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December 2007 - Posts
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It's that day of the year when everyone is ready for some fun...New Year's Eve! It seems that, no matter what your age, when it comes to today people make plans, get dressed up, eat nice food, and revel in the fact that another year has come and gone whether for better or for worse. It's the one day a year where we can convince ourselves that a period of time really ends and another begins. It seems that many people like to travel to a big city for New Year's Eve to join in the celebration with hundreds and thousands of other people in huge (usually freezing cold) outdoor parties. I've heard of people getting to Times Square at dawn on New Year's Eve to camp out and make sure that they have "a spot" for the festivities later in the day. While that seems a little bit obsessive and overkill to me, I guess to each his or her own, right? I personally have never done anything big and exciting on New Year's Eve. It's a day that sneaks up on me and makes me wonder about what all has happened over the past year. It makes me reflect on where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going to be and what I'm going to accomplish over the next year. Rather than going out and spending the day with thousands of people who I don't know to ring in the New Year, I almost always prefer to keep things safe and simple by getting together with close friends, perhaps at someone's home. That is exactly what I did today, which of course was a much less expensive and far safer alternative to going out somewhere where we have to pay extra for food, service, drinks, and then drive to and from where we end up with the chance of unsafe drivers around. Since today is such a huge day in college football, I sat for the most of the day with one of my best friends at his house and watched the college bowl games on television. We ordered in some food and then waited for the rest of the gang (around ten more people) to show up to chat, have some drinks, and catch up after Winter break. It was very nice to be able to sit back, relax, and not worry about a thing besides having fun. There was no real talk of school or academics, which, for graduate students, is always a welcome relief. I think that the big ball drop snuck up on me, because I remember turning to the correct television station with less than thirty seconds left, so there was no "build up" to the moment. We had poured some delicious champagne, and as we counted down the last ten seconds, I remember being very thankful for being home, warm, happy, and safe with good friends on yearly "transition". I hope that it is the case that years come and go, but friends remain. With that little recap of my New Years Eve festivities, I wish all of you a very happy, safe, healthy, and prosperous 2008!
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At this time of year, especially after the crazy time of Christmas shopping and holiday travel, I always thank my lucky stars that I have been blessed enough to be funded by my university while I've been at graduate school. I know that there are many individuals out there around America and around the world who are doing their best and working very hard to make it by at school without any support from their departments or their university. I think about these individuals often, and I always always wish them the best. There are plenty of people in my own department who I sit with in classes every single day who do not have funding, and I know the struggles that they face to juggle their homework with their jobs and perhaps even loan payments along the way. I know that if I'm feeling financially pressured at this point in the year, they have to be feeling this pressure tens of times worse. I try to do little things for my friends who I know are struggling a bit. Perhaps taking them to lunch, making dinner, or just suggesting that we hang out and visit at home rather than heading out for dinner or drinks. I know that they are little things, but being a student myself, I can't do much either. Each semester that I have received funding, I have always kept my mind on the future and my finances. Things like dissertation research travel, paying taxes, and paying on my student loans from undergrad are always on my mind. I know that some of these are shorter term concerns and some are longer term concerns, but they are concerns nonetheless. Because I know that I have these other financial commitments ahead of me, I do my best to spend conservatively throughout most of the year so that I can make a profit on my fellowship stipend each semester. Each semester I try to save a couple thousand dollars to put into savings so that the money will add up as time goes on. This extra money will do nothing but help me in the long run, as long as I keep remain disciplined enough to save it. Sometimes it gets very difficult. Case in point...I wrote to you all about my recent shopping trips where I was very tempted to spend spend spend, just because I could. Then again, I thought to myself, why not splurge and buy a few nice things that I can enjoy and then save the rest. Of course that what I ended up doing, and although it pained me a little bit at the time, I'm very thankful that I did so at this point. I kept telling myself that I would be a lot more thankful come next week when the next disbursement of my fellowship gets deposited into my checking account. But then again it starts all over again wondering about funding for the following year. Some fellowships, like the one that I receive, have to be renewed each year, so there is a point each year where I have to reapply and hope for the best. I am hoping that with my positive progress and good grades that I will be renewed once again, but surely it is not something that I can just expect to happen. I always fear for the worst, and that way I will be less disappointed (at least that's what I tell myself) if a negative outcome should result.
