Being sick is great for not spending any money.
Feb. 23, Friday: Had to cover a story at my synagogue for the paper, so we agreed that I wouldn’t come to the office. Only spent $15 for gas, otherwise I was pretty well-behaved.
Was pretty much out of it on Sat., Feb 23, so nothing there.
Feb. [...]
Tuesday, Feb. 20:
Since we got out of work so late, and I was feeling under the weather and didn’t feel like making anything when I got home, I broke down and bought a Wendy’s special burger (I won’t go into the lurid anti-nutritional details): $5.11. I suppose I could have waited til I got home, [...]
Friday, Feb. 16: Nothing spent
Saturday, Feb. 17: $1.34 on cat food. Hey, the cats have to eat, too.
.60 library fine. I never feel bad about having to pay these. I figure it goes to a very worthy cause and whatever the fine, it’s still cheaper than buying the book.
$1.50 for a danish. Not a necessity, [...]
One of the problems with these “journals” is simply keeping up, esp. on a daily basis. So it’s time to play catch-up.
Monday, Feb 12: Nothing spent, although I did go to Barnes and Noble. But I had a gift card, so it didn’t count.
Tuesday, Feb 13: The office closed early today, fearful of the coming [...]
Grocery day. And groceries don’t really count, right? Like last week, I was pretty careful not to be impulsive (although I did buy three bagels of crunchy snacks. On the other hand, I didn”t buy cookies). Later in the day I went to the butcher, where I bought:
2 packages chicken breasts1 3-pack of potatoe knishes1 [...]
My wife and daughter spent the night at grandma’s house (grandma lives in town, but my daughter thought it would be fun). I brought over bagels for breakfast. I’m sure there’s food around the house, so how far does (or should) “tradition” go in the NBI plan?
Bagels $6
I suppose it’s too much to believe when [...]
Feb 9 — Received a review copy of Levine’s book. Yippee! Now I can make notes. I used to be shy about writing in a book, as if they were holy relics. If I wanted to take note of something, I would use a post-it, but my philosophy has changed.
What better way than to write [...]
In the spirit of NBI, here’s one of my favorite Delbert McClinton Songs, in colaboration with Lyle Lovett, and John Prine:
Too much stuff
Big house, big car, back seat, full bar.Houseboat won’t float. Bank won’t tote the note.Too much stuff. There’s just too much stuff.It’ll hang you up, dealing with too much stuff.
Hangin’ out on the [...]
Feb. 8 — Didn’t spend anything this day.
I have to prepare a cheesecake for a weekend dinner. I managed to get around going to the stoe to buy the ingredients by asking my wife to do it. Is that cheating? After all, it was “necessary,” an obligation I entered into before deciding to take the”NBI” [...]
RELAPSE!
I had to have some bloodwork done this morning, so I didn’t eat breakfast. Following the procedure I had an interview, for which I arrived about 30 minutes too early. With nothing to do, I went into a local CVS where I purchased a bag of Weight Watcher’s candy for $2.66.
Then I wanted to buy [...]
Nothing spent on Feb. 5.
On Tueday, Feb. 6, I had to put gas — a necessity — in the Scion, or as we call it, the toaster. I hit the empty mark on the way to work, and since I’m never sure exactly how much is left in the tank once the light comes on, [...]
Although I would never seek out a fashion magazine, one comes to my house almost every week in the for of the Feb. 4 New York Times Magazine.
This week in particular, a few outfits were submitted for consideration. Among them:
So my question is, simply, wh, besides models for a fashion shoot, would wear this [...]
Sometimes the media just goes looking to stir up trouble.
Take Stuart Elliott, writing in The New York Times about Sunday’s Super Bowl ads. In breaking down the various commercials, he tries to tie in the violence in Iraq, claiming that “the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface.”
He points t the violent nature [...]
Sunday is our traditional day for the food shopping. Because of accounting issues (i.e., concerns of checbook balances), we had $100 cash to use. After a lot of head-scratching and calculations, I managed to spend less than $80. We typically spend about twice that much for a family of three, which I think is ridiculous. [...]
February 3– The author who wrote the book obviously didn’t have to consider kids.
My daughter and I went to Target to buy a birthday present for the kid next door. Sure, you can draw a hard line and say, “I’m sorry, but we’re not doing presents this (time period). I’m sure you can understand the [...]
