1. Always Steppenwolf: we love our seats, we love the ensemble, and they seem to be the only major Chicago theater company who continues to invest in finding, developing, and showcasing local talent.
2. Often Court Theatre.  We’re UofC’ers, but more importantly, we’re huge fans of Charles Newell and Court Theatre’s mission to bring classic plays to life.  When we drop this subscription, it’s almost always because the trek down to Hyde Park is getting to us.
3. Something local.  Usually non-equity, relatively low cost, and an identifiable mission or distinct personality that we like.

So this year, our slate was Steppenwolf, Court, and Profiles.  All decided upon and purchased last spring.  But then I found out about Theater Wit’s subscription/membership…  For less than the price of cable, we could be members of Theater Wit and partake of all the theater we could possibly enjoy.  Theoretically we could see something every night of the week.  Realistically, we could go every other weekend and still get a great deal.  So we signed up for that too.

All that said, over the three weeks, I’ve seen:

• BoHo’s The Rainmaker @ Theater Wit
• We Are Wyld Stallions! @ Theater Wit
• The March @ Steppenwolf
• The Iceman Cometh @ Goodman (thanks to a friend who invited me!)
• Angels in America, Parts I & II @ Court Theatre
• Bachelorette @ Profiles
• Timon of Athens @ Chicago Shakespeare (half-priced tickets from Goldstar)

Not a single dud among these shows.

Iceman was very, very long (5 freakin’ hours!) and could have used a bit of editing, but the acting was uniformly stunning.  Stephen Ouimette should get more (or heck SOME!) attention in this play, but Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy are soaking up all the ink.  Patrick Andrews is also wonderful; I remembered him from Steppenwolf’s American Buffalo and if there’s any justice in this world, he will be a star.

The March was also very, very long (only 4 hours – ha!) and since it’s a new adaptation, will probably be pruned down over the years to come.  Ian Barford was, as usual, wonderful.  Harry Groener is, arguably, the “stunt” casting (although I may overestimate his star wattage as a fan of Buffy and the original Cupid series) and if he’s not quite as good as he was as King George last year, he’s still remarkable here.  Carrie Coon disappears in her role here: I had to double check to make sure she was the same woman we had seen in Steppenwolf’s Virginia Woolf.  She’s going to take Broadway by storm when VW moves there later this year…

The Rainmaker was low-key and simply lovely.  I loved how this play centered around a smart woman who struggled and overcame her insecurities with a laugh at the very end.

Wyld Stallions was just good fun, explaining how Bill & Ted saved the world.  Pure camp in the best sense.  That was a great show to watch with a drink in hand!

Bachelorette was more than good fun: the three main gals were fantastic and if the guys were a bit weak, then that works for the play overall.  I’m curious to see how Profiles grows into a larger space: this production demonstrated just how awesome they are in their current, intimate space.  I do wish I had had a stiff drink in my hand during this one too!

Timon had a perfectly cast lead actor and overly-well cast comedic touches (Timothy Edward Kane was truly, criminally under used) as well as a stunning production design and a truly interesting perspective on the play.  Barbara Gaines also effectively edited the play down to a mere two hours.

Angels is a masterpiece, with what should be (but won’t be) a star-making performance from Larry Yando.  Tribune’s Chris Jones got this one completely and totally wrong.

And there’s still more on the horizon:

• Rent @ ATC (directed by David Cromer)
• In a Forest, Dark and Deep @ Profiles

I’d also like to see (but don’t yet have tickets):

• Light in the Piazza @ Theo Ubique
• Tigers Be Still @ Theater Wit
• Tick, Tick, BOOM! @ Stage 773/Porchlight Theater
• Freud’s Last Session @ Mercury Theater

Who needs cable when there’s so much awesome theater here?

Or at least once a week.

Or, at the very least, once a fortnight.

Then April happened…  And I don’t have any good excuses except to say that the writing muse wasn’t with me.  Which is, frankly, a sucky excuse because I know better than to wait for the muses to move me.

Spring has sprung in Chicago (kinda), which gets my gardening nerd going.  One problem for my inner gardening nerd: we have no outdoor gardening space.  Just a tiny deck in the back that has just enough square footage for the grill and ZERO sunlight.

