Dinner and Movie Meetup - My First Event

Shawn, the one with the grin, is the organizer

I finally attended a meetup.  For those of you who don't know me, and you may be many but you're probably a select few, I am part of several meetup groups.  I don't know why I do this but I can easily join a meetup, get announcements for meetings and then I don't go.  It's gotta be annoying for organizers because, I am probably not the only one.  Anyway, I went to my first meetup and I had a great time.  I joined a group of 30 and we met at the Starlight Diner, not far from the 34th Street AMC movie theater, to have dinner.  Afterwards we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy.  I got to meet a lot of nice people.  Shawn is the organizer of the meetup.  I can't wait to go to another dinner-and-movie meetup since this was a pretty easy event to attend.

Meetup is a great idea to meet new people who enjoy the things that you like.  It's easy to find any type of group in your city.  Of course, the website is Meetup.com.  One of the things, in a technology obsessed culture like ours, that have gone by the wayside is cultivating friendships on a reality level.  I don't care what anybody says, I just don't think a Facebook friend is a friend.  And yes, I know that people go on Facebook to have thousands of friends, but what does it mean at the end of the day?  I'm biased because I don't have a Facebook account.  And I may open one in the future, but I just think it's odd to count Facebook friends as real friends.  At some point, relationships will probably flower from those group of contacts but, I'm not sure that those people are presenting their real selves.  Besides, it would be hard to hold these Facebook friends accountable to their real identity.

It's far healthier to have real time friends.  It's more of a commitment, but that's part of the whole deal.  We have, as part of our mythic traditions, the rugged individualist.  But in reality, our society has thrived more by people coming together and doing things together.  I can remember from my history class that people had the barn-raisings when the West was settled.  The keen French observer of American life, Alexis de Tocqueville, was surprised by all the volunteer organizations that we had and called us "a nation of joiners" in his book, Democracy in America.  Americans are joiners because each of us know that having friends or a network of people with whom we can have relationships with is what makes our life fun.

Now, I do not deny that there are all sorts of dysfunctional people out there.  But it is up to you whether the dysfunction is something that you can tolerate or not.  I would never advocate suffering a toxic relationship.  However, just as with anything, you have to discern what relationships are healthy for you and what are not.  And the more relationships you have, the better you will be at discerning what is a good relationship for you.  Good relationships are hard to come by and Facebook friends just don't cut it.

The Millennials are not Saving their Money

Millennials spent their discretionary money on three things: Coffee, fast food, and alcohol.  First of all who are the "Millennials"?  According to the report by Level Money (a budgeting app), it's that group of people in the 18 to 35-year-old age range; they are formerly known as Generation Y.  That's a pretty wide age range. Technically, you can have a parent and child in there and they would both be called Millennials.  The two can enjoy their fast food together while the 18-year old pairs it with an iced coffee and the parent can enjoy a brewski.

Apparently, you are a Millennial if you were born at least 17 years before or at most 17 years after the turn of the century.  The oldest in this group was born when personal computers became popular, barely knew that a nation called the Soviet Union existed, and listened to music on CDs or MP3 players.  I can relate to this.  My parents listened to 8-track tapes while I listened to music using a Walkman.  Remember those?

The members of this group spend their money trying to wake up, rushing through lunch, then taking advantage of Happy Hour.  They splurge on Starbucks, cheap out by eating a Happy Meal, then indulge again on cocktails.  Nowhere on this report does it say that they save money for that rainy day that inevitably comes or that they save money for a goal such as buying their own place.  Retirement is not even a blip on their thought horizon.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.  I don't think anyone in America is taught to be financially practical nowadays.  I was brought up by lower-middle class parents who taught me and helped me to understand the value of a dollar.  And even then it's hard for me to resist materialism.  How much more so for people who don't have parents like mine?

Am I the only one who...

does this?

• Takes home the extra roll of premium toilet paper when I stay at a hotel?  Everyone takes the soaps and other stuff but if there's an extra roll of toilet paper and an extra box of Kleenex, I take those too.  I think it's mine because I paid for the room and it's included.
• Plays with their pudge?  You know what I mean, men call it their flat tire, I call it my pudge.  It's that roll of fat around my waste that I have been trying to get rid of since forever and never seems to go away, so why not play with it.  It's soft and squishy.
• Takes home extra Splenda from gourmet coffee houses?  For the prices they are charging for a hot beverage at those places, I feel that I should take extra.
• Smells a shirt or pair of pants to see if it's worth wearing one more time?