It was one of those days that started out beautifully, and ends in a smashing bustle of head pain. Nevertheless, here are today’s musings and spendings:
$33.00 (credit–guarantees I get a receipt, which is necessary since I will be reimbursed for this) to Sugar Sweet Sunshine for 22 cupcakes to feed to whichever brilliant MA students [...]
This is why one should post daily–otherwise you find yourself buried in little expenses, a bit like those errant leftovers hiding in the back of the refrigerator. They’ve mutated into something dangerous in those forgotten moments. Beware.
On the train today, I gave a man my change for a song he sang. $0.31(cold change)
My husband went [...]
From A Report of an Enquiry by the (Great Britain) Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, Presented to Parliment in 1911, we learn that not much has changed in US consumption habits since 1909.
It is evident, however, that the practice of buying clothes that are expected and intended to [...]
School landed last Saturday, squashing my psyche, hauntingly similar to that farmhouse landing on a witch in Oz. Instead of falling apart, like I normally do, I took a bit of wisdom gleaned from a class and decided to shift the mental burden for a few daily activities onto my husband. Namely, grocery shopping [...]
I’ve recently been reading Colin Campbell’s “Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming” from Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, edited by Lawrence B. Glickman, (Cornell University Press). In his essay, Campbell proposes that daydreaming inherently plays into consumption by creating an alternative world that we, as daydreamers, increasingly confuse with reality. He postulates [...]
The first week of the month always means paying a pile of bills.
$18.68 to national grid for my heating gas. I used 4 therms last month making cookies, bread, soup, and accidentally leaving the gas on all night one night (it was on low, and the flame went out). I woke around 5:30 thinking “wow, [...]
Well, the real expenses hit today. Rent. $1500.00, paid by check for our pseudo one-bedroom, roach and rodent-free apartment in a good location. Amenities? Two human dishwashers, a sloping floor, four windows, a skylight, and excessively adequate heat.
Other expenses: $6.00 on cupcakes from Sugar Sweet Sunshine for my cousin, to celebrate her new apartment. I [...]