Grass is growing in the labyrinth.
Here’s what I haven’t bought since January 1:
Books:
- Percy Jackson: the demigod files, Rick Riordan , Sort of a one-off volume in the tradition of Rowling’s Beedle the Bard, giving us short tales concerning Percy and his buddies at Camp Half-Blood.
- Percy Jackson: Book 5: The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan , The final installment of the series, to be published in May. These are great little tales.
- The graveyard book, Neil Gaiman , The 2009 Newbery winner.
- Wabi Sabi, Mark Reibstein , The 2008 Caldecott winner
Music:
- Mystic chords & sacred spaces, Steve Roach, and Body Electric, Vir Unis , These showed up in my Pandora “New Age” station one day when I was working on the labyrinth. I can always use more labyrinth music. Perhaps I should write some of my own. Hm…
- Time Cycle, Lukas Foss , He had like his 100th birthday or something recently, some kind of celebration in NYC, and this alerted me to his stuff.
- The death of Klinghoffer, John Adams , A student production in NYC got good reviews and revived interest in the work.
And most of all:
This is the Take-Away Tray from the Museum of Modern Art. It was featured in The Week magazine on their little Consumer page. I like it for the back yard, both for toting drinks and for moving around the dozens of votary candles necessary for evening activities. However, for $90 “on sale,” it is definitely on the Do Not Buy list for the time being.
I’m also not buying updates to iWork and iLife; a complete upgrade to my Adobe DreamWeaver suite is also waiting for a paycheck or two this summer.
Here’s what I have bought: tango lessons, and a couple of dinners out, and a few presents for friends who needed them. Some materials for the ongoing labyrinth project. Not bad.
I’ve also been doing my part to diminish my personal economic stimulusness. Not for the purpose of being politically difficult (I’ve more or less given this up entirely), but rather to both celebrate what I HAVE and to hopefully stockpile cash should things turn financially difficult for me personally. This being said, I did buy the iLife/iWork/Leopard package. The Leopard upgrade bit my Mail in the arse, but the rest of it has been wonderful. iPhoto was/is the highlight.
Laggards! How can we get this economy going if you guys aren’t going to keep up your end by spending. We all know a consumer driven economy is best, especially when the consumer is going in debt. Look at the success the last 8 years have brought.
With that in mind I ordered a Bose set of noise cancelling headphones, and immediately returned them as they didn’t work! So much for my contribution to the economy.
I bought a pair of Sony ones from Best Buy for about a third the price last year (when I was still stimulating) and have been quite pleased with them.