Budgeting...

I need to get my finances in order. If I am indeed going to try to buy a house any time in the near future, I have to prove to myself that I'm capable of living on a pretty severely restricted budget every month. So, this morning, I got out a handy-dandy day-planner that I haven't really used much, and decided to chart out all of my required expenses for the next month, and figure out how much cash I can allow myself to spend. Well, my math skills are sad to say the least (remember I work in a museum - we don't do math in museums), so perhaps I did something wrong, but it appears that I should be making a $20 bill last for about 3 weeks every month. That can't be right, can it? Surely not. Anyway, I got so depressed that I gave up and put the day-planner away. I'll try it again when I'm in a happier state of mind.

Happily, this gloomy financial forecast didn't dampen the whole weekend. My friend GG called last evening and invited me over for an impromptu cocktail hour and dinner of stuff she'd bought at the farmer's market. It was a pleasant evening and the food was very tasty. I am always impressed by people who can whip up great meals out of basic, simple ingredients. I am not one of those people.

Also, I watched the movie In Bruges (starring Colin Farrel) last night. I was excited about it, because the previews for it looked pretty funny. And actually the first hour or so of it was pretty funny. Then all of the sudden it took this super-violent, very dark turn somewhere in the middle. It did not end well. So, I'm not sure I can really reccomend it. However, it was excellent Colin Farrel-viewing though!

Welcome to my world...

Well here I am finally - posting to my very own blog. I've been thinking about doing this for quite a while now. I work as a museum curator, and over the last few years several of my interns have been on me to start a blog called "What not to do in Museums", in which I would rant about all the proper museum methodology that I try to impart to them every day. While I would find such a blog amusing, and probably several of my friends in the profession would too, it might get old after a while. So, instead, I plan to post about not only the whacky stuff that happens to me at work, but also about my life in general - therefore it will be a true collection.

At the moment, I live in an extremely tiny rental. It is, technically, a house, but it is smaller than most of the apartments I've lived in thus far. While I'm pretty good at maximizing my space and making due with what I've got, there are days when my lack of elbow-room threatens to drive me over the edge. Today is such a day. I spent most of the day cleaning (yay! I found some motivation!), and then I got down to the business of connecting my new printer to my new laptop. Because my cable internet connection requires a cable outlet and my ethernet cord is unreasonably short, my laptop and printer have to be incredibly close to the only empty electrical outlet in my teeny-tiny house, which just happens to be behind some of the living room furniture. Therefore, I had to move the furniture, which was not easy, and then I had to sit on the floor behind the furniture, with what seemed like 30 cables and wires going every which-way. And my cat Pepper wanted to help too. She walked back and forth across the keyboard several times turning various programs on and off. Oh, and did I mention its like 105 degrees today, and my AC is, um, not quite up to the challenge? Anyway, everything's connected now, and the furniture is back in place, but this minor incident in my day has reinforced what I've been telling myself for a while now - I need to buy a house!

So, stay tuned for adventures in first-time home buying, as well as news from the museum world...