Budgeting

AAAAAUUUGGGHHGHGHGHGH, I hate money!!!!!!!!

I'm in my fucking 20s, and I haven't had a chance to live life and spend money on anything fun because I never finished college and was in debt before I even turned 20, and now I'm just always trying, trying, trying to get ahead, never getting there, always budgeting, worrying about how to make ends meet, what expenses to cut, how long I'll have to sacrifice things for...

I absolutely hate it. I don't even have the resources to devote to theatre as much as I'd like to.

I keep getting job offers from people trying to recruit me with financial institutions, but FUCK THAT, I don't want to do jack-sales-anything! Fuck sales, and fuck salesmen. Especially financial salesmen.

I can't even focus at work when this shit happens. I spend all day trying to think about how I need to live this month in order to pay everything by the end of it, and I sit here and type out budgets and calculate crap and try and figure "Maybe if I worked THIS much overtime..."

And yet, you know what? I still won't have enough money for my debts. Which fothermucking sucks.

I swear to God, I've learned my lesson! Why can't I just inherit $20,000 to pay off everything and finally be done with it? I would start a new life, live how I need to and I wouldn't be freaked out all the time and not feel too weary to face the day.

When I get like this, it's like I just don't even want to keep going. But it's not like I want to die, or anything, so it's like I'm stuck with no solution. I just want to sleep and sleep, or something. Just become a recluse and hide away.

Anyway, I better try and do something.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

You know what's interesting?

Watching The Brady Bunch Movie while playing a drinking game to it. Yes, we drank every time someone said the name Marcia. Which happens like 60 times during the movie. Eric and I finished off an entire 6-pack of bottled beer. It was Leinenkugel's Berry Wies, which I love. And that was after having fun all evening, like going to areas of Omaha that actually look interesting. You know, Hummel Park is really gorgeous. It's so sad that it's become a dangerous place and that they find so many bodies, etc., there.

Eric and I saw X-Men 3, which I think is a lot better, actually, than most of the X-Men fanatics are making it out to be. It could have been better developed, yes, but it was by no means terrible. It was actually a pretty good action movie. And I mean, come on, Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart! But a lot of the fan's are bitching about (if you can believe) the "far-fetched plot twists that happen".......................far-fetched???? FOR GOD'S SAKE, YOU'RE WATCHING A MOVIE ABOUT PEOPLE WITH SUPER-HERO MUTATIONS!!!!!!

Far-fetched plot twists...

Nerdity has reached new levels of amazement.

Let's see...must remember to look into possibility of using "With or Without You" as the background music for Act III, Scene 3 of Acrobat. The memory scene, with Arthur and Michael at the nightclub.

Okay, time to buckle down and get serious, now that I have the car shit and the View from the Bridge shit handled. I need to set up a pre-emptive reading, and I need to get all the answers I need from the Kurzes as far as props, lighting, etc.

I'm supposed to go visit my family today for Memorial Day. I just wish, though, that I could spend one of the holidays with Eric. Maybe Independence Day. I really want to go to the Zoo, I haven't been there since I was like in junior high. Seriously, I haven't even seen the new aquarium or the desert yet.

I was looking over a scene I started writing that might make an amusing small film. I just created some characters rehearsing a play, and they're really funny characters. Like I can imagine someone like Janine Geroffalo (spelling?) playing the stage manager. Anyway...

I think that's all for now, folks.

It's a Fine Cruddy Life

I hate companies where everyone's an idiot.

I hate the corporate world.

Why do I always get stuck working under people who are stupid and tend to assume that everyone knows what they're thinking, and who don't understand anything about the work other people are doing?

It's a long story. It's just...go home and watch your American Idol, lady. I'll get to the spreadsheet when someone actually bothers explaining to me what you're looking for rather than assuming that everyone knows everything about retail and what's going on for a specific case at any given moment.

Gonna bitch-smack people, I swear...

EDIT:

An addendum...

THESE PEOPLE ARE HALF-RETARDED.

Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy was right, we should take all the middle-jobs, the ones that are neither labor nor brains/arts and send them to another planet.

Sometimes, You Feel Like an Ass, Sometimes You Don't

I don't know...

Sometimes, I feel like I'm complaining too much about Eric's brothers. And I feel badly, because I keep forgetting that I'm putting him in an awkward situation by bitching about the people he's lived his whole life with. I just...I never stop and think, "Oh, he might be hurt since it's his family," since, well...I've never thought that way about MY family. And it's just how I've grown up around them. I'm constantly slamming my family, left and right, talking about them behind their backs, and wishing they would disappear.

It's really complicated, too, because I love my family but I sure as hell don't LIKE them and probably never will. And it makes it difficult, and honestly most of the time I wish I could somehow just make the connection between me and my family vanish. Like poof, no more ties, family? What's that?

But...I don't know, it's really, really hard for me to live like this. I want to live with Eric, but I want his brothers to recognize our room as our room, as a bedroom, not a living room, and Eric's so used to this and he says it doesn't bother him, but it bothers me, but I don't want to upset him because it bothers me. I just wish he'd look at it from my point of view...I'm not one of his brothers, and although he's infinitely comfortable with them - I'm NOT! I like them, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with one of the young ones coming into the room and lying on the bed with us while we're watching a movie. That's just...it makes me really uncomfortable.

I'm not normally a touchy-feely person, even with my own family. Hell, my mom practically has to YELL at my brother and I for us to every even shake hands. The only person I'm really comfortable with being that familiar with is Eric. And like I said, I LIKE his family, but when they just walk into the room without asking or lie on the bed, etc., it makes me really, really uncomfortable and feeling awkward. Like I just want to clam up.

And I feel badly, because for instance, Joel thinks of me as another big brother, but I'm really not ready for that. I don't want that. At least, not yet.

My own family...I'm just hurt so much by the past that I have a really difficult time with a totally different group of people wanting to make me part of their family. I don't want that. I know I have to accept them, b/c they're Eric's family, but I'm not ready to be their family yet, and I'm not sure if I will...I can't explain it, it just...hurts too much.

It does. It hurts more than I can explain, them wanting to make me family. I mean, my God, I'm sitting at work right now typing about this and I'm getting kind of teared-up about it. The word "family" just throws a knife right into my chest. I see brothers sharing common interests, being familiar, giving each other shit...I see parents who've known each other so long that they know how a conversation or a day is going to go, in detail...people going to colleges to help their kids move out their stuff for summer break...the whole family planning a small vacation to visit relatives in another state.......

And it all just tears me to pieces.

It hurts.

I don't want it to, but it does. That part of me, the part that can function with a family unit, that can love in a group...........I think it's dead. Or broken, at least. It was broken a long time ago.

When my mother would wreck the entire house because she'd been drinking. When my dad would snap at us viciously over misunderstandings because he'd been drinking. When my parents would stay out all night and not return home until after noon the next day, when my brother and I were both not even teenagers yet. When, at the age of three, I watched my grandfather grab my mom by the hair and threaten to kill her. When I watch my grandmother make bitter, acid, subtle comments that break my mom's heart when she does nothing but try to reach out to her.

(I'm sorry, I HAVE to get this stuff out, that's what this is for, I need to use it or it'll explode inside me...)

Or when I was two years old and alone with my mom, watching her wrists bleed as she panicked and called my dad's parents to come take her to the hospital because she had slashed her wrists and was now regretting it. Or my dad's brother practically forcing himself onto her when my dad was away. Or the extended relatives, even the aunts who pretended to dote on me, talking about my mom behind her back and talking about me behind my back, how I never did any sports and didn't act masculine enough.

Or listening to my drunken mom call me "Fucking faggot" more times than I can count the summer after I came out to them. Or how she fucked over my finances time and time again.

I just.....hate that word so fucking much.

Family.

I'm sorry, this is in no way what you'd call a chipper post. This just came now, and I need to get these thoughts out.

