The Cost of Budgeting

After doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations on my impending surgery, I knew that I'd need to do some serious cost-cutting on luxury items like eating out and gourmet yogurt at the natural food store. As I expected, this second surgery is gonna be like 20 times (slight exaggeration) more expensive and with my insurance up in the air right now (though it has more or less come in for a landing with the arrival of my insurance card), these are times for me being really, really frugal (cheap).

Well, except for going to watch Spamalot on Broadway last Tuesday. That was booked before said back-of-the-envelope calculations were computed. And we got a fantastic deal on the tickets! It's a great show that was precursed not with a $30 theater-district meal, but rather a $10 (combined) plate of pierogis and borscht with uber-frugal Melissa at my favorite Polish restaurant in Brooklyn, a few stops from where I work.

And then Wednesday arrived and I was caught between a rock and a hard place when Paul called me at work and tempted me with an opportunity for immense pleasure watching Jimmy Buffett at Madison Square Gardens the next night. Hello? No brainer! Of course I'm going to see that. But, yowser, that was an expensive treat. I had to hit myself to restart my pulse after he told me the price. I was doubting, doubting, doubting, sold. I spent many years of my life holding my wallet down and missed out on a lot because of it, so there's no reason to skimp on opportunities when they come knocking on the door when I still have positive cash flow. Plus I got to spend an evening with Paul and D before Paul goes back to school this week. As always, Jimmy put on a great 3-hour show with thousands of parrot-heads in the crowd. I really should go experience the Key West lifestyle while I'm out in this side of the country...

Saturday was a big milestone for me and my volunteer troupe. After two-consecutive trips that were total bombs due to one thing or another (and I'd like to think outside of my control), this was going to be a key month. School is back in session, so I was hoping that things would again be predictive and back to normal. I kept the number of volunteers limited this month to make sure that we'd get enough kids to sign up before people committed themselves, and sure enough we had 12 kids coming and only six volunteers early in the week. We were going to a rock-climbing gym, so maybe it was popular with the kids and the volunteers, because as soon as I opened up a few more slots for volunteers, they were snapped up quickly. Until someone cancelled on Friday evening and then someone called in sick Saturday morning. I was stressing out about having too many kids this time, but in the end everything was just fine and we had a great trip doing something that, while not cheap, was something that I hadn't done before. And apparently my body had never experienced such contorsions of my meager frame, either. I've been walking around wincing and with bruised ribs ever since! I picked an easy wall to try first and then, in front of the full crowd, chose a more difficult one that the little kids had little problem with. Apparently they're stronger and more athletic than me. Or should I say "strong" and "athletic", since I am none of the above. I huffed and I puffed and I cheated by pulling on the rope to hoist myself a few inches higher so I could get my foot on the next rock. But, hey, I made it and got down to the ground in a sweaty heap with my upper body twitching and shaking like it was 10 degrees outside and I was in my boxers.

Saturday night, was the massive Triple-E event: Eastern Euro Extravaganza! With many of my friends in grumbling compliance with my birthday wish to leave the island, we headed off on a trip to Astoria, Queens for one of the last Old-World beer gardens in New York. Unfortunately, D was a victum of a certain snarfing-incident and had caught the nasty bug that I'd had the previous week and Paul got the short end of stick when he came down with a stomach infection as a result of a baby pearl lodged in his kidney. There were many people hinting that going to the Polish nightclub (with "dress to impress" standards) at midnight in Brooklyn wasn't exactly on their agenda, but I was still up to the task. But, therein lied a question:

What does one wear to "impress" at a Polish nightclub in Brooklyn? Imagine a ven diagram with four circles (pretend like this isn't a web architecture ven diagram for a minute):

In my ven diagram, my four circles would be as follows:

1. Brooklyn Style: Known as being uber-hip, where you can wear torn jeans, tight vintage shirts, big belt buckles, and any other kind of clothing one could find at a second-hand store.
2. Greenpoint (1): An area of Brooklyn that is home to mostly Polish immigrants (and I mean fresh off the boat).
3. Greenpoint (2): According to my Polish sources, Greenpoints style is approximately a decade behind modern-day Warsaw.
4. Manhattan Club Style: In Manhattan, "dress to impress" for a club could mean a full on suit.
   

Add to this the fact that a beer garden in Astoria isn't exactly a place you dress up to go to, and we've got quite a small area of convergence on what is appropriate for Club Exit. I went back and forth on what to wear and decided that vintage yellow and red pumas probably wouldn't "impress", but tight Euro jeans might be acceptable. In the end, everyone at the club was wearing jeans, nice Adidas, and other standard Euro-fare clothing.

In any case, the beer garden was amazing. Next time anyone visits me and it's warm at night (think: September), I am going to take you there. It was totally legit and totally authentic, complete with old men playing cards and drinking imported Czech beer to little kids running around at ten o'clock at night while mom and dad sat with their friends at a bench table enjoying a cold one or four. I know you've heard me say that NYC is very European, but this was the first time I've experienced such an atmosphere without taking an eight-hour flight home.

Being that it was my birthday party, we all enjoyed quite a few pitchers of fresh, tasty Pilsners and Bavarian Dunkel-donker (I made that one up; How else do you describe dark Spaten? ;o). Foolishly, Alan brought up the subject of purchasing me a birthday shot and, clearly under the influence of the dunkel-donker, I asked everyone if they'd ever had a shot of Wild Turkey and lime. I guess I was the only one who had enjoyed such a disgusting sounding, but heavenly tasting, specimen and to my surprise, someone actually brought me a shot of Wild Turkey with a slice of lime. Uhhh...by "lime" I meant lime juice! And the next day, I realized that by "Wild Turkey", I actually meant "Southern Comfort". To this hour, I have no idea where I came up with Wile Turkey and Lime. No idea. I don't even like whiskey! SoCo and lime excluded....

With the masses coming up with lame excuses like "I have a baby shower to go to in the morning", "I have other, more important parties to attend", "I have a Liverpool vs. Chelsea soccer match to watch in the morning" (oh wait, that was me), or "my husband is at home with a kidney stone" (ok, that one is excusable), there was an exodus of friends when I announced that we had to depart for the club at once in order to get in at a discounted price. Melissa was a trooper, however, and was up for checking out Club Exit. We got there nice and early (and cheaply) at 11:45 and chilled out on the couches while the Polish rolled in. We discussed the dress-code quandry that I'd faced earlier that night and sat back and analyzed Polish fashion trends from days gone by. Once the dance floor was packed and the Euro-techno was pumping, we danced for a few hours before we got bored and headed back to the homeland in the city.

The next day, after shaking off a Wild Turkey headache and sitting in despair while reading recaps of Liverpool's loss (again) against Chelsea, I got some small things around the house accomplished before starting to plan for the next event of the week - Paul's Going Back to School party at a karaoke place downtown. Sunday nights are super cheap and we had a room for 15 rented out all for ourselves. It's been a while since I've sang out of tune in front of a crowd of people I know, but we had a blast. We were there for about four hours and sang what seemed like a few hundred crowd-favorite songs, plus a few songs that I wanted to sing but nobody wanted to listen to. You mean "Riders on the Storm", with lyrics like "If you give this man a ride sweet Caroline will die, killer on the run" isn't a popular sing-along? And, one thing I've gotta say: I now have tremendous respect for Ringo Starr. I always thought his songs were very monotone, but I actually found "Act Naturally" more difficult to sing than Sweet Child of Mine. We're gonna have to do that again sometime!

J. Riley, for some reason, sleeping sounds really good right now.