What about indoor gardening?  Well…  I’m lazy.  Which means that watering doesn’t happen as frequently as it needs to happen for an indoor garden.  Also, we don’t have much direct sunlight.  Oodles and oodles of indirect light (our home is wonderfully bright and airy), but not many actual sunbeams.  Since I favor planting useful, edible plants, that is really a problem.

Nevertheless, I keep dreaming about a little container garden in the sunroom/office.  Cat-friendly plants in self-watering containers that require little direct light but still look and taste good…  Yeah, this is a pipedream.

But dreaming is free and fun (in moderation).  And in the meantime, I’ll plant our Aerogarden with chives and basil in the kitchen (where there’s easy water access and we’d actually use the plants!) and try to be content with that.  Even though the Aerogarden totally feels like cheating…

Getting off track.  My point was going to be: why does there seem to be a strong correlation between money and religion?  What is it about how we spend our money (or rather how we think we should spend our money) that ties with God?

It’s actually an honest question.  I left the Christian church many, many years ago and never really picked up another one.  (Some friends think I’m a closet Unitarian-Universalist, which is probably not false.)

Some insight came from the Williamsburg trip: there’s a bit of ink spilled on how the Rockefellers believed that with great wealth came great obligation/duty/service.  Amassing great wealth and failing to do any good with it is generally unseemly.  For example, there’s quite a bit of speculation as to if Steve Jobs left anything anonymously; worrying about that has to stem from really, really hoping that he did or else he really was a “bad guy.”

My own view: I don’t care.  Really, I don’t.  I’d like everyone to do the touchy-feely good thing, but I don’t care if someone doesn’t.  What bothers me is a show of compassion without the actual compassion.  Or financial assistance with strings that compromise the value of the assistance in the first place.

So, going back to personal finance: there’s quite a bit of ink spilled on debt (which is a moral no-no), tithing (which is “a good thing”), other charitable donations, etc.  All of which is often, but need not be, tied to religious obligations.

I’d rather believe that most people are motivated to do good and contribute to organizations doing good because they are (or want to be associated with) good people.  Not for some heavenly prize out there in the afterlife.

Okay, not the most coherent blog post.  Then again, that’s not really the purpose of blogging, is it.

Compare to our communications while touring the home: we each carried an iPhone (an outdated one at that: we both have the iPhone 4).  I had my iPad as well (because I had downloaded a lovely HD version of a Williamsburg guidebook).  Chris’ iPad and MacBook were in the hotel room, which provided free wi-fi.

Then yesterday, Chicago enjoyed some fabulous weather.  So I settled in my apartment building’s courtyard with my iPhone and iPad.  Since I could access our wi-fi network outside, there was very little, work-wise, that I couldn’t do from my iPad: I spent yesterday reading, researching, and writing in the sun.  (The glare off the iPad was a bit annoying, but I made do.)

Every time I stream video to our TV or a mobile device, I’m happily surprised.

Every time I use GPS to pin-point my position and obtain detailed directions to a new destination, I’m truly astonished.

Every time I open my iBooks on my iPad and see the thousands of books I’ve already managed to acquire (yes, legally!), I’m astounded by the quality and quantity available at my fingertips.

I’m of a particular generation who grew up with computers in the home, but also remembers things like expensive long-distance calls, hand-written letters, black & white tube TVs, 8-track players…

Louis CK sums up my view on technology most of the time:

Some background: we have been homeowners.  And we have come to the conclusion that homeownership bites.  Bites hard.  With condos, there’s HOA dues and HOA members and HOA management to deal with.  (And speaking as a former president of a HOA, it sucks to be in one as well as to be on the board.)  With houses, there’s so much maintenance to deal with.  The costs of homeownership are not just the price of entry, but also property taxes, roofs, garbage collection, utilities, HOA fees, insurance, lack of mobility, opportunity costs…

So after selling our last place, we (well, Chris who then convinced me) decided to forego homeownership for the long-term future.  Which leaves us with the joys of renting.  On the plus side of the ledger:

• If something breaks, it’s not our problem.
• If heat is included in the rent, that’s a fixed cost for us (which in Chicago is often in our favor).
• No worries about homeowner liability (and rental insurance is so much cheaper!).
• Many landlords allow custom painting (which is the only improvement we ever made on any of the homes we ever owned).

