Loaded Answers

There are about a million things I want to say and write and do, but having so much in front of me sometimes paralyzes me and I end up doing nothing at all. It's a little bit annoying. A lot a bit, rather.

There are several feelings that I just love and don't think I'll ever be able to live without: the feeling of snowboarding and feeling the tension in my legs as I'm turning toe-side and pushing against the mountain and extending my legs from the crouched position to straight while my momentum carries me downward; running for an hour and still feeling strong and like I'm gaining momentum by the end of the run; feeling completely at home with another person and having full confidence in myself and in my position with that other person. Those are all feelings that I just have to have.

Yeah, so running yesterday...I'm surprised at how good I felt throughout. I ran 7.5 miles under an hour, and I feel like I could push that up to 9-10 next week. I want to run the Thanksgiving Point Half on April 24th, and I feel like distance-wise, I can work up to that mileage in two weeks, and I love feeling that kind of capacity when it comes to my fitness level.

Running definitely isn't for everyone. For a little while following the Chicago Marathon, I kind of took to trying to convince people that they all could do it too, but if someone just doesn't believe they have the capability to do so, they just won't, right? But if you really get me started on it, I can't think of one person that I know that is physically unable to cover that full distance - including no dying - provided that he or she puts in the work. Honestly.

I love the principle of repentance, if only because it means that I don't have to resign myself to my weaknesses. For the past 23 weeks I've been keeping track of every expense that I have, and I'm still far from perfect at it, but my spending and use of money are so much better now than they were back when I first started tracking everything. It's so empowering to feel like you have control over your life, and this is one small thing, but those are the kind that count, says me.

I want to sing praises to Progressive Auto Insurance. I used to have Triple A when I was in CA, and me being a moron, just kept that coverage when I moved out here to Utah. Last year my policy was an absurdly high $1800 for the full year. No accidents, but in a three month span I managed to rack up three tickets with one being covered by traffic school. Anyway, I shopped a few different insurance companies here this time around and even with a couple of additional violations (damn that California to Utah drive), I'm saving about $1000 off of any other insurance company. Unreal. So now I feel like I'm several hundred dollars richer. I could go into some behavioral economics stuff, but I'll spare you the details except for this one - I've framed this scenario as a gain so I'm flying high.

I don't even think I mentioned last week that I got out of another speeding ticket. There are all kinds of Ws all over place for me lately. Some people never get tickets, and I'm kind of a magnet for them. I attribute it to my minority status. I hate you white people.

...come to think of it, I do always get pulled over by white cops. I was just kidding before, but now I'm thinking maybe there's some validity behind that theory....

Although I get pulled over a lot, I think I get out of a lot of tickets for a guy. (Guys and girls aren't on the same playing field when it comes to getting out of traffic violations, not even close.) I think I get out of tickets about a third of the time that I get pulled over. I attribute it to how nice I am when the police officer comes up to my car. I pretty much resign myself to my fate of getting a ticket, and so when the officer comes up and sees me whimpering and completely vulnerable, it must thaw his icy cold heart and prompt him to not give me a ticket. It's surprisingly effective.

Back to Progressive...I have no idea what it's like on the back end should I ever get into an accident, and maybe that's where I'll wish that I ponied up a little more dough, but on this end where I'm saving about $700-1000, I'm pretty stoked.

Example of Progressive's awesomeness: Geico wanted to charge me $1700 for a full year, and knocked another $100 off for going from a $500 deductible to a $1000 one. I'm still at less than $800 with Progressive with a $500 deductible. And I've got emergency roadside and rental car coverage with that quote. Un. Be. Reeve. Able.

I would gladly be one of those real life customers they have on media campaigns who talk about how they saved over 60% by using their services....and they gave me this free bumper sticker with my purchase, too!

Not really, but you get my drift.

I got some variation on this very typical question yesterday: how are you? Answer: very good (well, rather. Sorry, third grade teacher, Mrs. Phelps). This guy really couldn't be any more happy than he is right now. I haven't been elaborating on the whys, and I won't bother to here either, but things are just great.

I just realized how much emphasis I've been using in this post, and I'm not even going to apologize for it. And with that, I hope you all have a great start to your week!