We always end up paying for our sins

We’re knee deep into the whole debt reduction plan. Cut back, pinch pennies, say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ at the store, buying bulk when cost effective; you get the gist.

Something happened last night and I couldn’t say ‘no’. I’m not sure if it’s due to the redundancy of eating pot roast and barbecue scalloped potatoes every day for lunch and dinner since Sunday or because it’s been so long since we’ve eaten out. But, the words Cheesecake and Factory were put together, by my wife, in a way that left me at her mercy. She could have requested anything else and I would have balked but ‘she had me at hello’.

We arrive at said Cheesecake Factory around 5:45pm. ‘Lobby doesn’t look too bad, we should get right in.’ ‘Why won’t these two girls in front of us give there name to the hostess’. ‘Are you in line? Then mooooove’. I should have known things were off.

Seated a few minutes later in a section with no kids, and off the main floor, proved to be very quiet place. Great now we’ll wait for our drink order, ‘hey that couple that came in after us is already getting their drinks’, ‘where’s our waiter, better yet, who’s our waiter?’

Here he comes, great, I’m ready to get a beverage. Ok, the special is yada, yada; man he sounds like he’s got cigarette smoke for life blood. I can’t even look him in the eye, because of the moley, moley, moley( or is it the feeling he’s going to have a serpentine tongue come lashing out of his mouth at me?). VERY nice though, I know he’s getting a good tip from me. Then I excused myself from the table, telling K that he had spit on my hand while giving us his recommendations for dinner.

We get our tea & water. Place our order after countless changes. You would have thought I had my finger on the red button at the Pentagon to unleash WWIII on the world; it was that kind of decision. I ended up ordering the Crusted Romano Chicken Pasta and was not disappointed. We also brought the 7 yr olds homework so that would not be a struggle to finish later that night. As she worked on that, K and I watched as a waiter, not our waiter, busted his rear to serve 4 tables in our area. From my guestimation, our waiter had three tables. Then I made the fatal mistake, I did not ask for our bill when he came by for drink refills (I should have pushed the red button!). The problem was that our waiter was TOO friendly. As we pondered the universe and our place in it, as well as doing some long division for fun, he was busy yucking it up with another table. By the time we left everyone that came in around the same time as us was GONE. I felt like there was a pause in time and 30 minutes of our meal was just obliterated.

We walked out at 7:40.

Then I had the Chocolate cheesecake with peanut butter cookie dough in the center for take out and I lost track of time again.

So what did we gain by eating out against our better judgment? A belly full of good food and leftovers, but a serious lapse in the time space continuum.

The Ripples of Debt Reduction

Doing our Total Money Makeover has all kinds of consequences in our daily lives. For instance, I rarely hear my wife come home saying, 'Hey look what I got for the kids'. Instead it's, 'There's this great deal on shirts for summer at Wally World, can we do it?'. Tracking every penny from our paychecks makes us reassess our spending on a daily basis and put the emphasis on reducing outstanding debt and making our 'impulse buys' secondary.

Of course my 'impulse buys' revolve around music and concerts. So out of my mouth you're starting to hear, 'It's sold out?! It can't be sold out! We get paid on Friday! It's sold out?!

I'm referring to Wilco. The Chicago(WOOHOO!) based group spearheaded by Jeff Tweedy. The same Jeff Tweedy of Uncle Tupelo fame.

Out of Uncle Tupelo also came Son Volt, fronted by Jay Farrar. They both have solo projects as well. Uncle Tupelo could be characterized as an "alternative country" band. Not quite country(real country here folks not Rascal Flatts or Carrie Underwood) and not quite rock & roll.

I've enjoyed both men's vision for music but in different ways. Whereas Jay Farrar and Son Volt tend to stay more in a alt country style, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco have taken Americana style of music, thrown in some tangents and experimentation and pulled off some amazing and I mean amazing music.

You may want to start with their first couple of albums, A.M. and Being There but you'll see the evolution in scope on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the follow up A Ghost is Born.

Two incredibly rewarding albums, sans the 10 minutes of feedback at the end of one track(you'll have to figure out which one I'm referring to).

To parlay off of YHF, the album, you want to check out the DVD documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. The director set out to follow the making of an album and caught a lot more; Jeff Tweedy dealing with the departure of two members, a record label that doesn't buy in to their new album and artistic breakthrough of enormous proportions.

But to really get a grasp of their music, you HAVE to catch them live. I had the pleasure to see them at the Cain's Ballroom on the Ghost is Born tour. At the time, I had heard one album of theirs and picked up a pair of tickets knowing I HAD to go. My friend fell through and I went by myself; not a big deal to me as most concerts are an individual experience for the most part.

If you've never been to the Cain's, you should check it out. It is steeped in history of who's who in country music and was the home of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. It was never known for it's sound quality; low ceiling, plaster walls, wood floor. Not good acoustics.

A few years ago it was purchased by a local doctor and hired a couple of individuals who completely renovated the place and also purchased a new sound system. The changes have been great!

Back to Wilco. This was their first time to Tulsa and it showed. Most bands who haven't played here do not know what to expect from the crowds. But the sight of a sell out crowd, singing every lyric blew them away. It showed in their music.

But what really caught me was the ability to completely deconstruct a song halfway through and pull it all back together by the end was remarkable. While Jeff is playing acoustic guitar and singing at a slow tempo, along with the bassist, the rest of the band begins to play out of key, banging away at their instruments to their own beat, not unlike acid jazz or something very bizarre, only to fall right back in to tempo and key with Mr. Tweedy in the next line of the song.

I would go to see them any time they came through Oklahoma

Flash forward to now...They are coming to Oklahoma!!! And I told my wife that we have to go, you will love it. She gave me the obligatory, 'ok, dear'. So it was set, I had a date to Wilco at the Cain's Ballroom, what could be better?

On a Wednesday night about a month ago, we're standing in a hallway of our church waiting for our small group to start. There's a younger couple that is there and the husband is wearing an Austin City Limits Festival t-shirt. And I have found a compadre in my musical journey. He too, thinks Wilco is incredible. He too, wants to go to the Cain's show. He then tells me it sold out.

Refer back to my reaction in paragraph #2.

The short term pain of our debt reduction will be a blip on the radar, but MAN that blip hurts alot right now.

Our Total Money Makeover vs. Valentines

So I did the obligatory flowers for Valentines; not one to go with the pack I went with Gerbera Daisies instead of roses. What I would REALLY like to do is to go out for DINNER. We had an awful lunch today after picking up the 4Runner from the tire store(part of our Total Money Makeover).

It was a recommended Mexican place near the tire place. A dead giveaway should have been that there were no Mexicans working there or eating there. Yes, that is correct. I think my 'combination' burrito was a combination of refried beans and Manwich. Smothered in a scrumptious helping of Ricardo's canned cheese. Or commonly referred to as Ballpark Nacho Cheese. Urp.

Back to the makeover. My wife got on a roll of listening to Dave Ramsey's radio show while at work. And we decided, as a couple, that we would get on the debt reduction bandwagon. After reading Dave's book we were ready to go. It is not an easy task. It takes more discipline than anything else I can imagine, but the results are easy to see. We have not used a credit card in 10 months and we are starting to snowball our debt. But we're still climbing UP the hill and we haven't come close to the peak. Once we itemized EVERY penny that went out of the bank account it became obvious where we could make cuts in spending.

So here I sit with a belly full of cheese, that may or may not come up before the night is through, the wifey happy with a bouquet of flowers for Valentines, and a few more dollars left in our wallets.