Of course, on the negative side of the ledger:

• If it breaks, we need to wait for the landlord to fix it (or pay to fix it ourselves and wait to get reimbursed).
• The quality of most apartments leaves much to be desired.
• Neighbors are usually much more transient than in condo buildings (although there was quite a bit of come-and-go in our last condo building too).

Our current home is wonderful in many respects: the light is wonderful, the layout is great, there are beautiful vintage features (built-ins, 10 ft ceilings, crown moulding, mosaic tile floors in the sun room and bathroom, hardwood floors elsewhere), heat and water are included in the rent, and the neighborhood is awesome.  We’re a 10-15 minute walk from some of our favorite theaters, restaurants, coffee shops, three major grocery stores, oodles of Zipcars, public transportation options galore…

But there’s very little outdoor space (just enough for our grill), I’m getting tired of the neighbor upstairs (or rather, her dog — which just barked as I was typing this sentence and loves to run back and forth through the length of the apartment), I’m tired of the inconsistent heating, I’m tired of the inconsistent hot water, I’m tired of the crappy water pressure in the shower, and I’m getting tired of nagging our landlord to fix non-urgent issues.

So when I found a coach house a couple of blocks from Chris’ office in the suburbs, I thought I had hit a jackpot.  The rent is pretty much equal to our rent (but utilities aren’t included), but it’s a private coach house with its own fenced-in yard.  The pictures looked adorable: grey-blue siding, a cute front porch, picket fencing…

So on the coldest day of the week, I dragged Chris to view it.  The outside matched the photos perfectly and it just looked too darn cute!  And the private yard had beautiful, southern exposure.  Then we went inside…  again, very cute!  Of course, I loved it.  By the time we were back outside, viewing the private yard again (which would be a perfect vegetable garden!), I was smitten.  I could overlook the too-low ceilings.  I could overlook the awkward layout.  I could overlook the cosmetic blemishes.  I could overlook the fact that our cat is beginning to show signs of arthritis and wouldn’t appreciate the stairs.  I could overlook the fact that the heating bill would be astronomical.

Fortunately, I wasn’t completely stupid.  I had brought Chris with me to serve as the reality check.  Which he did: upon leaving, he asked me what I thought.  I, being me, immediately started in on how cute it was, how wonderful the private yard was…  He let me go on for about five minutes.  Then he reminded me of all the flaws.  And he asked if I could really live in the suburbs.

No.  I really can’t.  I don’t want to give up easy access to theater.  I don’t want to give up my 2 minute walk to my favorite grocery store.  I don’t want to subject my 12-year-old cat to staircases.

I just want that yard.  In the city.  In one of the most dense neighborhoods in Chicago.

Oh, and the privacy of a coach house.

For the price of an apartment.

Yeah, I’m now bummed out.  But it will pass.

(This musical sprang into my head, and this is the most famous number…  Although I really am shy.)

So when I turned 30, my back decided to be lame.  Seriously: right after my 30th birthday, I began to experience chronic, but low-level, back pain.  Just enough to remind me that something’s not 100% but not enough to really complain most of the time…

Except that I also began to notice that I felt especially creaky when I got out of bed in the morning.  Our mattress (which was about 7 years old at that point) might not be the culprit, but was complicit.

That was also about the time of my employment instability, so while I wanted an awesome new mattress, I also wanted to pay the mortgage and buy groceries.  So a few more years slipped by before I finally yielded and bought a new mattress.

But I made a HUGE mistake and bought a cheap mattress.  So while the first few months were fan-freakin’-tastic, the mattress started to get soggy pretty quickly.

So, fast forward about a year later: I’m now newly fiscally responsible but I want a shiny new mattress.  While I absolutely advocate buying or trading for a lot of things second-hand (i.e., our dining table, our dining chairs, some office furniture, some kitchen tools, quite a lot of our books), I draw the line at soft furnishings.  (Well, I draw the line at buying soft furnishings.  I have no problems selling ours on Craigslist.)

