Spiritual explorations and common sense
When we buy impulsively, we may end up regretting the purchase. It might be more money than we really wanted to spend on that item, or we might find we don’t like that item as much as we thought we would, or we find that we could have gotten it for less somewhere else—sometimes a […]
Everyone has a set of guidelines, conscious or not, about friendship—what friendship is, what kinds of behavior are acceptable, what kinds of traits a good friend has. Those guidelines usually allow for imperfections as well—after all, none of us is 100% compatible, and we all make mistakes. Along those lines, I once told a tarot card reader […]
I wish I didn’t have this advice to give. I love going to a movie theater and watching a movie on the big screen. But nowadays, at $10 a ticket or more, and paying for three people, I think long and hard before I go see a movie in a theater. Instead, I wait until […]
The other night, my partner and I were accosted in a parking lot by a young woman who gave a good song and dance about how she and her female cousin were out of gas and needed to get back to Vacaville (a two-hour drive away). Could we spare anything? Anything at all would help. She gave just enough details to make […]
I’d like to think that everyone is already making this a habit, but experience has taught me otherwise. You can save a lot of money by turning off your lights when you leave a room. Or the television, or stereo, or other electronic device. Or powering down your computer instead of leaving it on when […]
You can find meaning everywhere by knowing yourself and noticing the little things that are easy to dismiss, pass off as coincidence. By “knowing yourself,” I mean understanding what is significant to you. Are there certain numbers that mean something to you? Symbols? Images? Sounds, names, tastes, colors? Events? For example, let’s say a particular […]
In my previous post on reducing transportation costs, I suggested using driving techniques that can increase your fuel mileage. In this post, I describe the techniques that have saved me a lot of money over time. For example, I get 26 MPG on the freeway in my SUV, and 18 MPG in the city. Although […]
For a number of years now, I have been studying Japanese–sometimes more diligently than others, but I figure if I continue studying, however slowly, things will sink in. Eventually I would love to go to Japan, but my main motivation is that Japanese is on my life list of languages I want to learn. The […]