In honor of this, the last day of annoying accusatory ads and those STUPID ads with Bill Clinton telling me children are the most important things on Earth, I have started re-reading The Last Days of Socrates.

Happy voting for all of you, whether you are heretics and brainwashers of our children or not! And happy day to those of you who are smart enough to avoid the whole circus, as well.

I have only spent 4 of the past 45 days at home. November isn’t looking too good either. Luckily, I get an entire month at home for the holidays - 12/9-1/8. Wee!!!

In related news, I recently calculated that I spend between 750.00 and 850.00/mo on hotels, and another 500.00/mo on the junk food and hotel-prepared food I eat while in San Francisco. Therefore, I recently decided to look for an apartment roommate situation in SF to reduce expenses and hopefully improve my eating habits while I’m working here. I found a nice talkative Jewish lady with a cute room in a cute apartment in the Outer Richmond district of SF - incidentally my favorite neighborhood. Also, it’s an idea situation, as she is also a long-distance commuter who owns a home in Napa and commutes to SF two nights a week to teach music at a local private school. I move in on 12/1.

The apartment room will cost me ~650/mo including utilities and internet. I figured I can furnish the room with a cheapo Wal-Mart aluminum-frame fouton and a TV and some cardboard drawers for about 300.00, meaning I’ll start saving money in rooming here by the 2nd or 3rd month. Add in the fact that I’ll have access to a fridge and cooker and hopefully I can eat slightly less life-span-reducing crap and save money as well.

Finally, having a semi-permanent dwelling in SF will be nice because I’ll be able to leave clothes and toiletries and such there, and thus travel much more lightly. Had I assumed that this situation had potential to become a solid career path as it’s become, I would have made this move/choice earlier. I was sort of in denial. It’s sad that I have to be so residential about my time in SF, considering the home and life I’m trying to build in NC, but I think I’ll be very happy with the reduced stress and positive monetary effects of this choice.

David’s Aunt Lucille died yesterday.

I’ve been lucky enough to have few relatives or friends that are very old or very close, and thus have been spared too many loved ones passing. Death is, ultimately, so futile and unnecessary. I hate it.

I hate the fact that we live in a society that worships death. I hate the fact that we spend so much money on observing death and ritualizing it. I hate the fact that we would rather protect a proteo-human that has had no life to live yet than use that tissue to investigate methods of extending the lives of those who have lived and loved and experienced years of it and obtained wisdom that they can share and build on.

Those who have lived longest in this world are the most valuable among us. When will our priorities shift to recognize this? When will we stop pouring our efforts and resources into preserving the reality of death, when we can conquer it?

You see, I do not intend to die. I intend to live.

Does anyone else here use Quicken for their personal finances?

I’ve worked in Accounting for 6 years and I just don’t get it. I can’t managed to synch any of the accounts properly with the online statements, and have to constantly make adjusting entries. 90% of my accounts aren’t even listed in Quicken’s list of financial institutions.

I just don’t see how this program will save me time versus just keeping everything in a nice, clean, Excel spreadsheet…

It was a rather expensive holiday trip this year. But it was nice having what was arguably the first real holiday family get-together since I met David. Imagine: spending the holiday with your spouse and family at the same time. A first for me. In past years, holidays meant juggling between my home life with David and my family’s plans, since he was never invited. It’s amazing how much more manageable this became when I decided to move to the other side of the country from the family and they suddenly realized that if I was going to see them at all, at any time, it would pretty much have to be on my terms.

Now I’m just passing a rainy day in SF hoping that the next 6 days pass especially fast, since they’re my last 6 days in a hotel in SF. I move to my newly-rented room in the Outer Richmond on Friday. Yes, I do plan to buy a tiny Xmas tree for said room.

I also hope that the subsequent 7 days pass quite quickly as well, though, as after that I return home to a cozy month of holiday cheer in Winston Salem, where, yes, I do plan to buy TWO very large Xmas trees.