Before I start my post for the topic above I should say that I'm doing much better in terms of my health. I recently went back to work. I was still pretty weak at that point, but for each day that I missed (over five, I was up to seven when I went back) I would have to find time to make up the shifts elsewhere, or my graduation from residency would be delayed. The first few days were a little rough, my hands would shake, and my mind felt a little dull. I'm now back to 90%, and continuing to make strides in my recovery each day. I'm grateful for all the concern and attention I received during this time. Now for this post...
I think it is well known that I am frugal. My dad says I'm cheap. Bryn-Erinn says I'm very thrifty. I would say that overall I agree with these statements and I take a certain degree of pride in them. I think this comes from trying to be financially responsible, and being a student for so much of my life. Until this year, I have never made more than a ten thousand dollars in a single year. In spite of this, I bought my car and paid it off early, paid cash for my entire undergraduate, went through medical school living on a very modest amount, and was still able to save and put some money in the bank for various items (e.g. Bryn-Erinn's wedding ring, a nice computer monitor, yada yada yada...). I rarely eat out, I love cooking from scratch, I try to buy things that aren't full price, I rent all our videos for free from the public library, and I'm more than happy to search online for a few weeks to find the cheapest price I'm willing to pay for a given item. This has left me without any credit card debt ever. Although, I do have some unavoidable student loans from medical school.
I wanted to provide this context so our readers would understand the significance of our most recent purchase. Now, I've mentioned that I have a very strong geek streak running through my veins. We have a home network, server, and a media center PC (these all built by me, at a very discounted rate). However, for the screen on our MCPC we had an old regular CRT TV. It worked great except that the resolution was very low (320 x 200, the lowest computer setting is about 640 x 400). This was problematic when trying to navigate screens and read menus. However, like a blind person learning to read braille, we learned where the positions of certain necessary functions were off the screen and knew to click those areas when needed. Deep down, this chaffed me to some degree, but the recorded TV and DVD that we mostly used the MCPC for, were acceptable in quality.
Bryn-Erinn and I have budgeted a very modest amount of $15 each per month for any personal discretionary spending we like. I try to put most of this away for later. Over the last couple of years I have also received some gifts of cash for various reasons like: birthdays, graduation, awards, etc... These too have been put in the bank for later.
A couple of weeks ago, while I was on the couch in my septic mind, I got the idea that we should upgrade our TV. I quickly batted this thought down, as it was not a necessary expense. To add to this, we now have hospital bills, and we are expecting a new baby this year. In spite of these rational thoughts, upgrading the TV kept coming to mind.
Aside from the badness that has hit, there have been some bright spots as well. I don't think many know this, but Bryn-Erinn recently added a new studio, Kenwood Pilates, to her work hours. She already has two new clients, and the Kenwood studio pays more generously than her other studio. As we reviewed our expenses, finances and hospital bills, it turned out that we have enough coming in to cover everything. It also came up that I had a fairly modest sum saved up in my personal expense account (to be honest I like it that way, so we can have some liquid assets in case of a family disaster or financial blunder (this has happened once)). At any rate, I found that I could buy a TV and still have a good sum left over in the bank for the Gourley emergency fund, as the government is not likely to pass a bail out plan for our family.
True to form, I researched HDTV's. Yesterday, I dragged Bryn-Erinn to several stores (Best Buy, Costco, Target, the Micro Center) to look at different models and sizes of TV's. We found a great deal at Target, of all places, on a Samsung 32" 720p LCD TV. This size gives us more screen than our old TV, but doesn't take up too much more space, and isn't so big that it takes over the room as many TV's seem to do now days. I spent the afternoon making the switch, rewireing things and reprograming our universal remote. After we had it set up and turned it on, we scanned the channels. The first show that came up and which we subsuqently watched was an old episode of the original Star Trek. We felt that was fitting. The picture quailty is amazing even on broadcast TV. And I wrote this entire post on the MCPC, something that I never would have attempted before.
