utenzi

I'm officially a car owner again. I received the title to my Elantra in the mail yesterday. As of tomorrow I'll have owned it for 2 years and 10 months. Since I usually keep cars for 6 years that means 3 years and 2 months before I have to deal with car payments again. I'm quite happy with the car and if it holds up well, I might keep it past the 6 year point. Hell, given the weakness of the economy---I might HAVE to keep it longer than 6 years. In other news, my heels are finally healing over. Only one of the blisters I got last week while hiking is still weeping. And that's only a little bit over the course of a full day at work. Soon I'll be able to go hiking again! Now if it'd just cool off a little bit. Hiking in 90+ weather is not a lot of fun.

Forbes Magazine publishes a supplement a few times a year called Forbes Life. It can be an interesting read in as far as it is an observation of a lifestyle very few of us will ever experience. We're talking about some seriously conspicuous consumption here. These are people who plop down thousands for a pair of shoes, hundreds for a couple of pairs of socks to go with the shoes and 20 grand to pop over to the little village in Italy to watch the cobbler put the shoes together in his quaint little shop. Nice, huh? One of the articles in this issue (April 2009) is about how simple things are back in fashion due to the hard economic times we're enduring. The article suggests taking off those fancy blocky watches and replace them with a more simple enduring look. But while they might be simple, they're not cheap. Of the 11 watches profiled in the article the cheapest was the watch over there on the left, a Jaeger-Lecoultre Master Ultra Thin with lists at $6,850. Most of the o...