Some people spend the lonely hours of the night drinking their troubles away. Others prefer to forget themselves into the night, and you can buy a dime bag of forgetfulness in the dark corners of the city. Sleep is a favorite escape for the solid working class. What do I do? I spend it reading about all my old friends and how they're living fabulous lives of nightclubs and restaurants and much fun. And then, of course, I get a little depressed. Because I'm not doing nightclubs or restaurants or that much hip fun. And then I wonder why not, since I do happen to live in a hopping town. I mean, this isn't some backwards 2 stoplight town like Chicago or Boston or San Fransisco or Seattle, this is New Freak'n York City! I should be out there living it up in the Lower East Side, chilling with strange women at 44 (the lounge), dancing the night away at the clubs. Why am I stuck in here blogging instead? And then, oddly enough, the answer came at Starbucks. There used to be this thing, the tazoberry iced tea crushed ice slurpie thing, that tasted devine and was large enough to beat the summer heat. And despite the price, I loved it. So, after a particularily muggy walk, I went into Starbucks and tried to order it. Apparently, they don't make it anymore, and what I was served instead was a tiny overpriced fruity thing that made my Mystic Fruit Punch seem like the nectar of the gods. So I bitched and moaned about it all night long. And then it hit me. I'm a cheap bastard (I prefer prudently frugal man, btw). If a $4 drink causes me this much consternation, how would I possibly ever cost justify a night out at $20/drink lounges or $30/head restaurants, much less fees to go clubbing or anything else for that matter? I'm just too cheap to be able to comfortably afford the hip lifestyle. I can barely pull the trigger, and put money I've set aside into my IRA accounts. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good time out. I just blew through $47 on a restaurant week dinner without blinking an eye. But then, I only do this dinner once a year. So there you have it, I'm too stingy to have fun. :: So after much fighting, I finally got Firefox installed on my laptop. The pageloading is remarkably fast, and although I was used to tabbed navigation in Mozilla 1.4, I do appreciate the simple functionality. I'll give this a week and see if I should switch over. Anybody have any thoughts?