11 June 2004 22:54
i like this as a philosophy. when i was preparing to leave last month, i typed up a list of things to take. at the head of the list i stuck this:ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING COULD BE STOLEN
the idea being to help me pack light and only what was necessary. since my camera broke right before i was to leave, i pulled that and a bunch of batteries and chargers and accessories and was all that much better. but living out of a duffel bag for two weeks was very refreshing. sure i had to do laundrey more often, but it was nice to be able to toss a bag in the trunk and go at a moment's notice. here i have a lot of items that i don't use very often. most of what i have is usefull, my anti-materialism is for the most part strong enough to repel knicknacks. but i still have things like my bike rack. i use it once every nine months, but i have it when i need it. in the meanwhile, it absorbs 240 cubic inches of space. i have a very nice flashlight that i really use once every four months (though i play with it more than that). i have a car. hm. i don't mean this to turn into an anti-materialistic rant that i'll do nothing about. i've had enough of those in the past to know how that turns out (short of the long... i get frustrated).
back to the statement above, i found it relaxing to think about. in some perverse way i was almost hoping some of my stuff would get stolen, though it would have been a huge inconvenience. not to mention it reminds me that everything is God's in the first place.
hm. my financial training was somewhat different than the mainstream's. when i was a preteen or so, my parents started giving us kids an allowance, an impressive $2.00 a week. okay, maybe impressive is the wrong word. i was old enough to realize how little it was. but it never dawned on me that it was too little. being used as i was to not getting an allowance at all, $2 seemed like a lot better than nothing. looking at it now, i of course realize that we were getting an allowance to learn money management, actually having to give us money was almost a necessary evil to accomplish that. but we never saw the $2. mom had it all worked out, 10% to tithe, 65% to savings, leaving 25% to us. so it boiled down to more like fifty cents a week. anyroad, it's just been in the last couple years that i've started to loosen up in my spending habits, realizing that spending $1.40 for coffee that i really don't like really isn't goign to make me go broke. for many many years though i had the mindset though that it would. all through college i'd go to resturantes with friends and while the evenign away nursing a glass of water. having now spent a year at a full time job, i still don't know what quite to do at first with the amount of money i'm "raking" in.
maybe it's just being raised a frugal mennonite, but i don't seem to be having any trouble making ends meet while living in southern california. my coworkers complain of the high cost of living, and yes, i agree that it's high, and yes, i agree that gas is expensive, and yes, i agree that we're still on the same payscale that the company was using five years ago, but still, i'm earning more than enough to pay my bills. but then my coworker who complains the most about needing a raise just bought himself a $10k 2001 chevy pickup. hello.
(before you start coming to me for loans, don't worry, i've figured out ways to spend it :) ).
i have my expensive habits as well, one being flying, and the other being traveling. for the latter though, i've managed to go on road trips on two separate occasions with my brother, where we went for 10 days each and 3-4 thousand miles each, and still spent less than $500 between the two of us on both occasions. part of it's just mindset. but then, i would rather spend the night in a $10 campsite than a $120 five-star hotel. flying for pleasure gets expensive at $70 an hour, but once i'm in the air i usually managed to forget how expensive ti is. being able to fly for an hour and still spend less than a day's wages is nice too, getting paid more htan minimum wage has its perks :).
i'm tired of talkign about money. we had a day-long meeting today in the vein of employee education. one of the themes was some of the financial principles the company has adopted. i felt like breaking out a dilbert book and reading it in class. instead i acted like i was taking notes and scribbled sarcastic comments to myself. one thing i heard way too frequently was the following word: "culture." i just looked up the definition, and while its use was technically correct, it was extrememly borderline. not to mention they were using it as a buzzword. they'd say things like, "we've gotten into a culture of doing things this way," or "we have this culture of thinking we don't need to do such and such." the phrase "bust your/his/my chops" was used five or six times too. it was humourous in its first use, but the joy quickly faded. the only good that came of it was me looking up the word "chop," and finding the term "chop logic" with which i was unfamiliar (to argue, esp. in a hairsplitting way).
i find myself using words or phrases repeatedly, and it bothers me to the extent that i make efforts to change my mannerisms. i also take joy in using words that i have not used for a while (example "mannerisms"). the use of such words as "way" (one thing i heard way too frequently...), "like," and "very" also bother me. one wouldn't know it by reading my writings, wouldst they?
i've read mark twain's Prince and the Pauper, jane austen's Mansfield Park, and tolkien's Return of the King recently, though i am not finished with the last. i enjoy their use of older english, whether it be style or vocabulary. twain especially laid the style on thickly, whereas austen increases vocabulary. tolkien wrote simply from a british perspective, though i dare say he added many words of more archaic nature than were common in british english at the time of writing. for instance, "kine" is one that stuck out to me recently, beign an archaic term synonymous with "cows," or "cattle." most of the words i don't know in tolkien's vocabulary deal with either wildlife or topography. his use of varying names for streams and hills and cliffs and features of the earth is endless.
"For there lay dark thickets, and a tumbled land of rocky ghylls and crags, behind which the long grim slopes of the Ephel Duath clambered up."
i daresay his fascination with beowulf and middle english helped him in this regard.
ghyll: A ravine. See Gill a woody glen.
gill: A woody glen; a narrow valley containing a stream
okay tangent. i came across this while tryign to figure out how to spell Beowulf. my websters says of the etymology, "+wulf, ie wolf, hence as a kenning for 'bear'".
i'm getting some interesting definitions of "kenning." i knew from other reading that "ken" is scottish for "know," thus, "i don't know about that" becomes "i dinna ken 'bout that." furthermore:
A. m-w.com
ken = (ety ME kennen, from OE cennan to make known & Old Norse kenna to perceive; both akin to OE can know)
1 archaic : SEE
2 chiefly dialect : RECOGNIZE
3 chiefly Scottish : KNOW
kenning (1) = (ety ME, sight, view) chiefly Scottish : a perceptible but small amount
kenning (2) = (ety old norse, from kenna) a metaphorical compound word or phrase (as swan-road for ocean) used especially in Old English and Old Norse poetry.
B. Webster's 1913 Dictionary (webster-dictionary.org)
1. Range of sight.
2. The limit of vision at sea, being a distance of about twenty miles.
C. my websters new world college (fourth ed) --from whom the original phrase re beowulf came...
scottish
1 knowledge or recognition
2 a tiny quantity; trace
norse
1 in early germanic, as OE, poetry, a metaphorical name, usually a compound, for something (ex "whale-path" for sea)
interesting how both examples of the metaphorical names were of the sea...
at any rate, it's obvious that the beowulf reference means "wolf, hence as a metaphorical name for 'bear.'"
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