Leelanau Whippersnapper

Boy this blog has just not been a priority lately for me and I’m feeling a little guilty about it.  My creative enthusiasm has been rather blocked lately.  Work has been crazy this past month or so and it’s been consuming most of my free time.  I’ve been struggling daily with a sick bunch of employees (from sniffles to flu) and I’m apparently the only one who doesn’t get sick.  They keep telling me my time will come but I just don’t have time to get sick.  In the course of my life, I have called in to work for being sick only once that I can remember and that was because I was in fact too sick to even get out of bed.  My immune system must be fairly strong…or I simply understand better that if I don’t show up to work, I don’t get paid.  I suspect that latter is my motivation for staying healthy.

I finally have a day off today, the sun is actually out (although not for long) and I’m trying hard to come up with a plan for the day.  My house is a mess, Gavin the wonder dog is drooling to get outside and play, but my little home is in desperate need of some TLC and a deep clean.  I don’t know if it’s the change in weather or not but I’ve got a fly problem at the moment.  Something hatched somewhere and I’ve had to kill off a whole swarm of these creatures.  I need to find out where they are coming from today because they are driving me NUTS!  So, I think today I might try and go for a hike and take some pictures of the fall colors (which I’ve largely missed this year due to my work schedule) and then spend the rest of the day cleaning.

Good news is on the horizon though for me in regards to my finances.  I’ve decided to go CABLE FREE and I’m in the process of getting myself set up to return my cable box and cancel my over priced subscription services to cable TV.  I have successfully hooked up a computer to my big screen TV and I am now able to watch all of the shows that I would normally watch on TV for free via multiple web sites that stream television shows for free.  One such site is Hulu.com and it is fast becoming a worthy alternative to paid TV service.  Granted, nothing there can be seen live (all the shows I watch are available one day later than the day they air on TV networks) but I’m OK with that since 99% of the time, I am not around to watch live TV anyhow.  The only aspect of going Cable Free that I am going to miss is the High-Def aspect.  Everything on the Internet is in good quality but it’s not truly a High-Definition experience.  That’s OK though, I’ll just save that for my movies where it actually matters.  The most exciting thing about doing this is that it will save me over $100 a month which is a tremendous savings considering that at best, the value I got out of my cable subscription was worth at best about $20.

I’ve been pretty impressed with myself in regards to my finances.  I’ve been able to find ways to cut costs this year by being creative and as a result, I’ve been able to spend my extra money on things that actually have meaning to me, like electronics and other fun toys.  I’ll be the first to admit that my expenses have not gone down at all but I have managed to re-prioritize my spending habits to better suit my lifestyle.  The next goal for me is to re-evaluate my credit reports and finally start to repair the damage I did to it years ago when I was young and stupid with my money.  Fortunately, I’ve had several years now of positive impact on my credit score, nearly every dumb thing I did in my early 20’s has dropped off my report, and I’ve been able to stay on track with debts and bills for several years now.  All of this is in an effort to eventually purchase a home at a good rate.  I’m most proud of the fact that I’ve not had a credit card now in several years and I have no intentions of trying to get one in the near future.  Credit cards are simply bad for me.  They work for some people but they don’t for me and I’m OK with that.  If I don’t have cash, I don’t spend money and right now, that is an appropriate rule for me.

Hopefully I’ll write a bit more in the coming days and weeks.  Just about a month now until Black Friday and things are going to be crazy at work leading up to that.  I have 2 more vacation days that I have to take before December 5 (or I lose them) and I’m thinking I might take a couple of day trips around the area to take pictures in places I’ve not been before.  We’ll see, most of that will depend on the weather which has not been very good lately.  Well, off now to motivate myself to take a hike.

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Well, after a good week now of having a visual editor on my blog that was missing major components, It’s finally been fixed and I can now edit my posts without going crazy.  It seems though that when one thing starts working again, another thing breaks.  My Apple TV is not working correctly, actually the Apple TV is fine, it’s some of the software that is running on it that is currently broken.  Again, nothing I can do about it until they release a patch for the software and who knows when that will be.  Technology sucks sometimes.

I’m finally off for the weekend!  This is my first weekend off now in nearly a month and it looks like the weather might cooperate a little bit.  Sunday is the fist day of summer (and Father’s Day) and we are still only in the 70’s up here most of the time if not colder.  We’ve had no really hot days yet this summer.  I’m going to be headed out to the lake Sunday for sure but maybe Saturday too.  I’ll have to see how late I end up sleeping and what the weather looks like when I get up.

Now that the blog is finally fixed, I’ll get back into writing again here soon.  My schedule is finally calming down a little bit too so maybe I won’t be so dam tired.  I’m starting to count the days to my vacation in July.  I’ll be headed to Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Indianapolis over a period of about 6 days.  It should be fun.  I’m really looking forward to Chicago since it’s been forever and a day since I’ve been there.  I’ll be staying with some old friends who came to seem me this past summer up here.  Now I just need to watch my spending over the next month so I can have a little spending money.

Not much else to post right now.  I’ll leave you with this picture I found on one of the blogs I read.  June is Gay Pride month.  This year is also the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots which is considered to be the starting point for the gay rights movement.  Lots going on right now in politics, too bad I’m just too tired to write about it right now.  More later.

