I got rid of a whole lot of books this weekend. I made two trips to the Strand, where I made $50 selling books, and I made one trip to the Salvation Army down the street for books I didn’t think they’d take. (The Strand doesn’t like to buy much fiction because they’ve already got tons of it.) And I took a few books to the post office this morning that I sold on Amazon. All told, I think I got rid of about 40 books this weekend, which is in addition to about 45-50 books that I tossed out during the past week. I’m still left with two six-foot-tall bookshelves filled with books.

I also spent much of the weekend checking out different pieces of personal finance software. First I explored Quicken, but Intuit (which owns Quicken) recently switched to a proprietary file format for downloading data from your banks. This makes more money for Intuit because it charges banks to use the format, but it’s a hassle, and I just don’t feel like supporting a big company that’s going to treat its customers like that.

Next I downloaded and tried out GnuCash, which is free, but I found it ugly. Worse, it requires using double-entry accounting, or debits and credits, which I can’t seem to get my mind around.

Finally I decided to try out Moneydance, which I think I’m going to wind up using. I like the interface, and the application is user-friendly. It’s free for the first 100 transactions you enter, but after that it costs $30. But I discovered that it was created by a UVa alum, Sean Reilly, so if I like it and want to continue using it, I’ll be more than happy to pay him. It’s always nice to support the little guy instead of the Man.

In other money-related issues, I cooked dinner on Friday night for the first time in ages and made enough to last three nights. And I’ve made it a goal to try to make my lunch and bring it to work every day this week.

I don’t know why I get on these weird kicks sometimes. When I get into something, I tend to *really* get into it for a while. Probably has something to do with my overachieving personality.

Although that personality never seemed to apply to things like law school.

I’m always interested in the passage of time, and I recently realized that this summer is a significant milestone for me.

I was at the University of Virginia for eight years, from August 1991 to August 1999. During that time, I went to college for four years, worked at UVa for a year, and then went to law school there for three years. After taking the bar exam during the summer after law school graduation, I packed up my stuff, left Charlottesville and moved back up to the New York area.

At the time, I marveled at how much time I’d spent in Charlottesville. I began college at age 17 and finished law school at age 25. Eight years – nearly a third of my life up to then. It seemed like ages.

This summer is significant because another eight years have now passed since that summer.

For a long time after moving back up north, I felt like I was living in a post-UVa transition period – my “post-UVa life.” I defined my existence by what had come before it. (Sort of like how we called the ’90s the “post-Cold-War era.”) Life just didn’t seem as interesting or as stable as it had back in Charlottesville. Even several years after moving back up here, I still felt like I’d just recently left UVa.

Well, it’s now eight years since my UVa life ended – it’s been as long as my UVa life itself. It’s hard for me to sense how much time has passed since then; the past eight years seem to have gone by more quickly than the previous eight years. But I’ve experienced a lot since then — some things that happened so long ago that I sometimes take them for granted.

• I came out to my parents.
• I discovered blogs.
• New York City became my stomping ground.
• I had my heart broken several times.
• I had a five-year career in state government.
• I met Matt and we became partnered.
• I met my good friend Mitch in New Jersey, and other friends whom I feel like I’ve known for ages.
• I turned 30.
• I experienced life in a post-9/11 America.
• I lived through most of the Bush administration.

When I graduated law school eight years ago and wondered what my life would be like in 2007 at age 33, I don’t really know what I pictured. I probably hoped that at the very least I’d be in a stable relationship, out to my parents, and financially independent. Check, check, check. Besides that, I didn’t know. I was finally done with school and had no idea what I was going to do with my law degree. I couldn’t see ahead into the mists of time.

Life is like driving down a country road at night. Your headlights are on and you can see only a few yards in front of you, and you have no idea what’s around the next curve. My future is as murky now as it was back then.

But I guess I’m not in my post-UVa life anymore.

I’m just… in my life.

Does the MTA website suck?

So South Carolina has moved its primary up to January 19.

