In which my financial situation gives me The Dread whenever I think about it, which is not very often. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Last night, my roommates went to see Clapton in Moline, IL so I had the whole blessed house to myself for the evening. I sat in front of the computer and dicked around with my PPC — the surgery appears to have worked! — and worked on this page, which I still haven’t been able to update without breaking. Grr.

Before I took my new-to-me PPC apart, it had WM2003SE on it. Taking it apart caused it to lose power, which caused it to reset itself to factory default… and now it has WM2003 on it. Which bugs me, because I want SE dammit! (The only difference between 2003 and 2003SE is landscape mode, which I don’t even use. It’s the principal of the thing.) Now, I just happen to have a 2003SE image and I found instructions (gawd I love the intarwebs) on how to to force-flash the ROM, though, so I might try to do a little illegal upgrade tonight. *evil genius laugh* I’ll need an assistant, though, because one needs to press and hold the “reset + press scroll in + contacts + power” buttons — all at the same time! — in order to force a ROM update.

Yes, I realize that none of you care about any of that. So I’ll move on and tell you that I bought new underwear at Walmart the other day! (I buy cheap-ass Walmart underwear because they’re cheap, they’re cotton, my dog will eventually eat them anyway, and because there’s nowhere else in town to buy undies that aren’t organic cotton and way out of my current budget.) New underwear = happiness.

Speaking of my budget, I finally paid a couple of bills that were urgent (one was an old parking ticket that, left unpaid, would have eventually gotten my ass arrested ’cause that’s how they roll here in BFE), and I started paying rent to AmmZon again! It’s so nice to have a job, even if I’m living on $800 a month. I’ve been using my Backpack to start working on unfucking my financial situation… there are many tedious steps, more tedious even than making money and pouring into a bottomless pit, if you can believe that: Credit reports, credit counsel, budgeting… gah. Thank God for the absence of debtor’s prisons. The whole thing stressed me right the fuck out: my debt is massive. My student loan account seems to have disappeared (I can’t login to it), which means it’s been sold into collections and I don’t know about it because my mail still goes to the farm. I can no longer login to my credit card accounts online because they’ve probably all been sent to collections, too. Just thinking about this stresses me out so much I feel all jittery. Then there’s the Indy cell phone contract (the one I got for the Ex and Bose because neither of them can get cell phone contracts themselves)… the bills for that still go to the farm, and I’d be willing to wager that they’re neither getting opened nor paid.

I’m going to get a P.O. box after I get paid again, and start having my mail forwarded. The reason I haven’t done it thus far is that I don’t want to get Ex’s bills (farm utilities), which are in my name. I guess he’ll have to call the utilities and have them changed over to his own name if he hasn’t already.

Two friends have been arrested this week. One because his dogs were a nuisance, and the other for allegedly biting someone. Ah, small town life!

Cherie Baby dropped by my office today and gave me a sampler box of truffles from The Chocolate Café for no apparent reason. She rocks. (I’m so fuckin’ amped on sugar right now!)

It got cold out. I had to wear a hat and coat today. This sucks.

This morning, my Ex was crashed on the couch (he went to Clapton with the roommates last night) when I went downstairs to let Bindu out, which was kinda… strange. When I got up the second time, the whole household was awake. The guys left for work; I made veggie chowder and sandwiches for AmmZon and myself and went to work too.

Um… I think that’s about it. Ciao, my babies!