing weekend.

In site news, I'm trying to get a new design put together, but I would rather do other things than spend hours sitting in front of my computer, creating a new blog design, especially now that it's getting warmer and warmer outside.

Anyway, that's all I want to write for now. Hopefully more soon.

peace
tm

We walked upon the railroad 'cause the train no longer ran. We caught a glimpse of all we missed from the stars that filled our eyes.

I actually spent some cash yesterday. I didn't include anything in the post I made yesterday morning because I wasn't 100% sure how much I would be spending. Here's the expense list:

• Speaker Wire – $5.53
• Cheese on my dinner sandwich – $0.21
• Total outflow – $5.74

I also had the usual $2.20 spent on gas getting to and from work yesterday.

That brings the monthly total/averages to the following:

Tuesday, the apartment complex had the flooring guys come in and replace our carpet. The new hardwood laminate floor is awesome! When I got home from work, both cats were cowering in my bedroom. Me, thinking that Roark would be ok coming to visit, pulled him out, walked into Jimi's room to see what he was up to and as soon as I got into the living room, Roark tore the crap out of my hand and ran into Jimi's room, under his bed. Moral of the story is that cats don't like loud noises, and we have a new floor everywhere but our bedrooms and bathrooms.

The project that has been consuming me at work is about to draw to a close for now. I've been sitting on the IU Web Content Management System (WCMS) committee since this summer. We're looking at WCMS's that would fit the needs of the IU community. My most recent assignment coming out of that group was to develop a 2-day training session on an open source WCMS — eZ Publish. Don't let the name fool you, it's nothing but eZ… It's one of the least user-friendly WCMS's I've ever seen.

Nonetheless, the training is being done the week of the 24th, so I'll be a little less stressed after that. When the WCMS stuff is over, I'll be focusing on Flash. I thought I'd never say this, but I am actually looking forward to finishing the new Flash curriculum.

Hopefully I'll get out and get some geocaching done next week. I need to get outside, I've got a really bad case of the winter blues… It'll also give me something interesting to take photos of for the photoblog. I miss both those things (photography and geocaching) and am looking forward to running around outside with my camera.

Now all I need is someone to run around outside looking for little pieces of crap hidden in boxes…

That's all I have time to write now.

I don't want to learn what I'll need to forget

Just a quick $5 a day update before I teach this afternoon…

Monday & Tuesday = now cash outflows yet. That's four days that I've spent nothing and lived on leftovers from last month. Starting today, though, I'll have some expenses.

I went grocery shopping this morning and bought the following:

• Instant oatmeal – 20 servings for $5 – $0.25 a serving (won't be eating this for a few days still)
• Rice – 20 servings for $3.48 – $0.17 a serving
• Cereal – 7 servings for $2.50 – $0.36 a serving
• Soy milk – 16 servings for $2.96 – $0.19 a serving (won't need to use this for a couple days)
• Frozen peas – 20 servings for $2.16 – $0.11 a serving
• Sliced cheese – 23 servings for $4.76 – $0.21 a serving
• Bread – 16 slices for $2.78 – $0.17 a slice
• Eggs – 18 for $2.93 – $0.16 a piece
• 100′ speaker wire – $5.53

The speaker wire is because the wiring for the stereo that I have in the living room is too short to reach the speakers with the new living room configuration.

Gas spent the last two days – $4.40 (to and from work for two days averaging $2.20 a day at $3.09 a gallon)

Let's take a look at the average expenditures through Tuesday night:

That's all I have time to write about now, hopefully I'll get a chance to write more tonight or tomorrow morning.

tm

Would you choose to die in sorrow if you could be remembered after you go?

So Carney was down this weekend, which could've been problematic for the new experiment, but I managed to not spend any money this weekend Horray! I lived on what was in the house already to get ahead a bit. The only thing I spent cash on was the gas it took to get from my apartment to the far east side to pick up one of Carney's friends, then to Hoosier Heights and back. I don't know how many miles that was (because I wasn't paying attention) so I'm going to estimate how much I spent.

So here's the update so far:

As you can see, just like I had guessed, gas expenditures are going to throw me over $5 a day every day.