South Carolina’s primary was originally scheduled for February 2. But then Florida scheduled its primary for January 29 to get ahead of South Carolina. South Carolina got annoyed at no longer being the first southern state with a primary, so it moved its primary.

This means that New Hampshire and Iowa are legally obligated to move their primary and caucus. Under state laws, the New Hampshire primary has to be held at least seven days before any other state primary, and the Iowa caucus has to be held at least eight days before any other state votes at all. So New Hampshire’s going to have to move its primary up from January 22 to at least January 12. And Iowa’s going to have to move its caucuses from January 14 to January 4.

If the leapfrogging continues, the Iowa caucuses could wind up happening in late 2007.

Isn’t this a bit ridiculous, the first primaries occurring nearly a year before the general election? The major party candidates will be chosen by February 5, and we’ll have a Democrat and a Republican sniping at each other for nine months.

That’s quite a long time, isn’t it? Maybe we should just move up the general election from November to, say, July. And we can move Inauguration Day up to September 2008.

Heck, we may as well start the 2012 primaries now. Candidates can declare their candidacies today and start railing against President X’s administration before President X is even elected or nominated.

Why don’t we hold the 2016 Olympics next year? And can I retire tomorrow?

I’ve been continuing my uncluttering kick. I got rid of around 40 books last night, give or take. They were all books I figured would be difficult to sell and that I knew I’d never look at again.

My first book-purging goal is to get rid of enough books so that all my remaining ones fit on my two six-foot-tall bookcases. Even that goal is hard. I haven’t achieved it yet. I have tons of books. I have such an attachment to them — they’re like my children. Each one has a story behind it and is full of ideas. And collectively, they make me look and feel studious. I admire people who have lots of books.

I did a book purge when I moved out of my old apartment two years ago, but I’ve since acquired more. When we moved in together, Matt jokingly told me that I wasn’t allowed to buy a new book without getting rid of an old one. It never happened.

I have conflicting reasons for doing a book purge: (1) I want to get rid of stuff in order to make a potential move easier and to just have less clutter around, and (2) I want to make a little money. These reasons conflict, because it’s actually a hassle to make money selling your books — it’s easier just to donate them. I’m going to take a bunch of them to the Strand this weekend and try to sell them; those I can’t sell I might just donate in bulk to the Salvation Army down the street. Getting rid of them book-by-book on Amazon seems way too slow and inefficient for the money I’d make off them. Andy made a good amount of money selling books on Amazon, but I’ve sold only one so far out of the several books I’ve put up for sale. And I had to go to the post office. I can’t imagine doing that 50 to 100 times. I’d rather just get them off my hands in one fell swoop.

As for my CDs, last night I ordered a bunch of ultra-thin CD sleeves, which should reduce the physical volume of my CD collection to about 1/3 of its current size after I toss out the bulky jewel cases. Of course, I had to spend money to buy the CD sleeves, so I guess I value the uncluttering itself more than the small amount of money after all.

Sometime in the last two months I crossed over into positive net worth. The assets contained in my 401(k), my savings, and my checking account are finally greater than my outstanding debt (student loans).

Of course, the 401(k) is basically untouchable, and that’s where the bulk of my assets are. Still, it feels good to know that my net worth is above zero, even if just on paper.

I’ve been on this whole get-rid-of-stuff-and-maybe-make-money-off-it kick today. I recently discovered The Simple Dollar, and it’s an addictive blog – almost every entry contains links to other entries, and I find myself clicking on a bunch of different things on each visit. There’s also Get Rich Slowly, and Unclutterer.

Anyway, I’ve decided I want to get rid of a bunch of my books and CDs. The books are easy – I’ll try and sell the ones I want to get rid of at the Strand. As for the CD’s, I’m trying to decide whether to just get a bunch of ultra-thin CD sleeves to keep them and save space, or whether to rip them digitally and sell them on Amazon or eBay or something.

There’s also the hassle factor to consider – maybe I should just dump the stuff I want to get rid of and not worry about selling it.

Why now? The fact that we might be moving is a big motivator here. I’d like to get rid of my clutter before packing for a move.