GOD, I LOVE BEING A TURTLLLLLLLLLEEEE!

Okay, we saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the Dundee tonight...

I understand that Eric loved it when he was a kid, and I have movies like that. But I didn't really ever get much into the ninja turtles when I was young, so it was more or less just like watching a really shitty movie, which it was. And I was tired and kept falling asleep.

You know what's freaking amazing? Mexican Mudslide with a banana added to it when you blend. Chocolate/banana alcohol is scrumptrilescent.

Oh, I ran into Steve Krambeck tonight, and Alicia Ross. Crazy, huh? They were all at the ninja turtle movie. Oh well.

That's all I gots for tonight.

Wugga WAH? A second post, so close to the last one!?

I finally moved my computer into our room, after rearranging everything to make room for another desk. Now I don't have to feel like I'm limited to when I can use my computer.

Still looking for a new car. But I just need time to look around.

There was something I was intending on posting on here, like a specific point that made me go, "Oh, let's post!" but now I can't remember it. Cocking shit-bitch... Oh well. I'm going to try and finish the Acrobat revisions either tonight or this weekend.

....Seriously, what the ASS what I gonna talk about?!

ARGH!

Apparently, Eric's about to go fight Shiva on Final Fantasy online. Yay, geekiness!

I also found out that the lady I work for right now used to date Cameron Van Cleave back when he was like 19. Small world.

I love "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". As Don would say, aw, fuck, man! Go watch it! Seriously, like right now!

Okay, well, if I remember, I'll post more later...

Beauty lies
Within the contact
Feel me
Feel the cold embrace you
Beauty lies
And you are mine now
See the truth
Let it consume you

Have You Dliven a Fold Ratery?

Getting cars is such a hassle.

But I trust my credit union, and so I'm not going back to Rhoden Dodge. Apparently, the lady there and the lady at my credit union had a conversation. Right after it was done, the lady at Rhoden called me and was all, "Oh yeah, went great, she said they'll finance you for this amount!" And then, after that, the lady at my credit union calls me all, "DON'T sign anything with them, they're taking you to the cleaners, that conversation did NOT go well, she kept trying to get me to guarantee this price, I said no way, I'm not guaranteeing anything, it should be less than this amount..."

So I'm going to shop around a little, now that I know my credit union is rooting for me and will finance me as long as I get a good deal.

In other news, I guess Matt Jacob's dad passed away from a heart attack, which is strange because he was a total health nut. His dad was a really nice and personable guy, though.

Counterpointing that, however, is the soon-to-be arrival of Matt's son, Beckett. Due in the next month or two, I believe.

Work is going well. I like working here at Pamida Store Support, and I am the Spreadsheetmeister, Master of Excel. Take that, compiled data! Yeah, you know you like it. I overheard the lady I work for talking with my temp agency telling them I'm great, etc., and the possibility of hiring me here full-time. We'll see.

Anyway, that's about all I got time for.

Must finish revisions for Acrobat this week. I'm halfway done.

Secret of MAH-nuh

Get it right, people. Mana is pronounced "mah-nuh", NOT "mann-uh" like "man". It's "mah-nuh" like in "monster". It's a real word, look it up in the dictionary. Manna is from the Bible. Mana is all pantheistic and New Age-y.

Stupid clique of Catholic highschool boys playing Magic all "manna manna manna..."

But I digress...

Eric and I are playing Secret of Mana, and when I loaded the game I found an old data file that had my name and the name "Coley" for one of the other playable characters.

I had forgotten that I was always telling Nicole about the story to that game and that she and I were going to start playing through it one time, but we never finished.

One of the plot elements is really depressing, actually. The character of Purim spends the entire game searching for Dyluck, the knight she loves. Dylucks is abducted early on in the plot by Thanatos (name means "death incarnate" isn't that lovely?) who seems to be going about creating cults in towns and draining people of their will to live, harvesting their souls, etc. Anyway, he kidnaps Dyluck, saying Dyluck is special somehow. Later in the story, he even manipulates Dyluck and messes with Purim's feelings by having Dyluck do things like act all possessed and try to kill her, etc.

