In which I’m overheated, excited, a little stressed, and realizing how deep my poverty-consciousness goes.

It’s unutterably hot and humid outside. I just had to walk to the bank and back because Bread’s got the big black truck. I’m all sticky. There’s a severe weather alert out for thunderstorms, and at lunchtime it turned dark and rumbly in a hurry but only rained big fat drops for a few minutes and it’s like a really damp oven out there.

A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 530 PM CDT FOR JEFFERSON COUNTY.

AT 443 PM CDT…A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WAS REPORTED CAPABLE OF PRODUCING GOLF BALL SIZE HAIL…AND DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR PERLEE…OR ABOUT NEAR NORTHERN FAIRFIELD…MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 15 MPH.

THE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WILL BE NEAR… BECKWITH AND SALINA BY 455 PM CDT… FOUR CORNERS BY 510 PM CDT…

A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 900 PM CDT TUESDAY EVENING FOR SOUTHEASTERN IOWA AND NORTHWESTERN ILLINOIS AND NORTHEAST MISSOURI.

Golf ball-sized hail, people!

I’m existing in a funny combination of excited and freaked out. On the one hand, it’s a job. I’ve been working since I was 16 and a job’s a job. I’m blasé. On the other hand, I have really only the vaguest idea of what I’m getting into, so I barely even have enough information to properly wig out on.

The sudden exit is going remarkably smooth so far; the money’s been there, I got an LOA rather than having to quit with two days notice after working here for six years, our electronics shipped out on time and will be here in the morning, etc.

But. Then there’s the house, the cat, the dogs… the four people we’ve asked so far can’t take any of those duties for us. I think Nanner will be able to drop by the place every week or so to take the mail in and pet the cat and put food out for him, and Bread’s asking another friend of his to just drive through occasionally to make sure the doors are all closed and such. But this is shit we’ve got to get resolved in the next two days and it’s kinda major.

I’m having some fun observing my own thought patterns about money. This gig is supposed to be quite lucrative, and I have a mental monster who keeps trying to pop up and say bullshit! there’s no way you can make that much that fast! even though I know that people do. Hell, I have friends that do. I seem to have some deep-seated lower-middle-class abundance issues and it’s been interesting to root them out for a look at them. I seem to have a belief that I’m only supposed to have enough, no extra. I’ve noted in myself a feeling of mild relief when I’m back to a check-to-check existence after a spell of abundance simply because it’s familiar.

In other news, a funny ISP tech support story almost worthy of Userfriendly: One of our support techs just wasted three entire calls trying to fix a customer’s DSL. He did all the troubleshooting, even swapped out her DSL modem for her. Finally he called her back to quadruple-check her settings only to hear her say, “Oh, I switched my DSL to another provider. Could that have anything to do with it?”

True story.