The Birthday Aftermath

Days until Christmas: four

My birthday is mostly a haze, really.

No, seriously. I took not one, but two different naps yesterday; one in the morning after I finished my last blog post (from about 6 to 1PM), and then another in the evening (5PM to around midnight). I think my body is still trying to catch up with all the sleep I lost over the course of the fall semester. So, the vast majority of my birthday was spent sleeping. I don't exactly mind this, to be honest.

I was, however, able to keep my straight-A record this semester; all grades were posted last night, and I had an A in both of my other classes (with a 97% in my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit class and a perfect score on said class's final). With the A- in my Graduate Studies in Fiction class (it still counts as an A, shut your mouth), my GPA is a 3.96 right now. It's not a perfect 4.0 anymore, but close enough. I took a screenshot of my grades and emailed it to my parents as I always do at the end of the semester.

I was also surprised with two different, unexpected birthday presents today. My friend Brittany sent me a $25 e-gift certificate from Amazon, and another good friend -- a former student of mine, actually -- sent me a wrapped gift from Amazon. When I opened it, I found inside the 2-disc CD set of The Essential Leonard Cohen, which is nothing short of amazing. I plan to play it almost immediately when I begin my hardcore cleaning of the house over the next few days. I gave both of them my warmest thanks and gratitude, as neither of them had to do anything for me at all, nor did I expect them to.

I used the majority of the gift certificate to preorder Archer: Season 2, by the way. It'll arrive at my home on the 27th. For those of you who haven't seen Archer yet, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It's one of the most vulgar, hilarious animated series I've ever seen in my life, and an instant favorite. I'd rank it in my top five favorite TV series of all time.

The friend who got the Leonard Cohen set for me says there's another present coming for Christmas as well, although since she doesn't celebrate Christmas, she calls it a "winter present." Which is doubly awesome. Like I said, my friends are the reason I keep getting up in the morning. They love me, they support me, they're there when I need them, and I likewise do my best to do the same for them. I am overwhelmed, at times, by how fortunate I am.

As for the box from my parents...well...

This afternoon I watched for the mailman. He showed up around 3, and as I was getting ready to go outside to get the box which was surely in the mail truck, he quickly stuffed a few things into my mailbox and again drove off to the next house. WTF, I thought. Surely it's in there, in the back of the truck.

No, no it wasn't. Instead of even attempting to deliver the box, the mailman put a little postcard-like slip in my mailbox telling me to come pick it up at the post office sometime after 8AM today. Again, WTF, don't they deliver packages anymore? My parents have mailed me a huge box every year, and every year they've always left it on my doorstep, or with me personally, no matter what. So this greatly irritated me.

I know, again, first-world problems, right?

I told my mother about this via email, and she was slightly pissed off, too. It's probably because my parents requested delivery confirmation, though. No big deal, really; I'll just get dressed and go to the post office when they open at 8 to pick up the box. It's 3:30 now, so I only have a few hours more to wait. How ironic that I'm going to the post office to pick something up, but not to mail out any of the packages I need to send (because I'm broke). Those packages will have to be mailed after the new year, now -- there's no getting around it unless, amazingly, I end up getting some sort of windfall of money within the next week or so.

Also in the mailbox with the pick-up slip for the package was a birthday card from my grandmother, or "Grammy," as I've always called her. It was a very sweet, beautiful card with a short handwritten letter inside it as well, and she included her customary $10 bill (which she always gives everyone in the family for his/her birthday).

Finally, I thought, some food money. Still slightly miffed about the box, I immediately went to the Papa John's website, used my "Papa Points" for a free pizza, and ordered cheesesticks as well. The total came to $7-something, and I paid for it when it arrived (very quickly thereafter, within 25 minutes) with said $10 bill. So, in a sense, I got the "birthday dinner" I'd been wanting, without having to leave the house. There's still a bunch of it left, and I'm going to eat on it for the next two or three days. This is good.

By the way, when I got up from my nap yesterday morning, it was snowing like hell here in Newton. Like, white-out, blizzard-conditions snowing. It dumped a few inches on us in a matter of a few hours, and then stopped and melted off the roads. There's still two inches or more in the grass, but the roads and driveway is just wet. It looks like the brunt of the storm passed us by, and we were just below the line where the massive amounts of snow were hitting. Wichita, from all reports, didn't get anything but a little sleet. Typical pre-Christmas weather for this area, really. I don't think I've lived out here in the midwest during a year where it didn't snow/sleet/ice/what-have-you on or around my birthday, or between my birthday and Christmas. You can almost set your watch to it. I'm just glad I didn't have to be out in it, and will only be driving the two miles to and from the post office in the morning even if the roads are a little slick still.

I ended up getting birthday greetings from almost fifty people, both friends and family members, via various social networks and emails yesterday. It may have been more than fifty, really. I didn't keep count. I replied to all of them individually, though, once I got up from my "nap." It took a good hour or more. Once again, I'm incredibly grateful for all of the well-wishes, and am in great spirits. As I told a friend tonight, I'm pretty well-off right now. I may be poor and single, but I have hot coffee, my three goofy cats, and a host of friends who love me and keep me sane. That's all I can ever ask for in this world, really. It's all I need.

I did find something interesting while I was cleaning out my room last night, however -- apparently, at some point, I purchased Grand Theft Auto III as well as Vice City for my Xbox. I also found Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, and Knights of the Old Republic II -- the latter of which is fairly rare and expensive now ($130 for a new copy on Amazon, with used ones going for $30 and up). The other games aren't exactly common or cheap either.

I don't remember purchasing any of these Xbox games, though I'm sure I did (obviously). I've also never played any of them. This means I either bought them from Blockbuster well over a year ago when it was going out of business, or I must've picked them up from various yard sales or pawn shops around town at some point. I had no clue I had any of them. I mean, I knew I had some Xbox games I'd never yet played, but I didn't know or remember that those ones were in the mix. I was awed. It was like finding more surprise birthday presents, really. Happy birthday to me! So over the course of the next few weeks, I may delve into a few of them a little bit. It'll give me something else fun to do, and at least if my finances get really bad, I know I can sell them for high prices on Amazon.

Zedral and I were talking tonight about taxes and tax refunds, and she said this coming year she's going to do them ASAP so that she can get her refund cash faster. I think I'll do the same as well; I can't remember what my refund was last year, but it was a lot. I remember that. I know the last $500 of it went to purchasing the Monte Carlo, so it was a large amount (mainly because I'm so fucking poor). I'll need the cash to put new tires on the car, get it an oil change, and get it worked on sometime soon, so perhaps if I get my W-2 forms shortly after the beginning of the new year, I'll do my taxes and get them mailed out before the break ends. That would be nothing short of awesome, and one less thing to worry about during the semester. It would also allow me to have some spending money for my trip out to West Virginia over spring break (once my parents order the tickets, of course). For some reason I always forget about the monetary windfall that is every spring tax season, usually because for the past six years I've been overly concerned with work or school during tax season, and tend to do said taxes in what little free time I have. This year they should be simple -- the only pay I have is from the school. I should be able to file them quickly and efficiently because of this. Well, I'll probably have to declare the $60 or so I made from my book's sales as well, but that only takes one form and about five minutes to fill out.

On that note, I'm heading to the shower, and will be drinking more coffee so I can stay awake to go get the parents' box in the morning as soon as the post office opens at 8. I'm excited and looking forward to that, let me tell you. Its unpackaging, of course, will be documented fully here on the blog.