escape yourself and gravity

Drat. I keep forgetting that I want to post here more often.

Let's see, what have I been up to?

This paycheck I actually had quite a bit left over after paying bills, so I ordered another box of contacts. That should get me through at least another six months, because I never follow the guidelines for how long to wear them. This is good because as much as I love my Obamacare plan, there's no vision or dental included in it, so I have a hard time scraping up the money for those visits. I haven't been to the dentist since 2011 because it's just too expensive. >.>

Speaking of Obamacare, I found out this week that my monthly premium is actually going down by quite a significant amount. An amount that will probably make the difference between going to the eye doctor next year or not going. So there's that.

I made my first ever campaign donation this year, to Bernie Sanders. It was only $10, but it's what I could manage. Right now, most of the "extra" income I have gets poured into my writing career, such as it is, so I'm trying not to do as much extraneous spending.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo, as usual. This year I'm using it to get a jumpstart on an epic fantasy story that I'm going to serialize on Patreon. It's called The Ghostwolf Cadets, and it centers on a group of teenagers who are drafted to a special academy where they'll be trained to become the emperor's black ops team. Of course, they all have their secrets, and some of those secrets could tear the team apart. I'm planning to fill it with lots of UST, including some slashy goodness, and in general I'm having a lot of fun with it. I've got it part-way plotted, and I've written 10k on it since November started. Haven't done tonight's writing yet, but I'm hoping to hit 20k by the end of my "weekend", which actually runs Sunday-Tuesday.

I'm stepping outside my comfort zone and going to a lecture in downtown Indy Monday night. Some of the activists who broke into the FBI offices in 1971 are going to be speaking on the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which was used against Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Panther activists, AIM activists, and more. I just finished an excellent (and infuriating) book called The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country by Steve Hendricks. I've had a heart for the Native American situation since seeing the miniseries of James Michener's Centennial as a young child, and the breathtaking amount of injustice and oppression that took place (and still takes place) on the Indian reservations really pisses me off. As it happens, COINTELPRO played a large part in the downward spiral of the American Indian Movement. So the lecture in Indy came along at just the right time to capture me.

Let's see, what else is going on... I'm going to be up in Fort Wayne next weekend for the Allen County Public Library Author Fair. I'm speaking on a panel called "DIY: Successful Self-Publishing" with a few other indie authors.

The kitties are all doing well. Eustace weighed in at 15.1 pounds a couple weeks ago, so he is on a diet and Not Happy About It. But he's also lost over half a pound since starting the diet, so at least it's going well in that regard. Eowyn and Eustace still aren't getting along, but for the most part they just leave each other alone. Strider's fine with them both and likes to play tag with them.

How's everyone here?

I honestly can't believe everything I've accomplished this weekend.  I think either the Zoloft kicked in or I kicked my own ass into gear.  Things I've done since Friday evening:

• Went through both closets and four of my five dresser drawers and got rid of three trashbags full of clothes.  Dad dropped them off at Trinity Mission for me yesterday.
  
• Three loads of laundry
  
• Got all my exercise clothes washed and loaded into my gym bag.
  
• Biked several miles on the West Lafayette park system's bike trails with Mom.
  
• Hiked at Celery Bog and saw a green heron, a kingfisher, and lots of the usual waterfowl.
  
• Got my night-elf warrior up to level 37 and fished in the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.  Didn't win though.
  
• Started working on new graphics for this year's cm_exchange--which will be opening for sign-ups this month!
  
• Cleaned off my desk.
  
• Found DVD #1 of North and South (BBC one) and the padlock I spent 20 minutes looking for yesterday.
  
• Balanced my checkbook and paid all my bills--and even had money left over!
  
• Revised 1500 words of my original novel, including writing a brand new scene with elements of two of the old scenes.
  
• Rediscovered my recliner.

And now I'm off to bed by 10:30!  One of these days I'll manage to get my bedtime moved back to 9:30 on work nights, but 10:30 is pretty good!  G'night, all!

Dear Indiana ePay website,

STOP SUCKING.

No love,
Someone who will be pissed if you take the taxes out twice

I just spent $1200.

How depressing that I spent it on catching up my payments to Discover and Sallie Mae. However, this hopefully means that next month I will be entirely caught up to Sallie Mae, and I can actually apply to the FBI because I'm no longer worried about defaulting on my federal loan. >.>

Plus maybe Discover and Sallie Mae will stop, y'know, leaving me daily voice mails asking for money.

In other news...

I bought some new makeup today. It's just L'Oreal, nothing fancy, but I came home and put some of it on and felt happy.

Watched Monster this weekend. I wasn't impressed. The acting by Theron and Ricci was good. The movie itself, in my opinion, tells far too much of a poor-victimized-me, I'm going to take revenge angle on Aileen Wuornos' story. Despite the fact that she was a hooker, the facts just aren't there to indicate that every single one of her victims actually raped or attempted to rape her before she killed them. She even admitted that at one point, even if she recanted that story. And despite the director claiming they weren't trying to glamorize it, I still feel they gave Wuornos too much credit.

