Me time

Splurgerific!!!!! If I had to pick one word for this weekend, that would be it. I have been spoiling myself for the last couple of days, ever since i got off of work Friday. I got paid Friday, and I am sure that I should have done something responsible with my check, truth be told, I did do a couple responsible things, I paid off my electric bill, it usually runs about 30-40 bucks a month so I let it go for a couple months then just pay it all at once, and I did buy my next booklet of bus tickets, as that has become my preferred method of bus travel in the city these days.

Allow me to go into a little detail. As of the beginning of the year, bus rides in Pittsburgh once again saw a fare increase. A typical Zone 1 ride, which is all I take, you can take 2 and 3 Zone rides if you want to head farther out into the suburbs, but everything I use the buses for is confined in Zone 1, went from 1.75 to 2.00, transfers (a ticket that allows you to go from one bus to the next for a multiple bus ride) remained at 50 cents. So a trip either to or from work for me would cost 2.50, one bus into town and a transfer either to Oakland or Greentree depending on my direction. There are multiple ways of paying for a ride, you can just put money in the fare box upon entering, you can buy tickets like I do, a book of ten costs $20, no savings in it per se, but you can use them at any time, they come with no time limit on them. You can also buy passes, either weekly, monthly or yearly. I am not sure of the rates on all of them since the increase, I think a weekly is around 19.50 or so, I know a monthly is $75 and I don't even want to know what a yearly costs. The advantage to a pass is that you have unlimited riding capacity within the specified time. I have been buying tickets because that way I don't have to put money aside for them (save for the .50 for a transfer) and I am not sure I ride the bus enough on a weekly or monthly basis to spend money on a pass. I would have to take 20 bus rides in a week in order to get the 50 cents in savings that comes from buying it, work related trips in a week only amount to 14, so I am thinking I am saving money by not buying it, I haven't done the math on a monthly pass yet, but just the fact that while the fare increase would seem slight to some, only a quarter, that quarter worked out to $15 when it comes to buying a monthly pass, it used to be $60, now $75 and I am hard pressed to part with $75 every month just to ride the bus, again when I don't know if I would get $75 worth of rides out of it.

Enough with my boring transit plans, this is about splurgage after all, and I did just that this weekend, buying comics books for the first time since pre-Christmas, stopping at the dollar store to buy a big bag of Doritos (normally 3.19, I paid 1.49), bean dip for tortilla chips ($1) and some post Christmas M&Ms, now marked down to $1.49 for the big bag. Saturday the spoiling continued, I went to the used DVD place and picked up "Signs" for less than 5 bucks. I also found the first ECW One Night Stand PPV for $11, and a documentary that I wanted to see in the theater but didn't get to, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", which I snagged for about 8 bucks. To cap it off, I didn't even bother cooking last night, instead ordering in and getting spaghetti and meatballs, an order of chicken tenders and an order of french fries. I know, it seems like a lot of food, but I had to hit the minimum for delivery, and the chicken tenders I put back in my fridge where I will nuke them later and make breaded chicken sandwiches out of them (with yummy hot sauce I might add). Yes, I am frugal, even in my splurging. Good thing I am only trying to impress me.

Memo to self, never mention how good things are in the blog, it tends to backfire rather quickly. I mentioned recently how good sports were around here recently, with the college basketball team and the NHL hockey team doing very well, well the basketball team lost Saturday for the third time this year at Cincinnati, and the Penguins lost arguably the league's best player Friday night when Sidney Crosby suffered a high ankle sprain in a loss to Tampa Bay, meaning he will be out at least 4-6 weeks. The Pens won their first game without him Saturday night, but chances are they will not play at nearly the same level without him as they have been over the last few weeks.

Even my video game good fortune has abandoned me, as Joe Random got sent back down to the minor leagues. This despite the fact I was hitting over .400 in the major leagues when I got demoted. I just wasn't getting enough at bats (you have no control over when the manager will play you in create a player mode, and while I was hitting well, I didn't have overwhelming power numbers or a great RBI total, so I was sent back to the minor leagues, where I have just been crushing the ball. The problem is that once you get sent down, you have to wait for 60 days to request being called up, or hope the major league club will call you up either because someone is slumping or hurt, and that hasn't been the case yet.

I do have a couple of page updates to get out of the way. Kudos to Angie, as she was the only person that actually had an idea of where the new title to the page came from. The title itself was not a suggestion from any of the fine readers of this page, in fact I got no suggestions at all, so I had to rattle my cranium to come up with something clever that at least I could appreciate if no one else. Also, of note is that unless I am just being snubbed, it would appear that Jon Jacob has left Multiply entirely. I first ran into Jon over at 360 and it was nice to see someone who is as much of a broadcasting junkie across the pond as I am here, and I was happy to see that he got his dream of a job with the BBC. That being said, I am not sure why he left Multiply, but I did see that he is working on something new on Vox and the link to his page can be found in the links column on my homepage.

I know I said I wouldn't tease future blog entries, yet here I am saying that the second installment of the BFT is scheduled for release later this evening. I have it about half written on my computer, but I am at work now as opposed to being at home, so I can't finish and post it quite yet but it will be forthcoming in the very near future.

Lastly, just a mention, or rather a concern about the NFC Championship game today between the NY Giants and the Green Bay Packers from Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin and that is that the game shouldn't be played in the conditions that are being forecast for today. Weather reports have that the game time temperature will be 0 degrees at kickoff, and remain around that temperature throughout the game. As I type this, some 5 hours before kickoff, it is 0 with a wind chill of -16. I am sorry, but when you put people in elements like this, where the goal is no longer to win, but just survive and hope nobody suffers from a severe case of frostbite, you aren't determining who the is the best team. If that were the case, the Super Bowl wouldn't be played at a neutral site every year in either a dome or a warm weather climate to determine the best team, the team with the best record would host the game, or the game would be alternated between conferences every season. Instead, it is played on a neutral field where the elements have the least chance of affecting the outcome, the players on the field are left to determine that. I am not saying that Green Bay shouldn't be hosting this game, they went 13-3 during the regular season, they earned the right to host this game, but just as you wouldn't but a team on the field during a thunderstorm for the safety of the players, putting them on the field in these conditions is just as reckless. This game could have been delayed for a day, where it will be slightly warmer in Green Bay (12 degrees) and without the sub zero wind chill and hopefully would present a better showcase of the teams abilities, rather than simply a battle of attrition with the elements.

Oh well, like I said, I am at work and I gotsta scoot if I want to get out of here today.