Dilemmas and Other Things

Days until my next paycheck: 6

Well folks, this will more than likely be my last post of 2011, and I am not typing it in my word processor, but directly on the site here.

Why?

Well, because for more than three hours now, my internet has been working just fine.

I really don't know why, or what changed, but I do know that when the automated phone call came earlier this evening from the cable company to confirm that yes, I did still need service, it was still screwed up and offline (again). After I made dinner and finished the second season of Archer, I came back to my Man Cave to see it back online. It has remained online with no problems ever since.

Yes, this may only be temporary, but still, I now have a dilemma.

The ISP tech guy is coming to the house between 8AM and 10AM in the morning, as I mentioned before. On New Year's Day. On a Sunday. Or at least he's scheduled to, anyway. My dilemma is that I do not know what to do now, especially as everything's working fine again. Just because it's working now doesn't mean it's going to be working when I get up in the morning, and I know this. It also doesn't mean that it's not going to screw up again in the future if I were to call and cancel the "service call" to my house, if not again sometime tomorrow.

Truthfully I'm not even sure how to cancel a service call.

I'm not sure it matters much anyway, as I'm not sure I have the minutes left on my phone to be able to do it in the first place, and no money (obviously) to refill said phone. I've still got another week before I get paid, and tonight's Walmart groceries I put on the credit card, as I also received my water bill in the mail today for $70. Did I also mention that I got the electric bill yesterday as well, and it was $180? Yeah, definitely need to be paid soon. Soonsoon. For some reason these scant few weeks when my money has been really tight is when I've had more problems and expenses than almost any other time this year, and it's simply maddening. With the checks my mother deposited, yes, I do have a little bit more cash, but it's nowhere near what I need to be able to cover all of my bills, not to mention the aforementioned credit card bill that is more than likely coming soon at some point as well. I can't tell you how much I need the other half of my student loan money to drop, ASAFP -- and, of course, how much I desperately need my next paycheck.

Of course, there's no real use in worrying about it. I can't do anything about it. Hell, this afternoon at Walmart I bought washing soda and Borax to be able to make my own laundry detergent since I'm so poor I can't exactly afford not to anymore.

1 cup Borax
1 cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda
1 bar of soap

Use a fine grater (like the really small-holed side of a cheese grater) and grate the bar of soap into a bowl. Mix it well with the cup of Borax and washing soda. Store it in a plastic container of some sort to keep out moisture. Use a tablespoon or two per load of laundry. That's it.

In case you were wondering, anyway. Yes, apparently a tablespoon or two is enough. Sounds good to me. I'm going to spend my New Year making a ton of it and putting it in different containers, since I have no life whatsoever. Because, after all, why not, right?

Over the next few days at some point I'm planning to write some sort of year-in-review post, if I ever get around to it. And, of course, as long as the ISP tech's visit tomorrow goes well, and as long as my internet keeps working. I'll let you know how that goes, of course.

Offline

(written December 31, 2011 11:55AM)

I do not know what is going on with my internet, but suffice it to say that it has not been working properly since Wednesday or so. It'll work sometimes, but usually at short intervals – say, for fifteen minutes or up to two hours or so – before going offline again, sometimes for much longer (it's been inoperative for up to six hours straight at times). There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, and despite how many times I reset the modem and router or unplug it/plug it back in, nothing has helped me “reclaim” my normal internet service. Because of that, I have lost at least two full blog posts here, and have spent many of the past 72 hours completely and utterly going out of my mind.

When you have no money (and therefore, nothing to do) during an extended break from school, having reliable internet that, y'know, works is incredibly important to my sanity and/or keeping me from becoming completely and utterly depressed. It is the one outlet I have into the real world, the only way I can keep in contact with my family and friends, the only way I read the news, etc. It an absolute necessity, one which is needed when I am home for an extended period of time more than ever. It's also the only way I'll ever know when I will get more money, as all of my banking stuff is online. So yeah, it's kind of important.

Here's what I do know, after a few calls to my ISP (who has always been wonderful when it comes to tech support and helping me when there's a problem):

1. There aren't any outages in my area that they can see; all systems are normal from what they can tell, with the exception that when I called, my modem was offline but connected (yeah, they can tell when it's plugged in).

2. A hard reset of my modem didn't work to solve the problem (then again, I knew that already).

3. If it's working intermittently (read: sometimes on, sometimes not), like it's been doing, then there are but a few solutions to the problem, none of them pleasant – either a cable or component has gone bad or is going bad between the pole and my house, or in the box on the side of my house, or the modem itself is dying.

The former, if that's the problem, should be relatively easy to fix by a service tech, and probably won't cost me any money. The latter? While that's more than likely the case, in case you didn't get the memo, I'm poor. Very poor, at least for the next two weeks or so. While I can get a replacement modem from the cable company, just like I got the one I'm using now, it's about $60. They bill it to you in three monthly installments, usually tacked on to your normal bill. That's not incredibly expensive, no, but it's still an expense that I was really not prepared for, nor is it one that I can pay right at this moment without the credit card if they don't do the installment billing anymore.

The ISP is sending a service tech out in the morning – yes, tomorrow morning, New Year's Day, between 8 and 10AM (possibly the worst time/day ever for said tech) to look at the problem and see what he can do. Regardless of what's wrong, by this time tomorrow afternoon I'm hoping everything will be fixed and fully operational again. Meanwhile, here I am hoping that every time I'm able to get online, it'll just keep working and won't screw up again. I've been able to get online four or five times since I got up this morning, each interval ranging from anywhere between a few minutes to fifteen or twenty before it goes offline again. Because this isn't that pleasant (obviously) I have taken to typing my blog posts, including this one, on my word processor for later cut-and-paste.

On the plus side, my mother did deposit the two checks I mailed her this week, and both have now cleared my bank account (which I was very quickly able to check the last time my internet was working), which gives me some grocery money. I'll have to go out and get some food today at some point, but I don't know when or what I'll get. The fridge is, regrettably, bare.

So, that's how things are now, where they stand. I will, of course, update all of you on what happens and how it happens, but for now just consider me offline, and off the grid (so to speak).

Internet Outages

I've been experiencing internet outages here for the past 36 hours or so -- up for an hour or so, then down for two. Up for two, down for one. Etc. There's been no real rhyme or reason to it, but until they cease, obviously, blog posts here will be sporadic and infrequent. I've already had to abandon two posts in the middle of writing them (don't worry, they'll be posted later once all the 'net stuff is fixed).

Budget Cuts

This morning, one of my good friends I went to college with at WVU asked me a question that I hadn't given a lot of thought to as of late, but bears discussion here. He asked me about the planned budget cuts our governor is planning to make, and how it will affect me.

Look, to most of the nation, Kansas is a joke, and a running one at that. It's right up there with Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia (the latter of which, ironically, is my home state) on the list of "the most backward states in the union." Our (Republican) governor, who I shall not name here in this blog but will state that, ahem, #heblowsalot, proposed early this year that the Kansas Arts Commission should be dismantled and disbanded, which would make Kansas the only state in the union where no federal funding would be given to the arts or anything arts-related, such as museums, galleries, theaters, any sort of music or performance halls, etc. This means no more poet laureates -- no laureates of any kind, actually -- no money or recognition for anything arts-related at all. This also extends and/or filters down, of course, to any state-or-federal-funded programs even tangentially associated with the arts, and may eventually involve the possible loss-of-funding for liberal arts programs within colleges and universities, though it hasn't gone that far yet.

I have a liberal arts degree. I am getting my Masters of Fine Arts in not only Creative Writing, but in Poetry, of all things, at a state-run university here that has already suffered numerous cutbacks in just the past two or three years, just emerged from a hiring freeze, and in a department that just now had enough money to hire a second poetry professor this past semester after the other one died over two years ago. In the spring, our program director is on sabbatical, at least two other professors in the department (if not more) are retiring, and many of the new recruits this fall are incredibly dissatisfied with the program itself. That's not counting, of course, those of us who have been there much longer than they have and hate the program that much more.

