Day 29

Last night I had an interesting experiment that tested the concept of peace through tyranny. I was having something of a pizza party with some high school acquaintances at the Cheese Board, one of Berkeley's renowned eateries. I got there early, but as more people began to trickle in, it was clear that we didn't have much of a game plan beyond meeting at a proscribed location and time before devouring cheese-covered bread. Well, that was a fine and dandy plan, the only problem being that our party was about 14 people. Predictably, it got chaotic pretty quickly and I found myself do a fair amount of traffic control. As a person who abhors a mob, I tapped into some of my deep-seated sheepdog instincts and did some herding of all the sheeple.

The pizza party was in honor of a friend of ours, and he seemed a bit flustered at such a volume of humanity before him. So I stepped in and became the benevolent dictator. I decided that there shall be pizza in our time, and I bought three pizzas for our group. Seeing that there were neither chairs nor plates, I directed some chairs and tables and plates together, that the people might sit upon the chairs and eat from the plates and sate their lust for pizza. And it was good, and the people knew it in their stomaches that it was good. Their cups runneth over.

What I'm essentially trying to get at is that I've gotten to the point in my life where I have next to no patience for indecision or inaction.

Also, I've been keeping a google spreadsheet of my spending so far this year. I have two columns, for my two accounts: personal expenses and family expenses. Whenever I bill something to the family column, I feel like I have to have a pretty legitimate reason. My general policy is to bill my parents for three essentials (non-prepared food, clothing, and shelter) and one major luxury (education, including books and tuition). But sometimes there are things that fall inbetween. Who pays for my laundry? Does the upkeep of my clothes fall in the category of essentials (staying clothed), or is it my responsibility? This may seem like petty niggling over a few nickels and dimes, but every time I move an expense from the "David" column to the "Famiy" column, I feel a little bit of my independence slip away. It definitely looks like it'll be a long time before I can stand on my own two financial feet. The count for 2010, as of 29 January:
David: -$213.67
David's Family: -$6049.75