And by the end of the story, Thanatos, of course, is trying to destroy the world and all, and they finally find him and Dyluck, and Thanatos seems to be weak and dying but he is apparently trying to "move into" Dyluck's body. And he possesses Dyluck, who finally has a lucid moment before Thanatos takes over completely.

And Dyluck looks at Purim and tells her he loves her, but that he's learned that Thanatos is an ancient sorceror who sold his soul to the underworld, etc., and has lived for centuries from body to body an is trying to destroy/rule the world, etc. And he tells Purim goodbye, and then Purim ends up having to kill him and then fight Thanatos's spirit (creepy underworld skeletal ghostly looking thing).

Well, that's all for tonight, I think.

"My Taters" by the Village Idiot

Wowzers, it's a new blog entry, lookie dat!

So...

Much goings on...in much muchness...

I have a new job! It's only temporary, but I'm hoping if I keep impressing them (with my Mad Excel Skillz) they'll want to keep me full-time. I'm working at the corporate offices for Pamida department stores. I'm the assistant to one of the buyers. Her name's Erica ("I'm Erica, this is my assistant, Eric.") and she buys a lot of the soda, salt tablets and snack products for Pamida stores.

Basically, I take messages for her, and I keep track of all her reports and data, doing filing, spreadsheets for her, etc. And I do all the follow up on new local vendors, since they have to give us the right insurance/payment information. So I keep track of the delinquent documents.

We open "A View from the Bridge" tonight, and it's going to rock the casbah. Seriously, I think Amy Kunz is probably the best actress around Omaha, and she really is amazing in this show. There's a climactic scene between Beatrice, Catherine and Eddie, and every time Amy (as Beatrice) does that scene, I get chills...I'm not even WATCHING, cuz I'm backstage, but I get chills just from the sound of her voice and how she says the lines.

I have no idea when we're filming Don's project next, and I feel bad. Well...mainly because...I had to shave the goatee for the play. And we've filmed scenes for the movie WITH my goatee, which means we may have to wait until AFTER the run of the play to continue filming. I don't think I let it get that long, though, during filming, so maybe if I don't shave for a few days, film on like Thursdays, and then shave it off for Friday night again...I don't know, though. It put me in kind of a pickle, but I haven't heard anything about the film in a while.

Oh, and I've started writing a parody of The Seagull. It's called Bye-Bye, Nina. I'm amused. The character I played is now named Meldveldamadenkdo instead of Medvedenko, and his first line to Masha is, "Why are you such a bitch?"

Another sample line: "...but if you've been reading Tolstoy or Zola, you don't feel like reading Tri-Borin. In truth, if you've been reading a children's grammar book or My Taters by the village idiot, you don't feel like reading him, either."

Eric and I are watching "Farscape", which is a really cool sci-fi series. It's because it's very highly CHARACTER-based. I don't know how to explain it, but I can see why he said it reminds him of "Firefly". The characters are what make it interesting, and their development and interaction. The last few episodes, though, a lot of the characters are starting to turn really selfish and nasty. Poor Pilot, getting his arm cut off...

I haven't had ANY time at all this week to work on Acrobat stuff. It's cuz of tech week for View... Next week, though, I intend to start kicking it into high gear again. I've already e-mailed Glo about the possibility of another read-through, and hopefully she'll respond soon.

Anyway, gotta get back to work. Here, this is from Chess:

No man, no madness...
Though their sad power may prevail...
Can possess...conquer...my country's heart--
They rise to fail.

She is eternal--
Long before nation's lines were drawn,
When no flags flew, when no armies stood,
My land was born.

And you ask me why I love her,
Through wars, death and despair?
She is the constant;
We, who don't care.
And you wonder: will I leave her?
But how?
I cross over borders,
But I'm still there now.

How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man's petty nations
Tear themselves apart!
My land's only borders
Lie around my heart.