A Night of Good Decisions (Mostly)

Posted on January 8, 2011 4 Comments

Last night I attended the Weezer Memories concert at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Rivers Cuomo and the crew put on a lively show despite a few oddly long sound checks, and I danced and sang my heart out from a ridiculously crowded spot in the back of a likely oversold packed house. With the brutal cold, a beautiful snowstorm, and the company of several college friends, it felt like one of those quintessential Chicago nights we’ll be talking about years from now — “The Night of the Weezer Concert When We All Huddled on the El Platform Jockeying for Position Under the Heat Lamps in Nine Degree Temperatures Inviting Strangers to Pack in like Empire Penguins and Cheering When Somebody Pressed the ‘On’ Button After the Lamps Went Off in Five-Minute Intervals.”

I think you probably have to be a Midwesterner to understand how simply standing outside in Arctic conditions can comprise one of the best nights of the winter. It’s all about using personality, humor, and body heat to combat the horrific weather psychologically and physically. I bet warm weather friends would think we were nuts. “Character building” is what we call it.

But bad weather isn’t the subject of this post. I managed to make it through the night spending only $26 for transportation, entertainment, dinner and drinks. And I thought that was noteworthy because concerts can easily turn into hundred dollar affairs. Here was the budget breakdown:

Ticket: Free (got it as a gift. Entertainment like concerts and comedy clubs is a great idea for your “wish list” for birthdays, Christmas, etc.)
Dinner: $13 for a burger, fries, and a diet coke at Fat Cat Lounge
Drinks: $2
Coat check $3, plus $3 tip for the awesome attendants who looked really, really cold in the basement of the Aragon
Transportation: $5 for public transportation

Thinking this is technically a “cheat” since the almost $50 ticket was free? I don’t think of it that way at all. Concert, movie, comedy club, and theater tickets are awesome substitutes for ‘stuff’ on your Christmas and birthday wish lists. Would you rather get some crappy sweater that doesn’t fit right, or a night out on the town? I would rather have less ‘stuff,’ more nights out.

Dinners are pretty easy to keep in check. But a lot of folks stumble here because they want to have a “nice dinner” when they’re having a big night out. Why? I don’t get that. Stick with the wallet-friendly option. Need something healthier? Go with a big salad. Dinner will nearly always be around $10.

For the drinks line item, I, uh, overdid it?, a little on New Year’s. Also, I drank on multiple weekdays for social events from Thanksgiving all the way to New Year’s. So I recently declared that I am not drinking alcohol at all until B finishes taking the bar exam in February (with the exception of my New York trip). And guess what? Despite my beer afficianado tendencies, I am really liking not drinking when I go out. I had a fab “mocktail” at a congratulatory happy hour the other day, and yesterday I stuck with water. Aside from a few suspicious “you’re not pregnant, are you?” questions, I’m finding that I can navigate the bar/social scene without spending all my money on alcohol. It’s a TON cheaper than drinking when the bad beer is $6 per glass, plus I am a total lightweight anyway and waking up without a hangover is one thousand times better than waking up with one. (The $2 was for a decaf skim latte at the train station to warm up after our 20-minute walk outside.)

The coat check line item is sort of a “meh” for me. I just wasn’t going to hold the equivalent of a down comforter on me while standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others and risking a dry cleaning bill of two or three times that cost to get the smell of smoke and stale beer out of my best coat. Could have done without this cost, it’s kind of a luxury.

Finally, we were tempted, because of the cold, to take cabs yesterday from downtown to Oak Park, which would have been about $30. But we wore the right gear to deal with the weather and so did the el to metra route back home. Plus, we got a 20 minute walk in between rail services so we burned some calories without burning a hole in my pocket.

I got home around 1 a.m. feeling happy I had seen a great show, sleepy enough to crawl right into bed, and grateful for a warm blanket. I couldn’t have asked for a better night.

I consider this a successful evening of good decisions. Have you had a night in good decision jeans lately? If so, pat yourself on the back and tell us all about it!

Category: Life

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