Shifting the Spend

Like so many other personal finance enthusiasts, we have settled into a routine with our monthly budget. Most of our expenses, groceries and gas and utilities, are more or less the same from month to month. The once-a-year expenses, the life insurance and Christmas, don't sneak up on our budget anymore. Everything is ordered, everything is planned for. It's gotten to the point that we barely need to discuss our monthly budget, so much as to simply give it a glance and say, like great God Almighty did all those years ago, "It is good."

Playing with My Emotions

They did it again. The Steelers got me to believe. This year, unlike so many others, I honestly thought they were contenders. They had an offense that could score on anyone, and a defense that kept doing just enough. This year, I said to anyone that would listen, they really could win it all. And then the Steelers made a fool out of me for believing in that lie, along with everyone else in Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh diaspora. We were naive to think this young team, being re-built on the fly, could make a serious run to the Super Bowl. Then Baltimore Ravens took that group of young players, drove them into the Heinz Field turf, and dry humped the poor bastards into submission. It was humiliating...and a little weird, too, since on-the-field humping, while not technically a penalty, is usually deemed poor sportsmanship.