I am not one of those people, by the way. I'm fine with the program only because I'm old enough and have enough life experience to know that the outside world, working in retail and other private-sector jobs is much, much worse, even if it does pay more (well, sometimes it does). I actually like the department, I like the program, and I like most (if not all) of the people in it. It sure as fuck beats stocking shelves for nine hours every night, or scrubbing glassware in a laboratory, even if due to my low pay I have a whole $40-something in my checking account right now. As I've said before, I'm grateful to be a part of the program simply because I have nothing else going for me in my life.

So, as to my friend's question, this was my reply:

Not sure as of right now. As far as I know, the creative writing program at [Flat State University] isn't going anywhere anytime soon -- we've recently breached several lists of "best small MFA programs in the country" within the past year or so, and the program is producing really good writers who go on to be successful. I'd say that it's possible our pay might get cut if it weren't for the fact that it's already *really* low (read: about half of what GTAs at other state schools, like [big state school] and [other big state school], make, and about $4k-5k a year less than WVU). Our taxes are through the roof here too, so there's not much more they could do to hurt us there, either. Income tax for us GTAs *tripled* this past year alone. So, really, who knows what could happen -- but it's not going to be anything good.

This is all, to the best of my knowledge, true. The taxes thing is no lie; when I started in fall 2010 as a GTA, we were getting paid $393.73 every two weeks. I remember this figure because I didn't even have to look at my pay stubs to know what to write down in my bank book after a few weeks because I had it memorized. Coming back in Spring 2011, we began getting paid $378.87 every two weeks, almost $15 lower than before. Irritated, I found that in comparing pay stubs from the two different semesters, the only thing that had changed was that Kansas's state taxes for us GTAs had tripled. Yes, tripled, at the start of 2011. Yet, obviously, our teaching stipends had not gone up to make up the balance -- we were being paid the same and were being taxed more on top of it. Doing the math here, this means that about 20% (roughly) of our income goes directly into state and federal taxes. I'm not sure what the income tax rate for everyone else is, but when we get paid obscenely low amounts of money per year, that's almost like an extra punch to the gut.

It's even worse when you think about the fact that, if the governor has his way, none of that tax money will go back into programs that support the very things we all do for a living -- writing, painting, bettering the arts community, etc.

We do make abysmally low stipends, too. Yes, we get free tuition as well, but our stipends are half, or even a third of what one would receive were one to become a GTA and get the same degree outside the state of Kansas. It's ludicrous. As you know, I have to get a student loan every year, if not more than one, just to be able to survive -- and I am not the only one. I'm just one of the very few with no backup plan (read: inheritances, trust funds, rich husband/wife/parents) to fall back on. That in itself is disheartening, as well, but as you know I've always taken pride in working hard and fighting for everything I have, even if what I have isn't a lot.

Interesting side note: before the neo-conservatives and Jesus took over the Republican party (so, well, before 9/11) I was relatively Republican in my viewpoints for the most part. Though I really did love Bill Clinton, perhaps because of the fact that he was getting blown in the oval office on a frequent basis.

Plus. Monica Lewinsky was hot. So hot. I will defend that opinion until I die.

Anyway, go figure.

Who knows if the tax rates for us will go up or down for 2012; none of us GTAs will know until we get our first paycheck of the spring semester (in February) and see if the amount on it is any different than the usual. What I do know, however, is that I got my Kansas state tax forms in the mail a few days ago, so as soon as I get my W-2 forms (or equivalents) I can do my taxes and be done with them. This is good as I just want to be done with them, get my refunds, and get the car worked on/fixed up/new tires.

The Christmas Aftermath

When I woke up, it was 1:30AM. Christmas was officially over. Finally. It couldn't have ended soon enough.

Not to say that it was bad, or anything, because it wasn't. But I always want Christmas to come and go as quickly as possible, so that people just shut up about it and everyone can move on with their lives. It's just. a. day, folks. Yeah, there are a lot of people who it means a lot to, usually really, really Christian people and/or rich people who can afford a ton of presents -- but to me, living alone in Kansas, it was just another Sunday.

This, of course, did not stop me from wishing my friends and family all the best on Christmas, and it doesn't mean any less when I did so. I love my friends and family, and really did want them to have a wonderful day. Most of them did, and seeing my friends and family happy also makes me happy. But again, to me? Normal Sunday.

As for my Christmas, I don't remember most of it, to be honest, because (as you saw above) I was asleep. I don't remember what time I went to bed. In fact, I don't even really remember going to bed, just that I did. All I did was cook up my three little steaks for my "Christmas dinner," call my parents, spend a few of the morning hours on Facebook talking to a few friends, and then at some point I passed out. And just. slept. like a rock.

I'm guessing my professor completely forgot about his offer of Christmas dinner to me, because I received no calls or emails from him. Which is okay, really, like I said. It would've been fun, but really awkward. And, again, I don't have enough gas in the car right now to get to Wichita and back anyway, so it's all okay.

Talking to my parents on the phone this morning was nice, though. My mother got a diamond necklace of some sort with both black and white diamonds from my dad, as well as professionally-done photos of the animals (the dog and their three cats). In turn, she got my dad a remote control helicopter. I'm sure there were other things, but that one was what stood out.

My mom is 51, my dad is 61. My mom got my dad got a remote control helicopter for Christmas. I'm repeating that so that it sinks in for full effect. My parents are awesome.

I also realized that I have about six minutes left on my phone now; don't know where all of the rest of them went (probably texting Suri back and forth during the semester) but the fact that I'm now out of minutes means I wasn't able to call or text anyone else for the holiday. This sucks because I always call my grandmother, at the very least. Instead, as I alluded to before, I sent out a flurry of tweets and Facebook posts. Yes, I felt bad about this, but I'm poor.

My Christmas did not go completely ungifted, though -- the first thing I saw yesterday morning upon getting up was that Brittany had gotten me another $25 Amazon gift card for Christmas, to go along with the one she'd given me for my birthday last week. It was incredibly sweet of her and something that really took me by surprise. I almost thought it was an error when I saw it pop up in my email, but it wasn't. I thanked her profusely. The girl's like my sister, and I really, really miss her being this far away from West Virginia all the time.

I haven't used the gift card balance yet, honestly. I don't know what I'll do with it. The first one, as you may know, I used to preorder the second season of Archer. That should arrive in the mail tomorrow, and I still have about $4 left from that one. This new one I've already applied to my account, but when I spent about an hour browsing through the stuff on the site this morning, I couldn't really find anything I was interested in. I may save it for a while, chamber it, and if something I'm interested in pops into my head over the course of the next few weeks, I'll order it. I wanted a Forever Lazy (yes, seriously, I do want one) but for some odd reason they're like $50 on Amazon. Maybe I'll get the cats some new toys or something. They systematically destroy most of the stuff I get them now. Suri got them a toy for Christmas and they'd broken it within two days. In pieces. I wish I were making that up, but I'm not. It was a hollow plastic fish with a "bizzy ball" ball-and-bell inside it. I found it broken in half at the bottom of the stairs two days after I gave it to them.

I told Suri, by the way, that it's high praise they destroyed the toy, as if they hadn't liked it, they wouldn't have bothered to mess with it or even touch it.

As for my own Christmas plans (which were, of course, scant), I accomplished only half of them. I was planning to watch the Captain America DVD, but as I fell asleep quite quickly, those plans got derailed. I'll end up watching it at some point this week, I'm sure. I have a stack of movies to get through, and that one's at the top of the list. This coming week is when things get interesting, after all -- it's the end of the year, I'm paying my rent tomorrow, and today I'll have to venture out at some point to Walmart (again) because I need cigarettes and a few other things I forgot or didn't purchase when I was there before Christmas. As the last time I looked out the window it was snowing, I'm going to wait a few hours to see if that clears up before I go out. May go back to bed again, too. Who knows. For the next week and a half my budget will be really tight again, as I'm paying the rent and am between paychecks, so if I can avoid leaving the house or spending money on anything unnecessary, I'm going to do so.

