Finding Freedom

As those of you who read this site regularly already know, I want a career in the performing arts. My goal is not to be especially rich or famous, but just to be able to support myself and my family doing what I love to do. With that in mind, let’s look at the following.

I auditioned for a professional theatre company earlier this last week, and I received a call today letting me know that they’d like me to come back in for a call back. This is very exciting because A) It makes me feel like this career is a viable option,
B) I think that this really means that I have shot at getting into this show, and
C) A local graduate school that I want to get into works in conjunction with this theatre, so, should I get in, this would be an effective foot in the door over there.

However, because it’s a professional theatre, they, like normal people, have their rehearsals during the day. This will, obviously, be very difficult in conjunction with my normal day job.

I’m hoping that my boss will let me do both so long as I can get the requisite number of hours at my desk job, but I don’t know if he will as the schedules will conflict dramatically.

If I could work both, that would be very beneficial for me in a finding freedom sense of the word as the theatre would be paying me comparably to what I’m making at my day job. However, the prospect of essentially two full time jobs is a bit daunting. Also, should I end up leaving my day job to pursue this, I won’t have any job come January, and when you don’t have any money, it becomes very difficult to pay off debt.

Obviously I’m getting a little ahead of myself because I might not even get into the show, but I’m trying to think about and weigh my options thoroughly before I have to make them. Thinking about the options really makes me appreciate the opportunity and gravity of the situation.

Any advice from any of you out there in the internet?

There comes a time in just about every man’s life where he has to consider taking out a loan in order to show his significant other that he cares. This is known as buying an engagement ring. Here are some of the things that I’ve learned as I’ve been looking for this very thing.

The important thing to know is that there are four “C”s to consider when you are purchasing a diamond. They are:
A) Color - How white the diamond is,
B) Carat - How big the diamond is,
C) Clarity - How many physical flaws there are to the diamond, and
D) Cut - What shape the diamond is.

I will cover the little bit that I’ve learned in that order.

A) You color my world. Diamond colors are grouped together, with D, E, and F being the most white, G, H, and I being a slightly yellower, and J through the rest of the alphabet getting substantially yellower. Because the first group is the clearest and most dazzlingly white, they are the most expensive. However, the differences between letter grades are very small visually, but they can have a substantial difference in price.

The moral? A G rated diamond will look just about as clear as an F diamond, but it will likely cost hundreds of dollars less. It should also be noted that the color diamond you get can depend on the color gold of the ring you get. A white gold or platinum ring will demand a more pure white diamond, while you can afford to go further down the scale with a yellow gold ring because the yellow from the ring will make the diamond look yellow anyway, and so even a beautifully clear diamond will appear yellow with that gold ring.

B) Size matters. As the size of the diamond gets bigger, the price grows exponentially. However, because a diamond is rated in the four different areas, you may be able to afford a larger diamond if you give up on some of the other areas.

Also, as is the case with two of the three other areas, if you go slightly below the size that you want, you can save money. For example, the price difference between a 0.98 carat diamond and a 1 carat diamond is, oddly enough, substantial.

C) Clarity is important. The grading scale goes Flawless, Internally Flawless, Very Very Slightly Included (VVS1 and 2), Very Slightly Included (VS1 and 2), Slightly Included (SI 1, 2, and 3), and Included. This measures how many imperfections or scratches there are on the diamond.

As was the case with the previous two, the last rung of one tier is virtually indistinguishable from the first rung of the second tier, but the price is much better.

It should be noted, however, that the Slightly Included grouping is where the imperfections may be visible to the naked eye. However, you have to be looking pretty closely to see them. Therefore, if you encourage your soon to be wife to gesticulate a lot when she’s talking, no one who sees the ring will be the wiser. I am joking, of course, but seriously, Slightly Included defects are difficult to see.

D) Cut makes it sparkle. There are many different shapes that you can get your diamond cut into. There is the princess cut, which is square, heart shaped, round, oval, among many others. However, what is important to know here is that part of what makes a diamond sparkle is the number of sides that it has. Round diamonds tend to sparkle the most because, due to how they are cut, they have the most sides. In fact, some stores, like Robbins Brothers, offer specially cut diamonds with extra sides that are especially brilliant due to the extra faces to reflect light off of. However, these diamonds are very, very expensive due to the fact that people like shiny things.

So, if you’re like me, and you don’t have a lot of money, but you want to impress and dazzle your fiance, I would suggest getting a round diamond that is G in color that is around 3/4 carat with a clarity rating of VS2 to SI1.

However, at the end of the day, you just have to decide which of these areas are most important to you. Do you just want a huge diamond? Then get a big diamond with a slightly yellower color on a yellow gold ring. Is the diamond’s beauty most important to you? Splurge and go for the VVS with a D or E color, but go for a smaller diamond so that you don’t break the bank.

In the end, it really is (or should be) the love that matters most, with the ring being just an expression of your commitment to that love. With that in mind, choose a good diamond, but remember, as you’re pinching pennies to get there, why you’re doing it in the first place.

It’s when it’s really hectic at work that I realize that what I do is, in some sick little way, important to a bunch of people. This is at once gratifying and horrifying.

I tend to park in a parking garage that my girlfriend and I split the payments on. Considering how much street or lot parking costs in downtown San Diego, she and I are getting quite a deal especially when you factor in the fact that the company that we work for subsidizes our parking expenses.

