So today, I got up early (that is to say, I got up).
Being a typical lonely and horny male in my 20s living alone, I did what those kinds of ornery young males generally do when idle and sexually frustrated, which is obsessively clean the apartment in the fantasy that one would actually have a female come over for sex.
I am badly in the habit of allowing dishes to pile up before cleaning them all in one go. I actually buy dishes on the basis of being easy to clean, preferring those made of out clay, metal or porcelain to those made out of plastic or melanide. Because I am very lazy and paranoid about chemicals I don't understand, I clean my silverware by boiling it in a crockpot with salt water, then washing it down with hot tap water. This is very effective and requires a lot less effort than using soap and sponge. It is also much cheaper.
I similarly cleaned the bathtub by filling it with hot water and adding salt, baking soda, rubbing alcohol and soap, then letting the mixture sit for a while before draining it and scrubbing away the detritus. Again, this is much cheaper, safer and easier than using Clorox.
So having done all that, I went outside.
I carried to the post office the GW2 CE I had sold, in a box lifted from the local China mart and stuffed with crumpled-up pages of old Yellow Pages. I also had to mail my notary app.
I had taken Azelma's advice and gone for the MSA loan.
Acceptance letter for the loan arrived today. I stuffed it in my cargo pockets. I cannot tolerate boredom, so I intended to open the letters and review them while on line at the post office.
As it happened there was no line. The box was mailed without incident. So I opened the letters and read them as I walked down the street. I had carried the box to the post office on a luggage dolley. After mailing the package, I slung the dolley over my shoulder
using a strap taken from a Dell laptop case. I often go out carrying the dolley in this way, on the laptop strap, if I believe that I will need to bring something home. It is necessary for me to have some means to drag heavy things around, since I do not have friends or a car. My approach seems common sense to me, but for some reason I have never seen anyone else doing it.
I stopped at a thrift store and bought
some nice clay dishes ($2 ea). As you can see,
they have no factory labels: they are artisanal. I have always liked artisan products because they are cheaper, better-quality, and owning things that are unique makes me feel better about myself compared to those who buy overpriced, mass-produced crap from Target. As I've said before, I derive a sense of emotional fulfillment from owning second-hand items, especially those previously owned by the dead.
I then stopped at a more upscale thrift store a block away and bought some things:
a nice rug to replace
my old one ($20), a
really nice pillow (center, $10), and a
piece of engraven rock for my bathroom ($12). The latter was initially marked $15 but the German proprietor, who had previously not liked me but I managed to change his mind by being good-natured and tough and by befriending his boss, who was like a less neurotic version of my mother, decided on his own initiative to cut me a break.
I carry a tote bag filled with reusable supermarket bags. I took out some reusable bags and put the items in them. Not only does this save trees from being cut down to make plastic bags, it also saves me the work of having to put them in the trash, and the reusable bags can be carried about on my shoulder without breaking.
It was then, walking down the street, I remembered that in my excitement I had forgotten my keys in the mailbox. I called up the housing office and asked them to let me in.
The person who answered the phone was this portly, fairly homely Filipino woman. She was initially pretty unpersonable to me, but I understood that life as a homely and overweight woman was unpleasant, so I made a point of being nice to her, and over time she warmed to me. A few weeks back I had asked her to sign my notary app, and was surprised that she and her boss enthusiastically agreed. She had asked to hear what came of it, and I had to ruefully tell her the other day that I still needed one more sig. She cheerfully volunteered the head of maintenance to sign for me. This was very helpful and allowed me to complete the app.
Anyway, she said there would be a $75 lockout fee. I politely said that I didn't need a change of locks, just to get my key out of the mailbox behind the door. So she waived the fee. The moment before the maintenance guy arrived, an Arab dude I get on well with, a resident let me in. I thanked them both and wrote the office a thank-you email. I will have to get them a fruit bowl for Christmas.
Black-bean gardenburgers and fakon had been on sale the other day, so I bought a bunch. There was also some mozzarella slices in the discount cheese section for $1.50 a pound, so I bought those too, and some buns, which were also on sale. A few weeks back, guacamole had been on sale for $1 for about eight ounces; I had bought the entire display and put them in my fridge. So while writing this
I made some gardenburgers with fakon and guacamole, served with that plate and cups I got a few months back (mentioned in a similar thread) and on a mat I also got at a secondhand store.
Good, real gardenburgers do not taste like fake meat; they taste like something else entirely. They are rich and tangy. Because they are low on calories, one can eat many more of them, and I find that eating high-quality food (not so much tasty as rich in nutrients and unprocessed) improves my mood and helps me think more clearly. This is also why I drink seltzer water, I find drinking seltzer instead of soda or juice from concentrate helps me think clearly and feel better emotionally.
The unit cost of the burgers is about $1.50 ea, and the seltzer costs 50 cents a liter. This makes the meal cost-competitive with Burger King, but more expensive than McDonalds, although the fact that it is well-balanced and does not need to be supplemented by real food probably makes it break even.
Despite all this, my parents pay $1100 a month for my rent. I have tried to talk about moving to Cincinnati, or at least to a cheaper apartment, but they don't want to discuss it. Whatever. I am trying to get the school to let me to study remotely because I hate educational administrators and distrust college campuses, so I'd rather keep them at far arms' length. If I cannot negotiate them into what I want, then I will move to Cincinnati and use someone I know for help as a partner - it's my experience that these people are a lot less confident when dealing with someone who isn't traveling alone. In any event, I now have a plan to not rely on my parents forever; I will do this MSA thing and become a bean counter. Accounting synergizes well with Classics as a secondary skill.
This is a narrative insight into how I think and live. Regarding the cost of this or that item, I'd point out those items may well last (another) lifetime and the total cost of all is probably less than a single hit of weed. (How much is a hit of weed anyway?) If I were on welfare, instead of supported by my parents, all this would cost less than a single Xbox game, something those people buy frequently, yet get many more years of use. In any event, collecting these artisan objects is strongly motivated by sexual frustration and the resultant fantasy of having a nice luvshack to bring some trailer trash home to, once I have a smart-person-type job.
The moral of the story is, with a bit of patience and resourcefulness, you can be classy, on the cheap, and have fun doing it.
Anyway, so that's that. I don't expect this thread will get as many views or posts as a stupid political thread, but you can't say I didn't try.