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Whenever I have to get up extraordinarily early, whether for traveling or otherwise, my body is never happy with me. I should have anticipated that I would be stuck with a stomach ache and a migraine as soon as I woke after just about six hours of sleep before heading out to the airport to begin my journey back to the frozen state of Indiana. I always have high hopes for how I will spend my time traveling. Seeing as though I am more or less stuck in one place (on a plane or at a gate) for hours, I always make sure to bring lots of things to read with me in order to both keep myself occupied and attempt to be as productive as possible. This plan worked out fine on the way home for Christmas, but with my stomach grumbling and migraine pounding in tow, I knew that there was going to be little progress made on the way back. Normally this wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that I was going to have to sit through a four hour layover in Washington, DC before my flight was ready to board to Indianapolis. I tried several times to sit and try to read, but every time I took something out to delve into, my head just started pounding again. Since I didn't want to leave the main gate area and have to go through the security checkpoint again, I decided to sit quietly in the gate area and people watch. Luckily from where I was sitting, I had a great view of the Washington skyline, so at least I was staring out into space at something. After the first couple hours, I knew I had to get up and walk around to eat something or shop or just do anything besides sit. I get cabin fever very easily, and today was no different from any other day. I must have walked around the various food establishments five or six times before deciding on purchasing an extremely expensive bagel and a diet soda. After I had wasted that time, I decided to tour the two different newstands/giftshops in the concourse. With all the people hustling about me, it didn't take to much time to realize that no one really appreciated a bored person wandering through the stores, so I resolved to go back and find my seat. Earlier in the day, when I first arrived after my first flight to Washington, I learned that there was an earlier flight to Indianapolis that I could catch that would result in only a one hour layover, rather than a four hour one. I was all set to pay the additional twenty-five dollar service charge to transfer my ticket and I had the gate agent making the changes, when all of the sudden she stopped to ask me if I had checked luggage. Well of course I did...I had just spent nine days away from home. Well, that was my downfall...checked luggage. She informed me that there was no way to make the transfer if that was the case. I decided that I was too exhausted to argue the case, so I resolved to just sit around. It would be either sitting around in Washington or otherwise sitting around in Indianapolis, since my ride wasn't going to be able to pick me up any earlier anyways. In the end it all worked out. I had no delays, no problems, no luggage issues, and all that it took me was sitting around for four hours with nothing to do. Could have been better, could have been much worse.