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I’m constantly amazed at the new things I find on the web these days.  I keep thinking back to 1993 in my freshman year at collage.  That year, I got to work and study in a huge computer lab with what was then, very current technology.  The Internet was just a baby.  Recently invented of course by Al Gore (hahaha).  I was able to get on line in the labs and use Gopher to find various things that might help me out in my studies.  How primitive.  Then, later that year, we saw the first web browser that used HTML to offer graphics and such.  That browser (Mosaic) later turned into Netscape which then evolved the Internet even further.  I used to spend hours in the lab ignoring my schoolwork just surfing the Internet.  Then I would go home and pay nearly $400 a month for AOL who charged for Internet access at 14.4Kbs speed BY THE MINUTE (so I could complete the schoolwork I neglected in the lab).  Anyhow, to this day, I’m always surfing and finding new things, constantly amazed by new technology.  Of course now I have an unlimited 5Mbs connection for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Oh how I wish this web site had been around when I was attempting to draft musical compositions (something I suck at).  I hated learning the proper (traditional) styles of composition.  My professors hated my handwriting, not to mention my flat out refusal to avoid perfect traveling octaves in my assignments (among other composition faux-pas).  I’ll readily admit that I’m not a composer and I do indeed get why understanding the rules are important (it’s like proper grammar).  To me, music composition was ALWAYS first about how it sounded to ME the composer.  I had enough experience in classical, choral, and to an extent Jazz music to know what sounded good and what didn’t.  If it worked for what I was composing and it happened to break a rule, big fucking deal.  My professors saw things differently.  I learned a great deal being ridiculed by my composition professors and then given handshakes from my peers after class for doing my own thing and ticking off the prof.  No really, I don’t fault them for their insistence that I learn how to do things correctly.  It was for a grade after all, once I was out of their class I could do whatever I wanted…and I did.  Anyhow, for you composers out there, check out this web site.  If you are still writing in long form (and not using a computer), this might save you a little money.  Looking back, I think if I were in school today in a composition class, professors might treat my anti-rule attitude in regards to composition a little differently considering the evolution of music.  I think my profs were a little put off by me too since they realized that I still saw myself (and was being treated by my peers) as a big fish in a little pond.  My background, stubbornness, and the talent I was willing to express forced them to constantly try to keep my ego in check and that was a lot of work for a few of them.  They knew better than I did, if only I had allowed that to sink in a little further.

So on the same technology lines, I was thinking the other day as I added more friends on Facebook from high school, that my class was the last one in 1991 (my Sophomore year) to officially learn to type using a typewriter.  The following year, Christian Hell High installed a new computer lab and from that point on, kids learned using computers.  It’s crazy to think that in under 20 years, we’ve advanced so much that nearly everything I grew up with (except for Tinker Toys) is obsolete.  It puts into perspective a little what my parents must think about some of the tech toys I show them.

Well, it’s off to bed now.  5am arrives far too early.

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OK, so I will be the first to admit that being single with a full time, well paying job has distinct advantages. I’ll also be the first to say that my bills could be MUCH lower than they are. I have (and likely always will) live well beyond my means. That said, I’ve come a long way in learning how to manage my cash flow. Granted, I still get nailed sometimes with expenses that I’ve not planed for but for the most part, I’ve finally arrived to that point where I’m not running to Mom and Dad every other week for a loan like I was years ago (but thank God they still have the willingness to bail me out once in a while). It’s amazing how much better you can feel about life when you actually have a few months of standard expenses in the bank as a buffer and you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck. This is the only time of year I can enjoy that…I hope that since I am no longer required to share my “wealth” with anyone else, I can maintain that buffer for quite a while now.

That said, I am a tech geek in many ways. I always have to have the latest toys. Jirar told me the other day that he was planning on taking back his iPod. I have grown pretty fond of the little mp3 player since my entire music collection is now in digital form. I don’t have much use for a CD player any more. Well, it is his iPod and it would have been hard for me to just say no so I went out and decided to just buy my own. I looked at a few options and it was a toss up between the 80gig iPod classic which would have been large enough to hold my 20gig music collection as well as video and podcasts -OR- the 8gb iPod Touch which is the latest and greatest thing from Apple with an awesome touch screen, WiFi enabled so I can get on the internet anywhere there is an access point (important now that I’ll be moving into town) and LOTS of other toys that are just fun. The biggest drawback however was that it is 10 times smaller in capacity. There was really no significant price difference between the 2, only a HUGE size difference. The iPod Classic would hold 10 times the number of mp3’s that the iPod Touch would.

Well, I decided to go with the iPod Touch. At best, and at any given time, I only listen to around 2-3gb worth of my mp3 files (about 150 songs). My taste in music fluctuates and these things are accommodating enough that I can just rotate my music collection as my taste evolves and changes. And now I can sit in my living room and watch YouTube videos on my iPod.

This thing also comes as a phone but you have to have AT&T as your provider right now and I can not justify switching cell phone providers, especially after I just got a new cell phone too!

Anyhow, I think my recent spending spree is pretty much over now. The last thing I need to do is get Gavin updated on his shots at the vet but selling off my firewood to Uncle Lou will pay for that. The only other thing I have to invest in now is half the fee of a storage unit that Jirar and I will be sharing starting in July. Beyond that, I’m pretty well up to date for the year.

Writing should be picking up a little although I am going into a stretch now of 3 weeks in a row without a weekend off. My assistant is having surgery so in order to keep things going I’ve had to pick up some slack. Lucky for me, she will be paying me back later this summer by working several days for me so I can have a break (even though she doesn’t know it now). Cheers for now!

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