I have changed my mind and have decided to stay mostly clean-shaven over the course of the next month or so, shaving down to the skin every three days or so. I'm doing this because not only do I have no one to impress with my manly beard over the course of this next month, but because I'm "prepping my face," of sorts. I've been told by numerous friends that the way to get my beard to grow in both thick and very quickly is to keep doing this for a while on a regular basis, and once my face gets used to these regular shaves, just stop, and it'll grow in thick in twice the time. While I hate being clean-shaven, if I can get my beard to come in thick and fast as soon as the semester starts, I'll be able to keep my face warm throughout the winter months when I'll be outside and in the weather a lot for classes. If not? I found a big, blue scarf that the former girlfriend knitted at some point and never finished (judging by the fact that there was still loose yarn on both ends) that I can wrap around my face and neck if it gets really nasty outside.

I am worried about the car once the weather starts getting bad; she'll go in snow just fine -- I know that for a fact -- but anything icy, she spins her tires and fishtails a little because those tires really, really need replacing. Kansas (and Missouri as well, when I was living there) is known for its ice storms. We haven't had one this winter yet, but it's bound to happen eventually. There was a horrible one last spring on a weeknight in mid-February or so, when the former girlfriend had a late class, and it was not pleasant to drive home in. I have confidence in the car itself, for the most part. I do not have confidence in its tires, and until I can afford new ones, I just have to hope my luck holds out. So much of my life as of late has relied on luck, and that's sort of scary to me -- because if one thing goes wrong, everything else gets screwed up as well.

My "Christmas" packages (or, as one of my friends would say, "winter presents") won't be going out until at least this time next week, if not later. Probably later. I know they'll be really late, but I don't have much of a choice; no money, as you know. I guess that's okay, though, for most people; nobody really seems to mind, and all of them understand my situation. I'll also be getting at least two late packages myself from friends who are in the same situation as I am. Money's tight for everyone this year, apparently. I just have to focus on survival for these next two really tight weeks. It's not pleasant, but it's doable.

So, that's about all that's going on right now, really. Nothing else happening, nothing else planned. Now that Christmas is over and I'll have a lot of free time where I don't have to think about other stuff, I can get into my work a little more on crafting/retooling next semester's lesson plans, working on my poetry, and editing my book(s).

Oh, and (eventually) trying to get myself on a more normalized sleeping pattern again.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, folks. You're welcome.

Humbugs

Nine hours, forty-nine minutes until Christmas

Yes, that is my normal face when I'm forced to deal with a cat who will not get off my lap. Merry Christmas, folks. Or Merry-whatever-the-hell-you-celebrate.

I just realized a few minutes ago that this will be the first year since I've kept this blog that I won't be able to make the list of things I received in my "haul of presents," because, nurrr, this year I won't get anything from anyone -- and all of you already know everything I've gotten from friends and family this past week, because I've already told you. I'm in no way discounting that, of course -- I also don't get to list the presents I've purchased for anyone, because, well, I haven't done that this year.

No, none of this is necessarily sad. Seriously. I'm not depressed, folks. It's just interesting to think about, that's all. It may sound sad to some of you, but eh. I'm okay. Christmas, as I've said before, is really just another day to me. When I get up in the morning (or more likely, afternoon) it'll be no different than any other day of the year. I'll still make coffee, feed the cats, smoke a few, take a morning shit, etc. Nothing will be any different to me except the date on the calendar.

I'm not sure I mentioned it here before (I probably didn't) but my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit professor, during the week before finals, invited me to his house for Christmas dinner with his wife and his son, who is currently in town for the holidays. I'm sure I'm the only one he's extended this invitation to, and I'm also fairly sure that at this point, he's forgotten about it (he said he'd call beforehand to ask me if I still wanted to come, and he hasn't done so yet). Ironically, as much as I'd love to go, I do not have enough gas in the car to make it down there and back, and certainly don't have the money to fill up the tank right now.

Okay, so if the presents thing wasn't depressing, I will admit that this certainly is.

To a certain extent I do hope he has forgotten about inviting me to dinner -- I don't want to disappoint him by being unable to attend. Since I became a graduate student here at Flat State University, I have had two different, high-level graduate literature classes with the man, and he is by far one of the most fascinating and intelligent people I've ever met. He originally invited me because he knows me fairly well at this point, and knows that since I'm now single, I didn't have anywhere to go for Christmas. As much as I would love to pick that man's brain over a few glasses of wine and some turkey, it would still be incredibly awkward. I've only met his wife twice, even, and have never met his son, etc. It would be sort of weird circumstances. I'd sort of feel like a mooch, I'd feel I were imposing, etc. Those sorts of things.

The most accomplished thing I've done all day is get up early enough to watch Saturday morning cartoons, and finished the first season of Arrested Development so I can move on to the second. I also took sinus/pain pills because I'm pretty sure I'm beginning to develop a sinus/ear infection, and need to nip that shit in the bud right now. Being poor over break is one thing. Being sick over break is one thing. Being poor and sick over the break would just suck.

I did get a few good surprises today; my friend Kristen, who I went to high school with, sent me a very sweet card and a bowl of homemade hardtack candy for Christmas, which was very nice of her and incredibly thoughtful. I also got my normal, yearly $75 check from my godfather, which he always sends for my birthday/Christmas and has always done so since I was a child. I was afraid I wasn't going to get one this year, which I told my mother would have been bad because, of all years, this is one of the years I need that money the most. That $75 will give me the ability to buy more groceries in my "hang time" between my bills being paid, my next (and final) paycheck for this past semester, and my student loan disbursement. Or pay my credit card bill, whichever comes first. Amusingly enough, I have about $75 on the card right now. Pretty close, anyway.

I also got the Lindsay Lohan issue of Playboy in the mail today, and that is enough of a Christmas present to keep me quite happy. Ho ho ho indeed.

Hm, well, what else is going on?

I did make my Walmart trip yesterday morning, arriving there around 6AM or so. I have found this is the best time to shop at Walmart, holiday season or otherwise, as there is nobody in the store, and it's after the night stocking crew has finished (they're always moving their pallets of empty boxes back into the back room around that time, as they're done). I got stuck in line behind a beautiful 40-year-old or so woman, who apologized profusely to me because she had so many items.

"Don't worry about it," I told her, smiling warmly. "I'm here at 6AM on a Friday morning. Believe me, I have time."

I believe the purchases on the conveyor belt were probably some of the most depression-inducing ones yet -- one large bag of cat food, and three little ones (for the girls). One large tub of cat litter. One $2.99, single-serving pack of small grilling steaks (for my Christmas dinner). One pack of Oscar Mayer roast beef, for sandwiches, and a pack of provolone cheese to go along with it. One pack of bologna, thick sliced. One box of tissues. One box of Suphedrine PE sinus pills. A can of salt, a 5lb bag of sugar, a small bottle each of onion powder and garlic powder. A pound of butter, in sticks. A bottle of Almond Joy coffee creamer. As she scanned it all, the working-holiday-hours-only cashier gave me a questionable you're not really this sad and alone, are you? sort of look, especially when scanning the cat food and litter juxtaposed with the rest of my purchases.

I felt compelled to tell her that yes, yes I was. But I didn't. I did, however, defend the cat food purchases by telling her I wasn't letting them run out over Christmas, 'cause there was no way I was coming back out to shop over the course of the next three days or so.

She just gave me the arched-eyebrows, okay mr. sad man sort of nod.

When I returned home, I put the car in the garage, where it has remained. It's been bitingly cold in the mornings and overnight hours; no reason to let it sit outside in the cold for no reason. I'm not planning on going anywhere for a few days, after all. I've still got a rent check to write, which means the only money I'll be spending aside from that for the next week or so will be for absolute necessities only, if that. The car goes have about another 30 miles or so to go before I need gas again.