I’m so pissed at the Democrats for caving in on wiretapping last week. A Times editorial today sums it up best:

[M]ostly, the spectacle left us wondering what the Democrats — especially their feckless Senate leaders — plan to do with their majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads to use it to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control president.

Damn Democrats. You can’t count on them for anything.

Articles about the new narrower New York Times, which debuted this morning: from Gothamist, Gawker, and the New York Observer.

Some peeves:

(1) If you’re riding a bicycle, YOU ARE NOT A PEDESTRIAN. I’m sick and tired of cyclists who ride the wrong way down one-way streets or ride through red lights. It happened to me again this morning. I was waiting to cross a street on my way to the PATH station. When the “walk” sign finally lit up, I began crossing, even though I saw a biker coming from the cross-street who I KNEW was going to keep on biking through his just-turned-red light. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of being deferred to. So he chaotically swerved around me and rode on into the intersection, where he had to brake in the face of oncoming traffic. If not for me, he might have made it all the way through. I heard him say, “My gosh!,” which I think was in response to me. I gave him a lingering glare and continued walking.

I don’t care how great you think you are for biking instead of driving a car. You still have to follow traffic rules.

(2) What’s with the phrases “the exception that proves the rule” and “a rule that is more honored more in the breach”? Neither makes sense. The exception doesn’t prove a rule. It’s evidence that there is no rule. As for “honored in the breach,” Google shows me that the phrase made more sense in its original meaning (it’s from Hamlet). But now it’s nonsensical.

(3) Tim Russert needs to learn how to read. Several times on “Meet the Press” every Sunday, a newspaper or book excerpt appears on the screen and he reads along with it aloud, but he inevitably screws up some words. It’s annoying but funny.

Happy Monday!

After writing yesterday’s entry, I thought about chronicling all the instances of “trick openings” that I find in newspaper articles. I didn’t expect to find another one so soon.

From today’s paper:

In a deal driven at least in part by the hunger to get programming for a cable network, Rupert Murdoch pays an unimaginable price for a family-controlled institution, one steeped in a distinctive set of values, the gold standard in its field.

A familiar story line. But this isn’t another account of Mr. Murdoch’s acquisition last week of The Wall Street Journal and its owner, Dow Jones & Company, from the Bancroft family. Nine years ago, the Fox Entertainment Group, a unit of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation, stunned the sports world by buying the Los Angeles Dodgers — The Wall Street Journal of the National League — from the O’Malley family, which had owned the team for decades.

Can we please have a moratorium on a particular journalism cliché? I don’t know if it has a name, but I’m calling it the trick opening. It’s used to alert the reader to a supposed historic parallel to a present-day situation. Here’s an example in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review, from the beginning of a review of a book about Bill Clinton’s first term:

The president is a failure. His foreign policy is a mess, and he’s hounded by scandals at home. A hostile opposition has seized the Congress, and he’s fought to stay relevant in the face of humiliating approval ratings.

George W. Bush today? No. Bill Clinton in 1995.

The name of the book prominently appears at the top of the review: “Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency.” There’s also a big photo of Bill Clinton at the top. So it’s not like we don’t know the book being reviewed is about Bill Clinton.

Are we supposed to find this opening clever? “Wow! You sure got me! At first I thought you were talking about George Bush — I had no idea you were actually talking about Bill Clinton!”

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I come across this trick in the newspaper every so often, and it always annoys me. It’s just lazy.

Aliens approaching Earth today on a spaceship would have no doubt that our planet was inhabited. In addition to our big blue planet, they would see the satellites, thousands of them, man-made, orbiting the earth. We use them to send information – weather, television, phone calls, bird’s-eye photographs.

Aliens approaching our planet 250 years ago would have seen no such satellites at all — just a lonely, pristine planet. But if they got closer, they’d see hundreds of wooden ships, going back and forth across the big blue expanses of ocean, confined to crawling along a vast sphere, prisoners of non-Euclidean geometry.

