Subsidized Vacation

I spent four and a half days in San Francisco for a grand total of $550, and I am here to tell you: it is all about the scam. Shiner had to be there for work, so I decided that was a good opportunity for me to be there for cheap. Shiner had to work on the weekdays, but we were able to spend the evenings and weekend together. I got a free but totally luxe hotel by shacking up with Shiner, and I got several free meals by sharing an entree he would just end up expensing anyway. I also got to see him during what would have been a very long business trip apart. He got some distraction and stress relief in the middle of said business trip, and his employer got a marginally de-stressed worker bee. Win-win-win.

Here's where I spent money:
$330 on a plane ticket--not the cheapest deal out there, but the cheapest flight for the dates I needed in order to get the free hotel, etc.
$12 on a roundtrip BART ticket between the airport and downtown
$75 on food
$24 on alcohol (for myself, my cousin, Shiner, and his BFF)
$18 on a three-day MUNI (transit) pass
$8 on tea for two at the Japanese Tea Garden
$18 on a ferry for two from Tiburon back to SF
$40 on souvenirs--blossoming teas from a Chinatown tea shop and Persepolis, since I can hardly be expected to visit City Lights without buying any books
$24 on a cab from the airport back home, since my train was no longer running when I arrived in.

Here's where I didn't spend money:
-the hotel and several meals, since Shiner was able to expense them
-lots of sights. The stuff I wanted to do most, like walking through neighborhoods, Golden Gate Park, GG bridge, Grace Cathedral's labyrinth, window shopping, and streetcars, were free or free with my transit pass. Next time we'll hit Alcatraz with their fancy public radio-produced tour and Muir Woods, but at least this way I've got a great excuse to go back
-airport dreck. Pack a sandwich and an empty water bottle with you through secutiy, and fill up the water bottle on the other side of the TSA corral. Way better than paying a tenner for a sandwich made sometime last week.

Personal Finance For Crime Victims

There are a number of instances where personal finance meets public finance, and the headlines this past week have given us one particularly grotesque example of that intersection: under VP candidate Sarah Palin's mayoral leadership, the Alaska town of Wasilla charged rape victims for administering evidence-collecting sexual assault exams. That's right, it charged women in the shadow of an assault between three and twelve hundred dollars to collect the evidence necessary to bring their assailants to justice. Wasilla didn't used to charge rape victims for investigating the crimes perptrated against them: that budgetary change was made under Palin's administration. When the state legislature of Alaska finally prohibited this cruel little fundraising trick in 2000, Wasilla was the only town in the state still passing along the cost of its criminal investigations to crime victims.

Any thinking human in favor of a functioning criminal justice system must agree: that's grandly messed up.

As disgusting as it is, it's important to note that Wasilla is not the only town to have shunted off public responsibility onto private citizens in this way. Although they are not supposed to under the Violence Against Women Act (thanks to bill sponsor Senator Joe Biden, by the way, for giving a damn), lots of places do or within recent years have charged rape victims for the privilege of having their assaults investigated. That, in my opinion, is the takeaway message. Even more important than the fact that Sarah Palin is an abhorrent person who thinks rape victims should be charged for going through an invasive, frequently traumatic evidence collection exam so that the state can maybe, just maybe, prosecute their attackers. She ain't the only one, and that fact ought to scare your breakfast out of you.

Being the victim of a crime, and helping the police investigate that crime, should not cost you a few spare hundred bucks. But it's good to know that some people think it should. You wouldn't want to, say, accidentally vote for such a person.

Nuptial Hindsight

I had dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousin recently. My cousin is starting college and my aunt wanted her to have a good, hearty meal before embarking on her first semester of ramen and cafeteria food. After dinner we were all sitting around telling stories and reminiscing, and my aunt pulled out their wedding album to illustrate a point. Of course we started poking through all the pictures and oohing and ahhing over everyone's silly glasses and magnificent facial hair. After looking through their album, we looked at the pictures from my aunt's parents' wedding. It was a ton of fun--who doesn't like seeing people they love be very, very happy?--but it also reaffirmed my committment to the What Would Grandma and Grandpa Do school of wedding planning.

Looking at wedding pictures a good few decades after they were taken is very instructive, especially when they are narrated by those who have the most invested in what they show. Expectations of weddings have changed since these pictures were taken, and not for the better. The weddings of both my aunt and her parents were certainly not frugal for their day. Both families were middle class or upper middle class, and shared a deeply culturally ingrained sense of what constitutes tasteful, elegant, and proper. That meant pretty dresses, shiny rings, bubbly champagne. But pretty, shiny, and bubbly notwithstanding, they were downright simple compared to the stuff wedding planning couples have to stave off today.

Here's the thing: extreme detail obsession is not tradition. Micro-managed decor is not tradition. Favors are not tradition. Opulant floral flourishes are not tradition. Months of preparative beauty-oriented body modification is not tradition. Chair covers are not tradition. "Themes" are not tradition, unless you consider, "Hooray! We are getting married!" a theme. Not that tradition should be the determining criterion as to whether or not you should include it in your wedding, but these things are new inventions that buoy an industry and are not the prerequisite to the legality of a marriage. Truth is, these things aren't even all that memorable after the fact.

How freeing. If no one can remember this stuff, why stress about it? Why spend time on it? Why pay for it? Here are the things that stood out to my aunt and uncle from looking at their pictures:

--that they looked so, so happy
--that my aunt, like her sisters, her mother, and grandmother, wore the same veil
--that their families were there and seemed to never stop smiling
--that the priest who married them was the same priest who officiated the wedding of her father, who had died when she was a child, and her mother
--that my brother took his job as ringbearer very seriously, and seriousness is always comical in a schoolboy.
--that my aunt's bridesmaids (her sisters and sister-in-law to be) bonded in mutiny, insisting on a shade of blue that looked flattering on them rather than the shade of green my aunt favored

None of those memories was of something that could be bought, designed, or contracted for. If there were favors, elaborate centerpieces, flowing liquor, or anything splashy outlay, no one could remember some thirty years later.