Boy are my arms tired

There is this great Cracked article that everyone has been reading called "6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying." #6 is "Well, $500,000 a Year Might Sound Like a Lot, but I'm Hardly Rich."

I can promise you I'm making nowhere near half a mil. My income is five digits, unless you count the cents. Or the dollar sign. But even so, I felt guilty the other day when I complained that despite having a real, adult job with a real, adult paycheck, I still feel broke.

Before I get to the guilt, the complaint. A real job in a new state means I am paying state income tax and student loans, which I didn't before. I've also been hit by, for the first time, being paid biweekly instead of on a monthly basis. I calculated my budget based on a monthly basis, although in fact I get several hundred less a month that that, except the two months in which I get three paychecks. That's messing with me. Food and yoga cost a little more, but transportation and capoeira cost less.

The biggest difference, the one that takes half my income, is rent. And, yeah, I could pay less - I could live on my own somewhere in Queens, or get a roommate situation somewhere in Manhattan. Ironically, I can't easily afford to move, not having a broker's fee or first/last. And I adore my apartment.

The overall effect is that I'm consuming about the same amount of goods and services now that I did a year ago as a student.

However, and this is where the guilt comes in, I know I could live on less. I know people in New York who do. I might find moving out of my apartment unbearable, but it is still more feasible than saving money by becoming a breatharian. I'm making what is to a lot of people good money. To them, my complaints are going to fall on deaf ears.

The easiest thing I can do for my budget is get rid of my credit card debt. (I'm not going to tell you how much it is, but it's … a lot.) If I wasn't paying that every month, I could breathe more freely. Heck, I could bathe in gold doubloons every morning. (Kidding.) I've been trying to do that since I arrived. I've made some progress, but glacial. Still, progress. Better than regress.

I just bought a plane ticket yesterday for my grandma's memorial service this summer. I don't regret buying it, but as I was doing so, I realized I do travel a lot. This year's Brazil trip is off, so I was thinking of going to Denver instead. That would be several hundred dollars, though. And from NYC, I could instead take an $8 Megabus to DC or Philly.

So, I have a new resolution: I'm not buying any plane tickets until the smaller of my two credit cards is paid off. Which, my parents fervently hope, will be before Christmas. To do this, I'll need to focus on paying it off instead of trying to save, and I'll need to cut back on a few things - goodbye handstand class. But I hope it will be the incentive I need.

Then I can stop complaining about being broke, and start complaining about the shoddy quality of modern gold doubloons.

Rare political rant

Lately, I've seen a lot of the argument that "if the government is paying for your [x] with my tax dollars, it IS my business." At the moment I'm hearing this a lot from people who believe that the government has no business ever paying for abortions or birth control - but it's not an argument exclusive to the religious right. The targets vary, of course: "I don't want my tax dollars paying for bombs in Afghanistan." The sentiment is the same: My tax dollars should not be spent for things I don't believe in.

You know what, folks? Those aren't your tax dollars. Once you pay them, they stop being yours. (It's rather like giving a wedding present. You don't get to take it back, even if they hate it or get divorced.) Instead, they belong to this giant, awkward, inefficient committee comprised of most American adult citizens, some of us whom are more involved in our committee work than others. We call this "government." Yeah, it doesn't always work all that well.

The alternative to accepting this premise? Well, if it's still my money, I get to decide what to spend it on. I'm not sure why I need to go through the step of giving it to the government in the first place. I'm going to use mine to buy shoes.

"Get off the ledge, Turducken," you're saying. "You know perfectly well that it is only supposed to be spent for the public good. Clean air and police and national defense and that kind of thing. Stuff we can all agree on. Still, I should be able to channel my own money, into clean air instead of police, if I want."

The direct result of this belief - not a long strange journey down some slippery slope - is that our impact on our budget is exactly proportional to our income. Rich people get to run things. How do you like that?

Well, you know who would have love it? The founding fathers, that's who. Remember, under the original constitution, only landowners could vote. A great many of us (even among the white male set) can only vote thanks to later amendments. Maybe you're copacetic with this; I'm not. This is one of the many reasons I have no patience with the WWTFFD? line of reasoning: Said fathers were ahead of their time, maybe, but they're way behind ours.