I’ve been reading a biography of John Adams lately – not the popular one by David McCullough (I’ve heard that it’s too hagiographical and sentimentalized, that McCullough dumbs down Adams’s personality by making him too likable), but a better one that I discovered, John Adams: Party of One, by James Grant. It’s delightful, and James Grant is incredibly witty – he appears to be a good match for Adams’s cantankerousness. (Adams spent a few years in France as the American minister; he had no patience for diplomacy and sorely tested the graces of the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, who couldn’t wait for Adams to leave the country.)

What strikes me is how slowly information traveled in those days. I’m currently reading my sixth consecutive book about colonial America (I don’t think I’ve ever read so many books in a row on a single topic before), and this keeps coming up. Back then, it took about four to six weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. As colonial American society matured over the course of the eighteenth century, the colonies became more closely tied to the mother country; the more well-to-do colonials liked to keep up on the latest British fashions, and London newspapers crossed the ocean to be read and discussed in the coffeehouses. And yet, the news in those newspapers was at least a month and a half old. When King George II died, the colonials didn’t know about it for weeks.

The same thing with letters. I don’t understand how the British ever managed to govern their colonies. If a colonial official needed permission from the mother country to do something or some information on a particular matter, he’d have to wait four to six weeks for the letter to cross the Atlantic, and four to six weeks for the response to cross back over the water – in addition to the time spent crafting that response. Information traveled no faster than a human being, no faster than the wind could push a ship across the ocean. When John Adams in France received letters from his wife Abigail back in Massachusetts, who knew how out-of-date the family news he was reading might be?

And yet, as John Steele Gordon writes, this slowness of information travel was “simply a fact of life. Like growing old, or needing to sleep for several hours a day, it was taken as a given, if sometimes regretted.”

It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that the first transatlantic cable was laid and the Old World and the New could finally communicate near-instantaneously.

Today, we’ve got our satellites and cellphones and airplanes, email and instant messaging, live television feeds. As soon as I hit “publish” on this entry, someone in far-off Indonesia will be able to read my words on a page visually formatted exactly the way I want it.

How can we take this stuff for granted?

Look around the room you’re in right now and think about what you see. A computer made of plastic and metal. Electric lights. A television, a telephone. Maybe some photographs. You might hear car traffic. I just took the elevator down to the lobby and got a snack, processed someplace far away, covered in a plastic wrapper. All these unnatural things!

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been deeply absorbed in colonial America this summer… but sometimes it really does feel like we’re living in a weird, make-believe future.

WTF?? First Ingmar Berman dies and now Michelangelo Antonioni? They always come in threes. Coppola and Scorcese must be nervous.

(And now I’m going to have the lyrics to “La Vie Boheme” stuck in my head all day.)

It’s possible that Matt and I may be moving sometime in the next month. Not definite, but possible.

Does anyone have an in on a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan? Any tips, advice, or whatever would be greatly appreciated.

(P.S. Wow, I just used the words “an in on” consecutively.)

Speaking of babies, Sparky’s got a new one of his own – Gina – and she’s beautiful.

More and more often lately, I think about having kids.

The thing is – I don’t really know if I want to raise kids. I don’t have the money and I can’t imagine myself ever having the money. And then there’s the time and energy. And they turn into rebellious teenagers.

So I don’t know if I want to raise kids – but sometimes I want to have them. I want to pass on my genes. I want to leave something that lives on after I’m gone – a bloodline that emanates from me. I don’t want to just be someone’s uncle, an offshoot on someone else’s family tree.

More practically, I also wonder, years from now, about dying old and forgotten in a nursing home — assuming that (1) I live a full lifespan, (2) there are still such things as nursing homes in the mid-21st century, and (3) our robot overlords haven’t taken over by then.

Theoretically I could become a sperm donor, either anonymously or to a lesbian couple. But I’d feel weird about contributing my genes to a child and yet not having any rights to that child. Which I know contradicts the desire not to have to raise the child.

These are all just amorphous thoughts that have been going through my head lately.

This particular excerpt from Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony the other day makes me want to slap him upside the head *SO* hard.

More here.

I’m still shocked when I come across lawyers who can’t write properly.

How the hell did they get through law school and the bar exam?