A more average life

As a hypothetical, what would my life be like if I was more average and spent most of my income instead of what I do now? This leaves me with about another thousand dollars to spend each month. How much of this would be broken down in consumer durables and more on going expenses.
Maybe I'd take up driving, $300-$400 a month (car, insurance, maintenance, fuel, parking) it's a stab in the dark guess
or living in a nicer place, ~$200/month
Film photography ~$40/month
Eating out a bit more $100
The Odd Movie $20
snacks $40
That leaves about $200-$300 for replacing durable goods. Most of it disappeared in a few large categories. Maybe I'm just not being imaginative enough. I'm sure my place would look a lot different. Maybe it would actually be an unshared space, though that would have to cost more than $200 more a month. Well, maybe I could find a basement suite.
I don't think it'll make me any happier though. I'm facing the larger purpose of life issues and the biggest deficiency in my life isn't material, it's sleep.

Very Bad Sign

After a week of working, I slept an extra four hours on the first day of my weekend. Didn't know my sleeping pattern was that bad. I've really got to do something about that.

Reflections on old posts

While reviewing a sales flier and saw some pencil cases for sale. I forgot how long I've been wanting a pencil case and it looks like back to school sales are starting. Anyway, flipping through the old posts, I couldn't find anything about the pencil case. Though I've learnt that my monitor has been dieing since last November. It's also rekindled fond memories of my last vacation in Ohio. It was nice, things felt simpler. The memory that sticks in my mind the most right now is heating up and eating that last frozen lasagna that I had. I can still remember how it tasted. I've stopped watching Wife Swap, but still watch House and Intervention. It's been a while since I set a small weekly goal. I don't think I'll start that up again.

Loneliness and Nostalgia

Today, I found myself under a severe wave of loneliness. I just miss having close friends and snuggles. Also, found myself feeling nostalgic for some old games, Warpath and Castle of the Winds specifically.
Castle of the Winds is an old role playing game, more details and free download available here http://www.exmsft.com/~ricks/
Warpath is a galactic conquest action/strategy game, more details and free download available here http://www.synthetic-reality.com/warpath.htm
They don't have all the fancy 3d renderings, but the simplistic game play makes them timeless classics. Obscure classics, but still classics. It's something that I kind of want to get involved in, making simple games that'll hopefully have a timeless feel to them. Anyway, I should get some rest.

Sad again

What a difference a day makes. I feel a deep and profound sadness today. Earlier, I was starting to feel good about myself. Though some positives today. Returned someone's bank card and mustard seed ID. It took me a little out of the way, but it was the right thing to do. Also a bit of irony worth noting, on Friday, I managed to buy about $5.7K of a fairly illiquid security. Someone accepted my bid at the close of the market, and a bunch of shares traded for less leaving me feeling like I may have over paid. Today, it is one of few items that are up on an otherwise down day. Oh well. Hopefully tomorrow goes better.

98 days

98 days down, going on 102. I just woke up from a strange dream where I was in some sort of war time improvised detainment facility. Anyway, volunteering today. Hoping to pick up some treats along the way to share with the group. I also come to a sad realization, the way dreams are hard to remember is actually almost like commuting. Unless something unusual happens, most people don't remember much, commuting just happens. That's a depressing thought.

I still have my fingers, but other things are broken

I had a near miss at work today. While cutting some material, a bundle of moulding hit me in the arm, pushing it toward the saw. It was a gentle nudge, startling, but no injury. Unfortunately I just cracked the screen of my mp3 player while writing this. Hooked it up to charge, adjusted my chair and crack. I don't really like that one anyway, give me something with swappable batteries. The alarming part with that is that I used to take such good care of my stuff, now everything is just kind of haphazard. I need my space to be more organized.

Feeling a bit better now

A bit of cooking and video games has helped smooth things over. Mythbusters helped as well. Right now, I find myself searching for a way to focus and clear my head of distractions. Part of me wonders if I want to try standing in a field practising swordsmanship all day long for a few months. That's not very practical though and I'm afraid I'll just wind up bored. I'm also wondering about music and programming. Music is something that I could probably do just to relax. It's harder to convince people to clear an area to wave a sharp piece of metal around. Programming though is something that I've always had an interest in. Maybe I'll take that up professionally one day. For now though, I kind of miss my old skills and I find myself in want of a few new tools. Strangely when I can't find a program to do what I want, I assess the complexity of the task and wonder if I could code something for that myself. Whatever it is though, I feel like just clearing a few months to just focus myself.
Sadly that'll have to wait while more practical matters take priorities. I need to get ready to move, I need to find a place to move to, and I have money that needs allocating. I've got about $4.2K lined up and ready to go right now. There's another $2.7K or so coming in this month and I'll guess about 0.5K going out. I suppose other things on my to do list include planning for the wedding trip in November. My computer also needs replacing eventually. I find myself wondering what I should go get. Pretty much anything at the lower end of the conventional range will work great for me. Though I find myself drawn to having a low power netbook as well. I'm not sure if having both is really the best combination for me. Anyway, though there's supposed to be some pretty interesting stuff coming out soon. Best to put that decision off till later. Maybe the netbook market will be more mature by the time I actually replace anything.

Challenging norms

I sit here looking at my dresser with three drawers poking out just a bit wondering what is the point of that thing. I haven't opened the drawers in so long. Depression makes you not want to do things and putting laundry away is one of thing I've been slow at. After simply having had laundry in a big basket for so long I question why I spend time putting it in a dresser or if I would even have one if there wasn't already one here. Am I just afraid to question the norms I grew up in? Having a basket of mixed clothing seems to work well for me. I can tell at a glance what I have to work with and it's easy to spot a few neat combinations. Downside being that it is wrinkled but that's nothing that's bothered me before.

