money
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Two Dollar Bill
Is this still legal tender?
You are viewing stuff tagged with money.
“Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to Dada…” is what I heard Ess singing in her pack and play on the morning of my birthday. She and Mykala sang it again later that day, and we drew with chalk on the sidewalk. Mykala baked a yellow cake (one of my favorites), and frosted a birthday greeting on the top of it. I visited my parents, and the sun was out for the first time in a few days. I tripled my age and got 96; I looked back and realized I started at my current job when I was only 27, and that Ess was born when I was 29. I recalled looking at my official birthday certificate when I was in college, and seeing my mom’s age at my birth: 29.
I think I’m holding a vigil tonight. And not in the sense of “I think I plan on it,” but rather I mean “I think this is happening right now.” So, what is the subject or purpose of my vigil? I’m reminiscing about life in school at St. Thomas and the U while looking ahead at my life. This involves a lot of mindless clicking around on Facebook, which I usually try to avoid. I find myself regretting things I both did and did not do in my past, and wondering about the future. I’m listening to Sigur Rós. It’s a quarter after 1 in the morning. Mykala is asleep on the couch.
The pollen outside today was actually visible. It was raining pollen onto the car, and I could see many little granules of it running in delicate rivulets down the glass. Surprisingly, both Mykala and I seem to either be getting used to the constant congestion of allergy season or our bodies are adjusting. Mykala might have mono, and by extension so might I. Both of us have histories of remarkably poor ear nose and throat health. My future children (not yet on the way, though Mykala and I frequently talk about you in the abstract), if you are reading this, I am very sorry for your ears — you can blame both myself and your mother.
I do weird things now, things I never consciously realized would be a part of my life. I clean trash cans. Sort mail. Go to the store to purchase toilet paper. Clean out the fridge. It’s fascinating that, though you have relatively little freedom as a young person, you have a very unique freedom from these adult responsibilities.
This obituary for Huguette Clark, who recently died at the age of 104, may be one of the oddest I’ve ever read.
For the quarter-century that followed, Mrs. Clark lived in the apartment in near solitude, amid a profusion of dollhouses and their occupants. She ate austere lunches of crackers and sardines and watched television, most avidly “The Flintstones.” A housekeeper kept the dolls’ dresses impeccably ironed.
“All the money in the world can’t buy your health,” he said.
Then, he and his wife gave away the $11.2 milion they had just won playing the lottery.
The Giving Pledge, where billionaires pledge to give over half of their worth to charity. Warren Buffet, who is giving over 99% of his worth to charity:
I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.
90 percent of U.S. bills carry traces of cocaine:
Research presented this weekend reinforced previous findings that 90 percent of paper money circulating in U.S. cities contains traces of cocaine.
“When I was a young kid, my mom told me the dirtiest thing in the world is money,” said the researcher, Yuegang Zuo, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “Mom is always right.”
Is this still legal tender?
Saint Thomas is situated in a very safe part of St. Paul—crime is low, and the safety measures in the dorms are high: keycard access and check-ins after hours. You start to take it for granted how safe it is to be on campus. In the past few years, however, we’ve had a marked increase of muggings only blocks from school. It’s usually dark, and the victim usually gets hit on the head. One guy was running with his iPod and didn’t even know what was coming because he couldn’t hear anything. Another guy was something like 6’5”, and he still got attacked.
I’d like to point out that Mykala and I went to get the new vanilla flavored Frosty that I jokingly linked her to a couple of days back (I became preoccupied with trying this thing for almost no reason at all). The verdict: they are good! They taste like … well, a lot like vanilla. That’s good, right? I think so. They’re cold, too. Good name, Wendy’s!