But, hey, if you're into that - if you wish I couldn't vote and that my boyfriend was legally 3/5 of a person because papa Jefferson and friends said so - go ahead, argue that you personally should be able to control your tax dollars.

The alternative is to suck it up and admit that every one of us sends money off to DC to be spent on shit we don't want. That might be birth control for promiscuous ladies or bombs to kill starving Iraqi children. Maybe it's to print money not based on the gold standard or to support bizarre art projects. Maybe it's just to pay that annoying (not to mention incompetent) clerk in sub-basement 3 of some minor federal bureaucracy. Face it, anytime your democracy is bigger than two people, someone is going to regret the choices society makes.

So here's the thing: If you want to change government spending, you have to do one of several things. One, you can convince people it's a low priority. ("I'm not against birth control; I just think the government should pay for submarines first.") Two, you can convince people it violates or is key to a fundamental human right. Yeah, the Declaration of Independence declared certain rights "inalienable," but the Declaration is not actually part of our body of law, and we've never treated rights as inalienable. Human life is "inalienable" - except when the person has committed murder or is a fetus or is dying and in pain. Convince enough people birth control or alcohol or fracking is morally wrong, and we'll vote to stop spending money on it, or at least convince five Supremes to agree with you.

Can't do that? Well, keep fighting. But I don't give rat's patootie if in the meantime "your" money is being spent on things you think are wrong. ALL of us are in that situation, and if you are somehow more sensitive and delicate than the rest of us and can't handle it, that's still not our problem. The princess and the pea is not a policy-making guide.

Ramapo Torne and Russian Bear

The next hill, a photo by TheTurducken on Flickr.

So, my first hike since September, an "advanced beginner/intermediate" hike in Harriman State Park, clocked in at 9.92 miles with 4,344 feet of elevation gain. And my boots were okay, but I'm not overwhelmed by them. At least they didn't give me blisters.

The terrain reminded me of Tennessee in places; hills that look gentle, with almost flat tops, and rocky soil. There was even some mountain laurel. Despite that superficially similar feel, the organization of the hills was different; it's not a plateau with valleys.

The park itself has oodles of trails and is close to the city, so there is a great deal more hiking one could do there. I just bought a book of NYC-area hikes, and I'd like to explore some of the other areas, though - besides the Highline and Central Park, which the book includes.

Once you go Five Fingers, you can't go back

For the last couple of years, I have been hiking almost exclusively in my Vibram Five Fingers. They worked for almost every hike, except the very cold and wet, and for trail maintenance - people in charge of safety like it if your toes are nicely covered. I wore them for 20-mile-plus day hikes as well as backpacking trips. In fact, in my move to New York, I threw out my old boots. I wasn't so fond of them, they were heavier than I liked, and they took up space.

Here's the problem: There's more cold and wet in New York than Tennessee. I'm going hiking today, with a high of 43, and the Vibrams wouldn't be warm enough. (I own snow boots, but it's not cold and wet enough for that, either.) So, what does a girl do but go to REI and buy a new pair of boots?

The Soho REI is similar in size to the Seattle flagship, although I was surprised at how small their footwear section was. For lightweight hikers, my choice was pretty much Keens or Merrells. I took a pair of Merrells home. The next day I walked around the apartment in them, and decided almost immediately to take them back.

I inherited my dad's feet; they're actually slightly narrow, but the widest part is rather wide. In the past, that had not been a big deal. Then I started wearing the Vibrams a lot. My feet have not only gotten stronger, they've shifted a bit; the widest part of my foot is now even wider. I had noticed while attempting to purchase ordinary shoes, but it didn't become painfully evident until trying on hiking shoes.

In a couple of cases, the instep was too far forward for me. But in every pair of shoes or lightweight boots I tried, the shoe was tight across the wide part. Lacing didn't help, as it was the molding of the footbed. Finally, I tried on the last shoes EMS had, a new brand named Salewas. These were OK, so I bought them.

They're too wide in the heel, alas, which could mean blisters. I'll see how they work after my first hike with them today. Five Fingers will be in the pack for backup.

Meu mestre

Capoeira Angola Palmares, a photo by TheTurducken on Flickr.

As I promised, photos from the Baton Rouge event.