#218 - Short Routine

So the past two days have gone by relatively quickly considering how little actually was accomplished. Wednesday was one of those days where I really couldn't start on anything. On some ends, it was my fault for sleeping in entirely too late and not really having a chance to sit down and start on anything until sometime after noon. Of course, this doesn't mean I actually slept until noon. I was up before eleven, but didn't really make much effort to hurry through showering and breakfast...ing, and playing with the kitten and such. I saw the note that Kevin of the gas station had called relatively early in the morning to say that my car was done and knew I basically couldn't start doing anything until after around 3. Surely my mother would want to take me to get my car as soon as she walked in the door, and that was more-or-less the case.

It didn't take long at all to get that taken care of, but because my mother's truck thing inherited a nail in it's tire before she left work, I ended up having to deposit my check to her in her bank account, which seemed kind of awkward. Clearly, I'm not Angela, you know? But the bank girl gave me a Creme Saver through the drive-through. Good times.

When I got back, the mother unit was talking about me picking up a pizza, which I ended up doing only a few short hours later, leaving yet another awkward gap where I really didn't want to start anything because I knew I'd just have to stop to get the food, but at the time I wasn't really sure when I was actually going to have to leave. A few more hours just sort of seeped by as I played various ROMs, and then there was food, so I ate it.

Finally, I decided to start playing Arc the Lad III, which has been somewhat enjoyable. This carried through into today, which was pretty much the same sort of day. Lots of Arc up until dinner, and then more after dinner. I finally decided that since my computer was running this whole time that I'd might as well make some use of it, and I copied most of the Love Hina discs Dave loaned me. This shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but my CD/DVD Rom drive doesn't like to read very consistently all the time, so I ended up having to copy the entire contents of the disc onto the desktop using the CD Burner, and then burned the materials onto the disc before deleting them and repeating the process with...nine or ten more discs. I still have a few more to do.

Earlier today I felt a few things that I wanted to blog about, but never got around to doing so. This is probably a good thing because it would have ended up being incoherent anyway. It's been a few days though and I'm trying to get back in the habit of doing this more often, though...thus, you get a simple, relatively thoughtless post of my two days off.

Black Friday is tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to work, but I'm sure I'll deal. Typically it never ends up being as bad as you think it's going to be, but we'll see. Then I get the two day off thing again, which will be a bit less boring because of Anime Loser Day on Sunday.

I know I say it every time, but I really hope all the people that say they are going to come actually do come. It'll be good if quite a few people show up. We'll see, I guess. In all likelihood, it'll end up being just me and Jake.

That's fine.

~Don

#217 - Unproductive

A funny thing happened today.

Not really, but it seemed like an lame way to open a post.

It looks like my brother isn't planning on coming home again tonight. Here we are almost upon midnight and still nothing, to my knowledge (of course, the door's been shut, so I couldn't tell you for sure). This would make the second night in the past few days that he's told my mother that he would be home so she's left everything unlocked for him, only to have him not actually show. This kind of thing kind of bothers me, because I know it probably worries my mother. Granted, I've crashed at other places a few times, but those nights usually involved me saying "Well, it's a party and I may just crash down there, so don't be shocked if I'm not home. If it gets too late, I'll just stay there."

Him saying he'll be home and not showing is kind of irritating though. He was only home one night this week I believe, and he got home after she went to bed, and actually left because his girlfriend 'wasn't feeling well' and wanted to 'go home.'

I'm pretty sure she's spent enough time here to call this place a home....enough so that she could have let Dan stay here to see his family and maybe let Lindsay sleep instead of waking her up to drive her home.

That's kind of how it works though.

In any case, I'm looking forward to Justine's 100 ... thing ... list. I may even decide to do my own if hers and other people's lists actually inspire me to do so.

But not tonight.

I really don't have much else to talk about tonight. Getting dizzy from laying around all day, and I'm working tomorrow. Nonetheless, the weekend passed by quickly and I had a good break, I simply didn't do that much.

~Don

#216 - Proclamation

Here now and forever I declare for myself that 2002 be known as The Year of Financial Downfall.

Now the obvious concession to everything I'm about to say is that it is true that I currently do not hold a full-time job, and that if I did, I'd probably have some extra cash on hand, but the fact of the matter is this - even with that extra money I'd still be making little or no progress.

It's sad to think that I've worked for as long as I have but only have around four thousand dollars to my name, but you also have to consider that a great deal of the money that I make goes to things like eating and paying for gas and buying things I actually need, and of course paying various bills over the years. I also have a lot of other stuff that I probably didn't need all that much, but I'm glad I bought anyway. And of course I have a lot of stuff that I probably didn't need all that much and I hardly use. Anyway.

