The budget is going to be a little tight, probably tighter than it should be.  We never do things underbudget, and I'm frankly a tad worried.  I know things will turn out alright, though.  I do have to admit, I am getting excited to go.

Since I have nothing more to add at this point, I guess it should be known that I am craving a peanut butter sandwich with ketchup.  I know this is a treat that (probably) no one else in the world could ever possibly like.  I don't know why I like it.  For a while right after Satan ditched me for charred pastures, the only thing I ate most days was peanut butter sandwiches with ketchup with a Sprite to drink.  This wasn't completely by choice, because at that time I made $600 a month in a grad assistantship and was finishing out a lease that Satan left me in for a $500 a month apartment.  After I bought cigarettes, this left about $40 for groceries. 

Utilities were a whole other adventure.... I'm unsure how many times I begged money from the 'rents to pay electric.  Luckily my bills were always fairly small.

I would walk out of my apartment and walk across a small vacant lot to the Osco store, and I would buy bread, peanut butter, ketchup, Sprite and cigarettes.  And I ate like this for about three months straight, to the point when Amy began to take me on dates (I would have taken her, but I had no money) my stomach would get upset at even the mildest food that wasn't peanut butter and ketchup.

After that particular culinary honeymoon, I gave up that nastiness for a while.  But I still get some pretty strong cravings for my weird little delicacy, and I still eat it maybe three times a week.  I don't drink Sprite anymore because I only drink soda on a very rare occasion, and that soda is almost always high quality root beer.  I figured out somewhere along the lines that soda is too expensive, too sweet, too addictive and too riddled with empty calories.  I now treat it like a dessert.

Right now, I crave peanut butter and ketchup again.  But I also know that, if I ate it at this late of hour, the peanut butter/ketchup combination doesn't sit well on a mostly empty stomach right before bed.  Bad belches can result, which makes the treat not so treatlike for a while.

Why ruin a good thing? 

Besides, our time on the train is going to be a lot of peanut butter, a lot of Pringles and a lot of refilled bottled water. 

I don't want to spoil that. 

I kind of want to win a giant lottery jackpot so I can buy my friends things that they want.  Sometimes when my mind goes shot, I dream about winning the lottery.  I know it's a cliche, but it's my cliche. 

Touche, cliche.

When I dream about winning the lottery, I'm not doing any sort of actual prospecting.  Strangely, my thoughts go straight to the organization of the money and how I'm going to distribute it.  I always start with $50 million, and I try to figure out what I can do.  I always pay off my parents' (both sets) houses and those of my family, and I usually set up a trust fund for my little cousins' colleges.  I usually buy my dad one of those new four-door Jeeps and a house on the beach, and I buy my mom a Toyota Sequoia and a big log cabin in the Rockies.  I usually buy my brother some sort of business and get him set up.  And maybe a limo with a driver, since he isn't driving anymore for a while.

If I'm feeling religious, I give Amy's churches and my church and my parents' church money.  I usually give the geography departments money and tell them to put my assistantship in a trust for scholarships, and I usually give a sum to things like NPR, the zoo, the symphony, various museums, animals rescues and rights organizations, legal aid, Habitat for Humanity, the library, and community programs and other good things.

I usually pay off or buy houses for most of my friends, and give friendly acquaintances checks for like $50,000 or something, just to make their lives easier.  Other friends, the more ambitious or creative ones, I might help start a business or an art studio or an animal rescue.

I always try to buy Amy a giant saltwater aquarium and donate enough money to the zoo that they have to let her be a keeper, even if they don't pay her.  And I would build her an animal rescue, so she could rescue dogs and horses and pigs and goats and tarantulas and sloths and parrots and cockroaches and bearded dragons and aligators and pirahnas and whatever-the-hell else she wanted to rescue.  I also buy her a Volvo Wagon like she's wanted for forever.

And I make a trust so that she can always hire some shit-cleaner, and provide that shit-cleaner benefits.

As for me?  I pay off my school loans, save enough for a house down payment and maybe buy a Prius.  I usually end up taking Pedro up to Euclid Foreign Motors in Cleveland to get a full restoration.  And maybe a stereo for Pedro too.  That's enough, I think.

In more ways than one.