Brown Bag Mathematics

There are thousands of ways to save money and a million ways to spend it. I'm faced with the imbalance of this equation every night of the working week. A challenge that I consistently fail when I decide not to pack my lunch before going to bed. Such a simple task could annually save me a significant amount of money. But the other side of the grass is so much greener.

Eating out has a major upside, getting outside for fresh air, a mental break from your work, drinking a yard beer of Guinness. And the food factor: thinly sliced deli meat from Boar's Head, springy lettuce, hot waitresses, and the option of eating a fresh Cobb salad. These are honorable reasons to venture out for lunch. But when I look at it strictly from a money standpoint, it seems like a short-bus move not to brown-bag my office meal.

Let's do the math, shall we? Last time I checked, there were 365 days in a year.

• throw out Saturdays and Sundays, 260 working days
• subtract Federal holidays, 249 working days
• minus vacation for a mid-career hire, 234 working days
• sans sick days, 229 working days
• take away days with beautiful weather to call in sick and play golf, 225 working days.

The number 225 seems so harmless by itself, let's do some multiplication, shall we? The average lunch in the D.C. Metropolitan area is not cheap unless you don't have an appetite due to chronic diarrhea and/or you have to eat through a straw. Otherwise, if you are ready to chow, start memorizing your PIN number for the ATM visit, you'll need it. Let's review from a Deli perspective:

• sandwich - $6, chips - $1, soda - $.75, indigestion...priceless or $7.75.
• 225 working days multiplied by $7.75 per day equals $1,744 per year.

I'm comfortable in saying that a total for eating lunch at a slim $7.75 is a conservative estimate. Let's stop being naive and have a real corporate clone lunch. Let's get a pager in the shape of a coaster that blinks, a waiter, and a bill. Now we're living large. Oh, our table's ready:

• entree, drinks, tip, uncontrollable flatulence.....$16.00.
• 225 working days multiplied by $16.00 per day equals $3,600.

The final step is to morph the conservative and liberal estimate into a hybrid amount. Half of those lunches are spent peeling back the white paper wrapping on the chicken salad sandwich at $7.75. The other half is having a beautiful waitress remind you how old and perverted you are while munching on a salad the size of a campfire at $16.00. Divide 225 days by two and assign the divided amount by each dollar amount then combine them and vee-oh-la, $2,671.88 per year. That's alot of coin....what's available for approximately $2,671 in 2006 dollars:

• 42" widescreen plasma HDTV
• Full set of high end golf clubs (including driver and golf bag)
• Down payment on a Harley Davidson
• American Express gift card for $2,671

Why not just pack a lunch? Now I won't save the full $2,671 because my grub money has to go somewhere but I could guesstimate a savings of $1,500 per year by brown-bagging it. A loaf of bread costs $2.99, a 24 count of sliced cheese is $4.99....oh f*ck it, I'm not doing this math all over again. Just trust me on this one, you'll save money by packing your lunch.

Why is it such a herculean effort? I can find time in my predictable schedule to brown-bag it. It'd be easy to squeeze 5 minutes between my TiVO'd Family Guy and falling asleep on the couch to make a sandwich. It has the appearance of being a breeze but it is such a royal pain in the ass, kinda' like changing banks. Lousy leftovers, deli meat on the cusp of expiration, not to mention my 70's style refrigerator that was engineered by a midget contortionist from Cirque du soleil. I was in traction for a week from grabbing a jar of pickles hidden in the back on the second shelf. Damn midget engineers. Then it hits me, it's not about the act of making my lunch, it's the baggage that goes along with it. Being stuck at my desk for the whole day, breathing in the oxygen backwash from 1,500 co-workers, and toggling between the internet and my excel spreadsheet when someone walks by. There has to be a compromise.

Fact is, I shouldn't eat out every day of the week and coax a possible Lipitor prescription. On the other hand, I shouldn't be inside the office every day of the week suffering from mental health atrophy. The happy medium is to eat out two days a week and pack my lunch three days a week. On the days I do pack my lunch I'll just find a secluded corner in the break room to cozy up to my latest issue of Maxim, great articles...seriously.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to think about packing my lunch. Or maybe I should just go to bed, it's getting kinda' late.

Taxicab Confession

Whether I'm the driver or the passenger, I'm religious about wearing a seat belt. All those Driver's Ed videos from high school (in hi-fi Betamax format) were enough to put the fear of God in me. Images of a body impaled on a telephone pole after being launched from a car, a distorted face blasted through the windshield and frozen in its final breath, a Jedi who had been cut in half by a black knight's light saber.

I am a strong believer in the "Click It or Ticket" mentality. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, alot of people die in car accidents each year. Furthermore, a large percentage of those alot of people could still be living today if they wore their seat belts. Chilling statistics. Despite being a seat belt nazi, I realized what a hypocrite I am. Because today I called for a cab ride.

