Spring Break is the best thing ever invented. I am not going anywhere, but I am in total bliss.
First, I get to study what I want when I want. I am finally putting a little dent in my research, and I go to bed ready to wake up and get back at it the next day. Great feeling.
I am also getting out on the bike. It's like 60 degrees here. I can feel the winter weight, but I'm also surprised by how fast I still am. Time to overtrain the hell out of myself, because I won't be able to keep it up once classes start back up.
The more I ride around Michiana the more I like it. I don't think it will ever be like Peoria or Minneapolis to me but probably more like Richmond, where I went to college. South Bend has that same Midwestern post-industrial feel, and I really like that sort of thing. Abandoned factories, housing projects, river valleys, all that. Long Live Rust!!
I also am taking homeownership classes to start buying my first house. It will be hard to pay less on housing than I already am, but I'll give it a shot! It's really interesting to me how many types of financing are available, and how it meshes with what I've been learning in school.
Economic theory is really hard to apply to real life, at least partly because it's tough to be very clear about what exactly you want! Assigning yourself a functional form for utility means that you know exactly what gambles you would accept and what you would reject--it's like planning for every possible Deal or No Deal scenario you could ever face.
The thing is, an additional dollar is worth less to you as you gain more money. A millionaire cares less about a dollar than I do. How fast it becomes less valuable is very important when trying to make decisions. Not complicated, but it requires a degree of logical consistency in one's choices that not even very smart people can live up to.
Risk is funny like that. It plays with your head. People just haven't evolved brains that are able to rationally weigh risks and assign weights to dollar amounts. You might say that one can use probability to analyze risks, but the problem isn't like that. The problem is in knowing how much you care about certain standards of living.
Stuff I like:
Tifosi sunglasses - The cheapest ones in the store, but they have served me very well and they look good.
Mechanical pencils with .7 mm leads- They never get dull, and hardly ever break.
exile.ru - A zine for expats in Moscow. I especially like their War Nerd colmnist Gary Brecher, but it's all good. I like Soviet and eastern European stuff because it totally fits into the heavy industrial Rust Belt aesthetic. If you don't like the way steel mills look, then you probably don't get it. But everyone will like War Nerd.
Aleksandre Vinokourov - My favorite cyclist of all time. Dude looks like a punk but he's crazy aggressive. Watch out for him in the Tour this year. Plus he rides
BMC. I gotta get that jersey.
My touring bike - So smooth, yet fast! There aren't many hills around here, so it doesn't matter as much that this almost weighs twice as much as my beloved
BMC. It's just so damn comfortable!