Worked forty-five minutes late last night. Which is probably not a big deal in a lot of companies, but in our culture where overtime is a four-letter word, it was crazy for C and G and me to all be there late (though for G it was only 15 minutes). We did get a thank-you from the VP of sales and the CFO, though, as well as our boss. Go us.

slightlyjillian, I know I owe you a phone call. :)

I need to remember this:

Lots of wanna-be writers wax rhapsodic about how great it would be to ditch the day job and just spend all their time clickety-clack typing away. These folks are idiots. Look, people: someone is paying you money and giving you benefits, both of which can support your writing career, and all you have to do is show up, do work that an unsupervised monkey could do, and pretend to care. What a scam! You’re sticking it to The Man, dude, because you’re taking that paycheck and turning it into art. And you know how The Man hates that. You’re supposed to be buying a big-screen TV with that paycheck! Instead, you’re subverting the dominant paradigm better than an entire battalion of college socialists. Well done, you. Well done, indeed.

Full essay here. I actually need to remember a lot of it...

I was super productive last night, despite having to get offline twice for thunderstorms. I filed both federal and state taxes, and have a significant amount coming back from federal. My state refund was so tiny I considered donating it to the Indiana Non-game Wildlife Fund, but hey, every little bit helps, so decided against it. It'll buy me a couple gallons of gas if the price drops a little. ^_~

I also went through the SFFWA list of professional paying markets and went to all those magazines' websites to print off their submission guidelines. I made up a three-ring binder with all the guidelines printed in alphabetical order, then I selected two magazines that I've actually read, that I thought would be appropriate for my two most polished stories. Prepared both submission packets last night and sent them off this morning.

I also cleaned off my desk, because it would have been impossible to do my taxes or make up submission packets without doing that first. >.> I am always surprised at having to clean my desk off every week, but then I remember that 98% of my social life, as well as 90% of my writing life, is spent at the computer. *grin*

Major flooding across Indiana today. The driveway feels like a mire from how soggy it is, and the downstairs toilet won't flush again. I'm sick of rain, but I suppose it's better than snow! Still, thunderstorms in February are a bit much. I love thunderstorms, but since I have to disconnect the modem every time it storms, I do get annoyed at them. We lost our cordless phones to lightning at about 3:10 Monday morning, so now I can't tell if the phone call is Discover harrassing me for money (or possibly Sallie Mae), or if it's actually important.

I'm taking advantage of being employed at the moment by making huge payments against things (my savings account has $20 in it right now) but it seems like I'm hardly making any headway at all. The tax check will pay off 3/4 of the hospital bills from the tachycardia stuff, so that will help. I know I've got a job through the end of this month, and quite possibly through the end of March...so I'm trying to get one of the credit cards paid off, as well. If I could devote two whole paychecks to that effort, it would work. Too bad my bank still wants my car payment every month!

I think that acknowledging this has made it worse. My heart's been acting up all morning, and it is icky. I have made an appointment with my doctor for Monday morning, and have found out that Mom is on Thyroxine, which is for hypothyroidism, which can be related to this, so I have something to tell my doctor when I see her.

Now if I can just find out about assistance in paying for it, I'll be golden. I just can't ask my parents for any more money. They've given me so much money since I lost my job last year, and even though I'm currently paying every bill but one, that one bill is the $500 debt-consolidation loan payment. So they've probably given me over $10,000 in the past 18 months.

I hate this. I absolutely hate this. I have been working since I was 16 years old, and I babysat for years before that (yes, despite my loathing for children). From the time I turned 16 until I turned 18 I had summer jobs, because Mom & Dad didn't want me working during the school year. When I went to college, I got a part-time job and had a part-time job with more hours in the summer for every semester of college except the one where my car had been totalled right after I quit a job because he wanted me to change my class schedule to fit his work needs.

After graduating from Purdue in May of 1998 I worked 30 hours a week until January of 1999, when I got my first full-time job. From that point until April of 2006 I worked full-time constantly, except for about a month and a half between the Linden job ending and the Frankfort job starting.

Now, that said, I confess that I don't like working full-time. I frequently joke that I was meant to be an heiress, and I definitely enjoyed the time I spent drawing unemployment and just working around the house. But the thing is, I have always paid my own way. I don't like taking money from my parents. I don't like having to approach my dad for money to cover things. I mean, the man dropped almost $600 on tires for me this summer and about $250 for brakes, as well as covering all my regular expenses.

To be honest, I didn't like turning 30 while unemployed, but I'm not liking my 31st birthday much better right now.

