Even in Kyoto

When I hear music that I like, I would like to be able to own copies of it and also support the artist(s) who produced it. I don't need hard copies (CDs), but sometimes that's the most straightforward option.

Recently, I listened to Interpol's latest album, using NPR's First Listen thingy, which had a link towards the bottom to purchase the album while also benefiting NPR. Well, there's a way for me to show support for some of the NPR programming I continue to appreciate (I am grateful for print-versions of topics they cover, even if their coverage is simplified and watered-down relative to other news sources). PLUS it won't give NPR my most recent home address, so they can't send me junk mail. Great.

The only two purchase options are through Amazon or iTunes.

I got pretty peeved recently when I discovered that recent Apple operating systems have started using the App Store as the sole method for distributing software and updates, in particular because Apple was requiring credit card information as part of the process. I try very hard to maintain barriers between my personal financial information and online purchases because they take financial interactions to a new level of abstraction and make it too easy for corporations to drain money out of my wallet. As an example, I keep separate eBay and PayPal accounts.

So, no thanks, Apple.

Here's the Amazon purchasing workflow, which makes me think twice before actually purchasing any music through Amazon (I already try hard to avoid ordering material goods through them because I disagree with their predatory pricing practices and labor practices):

1. Put music in virtual shopping cart
2. Attempt to check out, get error message because my account does not contain any automatically saved payment information.
3. Enter in payment information as part of "updating account info."
4. Make purchase (click!...that was fast, with minimal confirmation windows)
5. Attempt to download music, get error message that I need to install the Amazon music downloader installer application.
6. Download downloader thing and install it.
7. Download music.
8. Delete credit card information out of Amazon account.
9. Move downloaded music into separate directory.
10. Delete Amazon downloader application and associated Amazon directories.
11. Listen to music.

Alternatively, I could pirate music and then try to make a direct payment towards bands/organizations of interest.

Sigh.

Hey, it's June. How did we get here? I certainly don't know, but I have a feeling that the whole summer is going to fly by and it will be August before I know it. I am both excited and nervous about August. I'll head to Portland for the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. From there, I'll go up to Seattle to spend about a week with my family, and from there I'll go to South Korea for the International Congress of Entomology. I'm toying with the idea of taking an indirect return route from there, flying back to Seattle and then maybe heading over towards Minnesota on the train. Minnesota, I owe you a visit, bigtime. I suspect if I do so, I'll be very tempted to jump off the train in Montana and stay there. Montana is a glorious place to be in the summer. We shall see about these plans.

August plans are tied to a consideration of my finances. Funding for academic work can be a tricky beast, sometimes. While my expenses are covered for the trip to South Korea, I'm not really in a position to get financial assistance to cover the conference in Portland because I'll be presenting work from my dissertation. However, this conference is a really important one from a career standpoint; I haven't attended any ecological meetings in the past, but enough of my work is ecological that I'd like to get feedback from an ecological audience. Plus, given that the meeting is in Portland, I'm hoping that there will be a larger contingent of colleagues from the Pacific Northwest with whom I can network.

So that expense is going to come out of my own pocket. It's not the first time, and probably not the last time, something like this will happen. Getting to be an academic is quite the privilege, eh?

My student loan repayments are also due at the beginning of each month. Today, while looking over the numbers, I discovered that I'm close to the one-third mark for paying back both my parents and Sallie Mae for my undergraduate education. I started to work on paying things back about five years ago, while still enrolled full-time in grad school, and have been trying to accelerate repayment ever since then. I cannot complain as vociferously about my student loans as current students are entitled to complain, as some of my loans were subsidized while I was in school, I was able to consolidate them at a fairly reasonable interest rate, and some loans were interest-free from my parents. Still, talk about pushing a boulder up a hill. It's hard to feel free while still in debt.

These days, I'm reading a book called Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, by Kim Todd. One of the faculty members from ASU gave me a copy of the book. I find the narrative style somewhat annoying, but the fascinating qualities of the story shine through well. Merian was a painter and natural historian in the 1600's who documented caterpillar metamorphosis in Europe and in Surinam. One of the more unusual elements of her story is that she was a divorcee; her distaste for her ex-husband was strong enough to drive her into a religious sect, and caused her to flee from Germany to Amsterdam. A divorce in that era was financially catastrophic for a woman, and so it's pretty amazing that she was able to hang on and make a living while continuing to do the things she loved, studying insect natural history. So, a worthwhile book to read, overall. It's also making me itch to draw more, especially as I still owe my little sister some cricket drawings. So many projects, so little time...

