{rheality.check}

Alright I’ll admit I’m not the best with personal finance. Although I have to say that I used to be amazingly methodical and organized when I was 16. It’s incredible the amount of will-power and personal finance savvy I had for a kid. And then I went to college and somehow went from super-responsible-thrifty-chic to reckless-crazy-spend-thrift. How or why that transition occurred I’m not sure but right now I am not quite a spend-thrift but I am by no means what I would consider to be “thrifty” these days. So I’ve run up against an unexpected expense and lately I have managed to reign in my expenses to something manageable. But I wasn’t expecting my grad school tuition bill for another month so I had decided to splurge and buy myself this slightly expensive but very awesome bike (that I do use quite frequently, so I do not view it as money wasted). It’s just that now I have to pay interest on this bike because the money I was going to use to pay it off is now going to tuition. This bothers me because I just dragged myself out of this miserable hole of debt that I created at the end of my misguided college days that was perpetuated by several moves since then. Moves always bring unnecessary expense. Anyway, I’ve actually been pretty good about saving money and getting myself out of my little hole. So I think if I just buckle down and set myself a small budget for this month I should be ok. I’ve been trying to use Expensr to help me see trends in my spending but I need to add in my credit cards to get a real picture, currently I only have my bank accounts. It’s just taking longer to get organized and create a budget than I wanted. Who knew it took this much effort? I’m sure once I get it set up and figure stuff out it’ll be fine. For now it’s driving me a little nuts. Granted I have only been really gung-ho about being this detailed for like 2 days. Before I just gave myself a set amount of cash and didn’t touch my savings, it’s becoming a little more complex. I guess I’m just deciding to be more proactive about knowing where my money goes.

Yes, I did steal my title from a country song and no this post is not about cars or trucks or well anything “physical” for that matter. This is about Google’s new browser Chrome. I was extremely excited to check it out and start playing around with it. Unfortunately you can’t download it if your company has a firewall. Now you would think that a company like Google could have made an installer package that didn’t rely completely on the internet and could install without getting information over the network. So that in and of itself is disappointing. But also, I’ve been hearing some not so great things, like a friend has been playing with it for a little over a day now and he said that he can’t get any pages to load and that he keeps getting their version of 404 which is “Aw, snap”. I think that’s pretty sad too and just reading a few reviews the fact that you have to find workarounds already for just normal browsing is a bit disappointing. Not to mention the security breeches that I’ve seen rumor of. I am still excited to download it at home and at least futz around a little bit but I am hoping that my experience will be better than what I have been hearing so far. I suppose we’ll see, I mean I’d like to say my favorite color is chrome but currently, I’m a bit hesitant to even spend any significant time and energy on it (both of which I am short of these days).

This is something that has bothered me for *years*. I am staunchly pro-choice, does that mean I am going to go have an abortion any time I become pregnant? NO! In fact I have no idea what I would choose to do should I (miraculously) find myself to be pregnant. So I really take issue when people tell me, “Well I’m pro-life but I don’t really care what (other) women do with their bodies, I mean they should discuss it with their doctors and do what they feel is best”. Maybe I’m missing something but last I recall pro-choice meant that you are an advocate of a woman’s right to choose, which is exactly what you said except for the bit about being pro-life. That means that she could choose to keep the baby. That also means that she could choose to have an abortion if she decides that’s the right decision for her. Pro-choice is advocating giving women a choice that is between her and her doctor(s) and whoever else she chooses to include in that decision. It is not saying “Woo hoo! Let’s all go get abortions now!”. So why is it so hard to differentiate this simple concept? Also why is it so hard for our wonderful liberal Democratic party leaders to actually get this message across? I constantly get that well you’re young, you’ll change your mind about being pro-choice when you have a child. And I’m staring back at them slack-jawed because they nearly stated my exact position (minus the “I’m pro-life but” part).