The 100 by 30 project

Holy moly

Why didn't anyone tell me how insanely good "Gossip Girl" is?!? I'm in campy TV heaven, and I will never make fun of the CW3PO network again...

I'd forgotten how awesome libraries are

(Note: I wrote this post over the summer during my summer internship and never published it for some reason.)

I'm living in a city -- downtown -- without a lot of residential amenities. No grocery store, no book store (I'm rudely discounting the Catholic bookstore and the nudie bookstore). I have no car. Also working a strict 40-hour week means I have a lot of free time, so in between visits from my husband where he brings backlogs of my magazines (I read an Economist truly cover to cover for the first time ever last month), I was desperate for reading material.

So I was spending a lot of money on books. It had to stop. Yes, I want to support authors (and, erm, publishers... Hi, English Major!), but my budget cannot absorb $100/month on books.

And then I realized that Summer City library might give me a library card even though I'm not a permanent resident -- and it turns out they did! All I needed to show them was my paystub with my temporary local address.

Personally, I think the librarians there have excellent taste, because sitting right there on the new releases shelve -- all I had time to browse with the remainder of my lunch break -- were three books on the top of my Amazon wishlist: the new Jane Smiley novel; "Everything Conceivable", which is about the swift rise of the now massive artificial reproduction technology industry; and "One Perfect Day", about the wedding industry.

The tastiest $2.50 I've spent in awhile

Even my small city has jumped on the cupcake bandwagon -- we've had two cupcake-only bakeries for a few years now. I've never been too impressed, though. The cake itself was always fine, but the icing wasn't to my taste, generally not stiff enough and a little too light and greasy in texture.

But a new one just opened and oh my goodness. The icing is heaven. The cupcakes are gorgeous. I really wish I disclosed my city so I could link to their website, but I'll just leave you with some pictures of the wonderful treats that sell for $2.50 a pop.

The last one is my favorite: it's plain vanilla, and the lighting in the pic doesn't reveal the enormous amount of vanilla bean in the frosting.

Popcorn

A few months ago, TBH reminded me that air popcorn popper exists. Ours was well-used during my childhood, but I honestly had forgotten all about them. (Why isn't air popcorn much more popular with college students? It's cheap and easy.)

TBH discusses all the benefits: suitable for a variety of toppings, cheap, etc.

Anyway, she claims not to eat it every night because of "health reasons". Heh. I'm getting to the point of having it almost every night! Whether it's detrimental to my health is sort of up for discussion. At only 140 calories for the quarter cup of kernels I use and this "zero calorie"* butter spray:

it's certainly low-calorie enough, especially on those days I have a big lunch and basically have popcorn for dinner.

On the other hand... have you ever read the ingredients list for "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter"?

"Liquid Soybean Oil, Salt, Sweet Cream Buttermilk, Xanthan Gum, Soy Lecithin, Polysorbate 60, Lactic Acid, (Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Calcium Disodium Edta) As Preservatives, Artificial Flavor, Colored With Beta Carotene, Vitamin A (Palmitate)."

Hmmm.

(* yes, I know it's not really zero calories. The estimates I've seen suggest about 20 calories in the 20 pumps I use. Still, it's really f-ing good.)

Lazy Sunday

Today is just wonderful. The weather is gorgeous, my husband is as hilarious as usual, we've been furiously decluttering our house and the results are very noticeable today. I've spent half the day in front of the computer, but my research is going so beautifully that I don't mind a bit.

And we're a third of the way toward my long-term financial goal. By my rough calculations, our net worth is increasing by $1800/month. Even if we plateaued at that point for the next three years (which I hope isn't the case! Even the interest alone on our retirement accounts will increase, especially since my husband is pumping money into his like crazy.), we'd end up just $3k short of the goal!

Coolest holiday gift?

I received some very nice, generous holiday gifts -- two cashmere sweaters, a down coat, and checks. However, my favorite gift was $9.99: these floating bookshelves. (Click on the photo below to see even more fantastic bookshelves.)

Now I just have to figure out where to put them! Our house is a four square which presents two challenges: the first is the lack of wall area in a four square, the second is the decor (most four squares tend to have a Craftsman interior, ours is more of a mix of Craftsman and Greek Revival) which leaves modern bookshelves like these a little out of place. I know people with a better eye than mine can easily blend modern and classic, but I have no eye for making design and if I'm not very, very careful, the result will be a Greek Revival room with two random bookshelves slapped on the walls.

Simple Pleasures III: "Orlando, who's that freak over there that we didn't notice?"

British humor on YouTube. Pretty-boy Orlando Bloom is by far the funniest "Extras" guest yet.

Simple Pleasures II

Grad school can be a demoralizing, grueling, hierarchical ordeal. (Actually, I have generally been very happy in grad school -- only recently have I started to burn out a bit.) One of the great pleasures, though, is access to inter-library loan. Inter-library loan is so often used by academics to procure obscure disciplinary texts that it took me a full two years to think that I could use it for anything else, namely novels. For its stature, my school has a pretty crappy fiction collection, so I just used inter-library loan to order:

1. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Melissa Pessl (and maybe I'll find out what criticisms English Major has of the novel)
2. The Dissident: A Novel by Nell Freudenberger (I loved her short stories and am really looking forward to this first novel)
3. Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (will I be the first personal finance blogger to review this one?)
4. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (its atrocious that my school doesn't actually own this book!)

I wish I could say I'm looking forward to lots of great reading this weekend, but I have a qualifying exam in two weeks that takes precedence. The holiday break will be bliss, though, thanks to ILL.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm not really comfortable putting a long post on the Internet about what, say, my husband and our marriage means to me. Let's all just taken as a given that we adore each other. However, I thought today would be a good day to start something I've been meaning to do: a "Simple Pleasures" series of posts. I hope to post on this topic weekly. The idea isn't to share "deals" but to emphasize to myself all the little joys in my life.

First up is "Heartbreaker", Ryan Adams' first solo album. Sure, it's about six years old at this point; doesn't matter. Every time I bring this CD back into my rotation I'm just blown away by the talent and mastery and sorrow and glee on this album. Not to mention all the personal memories tied up in this album.

Listening to this album brings more joy than anything I've spent money on in the past six months. Something to keep in mind next time I go to make a discretionary purchase.

"Oh one day when you're lookin' back..."