As part of the “putting things in order,” I’m doing some very rough budgeting and prioritizing of expenses and projects in my world. I’m looking for jobs and trying to figure out my needs and what not. Turns out this is hard stuff.
This is in part difficult because I’m a pretty frugal person, I’m low key, I get a lot of clothes second hand (there are some great local second hand shops). And when you think about knitting as an entertainment (which it is) the dollars to hours ratio is pretty good. Same with spinning, only potentially more so. Same with books and reading. And writing is, well free. And while I’m pretty up to date with what’s happening with technology, I have a 3+ year old computer, a 3 year old cell phone, a somewhat newer iPod (that I totally use constantly). Embarrassingly I don’t even have my own digital camera, and don’t seemed too inclined to get one, (I have a 20 year old film camera that I don’t use much though!) You get the picture.
As a sort of thought experiment, I made a list of “things I would buy if money were no object.” Not extravagances exactly, but all of the things that I’ve said in the last couple of years “you know it’d be nice if I had X.” I’m not going to list these things because that would be absurd, but it’s interesting to see what I listed. A surpassing number of things were I’d estimate 20 dollars or less, and at least 80% of the list were things that were 100 dollars or less. And most of these things are piddly like (a desk chair which is two inches taller--which I suspect doesn’t exist--and leans back a little, or a sippy-lid for a nalgene bottle.) These are things, that I mostly need to just drag myself to the store to get done--complicated only by the fact that I sort of hate shopping.
I think this would make me a lousy lottery winner. It’s really hard to spend a few million dollars on things under 100 dollars. Reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s story Other People’s Money (podcast here) a little.
I’ll write more about headphones in another post, but my writing headphones have been ill for the past six months or more. Their detatchable cord had been chewed by a certain long dog and while this didn’t ruin the cord, it did hasten it’s demise. As I said the cord was detachable, which lead me to believe that it was also replaceable. Unfortunately, the manufacturer used a non-standard attachment size--not the connector which was perfectly standard, but the end was a bit smaller than the generic cords.
So I had this very nice set of headphones, and no way to reliably plug them in, and I had given up on them, and had convinced myself to ask for them as a birthday gift (Next Monday). As I started to do some research looking for the right replacement pair I became confused and disgruntled (reading the musing of audiophiles often does this to me). So in frustration I was finally driven to take a blade to one of the ends of a mini-stereo cord. and… Lo and behold, I was able to make it fit without compromising function.
Ergo. Good as new headphones. In fact, better than new headphones, as the cord I have now is thicker and not broken and therefore more conductive, so the sound is noticeably better. I’m happy. On the downside I don’t have a clue what I want for my birthday now. Sigh.
I hope you’re having a good day. My presence here will be sporadic over the next several days, but I think I should be able to keep in touch.