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Feb. 9th, 2006 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI've spent most of this week trying to get some sense of control over my life as it stands. This has largely involved spending money.
Time is a workable substitute for money on occasion. I expended nearly my allowance of time this Monday when Juan and I (well, mostly Juan) disabled the parking brake on my truck. I'm not concerned about not having a parking brake. The one on the Olds didn't work either, so I'm not in habit of using it.
In the end, while the rear wheels would spin again, I found out shortly after Juan left and I had invited Andrea into the car for a test drive, that it wouldn't start.
After trying several things to no avail, I had a sort of breakdown that my long-suffering mate fixed by reading a few chapters of Maniac McGee to me. Finally, when I was able to think again, I decided to have the truck towed to our mechanic, which I did the next day. I got back last night, five hundred dollars poorer but with a reliable vehicle for the first time in months. It still needs new brake shoes, but I can deal with that.
I know we needed to get this done, but I'm stressing quite a bit about money. The hiring bonus coming at the end of the month, previously earmarked for a dance pad and a keyboard foot pedal for me, will cover it, so I suppose I'm not any worse off than I would have been. I've just been looking forward to having a pad that isn't flimsy and frustrating for months. I was going to plan out my evenings to allow for an hour of DDR as exercise (I'm stressing too that a lot of my shirts I used to wear to work at Ford don't fit me any more) and stress reduction, and knowing that I probably won't be able to do that due to the ever-present concern of money leaves me feeling frustrated and impotent.
Which is why I spent another bit of money, not to mention my Tuesday and Wednesday time allowance, which I chalked up as another requirement for sanity. Sixteen more feet of closet bar to put up in the basement. Note to self: buy some more mounting hardware on the way home. Another note to self: Oops. You forgot, you turkey. The messiness of the House is another factor that's been contributing to stress and I need to feel some level of control over that. I finally have all of the clothes consolidated. Fourty-eight feet of chock-full closet pole and two thirds of a basement wall piled halfway up with garbage bags full of clothes. I am not exaggerating. We probably have some number of thousands of garments. This is why Moira is doing eBay. with that done I feel like I'm finally making some progress. I'm going to organize and separate the rest of the stuff down there and start boxing up the random detritus that's lying about. I'm stuck on how to store most of my grandparent's records right now, but I really think that if I can make my long-honed Tetris skills pay off, I can actually make all of our slowly shrinking stash of belongings fit neatly into our house. It may be a long time coming but I'm hoping.
I still haven't had a chance to write about my new responsibilities at work. I've been moved to a sort of de-facto second level support position. I need to produce a lot of documentation for our first level support tech, and that's been stressing me out too. But the hour grows late, and I believe I'll go into that next time. For now suffice it to say that I'm glad that people seem to think and worthy of such a position; I just worry that I'm not.
But let's not end on a downer. Things are pretty good right now. I've entered this entire post from my bed via wireless internet, Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the Phillips SpeechMike Pro that I got from work and my wrists are thinking me for it. That feels quite good. I'm rather excited about the costume that Moira is even now producing for me, her pretty paws working away at her thrift store sewing machine. And my spirits have been even more mightily heartened by the reward she gave me for finding the materials necessary for her to work on it. I'm not terribly excited about having to go to work tomorrow, but it will be really nice to know that, at the end of the day, my pretty girl will be waiting to pick me up and take me away to that magical metropolis of Chicago. I just have to make sure that I pack up all of the belongings I need to take with me before I go to sleep tonight.
Speaking of which I should probably go and, as some of my company's Indian consultants would say, do the necessary. To all my readers, goodnight.
Time is a workable substitute for money on occasion. I expended nearly my allowance of time this Monday when Juan and I (well, mostly Juan) disabled the parking brake on my truck. I'm not concerned about not having a parking brake. The one on the Olds didn't work either, so I'm not in habit of using it.
In the end, while the rear wheels would spin again, I found out shortly after Juan left and I had invited Andrea into the car for a test drive, that it wouldn't start.
After trying several things to no avail, I had a sort of breakdown that my long-suffering mate fixed by reading a few chapters of Maniac McGee to me. Finally, when I was able to think again, I decided to have the truck towed to our mechanic, which I did the next day. I got back last night, five hundred dollars poorer but with a reliable vehicle for the first time in months. It still needs new brake shoes, but I can deal with that.
I know we needed to get this done, but I'm stressing quite a bit about money. The hiring bonus coming at the end of the month, previously earmarked for a dance pad and a keyboard foot pedal for me, will cover it, so I suppose I'm not any worse off than I would have been. I've just been looking forward to having a pad that isn't flimsy and frustrating for months. I was going to plan out my evenings to allow for an hour of DDR as exercise (I'm stressing too that a lot of my shirts I used to wear to work at Ford don't fit me any more) and stress reduction, and knowing that I probably won't be able to do that due to the ever-present concern of money leaves me feeling frustrated and impotent.
Which is why I spent another bit of money, not to mention my Tuesday and Wednesday time allowance, which I chalked up as another requirement for sanity. Sixteen more feet of closet bar to put up in the basement. Note to self: buy some more mounting hardware on the way home. Another note to self: Oops. You forgot, you turkey. The messiness of the House is another factor that's been contributing to stress and I need to feel some level of control over that. I finally have all of the clothes consolidated. Fourty-eight feet of chock-full closet pole and two thirds of a basement wall piled halfway up with garbage bags full of clothes. I am not exaggerating. We probably have some number of thousands of garments. This is why Moira is doing eBay. with that done I feel like I'm finally making some progress. I'm going to organize and separate the rest of the stuff down there and start boxing up the random detritus that's lying about. I'm stuck on how to store most of my grandparent's records right now, but I really think that if I can make my long-honed Tetris skills pay off, I can actually make all of our slowly shrinking stash of belongings fit neatly into our house. It may be a long time coming but I'm hoping.
I still haven't had a chance to write about my new responsibilities at work. I've been moved to a sort of de-facto second level support position. I need to produce a lot of documentation for our first level support tech, and that's been stressing me out too. But the hour grows late, and I believe I'll go into that next time. For now suffice it to say that I'm glad that people seem to think and worthy of such a position; I just worry that I'm not.
But let's not end on a downer. Things are pretty good right now. I've entered this entire post from my bed via wireless internet, Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the Phillips SpeechMike Pro that I got from work and my wrists are thinking me for it. That feels quite good. I'm rather excited about the costume that Moira is even now producing for me, her pretty paws working away at her thrift store sewing machine. And my spirits have been even more mightily heartened by the reward she gave me for finding the materials necessary for her to work on it. I'm not terribly excited about having to go to work tomorrow, but it will be really nice to know that, at the end of the day, my pretty girl will be waiting to pick me up and take me away to that magical metropolis of Chicago. I just have to make sure that I pack up all of the belongings I need to take with me before I go to sleep tonight.
Speaking of which I should probably go and, as some of my company's Indian consultants would say, do the necessary. To all my readers, goodnight.