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You may recall from a few days ago that I mentioned that the numerical, geographical, and age makeup of the two sides of my family is totally different. While my mom's side of the family has a lot of kids, is somewhat younger in general, lives all in the same town (except me), and is numerous...my dad's side of the family is none of those things. Christmas celebrations with my dad's side of the family are usually very stressful owing to the fact that my grandparents are older and don't like a lot of fuss. We also don't have a big enough house to fit the nine people who will be there, yeah, figure that one out. Just for a size comparison to those nine people, my mom's side of the family has twenty that show up to Christmas. Anyways, ever since I can remember, Christmas with my dad's side of the family has felt "different". Sure, it's great to see the family, but it's always crowded and somewhat high-stress. Rather than sitting down to a dinner, we do snacks. The amount of alcohol consumed by any one person is monitored consistently. Gifts are opened in order of age, rather than just being opened. No one ever knows who they are "doing gifts" with from one year to the next. Finally, gifts consist of a huge exchange of money and/or gift certificates and gift cards, mostly because no one knows what others want or like because no one ever sees each other. Can you see where the stress derives from?...right. Things most always end up going smoothly however, and the highlight of the occassion is where the four cousins along with their significant others end up going down to our favorite townie hangout for drinks and the opportunity to talk about our crazy family and what we are doing with our lives. This is honestly one of my favorite things to look forward to each year. Although I've never really had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my two cousins on my dad's side, owing to the fact that they always lived about three hours away, even when we were kids and now they (and I) live even farther away, it's great to be able to catch up for a while at Christmas. In comparison to the other side of the family, the four cousins on my dad's side span the ages of twenty-seven to twenty-four, rather than twenty-six to twelve. At this point in our lives, we have a lot more in common even though we lead totally different lives. I suppose that when we end up going out for drinks on our Christmas that we always live it up and make sure to have a nice time since it's extremely likely that none of us will see each other again until the same event next year. I'm hoping that that won't be the case for me this year. I've got pretty set-in-stone plans to go visit my one cousin in New York City for my Spring break this coming year, and then I'm trying to work out something to fly to Barcelona with my grandmother where I'll see my other cousin. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! Anyways...back to Indiana tomorrow!
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In past years when I've come home for Christmas break, it has seemed almost like a whirlwind of engagements to keep up, friends to meet, and places to go. This year, on the other hand, has been a lot different. While I still have had plenty to do to keep me occupied, I haven' t found myself going out a lot for social engagements or spending a lot of unnecessary money on food, drinks, or entertainment. The money that I have spent has gone towards improving upon or adding to Christmas gifts, and a lot of my time has been spent with family members. I have noticed that I have spent a great deal of time in the car over the time that I've been home, which is owing to the fact that I didn't have my own car this visit, so I've been juggling and trading cars with various members of my family who have been nice enough to let me borrow them. That means dropping people off for work, going to do what I need to do, and then going back to pick them up again. Luckily the weather hasn't been too terrible and the temperatures have been somewhat bareable, so my time spent driving around the city hasn't been all that bad. With all the things that I've had to do, it's hard to imagine what my vacation would have been like thus far if I did have all the usual social things to keep up with. Of my three good friends that I still keep in contact with from home, only one still lives there, so I don't have to do that kind of extra running around. I was actually able to see my one friend who still lives at home for a longer amount of time and catch up on hanging out and doing all kinds of things like we used to do growing up and in high school. It was a lot of fun to be able to spend some more quality time with one person than running around spending little bits of time with multiple people. That is how the first three or four days of my vacations home usually start out...hence why I'm so exhausted and need a vacation after my vacation is over. I don't know if I'm just getting older or if I just have less energy, but the amount of things that my family expects me to do in a given amount of time just seems to get more intense year after year. Maybe it's the fact that we're all getting older, and they can't keep up with the load of things that need to be done, so I have to help out extra when I finally get home. When it finally got to Christmas Eve and Christmas this year, I was just absolutely zonked out and had a hard time staying awake long enough for all the company to leave from the house. I think that the cold weather takes a lot out of me as well, since I have to expend all that extra energy keeping myself warm. I honestly don't think I really felt comfortably warm for more than an hour the entire time that I've been home. I think that everyone up at home is just so used to being somewhat cold all the time that it doesn't phase them, but this "Florida" boy can't handle that. I always had lots of layers and blankets with me wherever I went so that I could at least attempt to keep myself warm. Tomorrow is the last full day that I'll be home, and I'm honestly looking forward to heading back to Indiana so that I can have a few lazy days before heading off to Chicago for a conference and then right back into school. These breaks are never long enough!
