It’s just under one week ‘til payday, and I’m flat broke. There’s precisely one penny in my bank account. I have a little bit of cash in my wallet. I’ll be making a bit of money over the weekend, which is why I’m not in a blind panic right now. Next month probably won’t go much better, as a fair chunk of my “operating” funds is already spoken for.

I started feeling woozy and nauseated late on Wednesday. I sort of bulldozed my way through work yesterday, figuring that if I just kept going strong then whatever’s wrong with me would run its course in the background. Oh, like that would happen! So today I’ve been at home, even more sick than I was yesterday, and generally not what you’d call in the best of spirits or health.

I want to be doing creative things, but I lack stamina and the ability to concentrate for very long today so I settled for doing some more digital housekeeping. DVDs have been burned and filed. A few superfluous directories (full of stuff that I once thought I’d use but I now realize that I’ll rarely think about ever again) are now deleted. There’s more work to do, but my progress is substantial.

That’s something, right?

Just so you know: I’m not dead.

I’ve been tinkering with things on my local desktop, rearranging how I run my digital life, seeing about rejuvenating certain aspects of this electronic existence I’m so very tied up in. Maybe I’m just afraid of becoming complacent, maybe I’m trying to “shake things up” to break out of the doldrums. There’s some fun in just plain puttering around for its own sake, of course.

I haven’t forgotten about the writing. I haven’t even forgotten about the music video projects. I just need to straighten out the working environment (and a few remaining loose nuts in my psyche) before I can tackle those. I very much want to make something, though, so there probably isn’t a whole lot more of this quiet, behind-the-scenes action (hidden though it may be) remaining before things start picking up around here.

Yes. Yes, I know. I know I’ve said many times already this year that I was finally ready to come off of hiatus. The difference is that at least during this break I’ve been actually doing things rather than just moping around feeling sorry for myself.

Scary, huh?

Once again I find myself trying to break a long, silent streak at this journal. If I tell you my normal weekly schedule, that might explain why I don’t have much to write about…

Weekdays, Daytime: Wake up at 5:30am so I can be at work in Hillsboro by 8:00am. Leave work at 5:00pm and approach home some time between 5:45pm and 6:30pm depending on transportation method and traffic conditions.

Monday Evening: Probably having dinner and watching anime/DVDs at Kyla’s place, going home around 9:00pm so I can get to bed early enough to (possibly) get a decent night’s sleep before the next day’s early rising.

Tuesday Evening: Probably visiting the rugrats, arriving some time between 6:30pm and 7:00pm depending on transportation method and traffic conditions. Leave their place by 8:00pm so I can go home (takes about an hour) and get to bed early enough to… blah blah blah, you get the idea.

Wednesday Evening: Probably at home doing laundry and trying to catch up on any personal stuff that’s accumulated in the previous 48 hours. Like, say, balancing the checkbook or making sure my webserver’s running okay or any number of other housekeeping tasks. Maybe watch “Mythbusters,” which means a 10:00pm bedtime at the latest.

Thursday Evening: Probably at home, this is my most variable weekday evening so I might be gaming with Kyla (at her apartment or mine, or separately) or listening to music (relaxation = good) or what-have-you. Bedtime is still around 9:30pm, give or take half an hour.

Friday Evening: More often than not I’m out to dinner with Lilith, but not always. Bedtime is… whenever. Yes, I’m pretty bad about keeping a consistent bedtime when there isn’t work the next day. When you get right down to it, I’m an Evening Person. (I stopped being a Night Person a long time ago, though. The closer it gets to midnight the greater the chance that I’m ready to be unconscious.)

Saturday: Sleeping in, followed by visiting with the kids (this is my “good” visit, the one that lasts more than an hour and isn’t preceded by a long day at the office) and probably dinner at Kyla’s place.

Sunday: Sleeping in, followed by whatever fun-and-games I can squeeze into the day, including Game Night at my place with the usual gaming crew (or as much of the crew as will show up on a given weekend). Bedtime is around 9:30pm, because after this we start the whole routine over…

With very little variation, the above description covers almost every week so far in 2007. I have a couple of hours to myself per day, maximum, to do anything that would be worth writing about… or even to do the writing itself. (I’m posting this from work during my lunch break, for what that’s worth.) I’m glad that I have people to spend time with and ways to fill many of my waking hours. My biggest complaint is that I work so far away from where I live that I lose many hours per week either commuting or working around the fact of the long commute in one way or another. Never mind the plans I simply can’t make (like, say, observing any of my kids’ extracurricular activities!) because I’d have to take half a day off from work to realize such plans.

