One Step Closer...

One of my goals for 2010 is to reduce my expenses even further. My conscious plan involved getting rid of most of the things I have in storage through selling items, getting rid of stuff and moving other things to the basement of where I'm living now, the other is to get that second roommate here. Both attempts are going along slower than I'd like..but coming along.

This week I got a boost I wasn't expecting. Turns out, that my mobile phone carrier offers discounts to people who work where I work. 20% discount. Awesome. It was as simple as giving my work email and verifying a few minutes later.

Voila.
$150 a year saved.

That doesn't seem like much on face value, but considering that just one of my daughter's text books for this semester, cost that much used, I'm pretty happy.

I have already achieved one goal with further improvements coming. And it's still January.

YAY ME!

Thank you, 2009

A double rainbow in Vermont. Taken by a buddy.

It would be foolish not to acknowledge what went well this year, so here goes.

First of all, Thank you 2009 for the fulfillment of one goal I had for this year, a closer and better relationship with my daughter.  It hasn't been smooth, but that's exactly part of the process. She felt safe enough with me to argue with me a few times and we've worked it out and found more common ground to communicate than just our love of pop culture.

Thank you 2009, for making up for the eviction by miraculously helping me into a terrific roommate situation. I really wasn't looking forward to it, but I found a place that is pretty good and a roomy who is enough like me in all the right ways that living with another person is easier than it could have been. Plus the dude makes the best pulled pork I have ever had in my life.

Thank you 2009, for introducing me to Twitter. Really that's because of Too Much Perfection. I still don't remember how I found her blog, but her twitter roll on her blog made me break down and try it and it's been fun to meet new people and get into some conversation and take on a Right Wing Nut Job or 3. As a result I will be attending Blog Her next year, which happens in my home town, but more on that in tomorrow's blog.

Thank you 2009, for keeping me employed. Temporary or not, lack of paid time off and holiday pay or not, its great to have had relatively steady income this year when so many friends and/or their spouses have not. It's a wicked rough world out there and for all that's been so hard this year, I'm glad to have not gotten further knocked back. Which leads to...\

Thank you 2009, for the chance to begin to etch away at debt, medical, consumer, tax and otherwise. It's gone slower than I had hoped, but it's gone...and that's important. It was a thinner Christmas than I would have liked, and this month's rent will be a little late. But I wiped out an entire section of debt left over from my hip replacement a few years ago...and that feels damned good in and of itself.

Thank you 2009 for the folks I have met in the blogosphere and twittersphere. Some real sweet people. Even a cybercrush or two (no I'm not telling). I do need to spend more time with my friends in the "real" world in the coming year, but I have found my cyber friendships to be fulfilling and meaningful and I hope they can say the same about me.

Thank you 2009, for me beginning to find my voice in the blogosphere...to really learn how to express, argue and rant my sense of things...its been helpful.

Thank you 2009, for helping me rediscover the joys of Brooklyn. It's interesting and beautiful here.

Thank you 2009, for the slow and steady clarity of vision about my life. Got a ways to go yet, but its gone better than it has in a long time.

Thank you 2009 for getting Healthcare reform on the table. I may not be happy about how its turning out, but I still believe it to be an improvement and a first step. Social Security and Medicare evolved as well. So too shall this.

Thank you 2009 to the growing number of folks who actually read my stuff here and respond back. It's really fun and heartening and motivating.

And finally, thank you 2009, for ending. I'm tired from it.

Tomorrow, what I'm looking forward to in 2010

Fuck You 2009

It's almost over so I'm saying goodbye to the year in two parts.

Today's should be obvious by the title. Tomorrow's will be more positive.

Fuck you 2009, you started out with an eviction, upending my life and causing me to abandon 80% of my stuff.

Fuck you 2009, your recession halted my ability to find new or extra work to help my new situation along. You also pushed back for another 2 years the ability for the place where I temp to hire me permanently.

Fuck you 2009, for giving me more of that ignorant and manipulative bitch, Sarah Palin.

Fuck you 2009, for continuing to bombard me with that evil troll Dick Cheney's incessant and fearful nattering.

Fuck you 2009 for those teabagging morons who can't spell, read or think, let alone make a reasonable case for themselves.

Fuck you 2009, for making things more expensive undermining my paycheck.

Fuck you 2009, for not being much of an improvement over 2008 despite my best efforts.
Fuck you 2009, for giving my hip so much trouble. It's supposed to be less painful than it's been so you can go screw yourself.
Fuck you 2009, for Dick Armey, speaking of those moron teabaggers, for being the kind of douchebag smart enough to know how to make people into sheeple.
Fuck you 2009, for Jim DeMint, the hipocritical asshole that has more to do with how fucked up National Security is than anyone else, but plays it as if it's Obama's fault. We don't have a head of the TSA because DeMint hates Unions. Country First, douchebag.
Fuck you 2009, for teasing us with Obama's election but sticking us with the worst Senate in memory. Not to mention Obama's penchant to stay out of things...very disapointing.
Fuck you entire decade for Joe Lieberman.
Fuck you 2009 for the bullshit racket of college textbooks. $150 for the Spanish language my ass. And that's just ONE textbook.
Fuck you 2009, for being the third year in a row that I wasn't able to do my retreat in Vermont this summer.
Fuck you 2009, for letting FOX cancel Dollhouse.
Fuck you 2009, for Snuggies.
Fuck you 2009, for killing off teachers and old classmates.
Fuck you 2009, and good riddance.

Tomorrow I'll say things that refute almost all of this, but venting comes first.

Thanks for listening and your tolerance.