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Perhaps the most dreaded shopping day of the year after Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is the day after Christmas. It's not so much that a whole ton of shopping goes on that day, but rather a whole bunch of exchanges and returns. This day is likely equally dreaded by shoppers doing these returns and the unlucky retail associates that have to work handling these transactions. I suppose that after the hustle and bustle of the Christmas holiday, the last thing that people want to do the next day is hit up crowded and busy malls, and even less so do they want to want in lines only to learn that they don't have the receipt they need or aren't going to get the amount of money back that they had originally thought. Since I don't often get clothing for Christmas, I almost enjoy going to the mall on the day after Christmas to take advantage of all the sales, markdowns, and discounts that undoubtedly happen to get rid of the holiday overflow. Items that just two days ago were very expensive and sought-after are now at some percentage off and sit lonely on somewhat empty shelves until someone snatches them up at a hefty discount. I was happy to take advantage of some of these sales on the day after Christmas, as my Christmas celebration with my father's side of the family isn't going to take place for another couple of days, so I decided to hold off on purchasing gifts for these folks until today so that I could check out these sales. After I had finished my shopping, I was absolutely amazed at the difference between what I would have paid versus what I actually did pay. I think that I saved almost forty percent on my five purchases, which is a great shopping day for me! The only downfall of the day was the fact that the mall looked like a disaster area. Each and every store was torn apart and the shelves and displays were picked over. I guess that if you're going to try to take advantage of the great discounts on this particular shopping day, you're going to have to pay for it by searching for what you need. As an added bonus to the day, I was able to head over to the Hallmark store for some gift bags and boxes for these latest Christmas presents. As with the other stores in the mall, these usually expensive items that no one looks forward to spending their money on were also on sale. I was able to find beautiful gift bags that normally cost about five dollars a piece for just ninety-nine cents. There were bags of bows for the same price and of course rolls of Christmas gift wrap at extremely reduced prices. I saw many moms and grandmas in the store joking about how they were going to buy the paper up and just store it away until next year. I couldn't agree with them more, since it's never too early to start saving for the next Christmas season, since we all know that it will be here again before we even have a chance to blink!
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It's been over a year now since I started writing this blog, and truth be told, it seems like it's been a lot longer than that. For any of you who happen to keep a blog, a diary, or a journal, you know that keeping things current and making sure to write a post every single day is no easy task. This blog however is a lot of fun to write, and I enjoy taking a few moments each day to sit down and write about something that I think is important that has absolutely nothing to do with what I do for school or work. I've been trying to hard to keep the ole blog current as I sit up here freezing in New York while visiting my family for Christmas break. I've been staying with my brother and sister-in-law in their new home, and luckily they have wireless internet in the house so that I can sit down in the warm and cozy living room and write while they watch television. Now, on account of my sister-in-law purchasing a new American bulldog puppy for my brother for Christmas, I do have to dodge the new pup jumping up on the couch next to me every so often. I was talking with my sister-in-law about her gift and I realized just how huge a purchase and a commitment that getting a puppy ends up being. Not only are they expensive to purchase from a breeder, but then their are shots, vaccinations, de-worming, flea medicine, food, supplies, checkups. The breeder told my sister-in-law that, depending on the individual puppy, they can cost between two and three thousands dollars per year. It's just like having a child, granted one that you can leave in a crate for the day rather than paying for a babysitter. I'm glad in that respect that I'm not really an animal person. I like to have things neat, tidy, and non-smelly around the house...and I don't like to have things ruined. I've heard such horror stories about puppies and other pets, that I just don't think that I will ever be able to have one. I had a turtle for about three years, and he was enough of a hassle. It got to a point where I was going to have to buy him a new tank with a new filtration and heating system, and take him to the veteranarian to get medicine for shell rot, and I decided that it was time to take him to the pet store and give him up to a better home. Although I really enjoyed having a pet turtle, I received him as a gift, and truth be told, the novelty wore off after a while. Having a pet, if you're on the fence about it, is one of those things that you don't really want to be thrust into by receiving one as a gift. So this comes full circle to my brother and his new gift/pet. Having a dog, or a cat for that matter, is an entirely different situation than having some fish or even a turtle. With these types of pets comes a lot more commitment and a lot more responsibility,...and by commitment, I mean anywhere between seven and fifteen years, depending on the anaimal and the breed. So, I suppose that the point of this post, besides wishing you all a very merry Christmas, is to open up the eyes of all you gift-givers out there to the joys and not-so-joys of giving and receiving pets as gifts.
