I have started each of the last two years with a tender, juicy nugget of knowledge but the tradition is blown. Those bastards want me to suffer without my quotidian dose of devotion until Monday. How can they be so cruel? The book is stuck in Louisville waiting to cross into friendly Yankee territory.
On the bright side, I looked ay my bank accounts yesterday and discovered that I was a few hundred dollars richer than I supposed. Surely, I thought, this must be wrong. A check musn't have cleared. But I could find no check or checks that would account for the discrepancy and so I am going to declare it a victory for my parsimonious penny-pinching.
While I don't have a proper New Year's resolution, I do have a pecuniary goal for 2009: to get out of debt. While I did charge my new PC on my credit card, I can pay that off easily enough. What I'm really aiming to do is to pay off my student loans.
I took out around $17,000 in loans for my higher education. With interest, it surely comes out to much more. But all my book learnin' has allowed me to write witty, erudite blog posts. I've been paying on them for nearly 14 years and enough is enough. The beast has been beaten down to a bit less than $2,100 and it's going to die come the spring when I get my tax return. Once that's done, I will have an extra $230/month in my pocket which shall make riding out this recession more bearable.
This is the only plan I have for 2009 that resembles a resolution. Of course, there are lots of things that I'd like to do but time and money will dictate whether or not I get to enjoy them.
The first month of the new year should be fun. Not only is LOST finally returning, but new episodes of The Simpsons start airing again as well. The Dulcinea and I will be heading to Milwaukee to hear & see The Musical Box recreate a Genesis concert from 1976. I missed Genesis doing "Squonk" live and this is the next best thing. A couple days later Madison's proggy cover band has a date at the High Noon. Lastly, Facets Cinematheque in Chicago will be screening 4 films by Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó and I would love to see Red Psalm again with its expertly staged scenes of folk rituals tucked inside 9 minutes shots. The scene where a loaf of bread is passed around stays with me to this day.
Later this winter astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and philosopher Daniel Dennett will speak at the UW while an exhibition of Edvard Munch's work opens at The Art Institute in Chicago.
The spring will see not only the snow driven away and flowers begin to bloom, but also the Wisconsin Film Festival, Adrian Belew playing in Milwaukee, and a play starring zombies.
But more important is my plan to resuscitate something I gave up a year ago – donating to charity every month.
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