Oh, I forgot to mention before that I got approved for a second credit card, which should be arriving in the mail over the course of the next week or so. It has a $500 limit, and I applied for it specifically for emergency circumstances. It has a low interest rate, and 0% interest until September 2013, so that's good. In the case I may need to use it if something major blows up on the car, I'll be able to pay it off in installments. That's good too. The Amazon card I already have, conversely, will mostly be used for small-purchase things, such as gas, fast food, etc., in order to build good credit. The objective here is to build myself a bit of a safety net. If shit goes really wrong (like the aforementioned car blowing an expensive part), I'll at least be able to save myself temporarily with these cards until I can amass enough money to pay them off. I'm not the kind of guy who's like "Credit cards? Wooooo, shopping spree!"

Because I'm not stupid. For the record.

On that note, I'm getting off here. I think I'll wander out to the living room, snuggle with the kitties, and possibly fall asleep watching football on the couch.

The Cold Outdoors

Days until Christmas: two

This morning I have decided to brave the cold and make the Walmart trip I've been putting off since Wednesday. It can no longer be avoided -- the cats are now completely out of litter and only have about two days' worth of food left, and I'm down to the last few bare essentials of food in the refrigerator (not counting, of course, the stuff my parents sent me, now stored safely in the cupboard).

I planned to go to Walmart yesterday morning, but Arrested Development derailed those plans, as well as an hours-long chat with Andrea and the later desperate need for sleep. That was all I did yesterday that was worthwhile, actually. I went to bed afterwards until after 8PM, made a can of the Vegetable Beef soup my parents sent me for dinner (because at least that has meat in it, and I don't have any other meat in the house) and watched another full disc of Arrested Development until well after midnight.

I was very lucky that I'd waited to go to Walmart, and hadn't done it earlier -- upon checking the mail when I woke up last night, I had a Christmas card from my parents. It was the card my mother had been telling me to watch for over the course of several days, and for good reason -- inside it was a $50 Walmart gift card. Any thoughts of using it to purchase luxury items like video games, t-shirts, or DVDs were fleeting, however -- that $50 gift card will cover the majority of my grocery shopping trip this morning, and it must cover nothing else if I want to be able to stay on my budget for the rest of the break. Anything over that $50 (because, trust me, I'll inevitably spend more than that) will have to go on the credit card. At least the car doesn't need gas anytime soon, which is a plus.

Yes, I do (finally) get paid again today, the money from which will be going towards the rent almost immediately after Christmas, leaving me with less in my bank account than I have now. But at least all of the bills will be paid, and I'll have some food in the house. I've already made a huge shopping list full of things I won't be able to afford until after January 6th. Like I said, it's these two weeks that my budget will be at its tightest -- when I will have no spare money whatsoever, and when I'm waiting to be paid next and waiting for my student loan to drop -- that I'll be at my poorest. In fact, it's the poorest I will have been since, oh, almost three years ago when I moved into this house with the former girlfriend. While being that broke and destitute should be fleeting and shouldn't last too long, I don't necessarily like it, of course. If I were in school, I wouldn't be able to do it -- the gas for the car alone would eat up what little was left of my money.

Of course, I don't know when the credit card bill will come due, either. I'm really hoping it doesn't come in until next week, and isn't due until January 20th or something like that. Obviously, I don't have the money for that either, and have to keep using said card for little things until I do. Can't do much about it. I have to be able to survive, folks, and it's really shitty luck that all of these financial responsibilities are hitting right now, of all times -- the only time in almost three years when I don't have the money to cover all of them immediately without a second thought.

Anyone want to come out here and marry me so that I'll have regular sex and a two-income household? I'm taking applications. Must love cats; it's a package deal.

In the mailbox I did have another special surprise as well, from Wayne and Jane. It was a small flat-rate box about the size of a VHS cassette. Inside was a very sweet card, several of Jane's wonderful cookies, a molded-chocolate bar of Han Solo in carbonite (no, I'm not kidding, she made it with one of these), and a small wrapped present. The present, once unwrapped, was the DVD of Captain America: The First Avenger. Which, needless to say, is awesome. I'll finally be able to see it. Again, I can't thank the two of them enough for everything they do for me, especially when they don't have to do anything at all. I'm beginning to realize now just how fortunate I am to have wonderful friends like them, and many others.

"I now have a dilemma," I told Jane. "Should I interrupt my eight discs of Arrested Development to watch the movie, or just wait until afterwards?"

She replied that she didn't like Arrested Development, so the choice would be easy for her. For me, though, it's a little more difficult. Perhaps I'll finish the first season today and tomorrow, and Christmas day will be all about America, explosions, and the Red Skull. In fact, that's more than likely what I'll do. At least it'll take my mind off Christmas being Christmas, you know?

After I get home from Walmart this morning, hopefully making the trip there and back before dawn, when the daytime shoppers start crawling the store for last-minute Christmas gifts and Christmas dinner supplies, I once more plan to garage the behemoth and not leave the house again until absolutely necessary. Zac, my officemate, tells me I should immediately begin playing my copy of Knights of the Old Republic II that I found for my Xbox a few days ago, as he says it's the best thing Star Wars-related since Return of the Jedi. While I may keep that one, I'm seriously considering selling off a lot of my older games for both my Xbox and my DS over the next few weeks or so on Craigslist just to get some cash in my pocket. I do have some rare ones I've collected over the years that I'd much rather have the cash for than let them sit on my shelf.

On that note, it's time to make my shopping trip. No reason to put it off any longer than I have to. It's 5:10AM and I really just want to go get it over with. I'll update again soon; I have plenty more to write about over the course of the next few days.

Cartoon Socks and Free Time

This is a pair of socks gifted to me this year by one of my close friends (and a former student), the same one who got me the Leonard Cohen set for my birthday. She says these socks look like me, and I am inclined to agree with her -- down to the little aviator sunglasses.

I am currently wearing said socks right now, by the way. They're comfortable, if a bit meta.

(They're "a bit meta" because I'm wearing a comic-like representation of myself on my feet, in case you were wondering.)

I don't know if my friend who gave me these socks reads this blog, though she does know of its existence. We're close, we follow each other on Twitter, we talk all the time, etc. I would imagine she at least reads it occasionally, which probably means I should at some point come up with a codename for her. Her real name is rather...distinct, shall we say. I've never met anyone else with the same name, so anyone in the Wichita area would easily be able to figure out I was writing about her if they cared to look her up.

I'm all about privacy for my friends if I mention them on here; it's me who's the open book, obviously. Like I've said before, I don't give a shit who reads about my own life here -- that's sort of the point of the blog: my own life. I don't censor myself, but I also don't write anything possibly incriminating to myself or others.

So. Anyway.

I have become fairly content with my life right now. I know that sounds weird coming from me, but right now I'm in a pretty good place -- at least during the winter break, anyhow. No, I don't have a ton of money, but at least I can sleep when I want to, can decide to leave the house or not at my own choosing, and have time to relax, listen to the podcasts I've collected over many months, and play the occasional video game or watch a movie if I so desire. The first few days after the semester ended, I didn't really know what to do with myself. All of my responsibility came to a grinding halt, and I broke free from the proverbial chains which held me.

Ugh, that sounds so pretentious. Let me rephrase that.

I ended up sleeping a lot and not doing much else, because I didn't have to.

There, that sounds better.

As you folks know, my sleeping schedule when I'm off from school is really, really weird. Yesterday, for example, I slept from 2 to 7PM. Then I got up, and have been awake ever since. In the overnight hours I did the dishes, vacuumed the entire house (yes, in the middle of the night; I'm special like that) and spent a few hours playing my Xbox. Shortly before sunrise, I began watching the set of Arrested Development that Andrea got for me a few weeks ago. As you may know, I've never seen the show before. Believe me, if you haven't seen it, it lives up to the hype. Totally lives up to the hype. Very well-written, intelligent comedy. And brutally hilarious. I'm so totally going to enjoy watching all eight discs of it over break. All else I have to watch may be put on hold until I finish it.