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Besides all the usual reasons, Christmas is a particularly important and special time for me each year, because it usually marks one of the only times that I get a chance to visit home and see my family for a somewhat extended period of time. I've technically lived away from home by a considerable distance for over eight years now, and it's hard for me to realize just how much I've missed (whether for better or for worse) during that amount of time. It seems that every time that I come home, my little cousins become less and less "little" and people have gone about their lives with new homes, cars, and purchases. New stores spring up and old ones move, get remodeled, or just change all together. Time keeps ticking whether I'm there or not, and as a result, each time I visit home, it's like a mini culture shock. These times that I get to gather with family have become all the more important on both sides of my family for various reasons. On my mom's side of the family, it's been just about eighteen months since my grandfather passed away, and his passing made us all realize how close we really were. The time that we get to spend together is all the more important now because we all gather to think about him and remember how things went in Christmases past when he was still with us. On my dad's side of the family, it's a little bit different. The family on that side is very small, and we all live all over the place. My cousin and her boyfriend live in Spain, I live in Indiana, my other cousin lives in California, and my aunt and uncle live about four hours away in downstate New York. Getting everyone together in one place all that the same time is no easy feat, and so we're actually very lucky to be able to do it at all. On top of that, my grandparents are getting up in their years, and the years are starting to catch up with them. Truth be told, we never know when it will be our last Christmas with one or both of them, so we do our best to keep things positive and festive and as close to how things have always been as possible. It gets tougher and tougher each year, but we do our best. In the end, it doesn't really matter, as long as we're all together, but I think that keeping the traditions and customs alive as best as possible helps to ease tensions about any number of things, and it reminds us all that we are a strong family with strong ties and great traditions. I know that a lot of people might not necessarily agree with my take on the Christmas holiday, because I tend to put the family togetherness above the religious aspect of things. While I understand and appreciate the miracle of Christmas as it has been celebrated for centuries, I believe that God would be perfectly pleased with how I place my priorities. Our lives begin and end with our families and the relationships that we make with them, and so I think that it's very appropriate for me to concentrate on maintaining those relationships in the minimal time that I have to do so each year. Alas, that's what I have to say about seeing my family...and maybe tomorrow we'll talk about some other fun family Christmas traditions before delving back into our discussion of finances after the holiday.
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It seems like so long, and I suppose it has been a really long time, since I first met my best friend Matt. He and I met when I changed schools at the beginning of the sixth grade, and for the next several years until we graduated high school we were pretty much inseparable. I ended up far away for school, and he stayed closer to home, but we did manage to see each other for summers and holidays, and we visited each other twice during our undergrad years. As time has gone on and things have changed as far as location, it's become more difficult to see one another, but I always think about him a lot at this time of year, because I always remember that today is his birthday, December 23rd. We always used to have a laugh that he was older than me, though only by twenty-two days. That made him a 1980 baby, and me a 1981 baby. Matt and I do our best to stay in good contact, and we especially make it a point to catch up and chat on our birthdays. He and I have one of those friendships where, no matter what the time and the distance, we can always pick up right where we left off. We keep up enough on what one another is doing on a regular basis so that there isn't a lot of "catch up" time when we do get a chance to talk. We always joke about getting a chance to make a visit where we can really get caught up on things and see where one another lives, but it's been difficult both from a logistical and a financial standpoint. I'm in school full time, while he is in school part time and working full time. As you can probably imagine, that doesn't leave him with all that much time to do any relaxing or traveling. I suppose that it would be much better for me to try and make travel plans to get down to see him in south Florida at his fancy apartment, rather than having him and his wife trying to travel up to podunk Indiana to see me. It's just finding times for visits to line up that ends up being the hard part. I suppose that, on top of that, justifying spending time and money flying down to Florida for vacation is pretty tough when I have conferences to attend and traveling for my dissertation research coming up on the horizon. On the other hand, I never really do give myself a chance to get out anywhere, and I do save my money more than I spend it, so maybe at this point I owe it to myself and to my friendship with Matt to try and make plans to make a visit. After all those years that I lived in Florida, I really never made it down to south Florida except once, and that was definitely not a vacation. I have never seen the east coast beaches or visited any of the cities, besides Miami that one time. I guess, having just finished talking for about an hour to Matt on the phone and sending him my long distance birthday wishes, the possibility of making such plans is fresh in my mind and the motivation is there. I really just need to make notes and reminders to myself to keep the thoughts positive and the airline ticket searches going on a regular basis. Hopefully soon I'll have a trip planned and head down to see my best pal!
