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.