tunage: begin to hope by regina spektor
i graduated from college in may, so now i have a lovely diploma i can flaunt. but as of yet, alas, i have no job. although i am on the job hunt. my parents thought it would be wise for me to learn how to manage the money that i will eventually be making, so they signed me up for the financial peace university seminar at our church. and, while i am not in debt (at all) and do actually have money in the bank, i am learning a lot about the importance of knowing where every dollar you have goes each month.
the conclusion is that i spend a lot of money on coffee and other things i don’t reallyneed. during the last semester i knew i needed to get my spend vs. save ratio on a better track than the one i was headed down, but when you’ve been laid up with pneumonia all january and you’re just trying to survive until graduation, saving is not the biggest thing on your horizon. granted, that is no excuse for not saving.
for the last few weeks of school, i probably bought coffee three to five mornings a week. no joke. occassionally that’d be twice a day. i don’t go wild and crazy on the syrupy, sugary drinks or anything, but i do like a nice scooter’s latte, and an extra espresso shot never hurts when you’re leaving home at 6:30 in the morning, facing a 45 minute drive to your 8 o’clock class, and not going home until your absentminded professor mercifully releases you somewhere around 3 o’clock. but that’s about $3.50 right there, plus the muffin or scone i might have grabbed if we didn’t have any quickie breakfast foods lying around at home.
that adds up to a lot of money. dave ramsey of fpu stresses the importance of a single person having a financial accountability partner. when i choose mine i think i’ll definitely look for someone who has no qualms about telling me that i can’t buy coffee whenever i want it (ouch!). but it will keep my teeth whiter, my waist trimmer, and my bank account fuller.
~*~ and now for a slight change of topic ~*~
do you ever blaze through yellow lights right before they turn red? or even maybe just go the normal speed but still feel like you’re blazing because the yellow caught you off your guard? yeah, i do that, too. a friend of a friend kisses her first two fingers and touches them to her car’s ceiling when that happens. so my friends and i started following friend-of-a-friend’s (who is now a full-fledged friend in her own right) example. while riding with strawberry sunshine and charlie brown last saturday, i learned that if you go through two yellows in a row and do that you’re supposed to be in line for a hot date come the weekend. we made the first yellow light, but the second one turned red before we arrived, so the charm was broken. neither strawberry or i much minded, though, since we’re a little weirded out at all the courting and engagement and marriage and baby-making (and having) going on around us. charlie brown was talking to picasso on the phone, so we didn’t hear his take on the matter.
but tonight, as i was driving home from fpu …
… i kissed through two yellow lights in a row.
guess we’ll see what happens over the weekend. 