I do have some stuff to do over the next 24 hours or so, including getting some sleep at some point. I must venture to Walmart again (yes, three days before Christmas, I know) to quickly pick up some essentials -- the cats are almost out of food and litter, which is sort of important, and I'm out of a few smaller items like sugar, salt, and butter, which are important if I want to do any sort of cooking over the course of the next week or so. While my parents' box provided me with many meals' worth of food in one fashion or another, I still want to be able to cook the basics even if I'm poor. Of course, the weather has decided not to cooperate as well as I'd hoped, and it's currently snowing like hell at my house.

Although I did just watch the neighbors' cat, a big, fluffy-tailed Maine Coon-looking cat -- chase and catch a squirrel, which fought off said cat and ran up a tree. In the snow. It was hilarious. The cat followed about four feet up the tree before going fuck it and jumping back down to the ground. Ah, my little bit of amusement for the day.

I don't particularly care how much or how hard it snows; at least it's snow and not ice or sleet. Walmart is two miles away, and I'm not going until I get some sleep anyhow. If that means I end up going in the middle of the night tonight, well, no big deal. It'll be a quick trip anyhow, and I'll have to put it on the credit card anyway. I don't get paid again until tomorrow, and all of that paycheck is going to the rent. Every cent of it.

After that Walmart trip, by the way, I'm not planning to leave the house again until well after Christmas. I really just want to have as much peace and quiet time to myself as humanly possible. This may sound ironic coming from a guy who never leaves the house unless he has to anyhow, but during the holidays it's different. More than anything else it's like I'll be avoiding the thought of how alone I am by keeping myself occupied, doing my best not to think about the fact that most, if not all of my friends will actually be doing something to, y'know, celebrate the holidays, whether with family, friends, significant others, or what-have-you. While the thought of my Christmas alone may be soul-crushingly depressing to most of you -- and to a certain extent, it is -- I see it as training and practice for what I foresee may be a long, long stretch of years of living alone and not doing anything significant or otherwise celebratory on days like Christmas.

Because, really, if nothing else I'm a realist, folks. You know that. I expect to be single and living alone for a very, very long time, if not the rest of my life. Whether I'm "okay" with that fact or not does not matter; the reality is that it's greatly probable. While I'm optimistic about a lot of things, this is one of those harsh realities that I can look at in an objective way, and think to myself yeah, that's probably how it's going to be, really.

Ugh, that really does sound awfully depressing, doesn't it? I didn't intend it to sound that way, to be honest. Merry Christmas, right? I really don't dwell on these things; I don't think about them much at all, to be honest. As you probably already know, I've always lived a sort of solitary lifestyle, trying my hardest most times to depend on no one but myself to get by. Sometimes that's been easier than others, but still. I really don't want to dwell on thoughts like these; there's no point to them. What happens will happen, and there's no point in my getting all mopey about any of it -- and no reason for any of you to feel any sort of pity or anything for me either. My life isn't bad. I'm going places (figuratively speaking), if slowly. I'm getting an education, I have a car that runs and a roof over my head, and three cats who love me. I get by, I'm fine, I survive. Life's still worth living, etc.

On that note, folks, I'm going to wrap this up and eventually, sometime this morning, go to bed. I need the rest.

The Unboxing!

So, at 7:40 this morning (read: less than an hour ago) I warmed up the Monte Carlo, ungaraged her, and made my way to the post office.

This is what I came back with:


Yes, though it is on my coffee table, note the size of Maggie (the cat) to the left below it. Maggie is not a small cat. She is, in fact, the largest of the three now that she's getting fat in the winter, and probably close to twenty pounds. Also, note that yes, I did digitally remove all identifying addresses and info other than my own name...which all of you folks know anyway.

The box was sealed with what can only be described as massive amounts of clear packing tape, in a criss-cross pattern (you can see it in the photo above). It took the sharpest of my new carving/steak knife set to penetrate it, as it was layered and taped on every edge as well. Once I got the box open and removed the layer of bubble wrap (!) my mother packed to insulate things, this is what I found:

Please note -- that's just the top layer of the stuff in the box, and already I'm impressed. Two gallon-size ziploc bags of chex mix (one regular, one "spicy"), and a ton of snack-size bags of Utz chips and cheese puffs.

Neither of these things can I get out here; Utz is a regional brand, and I've never seen it west of the Mississippi River. However, their website lets you order chips/snacks from them anywhere in the United States. Also, obviously, I can't get my mother's chex mix unless she sends it to me or I go home to visit.

Hmm, I thought. I can't imagine what else is in there. Let's see.

Upon removing the top layer, this is what was underneath. I about peed myself:

...Holy crap, parents. Clockwise from left: two loaves of D'Annunzio's bread, an Abruzzino's pepperoni roll, a bag of Gevalia Kaffe French Roast coffee, a D'Annunzio's pepperoni roll, two cans of Vegetable Beef soup, a box each of cordial cherries and cordial blueberries (!), a few little single-pot packs of coffee, two huge bags of beef jerky, two Slim Jims, and a mess of tea bags.

I didn't even know they made cordial blueberries. That. Sounds awesome. I'll be eating those first. The bread loaves have already been put in the freezer to preserve them (that bread molds quickly if it's left out, and it's been in the box since Saturday).

I thought this would be all. Oh, no. No no no. My parents outdid themselves this year. There was a third layer. Behold:

Underneath everything else there was more tea, my mail, and then...this. This haul of obscene amounts of candy, including my three favorite candy bars ever, pictured above. In that order, too. Good grief! This is a ton of stuff. A ton.

Here's the final tally of everything that was in the box, piece by piece:

1. Eight assorted snack bags of Utz chips/cheese curls
2. Two gallon bags of homemade chex mix
3. One 12oz. bag of Gevalia Kaffe French Roast coffee
4. One box cordial cherries
5. One box cordial blueberries
6. One 3.25oz bag of Jack Link's beef jerky
7. One 3.25oz bag of Jack Link's Teriyaki beef jerky
8. Two full-size Slim Jims
9. One 4oz. "Tortuga Caribbean Rum Cake" (shit yes), boxed
10. Two cans Campbell's Vegetable Beef Soup
11. One D'Annunzio's pepperoni roll (2oz.)
12. One Abruzzino's pepperoni roll with cheese (6oz.)
13. Two full loaves of D'Annunzio's "GIANT" Italian bread
14. One pack Giant Eagle Market District "Breakfast Blend" coffee (2.5oz.)
15. One pack Millstone "Colombian Supremo" coffee (1.75oz.)
16. One pack Frangelico coffee (2oz.)
17. Ten tea bags, assorted flavors (mostly Green Tea w/ Pomegranate, mmm)
18. Two packs of chocolate-and-sprinkles-dipped pretzel rods
19. Two king-size Zero bars
20. One king-size Payday bar
21. One king-size Heath bar
22. One pack of Skittles "Riddles," where the colors don't match the flavor
23. Twenty-two assorted pieces of candy
24. Three magazines and one postcard I'd gotten in the mail there.

Hoo boy. I hope I didn't forget anything. That's a LOT of stuff.

So yeah, this is awesome. I guess my parents took the whole "I'm half starving myself because I'm poor" thing to heart this year, because...well, damn.

So there you go, folks. That's the box. Now I have to go put all this stuff away in its proper places, and keep it away from the cats at the same time. Farewell!

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.

Birthday Twenty-nine

Days until Christmas: five

So. I'm 29 years old today. Imagine that.

Today I enter the last year of my twenties, a concept that I am really unable to properly wrap my head around as of yet. It's the first birthday since 2004, when I turned 22, that I've celebrated as a single man, and it is to date the only birthday I've celebrated alone with no one else to share in the festivities.

Festivities which, really, are non-existent, as you may have guessed.

It is 5:30 AM. I have been awake all night, since around 11 or so. I took a short nap last night from about 6:30 to 10, slept off and on, and came upstairs again afterwards as I could no longer lie in bed and stare at the walls. For most of the night, I had a nasty headache, which became coupled with an upset stomach once I took pills for it. It wasn't pleasant. Indeed, I still have a bit of an upset stomach even now, which is probably the other reason I'm still awake. I spent the night listening to podcasts while cleaning, doing the dishes, and reorganizing my room. I also broke out the Xbox for only the second time in the past five months or so, to play a bit of Star Wars: Battlefront to get my mind off of the thought of getting older.