The good news is that there's a full-time job opening here where I've been temping, and it's a pretty high-ranked job, but D--- (who supervises both me and the open position) has told N---- that she would consider me an inside applicant for the job. It's crappy hours for most people, because it's weekend night-shift. For me, who voluntarily stayed up until 6 am and slept until 1 pm or so, during the unemployment months, the hours would be ideal. (Of course, I still haven't managed to catch her when she's not busy to talk to her myself.) Those hours are what may give me a fighting chance at the job. Very few people are actually going to want to jump into that job. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that.

Regarding my birthday, Mom's been telling me I have to decide what we're doing. Well, in the meantime she's apparently been prodding at Dad about a plan that she has. So I told her what idea I came up with, and she said she couldn't tell me what she has in mind. So I said she gets to pick. Which means I have absolutely no idea what we're doing tomorrow or this weekend.

I did get a birthday card from Gedna, with $20 in it. She wrote my first and last name, and then "I love you" but didn't sign it. So I thought that was pretty good. But then I found out that she called Dad this weekend to find out if she'd missed his birthday. I would have thought he'd told her no, she sent him a card back in August when it was. But this week he got a card from her in the mail that said, "I hope your birthday left. Love you. Mom." And had another $20 in it. So he netted $40 out of her Alzheimer's this year. (Then again I suppose that makes up for last year when he didn't get a card or a happy birthday at all, when he took her out for lunch on his birthday.)

*sigh* Life sucks a lot of the time doesn't it?

I've been on hold for 12 minutes so far... It's 2:45.

A pet peeve of mine is when they play music for a while, then have a woman's voice say "Thank you for holding" or "Please continue to hold". That always makes me think they're answering, so it gets my hopes up. Or something. It's annoying.

At 2:47 they answered.

45 minutes later, oh my gosh. I feel so much better. I reconsolidated, I made a $100 payment with my debit card, I have a forbearance...

I could just cry with how relieved I am.

I called off today. I told them it was a migraine, which isn't exactly true, but it was as close as I could get to describing the way I was feeling earlier. Sick to my stomach, with a headache, a couple muscles that kept spasming, and general body ache. I'm sure it's not the flu, because as long as I didn't move I was all right. ANd now I'm feeling fine, no stomach trouble, though my head still hurts and one of those muscles is sore.

I am wondering if it came from waking up today knowing I have to call Sallie Mae and try to talk them into not sending me into default. I still haven't made that call. I got a letter on Friday. They want the entire $23,000 I owe them by 19 September or will declare me in default. I don't know why they think the fact that I haven't been able to pay them more than $20 a month during some months means that I'll be able to cough up 23 grand, but whatever.

Man, just thinking about that makes my stomach clench again.

And to top it off, I got an email from one of the people who bought an eBay thing, and he claims the belt clip wasn't included. WTF. Of course it was included. I'm sure I put it in there. I never used the bloody thing but one day, and I didn't use the belt clip at all. I seem to recall the belt clip being weird. I wonder if he is too stupid to realize he has it.

Randomly, I may have been writing HP fanfic too long. I have always automatically spelled honour and colour with a U, but I never used to spell realize realise and defense defence.

I want to go back to bed.

Is there any option in the admin console to upload a whole shitload of userpics at one go?  I want to update specifically my GreatestJournal with a bunch of userpics, but I do not fancy the idea of uploading one at a time.  *sigh*

Dad and I talked money a few nights ago.  He expressed the thought that it may be time for me to consider debt counselling or bankruptcy.  I don't believe in bankruptcy, because I know I racked up all this debt by myself, despite the fact that I wouldn't have spent so much money going to Boston a year and a half ago if I had known I would be fired three weeks later.

Tonight Dad gave me $2000 to get current on all my debt except Sallie Mae.  My Dad rocks.  With the next six weeks or so working full-time in an AP position, I should at least be able to keep up on the bills for a while.

I'm applying for library jobs again, despite having said I wasn't going to.  There are a couple that are just too good to pass up, even if I don't want to go into that political sort of job again.

Speaking of library jobs, the bastard who fired me is retiring on September 1.  I am thinking of going to the retirement reception at the library just to embarrass people.  (Though I could possibly turn out to be the person embarrassed, so I'm not sure about this plan.)

Since the Bastard is retiring, I feel I can more easily get a library job again.  He won't be around to break the law by bad-mouthing me.  Not that I can prove that he did, but considering he broke Indiana state law by trying to prevent me from viewing my personnel file, and I had to file a complaint with the state and the state had to force him to do so, I wouldn't put anything else beyond him.  This is also, of course, the man who left his wife and created a random art director job for his mistress, paying an ungodly amount of money to turn the LIBRARY into an art gallery.

*cough* But I'm not bitter.  >.>

Let's see...  I'm currently almost 10,000 words into a fic that has hijacked my brain.  Considering I started writing it a mere week ago, I think it should be finished fairly quickly.

My Dell only has about 17 more days under warranty.  I swear I'm going to call Dell Tech Support tonight and find out how to get this screen issue/shutting itself off randomly issue resolved.