I got rid of a whole lot of books this weekend. I made two trips to the Strand, where I made $50 selling books, and I made one trip to the Salvation Army down the street for books I didn’t think they’d take. (The Strand doesn’t like to buy much fiction because they’ve already got tons of it.) And I took a few books to the post office this morning that I sold on Amazon. All told, I think I got rid of about 40 books this weekend, which is in addition to about 45-50 books that I tossed out during the past week. I’m still left with two six-foot-tall bookshelves filled with books.

I also spent much of the weekend checking out different pieces of personal finance software. First I explored Quicken, but Intuit (which owns Quicken) recently switched to a proprietary file format for downloading data from your banks. This makes more money for Intuit because it charges banks to use the format, but it’s a hassle, and I just don’t feel like supporting a big company that’s going to treat its customers like that.

Next I downloaded and tried out GnuCash, which is free, but I found it ugly. Worse, it requires using double-entry accounting, or debits and credits, which I can’t seem to get my mind around.

Finally I decided to try out Moneydance, which I think I’m going to wind up using. I like the interface, and the application is user-friendly. It’s free for the first 100 transactions you enter, but after that it costs $30. But I discovered that it was created by a UVa alum, Sean Reilly, so if I like it and want to continue using it, I’ll be more than happy to pay him. It’s always nice to support the little guy instead of the Man.

In other money-related issues, I cooked dinner on Friday night for the first time in ages and made enough to last three nights. And I’ve made it a goal to try to make my lunch and bring it to work every day this week.

I don’t know why I get on these weird kicks sometimes. When I get into something, I tend to *really* get into it for a while. Probably has something to do with my overachieving personality.

Although that personality never seemed to apply to things like law school.

I’m always interested in the passage of time, and I recently realized that this summer is a significant milestone for me.

I was at the University of Virginia for eight years, from August 1991 to August 1999. During that time, I went to college for four years, worked at UVa for a year, and then went to law school there for three years. After taking the bar exam during the summer after law school graduation, I packed up my stuff, left Charlottesville and moved back up to the New York area.

At the time, I marveled at how much time I’d spent in Charlottesville. I began college at age 17 and finished law school at age 25. Eight years – nearly a third of my life up to then. It seemed like ages.

This summer is significant because another eight years have now passed since that summer.

For a long time after moving back up north, I felt like I was living in a post-UVa transition period – my “post-UVa life.” I defined my existence by what had come before it. (Sort of like how we called the ’90s the “post-Cold-War era.”) Life just didn’t seem as interesting or as stable as it had back in Charlottesville. Even several years after moving back up here, I still felt like I’d just recently left UVa.

Well, it’s now eight years since my UVa life ended – it’s been as long as my UVa life itself. It’s hard for me to sense how much time has passed since then; the past eight years seem to have gone by more quickly than the previous eight years. But I’ve experienced a lot since then — some things that happened so long ago that I sometimes take them for granted.

• I came out to my parents.
• I discovered blogs.
• New York City became my stomping ground.
• I had my heart broken several times.
• I had a five-year career in state government.
• I met Matt and we became partnered.
• I met my good friend Mitch in New Jersey, and other friends whom I feel like I’ve known for ages.
• I turned 30.
• I experienced life in a post-9/11 America.
• I lived through most of the Bush administration.

When I graduated law school eight years ago and wondered what my life would be like in 2007 at age 33, I don’t really know what I pictured. I probably hoped that at the very least I’d be in a stable relationship, out to my parents, and financially independent. Check, check, check. Besides that, I didn’t know. I was finally done with school and had no idea what I was going to do with my law degree. I couldn’t see ahead into the mists of time.

Life is like driving down a country road at night. Your headlights are on and you can see only a few yards in front of you, and you have no idea what’s around the next curve. My future is as murky now as it was back then.

But I guess I’m not in my post-UVa life anymore.

I’m just… in my life.

Does the MTA website suck?