Because, dear reader, I truly am older now; today begins, as I said, the last year of my twenties, and I think I've aged more in the past year or so -- metaphorically speaking, of course -- than I've aged more than any other year of my life. It's not just a mental aging, it's physical as well; I'm losing weight (mainly because I'm too poor to eat heartily most of the time anymore), I'm losing my hair at a quickening pace, I think I'm developing arthritis in my hands (no, I'm not kidding) and if you look closely, there's some gray hairs in my beard. All of these things are rather painful to admit, of course, but true. I'm not a young kid anymore.

It is a mental aging too, obviously. I refuse to call it "maturity," because I'm still the guy who owns and wears a large collection of comic-book t-shirts and plays Pokemon games on a daily basis. I don't think I'll ever be "mature" in the sense that I'll stop doing that stuff, so therefore I refuse to call myself such.

As an aside, one of the oldest members of my entering class in the department told me that there's only a few more years I can get away with dressing the way I do before it'll seem creepy and/or weird. This is also a guy who had stable jobs in advertising and writing-related fields for twenty years or so before joining our program, a guy who dresses his age, in nice polo shirts, khakis and sweaters, and looks/is professional in every sense of the term within the department. Very few of us take our appearances so seriously when on campus or when teaching, and I am not one of those people. Hence why it's not uncommon for me to teach class while wearing my Iron Maiden or "The Mighty Thor" vintage t-shirts (for example) and camouflage board shorts. With flip-flops, if it's warm enough.

I had to think about this for a moment, really. I am getting older; he has a point. There will be a time where I reach "that age" where I can no longer pull off the laid-back college student look, and will have to completely upgrade my wardrobe to something that will better suit my age and profession, especially if I stay in academia for a prolonged period of time and teaching.

And then I remembered that I'm a poet, which is basically free license to dress unconventionally, and I remembered as well that my dad is 61 and still wears nerdy clothing on a regular basis, including comic-book-related t-shirts. Granted, he doesn't wear them to work (at least not frequently), but he can pull it off without looking like an idiot. In fact, they suit him well. And if there's anyone in this world I've been inspired to be more like, it's my dad. So maybe there's hope for me yet.

Anyway, I digress.

I wouldn't say I've been forced to mentally age more in this past year than in any other of my life, but it certainly wasn't voluntary for the most part. Let's be frank, folks, I've been through a lot of shit this past year, and none of it was truly voluntary. From the difficulties and monetary issues involved in buying and maintaining a landboat-like vehicle, to the slow disintegration of and eventual breakup of the relationship with my former girlfriend, to the perils and pitfalls of living alone, driving 150 miles a week back and forth for work/school, learning how to budget every penny, and dealing with the most difficult and work-intensive semester I've ever lived through, it's been rough. I won't lie. I've dealt with a lot of decidedly grown-up shit this past year, and it is only by sheer luck -- and the help and support of my friends and family -- that I've been able to make it through everything without giving up. Like I've said before, bettering myself a little more every day has become my motto in life, and I'm sticking by it. I have to, in order to keep getting up in the morning. It's that drive to succeed that will get me through my 29th year on this planet and hopefully carry me far into my thirties.

I, of course, have no plans for my "big day." I'll probably take a nap on the couch this morning at some point, cats on top of me or by my side, just so that I can get some sleep and see if it makes my upset stomach feel better. At 6AM, the weather has just now completely turned decidedly nasty, and Newton is in the midst of an ice storm, or something akin to an ice storm -- it looks like ice mixed with snow, and it's starting to coat everything in the neighborhood. We've gotten no snow accumulation yet up here, and it looks like if we get any, it'll be light. With the ice, however, I'm doubly glad I put the Monte Carlo in the garage yesterday morning.

Meanwhile, Sadie and her big kitty eyes are trying desperately to get me off the computer and go lay down so that she can sleep with/on me.

I've gotten about ten "happy birthday" wishes from friends thus far, all via Facebook. I won't be getting any via phone, at least not today -- my phone battery died yesterday, and I'd rather let it stay dead and not charge it until after my birthday passes, so that I don't get a text or a call every five minutes with more birthday wishes. While I do greatly appreciate it, it's also a pain in the ass, especially if I'm trying to get some sleep.

The big box from my parents should arrive today, or at least I hope it will. I have to be awake enough in the afternoon hours to actually listen/look for the mailman, so that if I need to sign for it or otherwise confirm delivery, I can do so. Once it gets here, I will be documenting all of its contents for the blog, as you know.

On that note, this 29-year-old is going back to bed. Farewell, folks.

Unpackaged

Days until Christmas: six
Days until birthday: one

I got up early this morning. I spent the entire afternoon in the living room, within earshot of the driveway and the street, waiting on the mailman. I read three issues of Playboy I was unable to read during the semester cover-to-cover, and read a graphic novel as well. I made a pot of coffee thanks to my new, eight-dollar coffee pot I keep in the kitchen, and drank three cups of it with creamer.

I paced the living room, getting up to look out the window every time I heard a vehicle in the street, hoping it was the mailman. I did this for more than three hours.

Why did I do this, you might ask? Because the huge box from my parents was supposed to arrive today, and in it would be something new, something different, to eat. It's also the only birthday/Christmas gifts I'll probably receive, and one of the few things I'm looking forward to over the entire break I'll be off and at home.

Truth be told, I've had to seriously ration my food because until after January 6, I won't be able to afford to go shopping. I'm also out of the vast majority of even the basic elements of cooking, including butter, sugar, flour, salt, most vegetables, all meats, and am almost out of cooking oil as well. I also never keep milk or eggs in the house, because I don't use them. What I do have is dry popcorn, several packages of dry pasta (and one can of sauce), a few cans of mixed vegetables, some ramen, and a few cans of Progresso soup.

As well as gallons of soup I cooked over the course of the semester and froze for later eating. I cannot tell you folks how sick I am of eating soup over and over again. Last night I made spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner, which was a little different (and used the very last of my margarine, so now I'm out of that too), and I have that as leftovers, but still.

Anyway.

The weather has been either torrential, freezing downpours or torrential, freezing downpours with the occasional thunderstorm all day long. It's the front edge of the winter storm that's moving in tonight, and it's a storm that will more than likely switch over to ice and snow soon. This morning, shortly after I got up, I moved the Monte Carlo into the garage to get it out of that stuff. In the garage it will remain until I leave the house again and/or until the nastiness of the weather clears up. As of right now, it's 5:30PM and the line between rain and ice, ice and snow is inching ever closer to Newton. But I digress -- this post is supposed to be about the box.

So I paced the living room and waited for hours. Usually, on most days, the mailman arrives anytime between 1PM and 3PM. For as spotty and unreliable as our mail service is sometimes, that's become the norm for my street. Sometimes it's a little earlier, sometimes it's later, but it's usually somewhere within that two hour window.

3PM came and went. Nothing. I knew he hadn't been here because the neighbors had their flag up on their own mailbox.

4PM came and went. Still nothing. I was beginning to get more impatient.

4:30PM came and went. WTF, mailman? I know it's rainy and cold, and that it's the last week before Christmas, but really?

Finally, at 4:45PM, I saw the mailman come down the street. I put on my slippers, bundled up tightly in my robe (for I knew I'd have to sign for the package or otherwise confirm that it was me receiving it), and went downstairs and outside, standing outside my downstairs door where my car would normally be parked.

He pulled up to my mailbox, dropped off two items (which turned out to be a magazine and another reminder/bill from Geico to pay my car insurance)...and kept on driving to the next house.

No box. No cards, either birthday or Christmas, that may contain money. Nothing but those two things.

Son of a bitch, I thought. I just wasted my entire afternoon for nothing, and now I'll have to do it again tomorrow as well. Son of a bitch.