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As much as I try to avoid it, I can't help but finding last minute gifts that I end up wanting to buy for members of my family. Although I usually show up in town with most or all of my Christmas gift shopping technically done, as I roam about around town visiting various stores and occassional the mall, I tend to find little (not always little I guess) extra things to wrap up and put under the Christmas tree. I fall into a particular trap when it comes to my mother, grandmother, and brother. When it comes to these three people who I have a very special affection to, I just can't seem to buy enough. My mother put up with a lot of things as my brother and I were growing up, both from us and from my father. All the while, it seemed that she was depriving herself of having nice things so that we (my brother and I) could have them instead. My grandmother, on the other hand, has just been an amazingly strong person throughout my lifetime, and I'm sure beforehand as well. She raised a great family and taught her grandchildren many things. She just absolutely deserves to have the best of everything, and her family loves to buy her gifts to show her how special she is. My grandmother and I actually have a very strong bond that surpasses the others. My grandmother is very involved in my academics, and we talk several times per week on instant messenger or on the phone. She is very active in helping me work on my papers and projects for school, and owing to her past editorial experience, I tend to capitalize on her skills and send off my work to her for proofreading and suggestions. Then comes my brother...he and I never really got along until I moved away to college and we didn't get to see each other often. Perhaps it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, because this is exactly what happened in our case. As we've gotten older, we've learned that we have a lot more in common than we have previously understood and we can now relate to one another, although still having the occassional sibling squabble here and there. My brother and I often laugh that we have turned out as well-adjusted and with a taste for the finer things in life considering our modest upstate New York upbringing. We enjoy good food, good entertainment, and good drinks, and this makes our mother laugh. At any rate, you can see that I have great reason to want to buy a little something extra for these three people in my family. I always tell myself that one gift per is quite enough, but then I can't help but to rethink the situation and convince myself that they really deserve something a little bit more. Although I haven't quite figure out yet what to get extra for my mother or brother, finding something to get my grandmother is going to be a lot easier. Since it's an ongoing joke between my grandmother and me that she is my editor, I wanted to get something "academic themed" for her extra gift. She already has just about anything that she could need or want, but I know that she is always looking for supplies for her computer, scanner, printer, or digital camera. I figured that simply getting a gift certificate to one of the big office supply/computer supply stores would be an easy gift. That way she can find exactly what she needs when she needs it for her office gadgets. Some people may think that gift certificates are impersonal, but I would definitely disagree. I think that they are very convenient and as long as they are to a store that the receiver likes, they can always find something that they would like to buy.