The driver promptly showed up and I hopped in the cavernous back seat and that's when it hit me, I never buckle up in taxis. And to highlight the height of hypocrisy, there is no more appropriate time to "Click It" then when you find yourself in a yellow and black checkered vehicle. I try to stay away from sweeping generalizations but taxi drivers are extremely aggressive on the road, and they all smell.

We proceeded out of the parking lot into traffic and I grabbed the "oh shit" handle above the back seat window as the cabbie accelerated into rush hour traffic, switched over four lanes, then slammed on the brakes in disgust when the light turned red. All of these evasive maneuvers transpired over a stretch of approximately 50 yards. I felt like an epileptic break dancer in a bumper car. The back seat strangely began to resemble a coffin. Despite all of this, I was stubborn and firmed my grip, I'm always up for a challenge. It's go time.

The driver anticipated the flow of traffic and jammed the accelerator in perfect synchronicity with the green arrow. Why is he taking this way? What's under this guy's hood? Who wet my pants? I haven't pulled this many G's since Kings Dominion. I'm trying to decipher what they are talking about on NPR but based on our hyperspeed all I hear is a blurb about tighter immigration laws coupled with the wind whistling through the crack in my window. Great, immigration laws. At least it's not a contentious matter for a cab driver. We're cool, right? You're a documented worker and I'm a white male. No problems here. The buzzword "immigration" seems to directly correlate to his speed. Would NPR please stop saying that word. Why are we accelerating through the acceleration?

Oh goodness, a tricky U-turn at a busy light. Through the use of complex breathing techniques which can be mistaken for hyperventilation to the untrained eye, I physically and mentally prepare myself. There's his chance, just a half-mile up, where the light turns red for opposite traffic. Firm grip...check, locked door...check, rock-solid 20 year term life insurance policy for my loved ones...check. My seasoned taxi driver sees another gap which I was unaware of. A gap which measures the approximate length of the car we're in. Sure, we can squeeze in while accelerating to upwards of 40mph in a strip of road that's the size of a suburban driveway. Yeah, no problem. I think I saw this on an episode of "Dukes of Hazzard" where someone was selling moonshine and Boss Hog was eating food. Boss Hog, you slay me.

The cab miraculously fits into the moving target that is our pre-designed space on the road. And no horns! I can see my building now and breathe a sigh of sweaty upper-lip relief. At the very point I begin to drink the Kool-Aid and start to enjoy the ride, we reach the building entrance. I get out knock-kneed and hand the cabbie my voucher, with a cottonmouth voice I manage a crackling "Thank You". The most exciting part of my day speeds away in a yellow and black blur. I'm left nostalgically smelling the fumes of burnt rubber and gas while wafting in a sea of smoke. His driving adventures will continue while my waking hours will consist of staring at my laptop on a morphine drip. Godspeed Mr. Achmed Andretti, you are the most fierce cab driver I never knew.

So remember, always buckle up unless you're in a taxi with a driver speaking Pashto on his cellphone. This has been a public safety announcement.

TheraFlu, Taste the Music

At least three times a year I find myself battling the common cold. And hell if I going to waste a sick day at home. My M.O. is usually a preemptive strike against influenza with obscene amounts of orange juice and jewish penicillin. When the light ammunition doesn't serve enough of a defense I have to call in the howitzer, TheraFlu.

Through my high school and college years I was never tempted to do drugs. Even though marijuana, cocaine, and shrooms were all within my social grasp I was always satisfied with a can of beer. Plus the pricing schemes for recreational use were ridiculous. I was not about to waste my beer money on drugs. Little did I know that in a far off land called New Jersey, mad scientists at Novartis were creating my achilles heel of addiction called TheraFlu. I was able to eschew readily available addictions in my pixilated days of college but regrettably find myself looking forward to taking a swig of TheraFlu when my throat becomes sore.

When the flu hits I'm groggy, grumpy, and it always seems to hit right before the work week. A good night's sleep is just what the doctor ordered. In this case I have two doctors; one named Acetaminophen and the other named Dextromethorphan, both in the form of a powder. When you've known them as long as I have, you just call them Ace and Dex. At this point you might be concerned. Trust me, it's just a quick fix to battle the flu, and so much more.

The big payoff is uninterrupted sleep piggybacked by entertaining dreams. My usual routine is to take a full dose at 8pm and wait to become comfortably numb. By 9pm it's flowing through my veins and my head hits the pillow knowing that dreams and a healthier tomorrow await. I eagerly progress into my deep slumber with a smirk on my face.

With TheraFlu, my hallucinogenic zzz's have been officially injected with anabolic steroids. Time to dream. Time to leave it all behind. Time to have sex with my ex-girlfriend while hang-gliding over Tahiti. Time to fly with a great white and swim with a hawk. That's right, bizzaro dreams that seem to make complete sense while they are happening. I'm not even breaking the law, just an OTC prescription to get rid of those nasty body aches and fever. Time for an absinthe nippy-nap before I have to wake up to the sobering reality that is my 9 to 5 life.