I was not happy. The box is shipping slower than expected, apparently, for the post office told my parents that I should get it today. It's a minor quibble, of course, a first-world problem, but it still irritates me. I was looking forward to eating something different tonight -- whether that be my mother's chex mix or ordering a pizza with whatever cash anyone else mailed me in birthday/Christmas cards (because that tends to happen, at least sometimes). My friend Zedral offered to order me a pizza last night, but I declined; I can order pizza myself if I want to -- I have a ton of points from Papa John's that'll let me get free pizzas, even -- I just don't have any cash whatsoever to tip the delivery driver. And believe me, in this weather, they'd definitely deserve a good tip. Besides, Zedral is just as poor as I am; she doesn't need to be spending money on me. No one does, really; times are tough for just about everyone I know this year.

So it looks like I'll have to wait at least another day on the box. Even worse is that the mailman tomorrow may be even later, depending on how much snow we get here in Newton. Wichita is supposed to get maybe an inch or two at the most, but Newton is right on the line where we could get smacked by the snowy part of the storm before it departs the area. It's so close that even the weathermen can't accurately predict how much we'll get up here. We just have to wait and see, I suppose.

As for the Geico bill I did receive in the mail today, that's no longer an issue -- I paid my car insurance online last night, just as I did the first time around. At least Geico's online system is fast and secure. The money was out of my bank account ten minutes after I paid the bill, and let me tell you...that hurts. It hurts a lot. Let's just say I am desperate to get my next paycheck this week and that it couldn't come soon enough, especially as I'm half-starving myself and I still have my rent to pay. I hate bills and financial obligations so, so much. I can't tell you how much.

At least the cats have enough food and litter to last them a while. This is good, because according to my calculations, I'll have about $100 total to my name at the end of this month. Yes, total. As in, I desperately need that student loan to drop ASAP after the new year, and will be waiting in great anticipation for my January 6 paycheck.

One at a time, ladies. Want to come to my house for a candlelit dinner of ramen and tap water?

Yeah, it's a sad state of affairs right now.

Of course, the weather hitting means that I'm not going out for my credit-card-fueled "birthday dinner" that I'd planned. I say "credit-card-fueled" because that would've been the only way I could've paid for food that's not already in my home. When I saw the weather this morning, and have continually watched it roll in and get progressively colder/wetter/nastier all day today is when I put my car in the garage and resigned myself to staying in. I don't care how quiet/lonely/hungry I am here in the house, it's not worth going out in that shit to spend $10 on a meal from some fast-food place, more than likely.

Nothing else is going on, really. Like I said, it's really quiet here. I don't think I've ever wanted the holidays to come and go so quickly as I want them to this year.

Dues Paid and Unpaid

Days until Christmas: seven
Days until birthday: two

Having a little free money right now (thanks to my parents), I went out Friday evening and bought the four things that I will absolutely need between now and January 6, my last paycheck until spring semester starts -- two books of stamps, a carton of cigarettes, a loaf of bread, and a large can of coffee.

Everything else, for the moment, can wait. I'm sure I looked like a pathetic single guy going through the registers at Walmart with just those items, which to some extent is what I am, but...I should be covered for the essentials until I can actually afford them again, which is nice.

At least I didn't have to purchase anything for the cats, or TV dinners, which would've made the array of items on the register belt look even more depressing, if not downright embarrassing.

When I came home I wrote out the check for the cable bill, which arrived in the mail last week. It is the first of my bills I can now pay, and by far the smallest. I also found an old stash of Christmas cards (a whopping four of them) and sent out cards to the folks that I must send cards to no matter what, like my grandmother and my godparents (who always send me a $75 check for my birthday). They're the only cards I have in the house and the only ones I'll be mailing, save for one to Wayne and Jane, who always send me cards and/or other assorted Christmas goodies -- and they've already sent me a ton of goodies/presents/etc this fall already. A card is the least I can do for wonderful friends like them.

It looks like the packages, unless I get some other money from some other source sometime this week in the mail, will be waiting to get mailed until after Christmas. I hate this, but there's not a lot I can do about it. The money's just not in my possession. Mailing those packages is going to cost about $50 or so, and that's money I really can't spare right now. At least not until the rent and car insurance is paid.

At least I have a ton of food in the house to eat, and more coming -- my mother is also sending her customary "big box 'o Christmas stuff" to me over the course of the next few days (she says it will arrive on Monday, with confirmation needed), which always includes a lot of food from back home that I can't get out here -- certain types of bread, snacks, coffee, candy, a ton of her homemade chex mix, etc. -- as well as other stuff that's usually a surprise until I open the box. Since I'll have nothing else pressing to do, I'll document the contents of the box here on the blog once I receive it. Usually it's pretty amusing and/or interesting, and my dad always throws in something extra as well -- most of the time it's comics or some new music, something along those lines. The box is always huge, as in big enough to hold forty pounds of stuff or more, and they tend to pack it to the brim. I told my mother to stuff as much chex mix in it this year as she can possibly fit into it at the risk of not having room for much else.

Anyway.

To celebrate the end of the semester, I shaved off my beard. I know what you're thinking -- it's cold, we're just now entering the colder part of winter, etc -- but, I rationalized doing it because I'll be inside my house almost exclusively for the next month, and I won't be forced to go out in the nasty cold/weather every day as I am during the semester, and it'll grow back some in that time. Besides, it was really beginning to irritate me. When one has awful fall/winter allergies, the last thing one wants is to have a beard when blowing one's nose all the time. I'll let you come up with the reasons why, and the mental images involved. You're welcome.

I didn't shave it off completely, by the way. I used my hair clippers with the smallest guard on them, which leaves about 1/8" of scruff. It grows in faster if I don't shave it down to the skin, for obvious reasons. Those clippers are the best $20 I ever spent.

It's only my third day of "break," and already I'm becoming a bit restless and bored. I have a ton of stuff to read and watch, but this break is different than other ones, or at least it seems that way. This one's more quiet and subdued, more lonely. I don't have to have any sort of sleeping schedule anymore if I don't want to, because there's nothing pressing to do and no one to impress. When I was with the former girlfriend, I at least attempted to go to bed most of the time at night, when it was dark, and get up sometime during the day, when it was light outside -- primarily so that she wouldn't think I was a lazy bastard for sleeping all day when she'd been up for hours doing things in and around the house. Now that we're no longer together and I've been living alone for four months, that mindset has sort of gone out the window. In some respects it's freeing that I have no one to impress or judge me for my actions, but on other levels it feels quite strange, almost as if my mental state had become accustomed to doing certain things in a certain way. The sleep thing is just an example.

For example, this evening -- at 7:30 -- I was tired after dinner, so I took a nap. I woke up around 1, and have been awake ever since. It's 4:30AM now, and I don't foresee myself going back to bed anytime soon. I've not only got a fair amount of coffee in me, but I'm wired with energy both kinetic and creative, and plan to spend my morning/afternoon hours vacuuming, washing my sheets and blankets, and watching football. If I fall asleep eventually, well, I do, but like I said, it's not like I have anyone to impress.

I do, however, have to write out my car insurance check and mail it off within the next day or two, to ensure it'll get there by the due date. Even though I have the money, I've been trying to put it off, or put it out of my head. I still have another six days or so until I get paid again, and I absolutely hate draining my bank account any more than I have to without it getting proverbially "refilled" almost immediately. It makes the part of my soul that has to budget for everything twitch a bit.

Also, to add insult to injury, this afternoon I learned that -- with only two days' notice -- there will be what could possibly be a crippling snowstorm hitting the area Monday night.

Yes, Monday night, as in the night before my birthday.

This normally wouldn't bother me, as I'm out of school and done with the semester now, but I'd made plans to go out on my birthday and treat myself to dinner somewhere, even if it was only spending $10 or so at the local McDonald's or Wendy's, just to celebrate my birthday alone by eating something a little different. I don't even care what it would be, as long as it felt like I was doing something that I wouldn't normally do. Aside from the rare occasion I ordered pizza (exactly twice this semester, and no more as I had to start budgeting tightly), I haven't "eaten out" anyplace since long before the former girlfriend and I broke up. I also haven't drank a drop of alcohol since August, either. Hell, I don't even keep fucking milk in the house...alcohol isn't something that's high on my priorities list.

