Rabbit Style News

Tonight I’m reading chapter 5 of my Accounting Principles textbook.  I’ve enjoyed the class so far and I’m excited to apply what I’ve learned to a real-life case: I’ll be doing the books at my brother’s game studio on Monday.  They don’t really have a set accounting system in place nor do they have any easily accessible financial statements, and I’ll be there all afternoon to set it up for them.  I had already given myself the day off and now I’m looking forward to doing some useful work at their offices.  Put some numbers in this column, name and prepare accounts, create the ledger spreadsheets, debit this account and credit that one, post a transaction to the ledger, write a trial balance, create an income statement, finalize the balance sheet… It sounds like a lot of fun to me.  For real.

Blueberries are on sale at the supermarket for $1.50/pint, limit 6 per customer. This is a very, very good price. I bought six pints and he bought six pints in the next checkout lane over. Three pints are already gone: I ate two directly (and rapidly) from the container and used most of another for blueberry muffins, eating what didn’t fit in the batter. In the new issue of O that just arrived there’s an article about a woman who lives on a small blueberry farm and it includes quite a few recipes for the fruit. The recipes look really good — cheese-filled crepes, peach and blueberry cobbler, arugula and feta salad, creamy blueberry-lime parfaits — and yet at first I couldn’t imagine making any of them unless I had a huge surplus of blueberries. Why waste them in a dish when they’re so good eaten fresh? I feel that way about a lot of fruit, actually. I’d choose perfect ripe peaches over peach pie any day. Less than an hour after expressing this sentiment at lunch I found the blueberry sale at the store and behold! A potential blueberry surplus! I’ll stop by after class tonight to buy another 6 pints.

I was relieved to see that the store set a limit. How would I know when to stop, otherwise? Blueberry season happens for just a few weeks and I spend the rest of the year pining for them, and I know that after eating all of them I’ll still wish I had more. But just how much money would I spend? $15? $20? $45? $150? Is it possible I could reach a point where I say, “You know what, I think I’d rather not eat any blueberries today, thank you”?

My new cell phone arrived today and I am once again in contact with the world!  It’s the same number and account and everything, although I lost all the numbers that were in my old phone.  To get the free phone I signed up for another two-year contract, this time with 300 minutes instead of 1000, plus 400 text (or photo or voice) messages for an additional $5.  I haven’t figured out all the features of the new phone yet.  It’s lighter than the old one, and probably a lot more up-to-date.  Three years is a lot in cell phone time.

I finished piecing together a quilt tonight.  I can add a border over the weekend and pin the layers if I have enough batting lying around somewhere.  I hadn’t done any sewing in a few weeks and it was nice to get back to it.  I looked up and it was an hour and a half later.

I have identified an issue that might be preventing me from experiencing true satisfaction with life: I have too much time on my hands.  I need more activities, interests, and commitments to provide structure to my everyday comings and goings.  The past couple weeks I’ve been going directly to class after work on Monday and Wednesday, and then Tuesday is ladies’ night for dinner and $1 scoop ice cream at Baskin Robbins.  I still have plenty of time spent sitting on the couch at the computer: reading articles, looking at celebrity gossip websites, talking online, watching videos…  I’m halfheartedly looking for a regular volunteer opportunity.

The two major hospitals near me request commitments of at least 4 hours per week and I had been thinking that I’d like to do closer to 4 hours per month, not week.  I might still look into it, especially because one of them says “2-4 hours/week” in one of their FAQ sections and I could do 2.  Both allow potential volunteers to specify whether or not they prefer to work with patients (no) and if they’d be ok working in an office environment (yes).  I also did a quick, unproductive search for local nursing homes that need volunteers to provide company for residents.  During a summer in college I assisted with bingo hour on Wednesdays at a nursing home and I’d be interested in doing something similar again, especially since my grandparents are all dead.  Perhaps I would be paired with a few residents who could use a regular visitor.  Then again, I vaguely remember that my experiences that summer were depressing more than anything, leaving me horrified by what happens in old age.  I vowed to be 19 forever.  While I didn’t manage to hold onto 19, at least I’m still young.  I hear 26 is the new 19.

I started hankering for Subway sandwiches about two weeks ago.  Since then I’ve eaten three foot-long subs and I look forward to another one this weekend.  If I had one here right now I’d eat it, even though I’ve already eaten four times today.  I just can’t get enough.