However, for the last couple of weeks, the garage’s elevator has been acting, well, substandardly.

As I get in to work pretty close to nine, most of the lower levels are already filled up, so I have to park towards the top, which makes the elevator an appealing prospect as opposed to several flights of stairs. The elevator, perhaps emboldened by its own sense of importance, has decided to make its passengers realize their own mortality.

When the descent started this morning, the elevator was literally shaking so badly that the doors started opening and closing. I chuckled to a lady next to me in an effort to divert her attention from the gradually growing dark spot in the front of my pants.

In all seriousness, though I guess I’ll have to talk to the attendants at the gate about it, although I can’t believe no one has talked to them about it so far.

Oh, and maybe I’ll start taking the stairs.

Let me first state that I am very grateful that I had old carpet at my old apartment. Because of this, I didn’t get charged for its very necessary replacement, and so I got a check in the mail for a couple of hundred bones.

I didn’t receive the full deposit back, but given the fact that my roommates had burned holes in the carpet, I am very thankful and grateful to receive any at all.

I’m surprised that they can keep as much of the deposit as they do, though. It seems like they would have taken carpet cleaning out of the deposit had they had to just clean it, which seems kind of crooked. When I left the deposit, I believed that as long as I didn’t destroy the place, that I would get most of it back.

I suppose that that is true, if by most you mean less than half. But, I suppose landlords have to make money too…

For those of you who are looking to perhaps make a bit more income by blogging, you should consider checking out the new classified section that Darren has put up over at Problogger. Potential employers are already starting to post about which blogs they would like to get someone to write for.

As I was signing in this morning, I realized that yesterday I posted my 100th post.

Do I feel like I have a better grasp on all things financial than I did a couple months ago? Well, maybe not all things, but I do feel that with even just sitting and writing about ways to save money and to pay off debt has been very useful towards achieving my goals.

Let’s hope that I can continue at the same pace, and, to that end, here is my new challenge to myself: I will be debt free by August 2007. As this is the time that I will hopefully be starting graduate school, I can’t think of a better goal for myself than to be debt free by this time.

Will this be difficult? Oh yes it will. It will require a level of self-control rarely seen by the world from yours truly, but as I am sick and tired of having this monkey on my back, I believe that I can do it.

Is it feasible? Well, after looking at the various APR’s and the balances associated therewith, I am going to have to pay off $1,596.17 a month to accomplish my goal. I take home just about $2300 a month, and my rent is $600. That leaves $103.83 for the other monetary burdens.

I’ll admit that it does sound impossible; however, my Adsense revenue have really started to pick up. I am hoping to see this portion of my income continue to grow over the next several months as well, and this will add a better cushion between what I make and what I need to pay out.

Finally, even if this my dreams are too much like delusions of grandeur, if I can put any more money towards my debt than I have been putting in the past (which, sadly, includes actually adding to some of the balances on the credit cards) than I will be in a much better place a year from now than I am today.

August 2007, here I come!

While it is easy to think of a video game as a ridiculous waste of money, video games can actually pay off.

Let me tell you what I mean. Let’s say that I purchase Madden 2007 for $45.

If I were trying to see how far my entertainment buck would stretch, at nine bucks a movie, I would have to play the game for ten hours to equal the amount of money and entertainment time I would have spent going to an evening movie.

If I would prefer to spend that money on drinking, it would likely take me four or five evenings of playing to equal out.

If I preferred to spend that time as quality time with my girlfriend, well, er, I guess I can’t really compare that one, although I could perhaps try.

In conclusion, I will likely pick up this game as I am pretty excited about it. I just thought that I would try to justify it monetarily.

I won’t even try to justify it as a good use of time…

Over at the Dilbert Blog today, Scott Adams posted about how he finds that he gets the most work done, and the little ways that he gets distracted.

“Another 10 percent of my work day is allocated to thwarting my cat’s anti-productivity crusade. She hates it when I do work, under the universal cat theory that any time spent not petting her is time wasted. As soon as I pick up a drawing implement she systematically goes around my office chewing and scratching one item after another until she finds something that will make me stop work and pet her.”

This got me to thinking about how I find that I get the most work done. At my job, if I’m listening to my ipod I find that I can get a lot of the easy tasks done rather quickly. However, as the tasks become more difficult, I find that I need to either turn the volume way down or else turn off the glorified mp3 player entirely.

With most of my job being relatively easy, I find that having the headphones is a great way to drown out the various office noises that might otherwise distract me from producitivity.

How about you, gentle readers? How do you find that you work the best? Do you like it noisy, or would you prefer it to be as quiet and serene as a Catholic church?

Everybody on our floor is being given two monitors for their desktop computers. According to my boss, this should increase our productivity.

I gotta be honest. My first impression with the monitors was that they were probably a good idea, but that they were a little bit unwieldy to use. However, as I am getting more and more used to them, I am finding how useful they are.

In my job, I have to be thinking about two or three different types of data at any given time, so the capability to be able to look back and forth without having to pull up different screens and programs is invaluable.

I think that I remember Bill Gates talking about his own office, and he said that he used three monitors, and I can only imagine that that would be even better.

As far as two monitors go, I give it two thumbs up, or, as they say on the reruns of In Living Color that I have been watching lately, two snaps in a circle.