The child in me just wants to slap down a credit card and hope we pay it off sooner rather than later.

The newly fiscally responsible adult in me says to save for it and buy it with cash.

My back is wondering if the couch is more comfortable.

So I’ve spent the day on business development (as well as blogging) to try to speed up the cash flow so that I can get my new mattress soon!

It’s February, it’s cold, and I still dream of moving to warm weather.

Then I remember: I have theater tickets next week.  And the week after that.  And the week after that…

I honestly do not believe there’s a better theater scene in this country than right here in Chicago.  It’s one of my many, many vices and I can’t imagine giving up attending live theater.

Yet, if one is supposed to convert one’s passions into one’s profession, could I do that with this passion?  A friend of Facebook once suggested it and it stuck with me.  One problem, of course, is that I’d really like to preserve this passion as a passion: in other words, I’m concerned that if I worked in the arts, that I’d get sick of the arts.

The bigger problem: I’ve got the performance talent of a stick.  Wait, no, that’s insulting to the talents of sticks.

Well, what about behind the scenes?  No, not making my toes curl.  The biggest challenge facing the arts, the biggest challenge that has forever faced the arts is fundraising.  And I’m the chick who couldn’t sell Girl Scout Cookies when I was a kid.  (This is the same reason why I’ve crossed politics off my list.)

But I’ve got plenty of other vices I could consider converting into a profession…

Yeah, I like things.  Just yesterday, I vowed to Chris that I wouldn’t buy from Amazon for two months.  Then I learned this morning that the ebook of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere was on sale for $3…

No, it’s not much.  But I promised myself!  And we had just decided to eliminate our CC debt by a combination of cashing out of tanking investments (yes, Chris was on board with yesterday’s idea) and some strict-ish budgeting for two months.  Which means I can continue to buy stuff I had already planned for (like theater tickets!), but not random crap.

And there’s so much random crap that I love and want.  I’ve got a crafty hobby (cross stitching).  I love books (real and electronic).  I love iPad games.  I love TV shows on DVD.  I love Apple gadgets.  I want to refurnish our bedroom and the dining room (and not with IKEA!).  I love shoes, purses, and sweaters.  (But I hate bathing suits.)  I love fine dining and great wine.  Can I tell you how badly I want to score tickets to Next Restaurant’s El Bulli menu?  I love to travel, especially to Europe and especially in first or business class.[1]

Not to mention the absurd part of me that wants a house (!) in our neighborhood.  (What on earth would I do with a whole house?)

Chris shares some (many) of my vices (but not the house thing) and has a few of his own.

It’s been hard (and sometimes costly), but we have learned some self control with time.  After all, first and foremost, we also want to enjoy financial stability.  So over the years, I’ve consumed quite a few personal finance books to help us figure out how to balance love of spending with financial stability.  We started with Ric Edelman and I read The Millionaire Next Door.  Liked Edelman, hated MND (not surprisingly, given the number of vices I’ve got).  I then moved on to a slight tangent on consumer behavior (Stumbling Towards Happiness & Affluenza) to better understand my own spending.

We even started to see a personal finance expert in 2005.  She rightfully scolded us over our credit card debt but then hooked us up with a turkey investment.  We stopped going to see her.

Yes, I’ve also read Dave Ramsey.  But his co-mingling of personal finance and Christianity (as well as his gender stereotyping and his reliance on familial norms) drives me crazy.  Not to mention that he’s weak on investment strategy and he’s too extreme on the evils of credit card use (although we are on a CC fast until it’s all knocked out).  So while he does say some good stuff, it’s hard to see past his preaching.  (I have not subjected Chris to Ramsey.)

Lately I’ve been reading personal finance blogs and one of them directed me to Elizabeth Warren’s PF book from 2005, All Your Worth.  This sounds like the secular viewpoint I’ve been looking for (not to mention I joined the Warren fan club a few years ago).  She (and her co-author/daughter) repeats some of the good Ramsey stuff, but the message is in tune with our philosophy: personal finance is about personal balance.