TV rots the brain?

I was looking back at a few old blog posts and came to two realizations, 1) TV shows have gotten me thinking about a couple of very interesting things, and 2) I don't post as much as I used to. So, a brief list of tv shows that have gotten me thinking:
1) Intervention - The name pretty much describes it. The show is a reality tv series on interventions. I think it appeals to me because I worry about appearing detached from reality.
2) Wife Swap - It's hard to get a feel for what a good family setting is in my absence of one. This almost doesn't help with that, but at least it gives me a feel for how bad things can get. I guess I'm not alone in a lot of ways. Also gives me some basis for comparison when trying to figure out how bad things are for me.
3) House - He's insightful and often way out there with his thinking. It's also nice to see someone who doesn't pretend to be nice when being a jerk for a change. There's so many interesting observations about people and society in there.

So, yeah, small goal for the moment, post more frequently.

I want a play fort!

A silly post today. Maybe it's the temperature, or maybe I seek more security in this time of economic uncertainty but right now, I have this strange desire to build a play fort to curl up in when I sleep. It gets harder to find appropriate fort building items as you get bigger. Maybe I should rectify that when I get my own place.

Things not as they seem.

I found a note at work on Friday saying something about how they want to start the weekend shift up again next week and they want to hire ten people. That’s quite a lot for the size of our plant. Also, still no sign of the missing pay scale. I’d like to know what I’m earning instead of a vague, more than I was earlier. I suppose I just have to wait till next pay day.
As of yet, I’m not sure which of the shifts I like better. The last two hours makes a huge difference. Though I do love having four days off on weekends. Granted, everything is so pressed for time. I suppose I also like watching the markets on the weekdays. On weekends, I simply don’t know what to do. I guess it’s back to the old ‘I need a hobby’ line.

General randomness

Today's random number is 1446. I have no idea how I got to that number, but hopefully it'll help me home in on my future financial freedom day. Ok, I'm actually estimating it based off my wage, market yields and estimated living expenses, but I have no methodology, I just pulled a number out of my head.
Anyway, I was having a little trouble with the market today. I found myself with only some of the data I usually get. Yes, it's the 4th of July and the US markets are closed, but I can't think of a decent reason why I don't see all the information I usually do on the Canadian markets. Yeah, that's my trouble with the markets today. I had trouble with access, no major losses or what not.
I also have a few predictions to make about the future. There are concerns about inflation and it seems to be getting a bit more news every time there's an interest rate announcement scheduled. I don't see interest rates going up nearly as quickly as they went down. That's going to be pinned down by fear of collapsing the economy. I hesitate to make a quantitative guess as to where interest rates will be a year from now. Maybe if I make a new guess each day for a week and take an average. That study really amuses me.

Goals for the Week

Feeling much better this Monday than most of the Mondays I go through. So, goals for the week, 5S my bedroom. Sort, stabilize, standardize, shine, sustain, going to have the things I use regularly out and put the things I use occasionally on the shelf, things that are rarely used can go in my closet. Everything will hopefully be laid out neatly. This will more likely be an ongoing project. I suppose I'll keep hunting for blogs I like and try to get some links setup. Other than that, things are up in the air again. I thought things have kind of blown over, but I guess I have to be prepared to take on even more tasks.

Busy day over, life continues as normal

My brother is moving to france for a year. Now there's even more furniture around here. It was a little mind opening for me. He packed the essentials into about a cubic meter and there's probably 10 cubic meters more stuff around here. I wonder how much space a minimalist amount of my stuff will take up.
In other news, the Bank of Canada has cut their target interest rate by a half percent. I haven't sat down to calculate what that means to me yet. Though it means I can accept a slightly lower return on my investments before paying off my loans becomes more profitable.
There's two other items in the news that I find worth yaking about right now. Hockey riot in Montreal. What is it about sports events and riots? What makes this more confusing is that Montreal won? Torching police cars might make sense in some kind of political outrage, but how many things can you celebrate with torching police cars? I hope someone they arrested is going to get billed for the damage.
The other thing that I want to talk about is Douglas Idugboe, author of Credit Miricle for Canadians. Last year, he was apparently making headlines for being wildly successful having millions after only seven years. He was known for saying things like, "Where you are today depends on the decisions you made yesterday." While correct, they reveal little to nothing about how to do anything. Well, according to the Calgary Herald, the decisions he made yesterday has resulted in him facing fraud charges today. Way to go, way to go...

Yay, last tax form in

Well, I can finally file my taxes. It sure takes a long time to get mutual fund tax info. Though I suppose the rules say that they need to be mailed out today. Anyway, that should be about 2K coming to me from that, probably 4K recovered from loans and 1.5K of pay after expenses this month, 7.5K in total, 6K in reserve. 13.5K to fund my core. If I can get 6%, that should put me at 10% of the red line. I wonder if that'll make me feel any better. It's an extra paycheck. Hmm, how else can I think of it? 4% towards doubling my income, 1/15th of the way towards the "you typically need 60% of your pre-retirement income in retirement" mark. It's also enough money to pay off my loans, which is still a very tempting. Do I need to revisit this one more time? Or perhaps the thing to do is see what interest rates do. The next interest rate announcement is on April the 22nd. Though then I have to consider the impact of the announcement on yields. Well, the some now and some later approach works well. Meh, too late to figure it out tonight. Well, it's already past midnight, so definitely too late now. Morning works though.