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No matter how peaceful we would like things to be around the holiday season, there are always those individuals out there who do their very best to create a stir and upset the cheerful mood that everyone is trying to adopt around the holiday season. It seems that just about everywhere that you go, folks are starting to get into their Christmas routines as work lets out for the holiday and student return home to their parents and families after another long semester at school. There tend to be naps on the couch, fun family meals, and lots of Christmas shopping and subsequent gift wrapping going on. Still others, perhaps out of jealousy or stupidity, try to cause problems for others around this time of the year. One example that was thrown into my face in particular today involved an urban legend that has arisen nearly every Christmas season since the events of September eleventh happened several years ago. I received a nervous and somewhat-frantic call this afternoon from my sister-in-law telling me about a friend of a friend of a friend (you get the point) who received an anonymous tip from some man in the mall that terrorists were going to be targeting malls in the days leading up to Christmas. She was making sure that she let everyone know so that, just in case there was some truth in the story, that no one took a chance of being at the mall during these times. She, and several others I heard the same story from, were unfortunately not privied to the fact that this story has become a very popular urban legend, and one with very little merit. While I will be the first to admit that our "intelligence" folks seem to be the last ones to know about things like this going on in our country, they would likely know and be investigating such a widely known tip about our nation's shopping facilities. Besides this being a ridiculous bit of information, when I had to sit down and tell her about it and the history of the urban legend, it really took the Christmas cheer out of me to think that people are out there trying to ruin the Christmas holiday for so many Americans. I realized at that moment that their actions, although not directly, were affecting me, and I didn't even know or believe the bit about terrorism in the malls. Just seeing others that I care about being affected by this type of information was enough to make the situation passively affect me. I hope that all of you out there who have also heard about such urban legends about malls during the holiday season have learned that this information truly is an urban legend and don't let it affect your holiday shopping, preparations, and cheer. It's tough to be able to live in a world where people joke about and perpetuate such terrible ideas, but we need to do our best to push past them and think positively!
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This is a pretty popular headline that isn't terribly uncommon to see in the news from time to time, whether it's national or local news. I thought that it would be an appropriate title for my post today, because it describes very adequately the way that I've felt over the past few days having to deal with the gasoline prices up here in New York. To give you all an idea of the real pain that I'm experiencing...the prices for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline are almost fifty cents more in upstate New York than they are in central Indiana. Why, you ask? I have no idea. I'm not sure if it has to do with regional availability of gasoline supplies or if it is more to do with taxation. Either way, it is not something that has helped my trip to be enjoyable thus far. I've realized now that I have lived away from home for such a long time, that a lot of what I used to do involved a very limited amount of driving long-ish distances around town. Since my entire family used to live within a two mile radius of one another and my high school was less than a quarter mile away, I never really had to go all that far to do what I had to do on a regular basis. Now, eight years later, my family has branched out a bit, and a lot of what I like to do while I'm home involves going to other parts of the city or visiting friends who have moved away from home to other areas surrounding the city. While this is kind of cool to be able to branch out and visit places in town that I'm not as familiar with, it really does just translate into more money spent for gasoline to get back and forth from where you need to be. This added distance coupled with the ridiculous gas prices is really making it hard on my wallet. Usually, as you all know, I'm pretty good about finding alternate solutions to save myself some money no matter what I have do, but at this point with the limited options that I have available to me to get done what I have to do while home and see everyone that I need to while home, I am just at an absolute loss as to what to do besides just paying the money at the pump and dealing with it. While it's very frustrating, it's a lot easier to do than fret about the money I'm spending. As I've always said in the past, I don't mind paying a little bit more money if it's worth it to save me time and frustration, but when it is something like this gasoline thing, I feel as though I really have no choice one way or the other. An added bit of frustration stems from the fact that the northern suburbs of the city, surrounding where my family lives, are the busiest in the entire city. I have spent an incredible amount of time waiting to make turns and waiting through cycles of the traffic lights, all the while sitting there with the heat and defrosters in the car running so that I don't freeze while I'm waiting. More time, more gasoline, and once again more money. Luckily now that I've seen everyone that I need to see and I've finished up the very last of my Christmas shopping, my travels around the city will become more centralized and yield less gasoline consumption. I'm looking forward to everyone being done with working for the holiday so that I can finally spend some time with my friends and family who I've come all the way up here to see!
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