The basic idea: income gets split among three buckets.  Needs, Wants, Savings.  50% (preferably less) goes to Needs (food, clothing, shelter, insurance, transportation).  30% (at most) to Wants.  The remaining 20% (or more) goes to Savings (which includes debt reduction).

This is completely in line with our experience.  When we realized we were in over our heads (thanks in large part to my unemployment), we first tried to pare down Wants.  But the most effective change we made was reducing the amount we spend on Needs (especially shelter) to about 28% so that we could take our Savings to 50%.  Leaving us with 22% to spend on Wants.

Could we get out of debt faster if we reduced the Wants portion?  Of course.  But we’d be miserable in the process and since we have a reasonably aggressive debt elimination plan in place, it’s just not worth it.

Does that make us hedonistic?  Perhaps.  But it also makes us realistic.

[1]  To be fair, there are stereotypical things that most people want that I don’t.  I’m not a diamonds girl (I truly can’t tell the difference between real and fake except for the price).  I have no desire to ever own another car.  Awesome kitchens with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances?  Been there, done both, no need to do so again.  Neither one of us are really into gift-giving to each other for special occasions.  We HATE hitting restaurants for major occasions too (how awful is dining out on Valentine’s Day?).  And, most significantly, we don’t want kids.  So there’s some savings right there!

So I think I’m developing a blog style: I’m not the musical one of the family, but there does always seem to be a good song to match what’s on my mind.

So another New Year’s Resolution: financial fitness.  Honestly, it’s embarrassing: Chris earns GREAT money, and while my income has been uneven over the years, I’ve managed to earn a bit myself.  So why I am constantly left wondering where does it all go?

Part of the problem is that we got into the terrible habit of credit carding too much stuff during my best earning days; we’re still paying down that mistake.

Part of the problem is that we automate some savings into accounts we never see or touch, so it feels like we have less than we do.  That is a “problem” I don’t mind.

Part of the problem is that we have too many vices: theater (which I haven’t blogged about yet but will), good food, excellent food, good wine, excellent wine, travel, books, DVDs, music, gadgets…

So I sat down yesterday to figure out where exactly all our money is going.  To do that, I tracked our actual spending in our checking account for all of 2011, broken down into 13 categories:

• Cash withdrawals.  I figured this wouldn’t be too much, because we never have cash.  Ha!  Was I wrong…
• Housing expenses.  Our housing expenses are very, very simple: rent and renter’s insurance.
• Utilities.  The usual: electricity, gas, internet, phone.  (I’ve never had a water bill my whole life: the upside to living in the Great Lakes region my whole life, I suppose.)
• Food.  This was further broken down into subcategories to track grocery and restaurant spending.
• Pet.  We don’t have kids, but we do have a cat and while she’s SO MUCH CHEAPER than a kid, she does still cost something.  (But she gives back so much more!  [kinda sarcastic...  but she is really sweet.])
• Transportation.  Another simple category, since we don’t have a car and Chris’ job pays for his monthly public transportation pass.  Just my transportation costs and our occasional Zipcar use.
• Clothing.  I figured this wouldn’t be much, since I feel like I never buy clothes anymore, but was I in for a surprise…  I also tracked our dry cleaning bills in this category.
• Insurance.  In addition to Chris’ awesome health insurance, we have life and disability insurance policies.  I suppose I could have tacked our renter’s insurance in this category, but it doesn’t really matter.
• Entertainment.  This was a hodge-podge.  Theater, travel, and subscriptions (I subscribe to Audible, he subscribes to eMusic, we subscribe to Netflix and TiVo and a few magazines) made up the bulk of this category.  Again, I suppose I could have put dining out here, but it didn’t really matter to me so long as I kept track of it somewhere.
• Debt.  So not fun.  We have some student loan debt but we still have credit card debt.  My priority this year: to wipe out as much as possible.
• Savings/Investments.  This is a more happy category, although how we’re saving and investing is making me pause because, based on some research, some of these investments are pure suckage.  This exercise was a great reminder to re-evaluate our investment portfolios.
• Charities.  This was a pathetic category.  Another resolution is to give more in 2012.
• “Other.”  If I couldn’t quickly categorize an expense, it got thrown here.

