Dirty Energy, Part II

Fall semester: day sixty-three

Still no movement on the rent check. Everything else has cleared my account, including those long-pending debit purchases from Walmart and the gas station. I emailed my landlord about it yesterday morning but have not yet heard back from him; once I get to the office in about two hours I will call him, as now my worry has escalated and I need to be able to get everything sorted out/figured out soon for the sake of my peace of mind and concentration. In the meantime, I have put a "notify me" request on that check # through my bank's website, which means when/if it does clear my account, they'll send me an automated email saying it's gone through. Aside from calling my landlord this morning, that's about all I can do, really. My hands are sort of tied in the situation.

Longtime readers of this blog will possibly remember that this sort of thing has happened once before (and only once before), again involving the rent check, when I was living in Missouri with the former girlfriend about three years ago. The check got lost in the mail -- along with everyone else's in the apartment building I was living in at the time -- and the company who owned the building sent out eviction notices and posted them on all of our doors even though it was their fault (they were the ones who lost the checks). I ended up having to do a stop payment request on that check (a $30 charge through my bank) and immediately pay the rent at the super's office with a money order, with late fees included, just to be able to stay in the place we were living at the time -- even though, like I said, it was the building owners' fault. I never got reparations or an apology for my trouble, either.

This time it's different; this house (along with 90% of the other ones on this block) are all owned by the same guy, my landlord, who also happens to be the city commissioner. I have, so far, received no eviction notice or anything else from the man, nor has anyone else on the block that I've seen. As yes, it is possible that he hasn't cashed anyone's check yet, I'm a bit less worried than I would normally be in this situation, but again -- for peace of mind -- I need to talk to him and figure out what the hell is going on. Especially as I'll have to mail out next month's rent sometime around Thanksgiving, and that's a lot of money to disappear from my bank account all at once.

On top of all of this, my car started running rough(er) yesterday afternoon and the low oil light came on again. I put another quart of oil in it when I came home and checked its other fluid levels (which were fine). I know, right? As if I didn't have enough to worry about as it is.

All of my work for this week is done; I spent several hours yesterday afternoon putting together the final version of the powerpoint presentation Suri and I will be giving in our Asian/Middle Eastern Lit class tomorrow night, and after that was finished I sat down here and wrote the last two response papers (read: miniature book reports) that I had to complete for my Grad Studies in Fiction class -- which I'm also giving a presentation in this afternoon. As for tonight's poetry workshop, I have new poetry, yes, but our professor keeps assigning us new things to read on a daily basis to cover in class tonight, even though he has to know that hey, we're all busy and this isn't a lit course, it's a workshop. We're supposed to be reading/working on our OWN poetry and theories, not other people's.

Bad things are happening all around, not just to me, but to my friends as well. I'm not going to go into details here, but this time of the year sucks for most everyone I know, for various reasons. I have tunnel vision so terribly that one of my friends (who reads/loves this blog, incidentally) posted on Facebook last night that he'd be back in his hometown -- several states away -- on Saturday, and dumbly, I thought to myself, for what possible reason would he be going out of town?

And then I remembered, oh, right. Thanksgiving. Some people actually get some free time to celebrate the holiday and go back to visit their families. I don't have that luxury, so I was confused and didn't even think consider it for a good two minutes or so.

The coffee still flows through my veins. All I have to do is get through today and tomorrow before I can come home, crash, and stay here.

That is, if I'm going to have a home to come back to. I will, of course, update you on what happens with the rent and the landlord.