Strangely enough, the rowing website where I keep track of my rowing meters changes its annual calendar over at the beginning of May. My best guess for why this happens is that it coincides with the end of the spring racing season for Northern Hemisphere collegiate and junior rowers. Well, almost the end. Teams tend to compete until mid-June. So perhaps someone else has a better explanation. Regardless, last year's numbers are gone, and we start afresh.

Anyway, this means I have another chance to look back at a yearly measure, the number of meters rowed over the course of the year, and to set a new goal for the upcoming year. For many reasons, last year was the first full year that I felt was representative of my rowing output potential. K and I worked hard to prepare for the Masters World Games in the fall, and I was able to complete the Holiday Challenge. Any perceived shortage in my meters total is due to inconsistent effort on my part; not even last summer's shoulder injury kept me from training.

Given all of that, I was able to row around 800,000 meters and change. That number is reasonably good, all things considered, but of course I'm ambitious as usual and like to play with numbers, as usual. They can motivate me to get out of bed when I might be tempted to roll over and go back to sleep. So I think I'll set the 2011 goal at 1 million meters. The teammates that I most look up to are much better than I am at reaching this many meters. They have the benefit of erg ownership, to be sure, but it's easy to let excuses get in the way, and I know from the Holiday Challenge that I can figure out ways to get over the excuses (e.g. bring in clothes to erg in the middle of the day).

The hardest thing about this million meter goal is that it will require consistency and persistence. I cannot simply sit down and put in that kind of mileage. Training for rowing marathons in the fall will certainly help. I have to do it in a habit-forming way, in the same way that I ride my bicycle everywhere. I'm satisfied with yearly bicycle mileage in the 6000-mile range and don't want to change that number, so it's time to play with the rowing numbers.

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There are other numbers to play with as well. As with last summer, I'm going to experience a reduction in pay this summer. It's just a fact of life; I should be grateful that the University has found a way to provide me with money in exchange for teaching over the summer so I don't have to find a job waiting tables or something. Thoughtful of them, really. And although I sort of appreciate the Obama administration's attempts to bolster the economy by handing a chunk of money back to me, I've put those funds into my savings for a replacement computer. The process of saving up money for the replacement has been painfully slow, when you realize that the computer was stolen almost a year ago by now. I'm about halfway there, by now, finally.

I should note that last fall's trip to Australia had to be paid for in the midst of this madness, and that I'm still trying to set aside some funds to repay student loans through all of this (or at least to pay the accruing interest).

When I finally get that imaginary computer, you'd better believe I will appreciate it. I don't want to put too much stock in it, but it will be nice to have a machine with my music and my photos on it, where I don't have to worry about everything eventually getting repossessed by the University. It all makes me think back to the day when I bought my road bike, for it took (what felt like) a loooong time to save up for that as well, but it has been so sweet to ride as a result.

Some of you may recall that at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006, I made a New Year's Resolution to do a better job of managing my finances so that I could buy things that I wanted and also pay off some of my ponderously large undergraduate debt*.

My strategy was relatively straightforward: start to keep track of every penny that I spend**, and start to put money into my savings account. I do not use a budget because the process of budgeting stressed me out and led to noncompliance because it is too fussy, but I do categorize my spending and devote some time to thinking about whether my spending is in alignment with my values and means. Everything that I put into savings is quartered, with one quarter devoted to repaying my parents (they provided above-and-beyond financing for my expensive education), one quarter devoted to Ms. Sallie Mae, one quarter devoted to longer-term savings (currently a CD), and the final quarter devoted to petty materialistic desires that are 'spensive (this quarter is my incentive to myself to save).

Well, 2006 was pretty successful. There were some rough patches here and there, but I managed to more or less keep track of what I spent and get myself out of the cycle of spending everything that I earned. With the help of an additional tutoring job that first year, I also got into the habit of putting my extra income directly into savings. That allowed me to purchase my fancy-schmancy road bike last spring. And 2007 has gone reasonably well overall, too, though I haven't had any supplementary income and have much more expensive living arrangements (I just keep thinking--if my rent were $100/month less, that would be $1200 over a year!). In fact, the only major differences in my financial habits were an increase in the amount going to rent and a decrease in the amount going to savings.

I look forward to maintaining the same sorts of habits in 2008, but the overall success of the 2006 resolution has made me wary of making other New Year's resolutions. This one was so well-defined, complete with concrete measures of my progress and well-thought-out systems, and so it's hard to make any other sort of tongue-in-cheek resolution.

*Well, it's not so large as many graduate debts for professional degree programs, but when you make as much as I do and expect to make about the same amount for a goodly number of years to come, it can be pretty overwhelming--at the present rate of repayment, I'll be working off these loans for the next 15 years--they totaled around $30k to begin with.

**Some of my friends make fun of me for this, but I know myself well--either I track everything, or I track nothing and spend everything, and so this seems the best solution.