Based on this breakdown, my first impressions of our spending:

• I was glad to see our grocery spending was greater than our restaurant spending.
• Still, I was not glad to see just how much we were spending on eating out, especially on eating crap.
• We (meaning probably “I”) spent way too much at Amazon.  I’m sure I got great deals, but still…!  I’d like to redirect a lot of that money to local shops and debt reduction this year.
• We spend an incredible amount on travel: looks like almost 10% of our net income.  Part of the problem is that we own two timeshares (ugh, don’t get me started on timeshares… that’s another blog post).  If we didn’t have credit card debt, I wouldn’t care.  But we do, so I do.
• Our electricity bill could stand to go down: I’ll give that some thought in the coming weeks as well.
• We hit coffee shops A LOT!
• Since Chris does most of the wine shopping, I’ll admit I was quite shocked by the amount we spent on wine last year.  Even Chris underestimated how much we spent by 33%.
• The “other” category (which included Amazon purchases, since I couldn’t quickly determine what they were) wasn’t as bad as I feared it would become, but does require closer analysis.

So I got a lot of food for thought from this exercise.  The next step: I’m thinking we need to pull money from investments that are tanking anyway to eliminate, once and for all, the credit card debt.  Let’s see if I can get Chris on board with that idea…

One New Year’s Resolution: to exercise more.  Actually, it was Chris’ resolution: he’s backpacking for the first time in his adult life this summer and we’d both prefer that he came back in one piece.

My own weight was creeping up (still in normal BMI range, but definitely getting up there) and clothes weren’t fitting as well as they might.  Last fall, we invested $5 in 30 Day Shred (thanks Amazon Instant Video!) and while Chris was much, much better about working out regularly, I wasn’t too shabby.  I was certainly doing better than I had been.

But he lost about 20 pounds and I lost 5.  That’s annoying.  (Everyone, including Chris, keeps telling me that guys lose weight easier/faster than gals, but when it’s your own weight that you’re worried about, who cares?)

So when he said he wanted a more rigorous workout program for the new year, I decided to join him.  I went from not working out at all to working out maybe 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes to suddenly working out 5-6 times a week for 35-45 minutes.

We also got better with respect to our diet.  Fewer carbs, more frequent small meals.

We’ve been at it for four weeks now.  And while he has lost another 5 pounds (and is beginning to see muscle definition) I have lost… NO WEIGHT.  Well, virtually no weight.  I keep fluctuating the same two pounds back and forth.  Worse, I’ve only lost an inch around the waist (my biggest trouble spot) and gained half an inch in each of my upper arms (stupid muscles).

Not to mention my back pain isn’t going away.  Isn’t strengthening my core supposed to help my lower back?

To give credit where credit is due, I’m a bit more flexible and I’m a bit stronger here and there.  Cranking out push-ups is now doable and 100 crunches is a regular thing.  Eating smaller-but-more-frequent meals is also helping my energy levels.  So I suppose I am getting more fit.

But damn it, I don’t want to be fit, I want to be thin!  I know it’s not PC to say that, that I should embrace my body type, that I should strive to be more healthy and let my body do it’s thing…  Screw that.  I’m a vain person at heart and I want to be a comfortable size 6 (or even a size 4) again.  I’m thinner than average (right now I’m a size 8), but who cares about average?  I sure don’t.  I want to be effortlessly awesome.  :)

So I’m left wondering if I should switch programs.  Perhaps try yoga.  Or pilates.  Something that focuses on long and lean, rather than strength.

But I also know myself.  If I don’t do this with Chris, I won’t do it at all.  He’s my biggest cheerleader, he makes it fun, he makes me laugh as we’re working out.  On the rare occasion I workout without him, I’m grumpy and resentful the whole time.  And I’m pretty sure that’s a two-way street: he’s much happier if he’s working out with me than if he’s solo.

So I’ll continue to plod on.  With luck, my back pain will get better, my waist will narrow, my weight will drop, and I’ll find my self-motivation.  And even if none of that happens, I’ll know I’m helping to keep Chris on track.