As I mentioned earlier, Carney was down this weekend. We ended up going to the gym on Saturday which made two days in a row for me, Shotwell and Jessi. For being the second day in a row, I climbed pretty well. I wasn't climbing lights-out, but I wasn't sucking it up either. My endurance is lower than I would like it to be, but with climbing two to three days a week, that should change pretty rapidly.

I'm also going to be getting back to swimming on my lunch break this week. I haven't been able to make it lately because of a last-minute, get-it-done-as-fast-as-you-can project at work. Now that that project is pretty much over (minus the actual training I'm supposed to lead), I'll have more time to get back to the pool.

That's all I'm going to write for now since I have stuff to do.

tm

I love the miles between me and the city.

This morning, on the morning radio show I listen to, Robert Schimmel, comedian and author of Cancer on $5 a Day* *(Chemo not included): How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life, was on and talking about his fight with cancer. It's not the fighting of cancer that sparked my interest, rather the title of his book.

I'm curious if it is possible to live healthily on $5 a day, so here's what I'm going to do to find out:

For the month of March, I am going to try to live on $5 a day or less. This doesn't mean simply spending $5 a day; this means that the sum total of all things I consume in a day must cost less than $5. For example, one day, I may spend $20 on groceries; this is not breaking the rules as long as I only consume $5 or less of those groceries that day.

A few things to note:

• I will be starting this experiment with whatever food I have in reserve — I have some rice, Ramen noodles, vegetarian patties, bread and the basics (flour, sugar, salt, spices, some soy milk, etc). These things will not be counted into the total because 1) I can't remember how much of them I've used and 2) I don't remember what they cost when they were purchased.
• Reoccurring payments won't be included — But, come tomorrow, I will list what I spend each month on things like rent, phone, debt payment, truck insurance, etc. One of my goals with this experiment is that if this is possible, the next few months I will be trying to pay off as much debt as possible.
• Cat stuffs and gasoline won't be included — Now, my reasoning for this is as follows: If I really needed to live on $5 a day, I would be forced to find another home for the cats (sad face). The gasoline: I will make two calculations a day, one taking into account the amount of gas I have spent and another that does not calculate gas expenditures. Gas is a necessity and I see it as overhead for making money and since I see this as overhead, it would fall into the reoccurring payments category.
• Donations are not going to be considered — If someone wants to buy me a beer, I'm not going to say no. Same with someone wanting to buy me dinner.

I'm also not going to freak out if I accidentally spend more than $5 a day, I'll just try to make the $5 a day average out for the week. I will be summarizing what I have spent and what I have eaten each day here as well as keeping a running daily average. I don't think there will be a problem finding the posts, but I will tag them all with the category $5 A Day.

The experiment starts tomorrow, so I guess today is the last day I have to eat a Moe's burrito for thirty days.

Some quick numbers on gasoline consumption
Truck City Mileage – 14 mpg
Distance to work – 5 miles
Average cost to drive to work ($3.09/gal) – 5 Mi x (1 Gal / 14 Mi) x ($3.09 / Gal) = $1.10 one way, $2.20 both ways
Number of trips to work in a month – 21 (in March)
Total cost of trips in a month – $46.20

These calculations only take into account trips to and from the office at today's gas price of $3.09 a gallon (the station down the street from my house that I always use). This doesn't take into account my twice a week trips to the climbing gym, my trips to the grocery store, or any other side trips.

I won't be changing any plans, just changing the way I participate in the plans I've already made.

One challenge to be aware of: We are planning on taking a trip to the Red River Gorge starting the evening of March 13, and ending the evening of March 16. I will have to live very frugally the first few weeks of the month to be able to afford this trip.

So, as you can see, I have quite the challenge ahead of me. I'm looking forward to seeing if this is possible. I am going to have to make sacrifices, but that will be good for me. Ever since I was hired full-time at IU, I haven't been doing much to save money and was doing the bare minimum to pay off debt. Tomorrow starts the month of truth and I'm looking forward to it.

Until tomorrow!
tm

You can answer the phone and talk anyway you choose it…