Yes, I do have a fair amount of beer, and more than half a bottle of vodka. I've just not been interested.

So yeah, I figured on my birthday, even alone, I could go out, have dinner someplace, enjoy it in a solitary fashion (read: put the amount on the credit card, however little it was, so that I don't have to pay it immediately) and feel that on my 29th birthday, I wasn't totally pathetic, and that I do occasionally get out.

Yeah, well, it looks like the snow may have thrown a wrench into those plans. Instead, I'll more than likely end up garaging the car and staying inside under my blankets and cats, watching DVDs one after another. Yaaaay.

The details of whatever relative snowpocalypse may hit us just continue to get worse as time goes on. We were originally supposed to get 4-6 inches of snow in this area, which is a fair amount for the part of Kansas I live in, and nothing to sneeze at. Now it's been upgraded to 5-8 inches, and we're under a Winter Storm Watch starting tomorrow morning, as it's supposed to start as rain and ice. Again, yaaaay. Look, as long as I don't lose power and I can put the car in the garage, I don't really care about it; it doesn't really affect me aside from ruining my birthday plans. I'm more concerned for my friends who have to travel in it over the course of the next few days as they migrate back to their homes for Christmas. Most of them have already gone, of course, but some are waiting another few days.

This weather, by the way, is -- as I've mentioned before -- one of those reasons I didn't fly to West Virginia for Christmas and told my parents to set the trip up for Spring Break. It's a good hour's drive to the airport in Wichita (it's waaaaay out on the far side of the city and not exactly fun or easy to get to) and I wasn't about to do that in horrific weather in that landboat I drive, no sir. The car already needs new tires, so can we try not to drive it in the worst weather environment possible for those tires unless absolutely and totally necessary? Right.

Interestingly enough, I have received no more student emails regarding grades. Most of them, I assume, know they did well on their final papers/exams, and have already seen their final grades, which have been posted for nearly a week already. I may have mentioned this before, but for the spring I already have 37 (out of 50 possible) students enrolled in my classes. This is almost ten more than I had this semester total. It's not like I won't have the extra time to grade their stuff (oh, I will), but it's interesting to me because usually enrollment is lower in the spring for composition classes. Oh well. I guess it means I'll have enthusiastic students -- many of them are coming from my colleague's 101 version of the Science/Engineering writing class, and she says the vast majority of them are greatly intelligent, interesting writers who already know what my class is going to be like because she's filled them in on my teaching style and what to expect. This is good; this is a definite plus. The School of Engineering is really pushing our classes strongly as well; it's almost certain that we'll get funding to continue offering these courses, as well as probable funding to design our own workbook for said courses over the summer. This would, of course, be awesome and would provide me with a summer paycheck in addition to teaching whatever summer sections are offered.

In other news, I could not get The Green Hornet or Toy Story 3 to properly work in any DVD player I have in the house, not even on my computer, so it looks like I have two less films to watch over the break. On the plus side, those are but two out of a massive stack of movies and TV series I have to watch. Right now I'm finishing the first season of Legion of Superheroes, after which I will start Andrea's gift of Arrested Development so that I can finally see said series.

So, let's see what this coming snow is going to be like, shall we? I will, of course, update you on that, as well as the contents of the huge Christmas box from my parents. Until then, my friends.

Crazy Times, Part II

Fall semester: day eighty-five
The last day of the semester
The last day of finals week

First of all, I have no clue who Christopher Hitchens was. I believe he was a guest on Bill Maher from time to time. That's it. I apologize; I don't get out much, and I keep up with political and/or public figures even less. What I know now is that he's dead, and that's about it.

Anyway.

The semester, at least for me, has ended. At 7PM, I took my final exam in my Middle Eastern/Asian Lit course, and finished it around 9. I wrote eight pages, doublespaced, which was longer than the drafts I'd written for my "study guide," of sorts, but I know there were still points I wanted to cover which I was missing or only briefly touching on. Regardless, I still know I did well, and am not concerned with the exam's score as much as some may be. I wasn't quite in fuck it mode, but I will say that I was ready for the semester to be over. It does impress me, however, that I could write eight pages in around two hours. Apparently, folks, I've still got it.

So the semester comes to an end, and I for one am happy about that. As you know, it was long and grueling, plagued by problems, money woes, setbacks of all sorts, and general fatigue/malaise.

For the moment, however, my money woes are at an end. My mother deposited my birthday/Christmas money into my bank account this afternoon (before I even woke up, actually), so now I have enough money to cover the bills and my car insurance over the course of the next week or so. I will be paid a week from today, and once that happens I'll be able to cover everything. The cable bill and the car insurance will be covered before then; either in the morning or on Saturday morning I'll need to go out and get stamps to mail everything off. The rent will have to wait until I get paid again next week. The money couldn't have come at a better time, to be honest, and I am eternally grateful to my parents for their generosity when I needed it the most. I'll be poor for the first week of January or so until I get paid again and my student loan drops, but I'll live, I'll deal with it. Neither I nor the cats will starve or be without heat/lights, and that's what's important.

So now starts the winter break, which should be filled with work around the house as well as on my personal projects, with a hefty helping of catching up on movies and TV shows I've collected on DVD over the course of the past several months as well. Tonight, for example, I watched Bridesmaids. It's one of the best movies I've seen this year. No, seriously, it is. I know I'll probably get some shit from some of you for saying that, but it's true. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a genuinely funny, supremely enjoyable movie. In the morning/afternoon/whenever, I plan to watch The Green Hornet, which I've heard mixed reviews about. I have a ton of movies stockpiled that I haven't seen yet: Toy Story 3, The Wrestler, The Departed, Zodiac, and a slew of DC Animated movies like Batman: Under the Red Hood and Justice League: The New Frontier.

And, of course, I have the Arrested Development box set that Andrea got me.

Yes, I'm going to enjoy my leisure time over the winter break. Perhaps it won't be as lonely and quiet as I thought it might have been.

Starting in the morning, everyone who hadn't previously left town will begin their departures to their home cities/states over the next few days. I left everything I possibly could in my office over the break; no reason to carry a bunch of stuff home needlessly when I'll just be bringing it back in a month. If I desperately need something I left there, after all, I can go back and get it at pretty much any time except when the building's closed during the week of Christmas/New Year's. And, as predicted, everything's falling into place with the car; I have another 350 miles or so before it needs an oil change (not that it really needs one, as I've put no less than three quarts of fresh oil in it since September) and I can drive at least another 50-60 miles in it before it needs gas again. This is good; it means I more than likely won't have to get gas again until well after the first of the year, depending on where I go. I plan to garage the car once I make a few more short trips for errands around town, and keep it in there for the majority of the winter break.

The cats are happy to see I'm home, at least; Sadie slept for a full two hours tonight on my lap without moving once. Suri got them a cat toy for Christmas, which is a hollow fish with one of those bell-holding balls inside it that rolls back and forth. Maggie is scared of it, Sadie is perplexed by it, and Pete pays no attention to it whatsoever, even when I make the bell jingle. Oh well. Maybe they'll warm up to it, or at least play with it somewhat over the course of the break.

Suri has a gift for me, too, but it's still being shipped here in the mail, slowly. She said she'll have to give it to me in January. Meanwhile, I gave her three different small gifts tonight. Suri's the only person I've exchanged gifts with this holiday season. No, wait, that's not true -- I gave Rae and Jay some DVDs. But that's it. I've not really been in the gift-giving or gift-receiving spirit this year, as you know. The fact that Suri got me anything at all was really surprising, let alone getting something for the cats, too. I found that incredibly thoughtful of her. She is a very good friend, and I don't have nearly enough of those anymore.

It's going to be strange not seeing anyone for the next month, that's for sure. The end of fall semester is a weird time, a time of relative limbo where some people disappear for a month, others become hermits, and still others march onward as if school is still in session, barely leaving their offices. I know that for the next few days, I'm going to be doing little more than waiting to get paid and recharging my batteries through copious amounts of sleep and relaxation.