I went through my credit card statements and phone bill this morning to look for places to reduce spending and didn't come up with many ground-breaking ideas.  Much of the entertainment spending (coffeeshops, restaurants, and movie theater tickets) were due to work.  I often did work at coffeeshops instead of the lonely and depressing office, I ate out once or twice everyday for meals at restaurants due to work (but yes, a truly responsible person would've packed their own lunch and cooked at home everyday), and I often escaped the stress of work by going to the movie theater.  Also I had to use a lot more gas than normal to drive to work in the past 2-3 months so that bill should fall and if not, then my oil-related investments' appreciation should hedge the cost of gas for me.  I will keep the cell phone Internet service for now because it's so handy to have an always-on Internet-enabled mini-laptop but will take out the landline (which saves $10-$15 a month from my AT&T bill).  :)  I rarely use cash so I'll ignore those rare cash-only expenses.  At the grocery store, I'll even pay $2 with a credit card.

To save on gas, I might drive the 2002 Corolla in Austin again.  That's the one that gets low-30s city and mid-40s hwy mileage.  :)

In two weeks, when I finally leave work, I'll also look more into establishing a home-based business (if not merely for the tax shelter) for the rest of 2009.

One thing I'd been wanting to do was to work a fun and social job like bartender.  Bartending classes turned out to be really short so I'm not in a rush to do that. 

Now that I won't have to stay up late and exist for 15-19 hours at work on little or no sleep, I can make a better attempt to cut out non-tea caffeine from my diet.

I have not played a game of Go in sooooo long.  I hastily made kombucha tea last Saturday morning, after having left the existing SCOBY mother in a 1-gallon jar fermenting for like four weeks in my closet.  I'd intended on making it a couple of weeks earlier but didn't have time.  Now there are 1.5 jars of kombucha drink in my refrigerator.  Glass jars seem really expensive.  I got mine from IKEA.  I saw some huge laboratory PYREX glass jars online for hundreds of dollars.  Disinfecting the containers was such a pain, but I'll continue since there is so much good news around about kombucha and what better thing have I got to do than to jump on a fad?  :)

I must go to work tomorrow to test many things.  The office building has AC from 8 am to 1 pm on Saturday mornings, I hear.  You see, I didn't know that because I rarely go on Saturday mornings.  My weekends are so precious I'd rather procrastinate until Sunday night if I have to go in on a weekend or Sunday morning if I'm that busy.  The Saturday morning Town Lake crowd is also the best.  Since I know from experience that decent light starts filtering into the sky at 6 am in Austin, I'll go for an early morning walk and then head to the office to enjoy the AC while it lasts.  I haven't jogged in ages and won't be since my knees are probably worn out from all the trekking around we do at work.

I had my first really close call to hitting a deer this morning.  It was a tall male deer with antlers, standing in the right lane of Bee Caves Rd. looking calmly at me as I braked to a halt and had the stuff in the passenger seat slide onto the floor.  It was so otherworldly and glorious, like a higher being calmly gazing at me.  I moved to the left lane.  It was dark, too (yes, we leave for work that early), so without high beams I might've actually hit it.  Thank God for high beams.