$23.98 food for dinner, wine, card
$95.24 sheepskin-lined waterproof winter motorcycle gloves
$13.50 lattes and donuts for neighbourhood stroll
$135.20 Tiles for backsplash
$100 Roth IRA contribution

second disbursement is for 4000 dollars, not 19000 as I projected.

Spending:

$184.00 haircut and colour (I know, that's obscene! Even with french-press coffee, tip and a foot massage. I look like Candice Olson from HGTV now.)

$??? emergency dental work

Both service providers discussed their respective interest in making me look good and not hurting me so I'd help them bring in new customers and come back. We've never had these kinds of conversations before: sure there's always some billing and payment going on but never before the blatant "I can always use some more customers!" I've never heard them open up about their political stripes before either, but they sure did today. It's not as if I sit down in their chairs where they're at liberty to hurt me and make me look like a dork and open with the salvo: "Who ya votin' for?" Hair will always need to be cut (maybe not professionally coloured) and teeth will always need maintenance.

I did make a point of visiting these service providers within 1.2 miles of my house though: gotta keep the local economy going. They're interested in doing the same.

$5.90 Lunch w/friend-excoworker
$9.58 gas for scooter
$51.32 Prescription & vitamins (2 for 1 sale at WAG: Whee! $11.32 saved in $20 challenge)
$90.60 CSA pickup boxes starting from beginning of this month
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Received gas bill: $30.12. Much lower gas use from same billing period last year; however, it's been +4F degrees warmer on average. Bad news, as of 10/1 we're paying $0.90/therm for procurement cost, a 16% increase in rates from September. We use a lot of natural gas (940 therms per year, compared with the average Kansas use) because someone stays home during the day, saving us about $100/month on gas and an extra $100 on daycare, and we use gas for our hot water and for our kitchen range, leaving us with an electricity bill of about $22/month. This will get lower when I get a laptop and a new refrigerator and use powerstrips. Inexplicably, I find thermostat-adjustment humour very funny in cartoons (e.g. SpongeBob Squarepants, Aqua Teen Hunger Force). It is very cold in the mornings and at work: my fingers were tingling and pink when I entered the work building, and didn't warm up until I went to my friend's building for lunch.
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Steeling myself for major squandering: boots, gloves, hat, cabinets. I owe my kid $50 because I challenged him to spell a bad word (seven letters long) and he did it. So $20 he takes with him to the Book Fair, and the rest goes into his plummeting college fund.
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Delighted to learn that our mortgage is looking more and more reasonable, commensurate with what mortgagees in Ohio cities are paying, and what a single worker with a cushy job is paying for a one-bedroom apt. in Seattle.

October 10
$37.43 Chinese takeout:hubby slammed at work on-call

October 11
$34.03 GreaseMonkey oil change/inspection
$16.23 Cash + eggs, yoghurt and cookies
$1.40 Postage for Japan
$1.08 Envelope for Japan
$10.05 Espresso break w/family
$0.10 New York Times Crossword
$15.16 Pasta, basil, crushed peppers, garlic

October 6:
$10 Chinese food going away lunch
$12 field trip fee for 10/31

October 7:
$10 Photocopied materials for C# course
$57.60 half of last-minute pricey Italian dinner when Cdn friend flew up from SFO and was waiting for her bus to take her back to YVR. Called me at last minute in hopes of having a dinner companion downtown.
$40.21 escapist reading material for the family: Willful Creatures, I Love You Beth Cooper, Monster at the End of this Book.
$38.15 10.44 gallons fuel for car.
$10.22 Pizza ordered while I was away at class and at dinner
$2.55 Cappuccino.

This morning's index numbers have crashed below my 'comfort plateaus': Dow now four digits, NASDAQ below my birth year. Just like 2001!

Gotta find and implement cost-saving moves. Not the ones where one invests 'only' $20300 for insulated siding for a big 2% reduction in heating costs (10% reduction in the gas you use, but not enough to offset the increase in the delivery costs or new taxes), but the ones where we can whack our basic budget down by 5%. Friends have been laid off, people can't even afford movies (what about DVD rentals?). What do I do? Take the kid out for food, and a play, and food again. Well, it's a birthday.

Why aren't foreigners and investment bankers throwing themselves at my feet in gratitude for bailing them out? I want my feet massaged and kissed.

How can you tell when someone approaches you for money that they're in sincere need, rather than hustlin' up tax-free income? Their acceptance of offered food? When they do it? Where they do it? I ask as I've seen people walk their wheelchairs in the early morning to downtown street corners and have read articles about people getting hundreds of dollars a day. In the summer on one block I have seen three people panhandling. I give only to local hunger agencies, the local Catholic charity and Real Change vendors but I'm wondering why more people don't sell Real Change.

Spending October 5:
$83.44 -- birthday celeb.
$5.00 -- parking

Incensed to read an article in the newspaper in which a woman who bought a $680K house last year was interviewed on the economy. She upgraded from a house whose $420K sale she grossed $46K in profit with her husband. Tell me I shouldn't be beating myself up for buying and holding a property we could comfortably manage living in on one person's salary for a few years. Tell me I don't have to have rich grandparents or generous parents or stock options or a six-digit individual income to live in Seattle. Or do you too feel like a suckah for believing in the index funds-go passive-buy-and-hold, buy-low talk not once but twice like me...

October 4 expenditures:
$30.95 -- food for party
$77.80 -- groceries for week
$5.20 -- postage stamps
$1.50 -- French Women Don't Get Fat recipes photocopies
$0.30 -- Sat NYT crossword/Sunday Xword & acrostic
$8.00 -- 2.2 gallons for motorscooter

I love good food. I used to think my grandmother made good food, but really she made Polish-Hungarian-Ukrainian-Saskatchewan comfort food: cabbage rolls, perogies, spaetzli. I used to think my mom made fantastic food, and she did, but much of it she didn't get to use on us -- I didn't like cheese (but I would eat it with delight in homemade lasagna and in French Onion Soup), my brother didn't like fish (why does he live in the Pacific Rim/Japan if he doesn't like fish????). Now I make fantastic food 93% of the time and it doesn't even have to be complicated. The best food is simply prepared and excellently matched. Food is the big budget challenge. I would live gladly without cell phones, run my 12-year-old car until the 2010 electric vehicles come along, wear consignment clothes, weed and go slug-killin' in the rain at midnight, but please don't ask me to head back to cheap, mass-produced, genetically modified edibles spiked with neurotoxins and carcinogens and preservatives. I simply don't have as much money as the rest of you -- what's the average American net worth at these days: $670,000? $1,325,571?

So what's on the stove now? Hungarian comfort food! I cheated and went to (*gasp!*) a supermarket for fish -- fresh halibut, sole and salmon were on special, so yes, I weakened.

I have been told that I'm in one of the safest positions in one of the safest groups in a cash-rich company that has over one year salary and infrastructure costs in an emergency fund. The work I do ensures the emergency fund remains with the company and not in the hands of litigators.

Holds off my plans for an immediate exodus though. On the other hand I will get my kitchen paid for! Landscaping! Maybe a new hybrid car! Or some big soundproofing system to drown out the noise the suffering neighbor dogs make. Gold! Doubloons!

Oct. 3
$10 -- Japanese study book
$2.78 -- Starbucks cappuccino

Oct. 1
$60 -- prescription
$5.44 -- Consumer Reports ShopSmart special publication
$1640 -- mortgage

Oct. 2
$89 -- Chess Club for tot
$6.49 -- Katsu Chicken
$1.25 -- Dasani Water
$100 -- partisan contribution response to an appeal