To sum up: I haven’t written anything here because I haven’t done anything worth writing about. I don’t want to find myself, years later, going through the archives and seeing post after post during 2007 if all of them are just going to say, “Yep, did the same thing this week that I did the last few dozen weeks.”

I’m sure you don’t want to read those posts either. That’s why I haven’t written them.

(This is a bit rant-y. You’ve been warned. I do love my family, even if some family members drive me batty on occasion. Besides, the really rant-y bits aren’t about them.)

My workday, for a change, was positively blissful (if you discount having spent nearly the whole day dealing with Windows Vista). My visit with the kids, minus some shrieking commentary from their two-year-old half-brother, went moderately well. And then, at the end, my phone rings:

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Karel.”

“Oh, hi son! Hey, we’re just wondering, do you know where Chrissie went?”

[stunned moment of silence] “I think she’s in Virginia, Mom.”

“Virginia?”

“Er, yeah. You know, she went into the Navy a few years back?”

“Ah, Virginia. Well, I just wanted to call to say I love you, son.”

“Um, love you too, Mom. Take care.”

The entire call lasted all of two minutes, tops, which means it went by too fast for my brain to really grasp all of the implications. (As I’ve said often enough, I’m the world’s slowest thinker. I’m not stupid, just a bit ponderous. I get there eventually… most of the time.) Let’s cover the basics:

• Sis went into the Navy quite a few years ago, now.
• Thus, Sis has been living on the East Coast for quite some time.
• Sis brought her daughter out to Oregon last summer for Granddad’s memorial service, an event attended by damned near all of the surviving family members, including Mom.
• She hasn’t changed her city of residence in the last couple of years.
• Therefore, Mom should know full well exactly where Sis lives.

So let this be a lesson to you all: DON’T DO DRUGS. They KILL BRAIN CELLS.

On a related note, this means that both of my most recent communications with my individual parents has included my sister’s most-hated nickname, “Chrissie.” No, in fact I don’t wonder why she doesn’t stay in touch.

…

On the bus ride home I was treated to several displays of stunning stupidity. First were the annoying teenaged girls, about which that’s really all I have to say. Then there was the gal who has no business at all being a parent: Her older children (we’re talking maybe seven or eight years old) had the run of the bus, while her daughter of almost-two punctuated her mother’s attempts at intelligent conversation (moron [sic] that in a moment) with piercing shrieks when she didn’t get some bauble or another, or when her big brother would tease her. The best part came when it was almost time for the horde to depart the bus, and the very small child was put into the care of the aforementioned brother… who promptly ignored his sister in favor of running to the back of the bus… leaving the toddler standing (barefoot, I hasten to point out) in the aisleway of a moving bus. At no point did the so-called parent bat an eyelash, even though this happened within arm’s reach. In fact, the toddler walked most of the way off the bus on her own two feet while her mother chivvied the older children and carted the stroller out.

The mind, it boggles. Big time. I’m amazed that nobody got hurt.

Oh, the intelligent conversation? The lady (yes, I’m using the term very very loosely here) is one of those loudmouthed know-nothings who are absolutely certain of facts gleaned entirely from, I suspect, Internet chain-letters and drunken conspiracy theorists down at the local bar. If I hadn’t wanted to wring her neck on account of shoddy parenting, I’d have wanted to just to shut her the hell up.

So, she gets off the bus. Yay. Apparently that was the cue for the next driveling idiot to start in. Yes, the highlight of rest of my ride home was a conversation between a vacuum-headed bible-thumping crusader for the rights of the homeless and a geriatric crazy sporting just the right balance between a rich fantasy life and an imperfect grasp on his own past history. (Allow me to note that I have nothing against Christians on general principle, but stupid loudmouthed bible-thumpers are among the most annoying of “God’s creatures.”)

I couldn’t get off that bus fast enough, I tell you. I’m intensely glad that, at the moment, there’s nobody talking anywhere near me. And now I’m going to go to bed and hope that tomorrow will feature a much higher intelligence-to-stupidity ratio…

We went from low 70s to upper 80s today, and that was my cue. This evening I worked up the energy to place the air conditioner into the window for the 2007 summer season.

Upside? I stay nice and cool, on demand.

Downside? When the AC isn’t running, I hear everything that goes on outside, all night long.

There’s a price to pay for everything, I suppose…

A bit more than a year ago I made a comment, quietly, just to my friends, that a particular person involved in a rather unpleasant incident had painted a target on their backside with a caption reading, “This Person Is Trouble.” I predicted that it was only a matter of time before the Powers That Be at a particular place of business decided to insist that this very special individual go away.

It’s not often that I make accurate predictions.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead fired. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go revel in the shadenfreude for a while.

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about? It’s okay. You’re not really missing out on anything.)