Yeah. I can't seem to get ahead at all this year. It reminds me quite a lot of the first year that I had a job. Now, keep in mind that up until I was almost 18, I had no choice but to save birthday money and Christmas money to buy the things I needed, because I couldn't drive and was in school and basically had no source of income. Stretching that bit of cash out for an entire year was not easy, so imagine what happened when suddenly I was getting the same amount of cash in a week.

Pure financial ruin.

I then managed to get some control on that and did alright - but I had to buy and pay off a car, which effectively took off a few grand right there. Then I got my own PC, which was another grand plus. And other stuff, but at least I was at a point where more than half my paycheck each week was going into the bank, which got me up to this past year.

Anime and anime cons and trips to Dave's place have killed it. I was tossing the numbers in my head and just thinking of the ridicularity of it all - you figure I make a trip down there a week and use almost half my gas tank to do so. If we go early we end up eating two meals out, and because Dave doesn't really do the fast food thing that often, we're talking about places where I spend more than five dollars per meal.

I probably average almost ten dollars per meal. That's almost twenty dollars alone, plus the ten dollars in gas I'm not going to get back and whatever else we end up doing while we're down there. Of course, I could not eat and save money, but I need to eat.

Anyway, then figure in that I have to eat each day that I go to work, and the gas that I spend going to work, and then the sudden addiction to playing a few dollars worth of DDR a day, and you see where I come into the problem.

I don't make much more than I spend.

This is a problem, particularly right now where I had two dentist visits and I have a feeling I need to get brakes done on my car very soon, among other things. Plus Katsucon is coming up in a few months and I need to start getting money together for Japan.

What does this equal?

Life changes, I think. I'm going to have to look into packing my lunches from now on, and I'm certainly going to have to stop driving to Dave's every weekend, because like Vince used to say, "You know you're going to spend more on that than you want to," and let's be honest: Which one of the people that comes with me offers me gas money? None of them, except Vince offered the other day when we hung out but I refused. I didn't really use much that day to get him, so it didn't seem worth it. Nonetheless though, it's not unusual for me to go out of my way to spend money to make things better - even if it means I end up buying Joe lunch or something.

The thing you have to remember and I seem to have forgotten is just because Dave can throw money around doesn't mean I can. So as much as I'm going to miss having things to do on the weekend, I think I'm going to have to start shifting into inviting people up here for awhile and space out my trips down there to once every two weeks instead of every Sunday.

Money creates all sorts of problems - for example, this week my hope was to try to summon up the courage to ask Nikki to do something with me on Wednesday because I believe she would actually have time for it and for once I'm actually off during the week - but that might be the only chance I have for another week or two to get my car worked on. That really bugs me, but it's got to be done.

It would be nice if I could have a fortune, but I'd only end up blowing it on stupid crap anyway. I'm a simple guy who really doesn't need to go out very often, though I'd like to have a bit more to do.

So to sort of summarize, I've lost a lot of money on bills because of a lack of health and dental insurance (my review of what I've written indicates that I never mentioned anything about this, but I see no reason to go back and add it in); I've lost a lot of money on stuff in general. I've managed to keep my bank account at roughly the same point for several months despite this, but each time I start getting ahead again, I have to pay for something large - like brakes, or ceiling fan installations, or dental/hospital visits, etc.

But I can start getting ahead again with some changes, and I think I'm going to have to start making those, particularly if I actually muster the courage to ask the girl out and it starts working out.

Girls are expensive.

~Don

#215 - The Kitten

The kitten is entirely too cute.

I haven't really gotten to tell the story about the new kitten as of yet, so tonight is as good of a night as any. This little thing is called Stormin' Norman (continuing my mother's penchant of using stupid names for pets, of course. Already I've taken to simply calling it Storm though - hey, I pleaded to have a chance to find a cool Japanese name for it, but I suppose that will have to wait until I get my own cat in my own place sometime). This kitten is about four weeks old, or so I'm told (rhyme!), and can't possibly be more than a few inches tall. It's official weight?

One pound, in name only. Apparently the veterinarian decided to just give it to him after watching the scale go back and forth between one pound and ... well, some number less than one pound. How gracious. In any case, this little guy is barely noticeable; if he weren't moving all over the place on my lap, I'd scarcely know it was there. Good thing for fur or I probably wouldn't even be able to feel it - but then again, I may be the wrong person to judge the weight of a cat. Thunder (or Fatlax or simply Fatass have been known to substitute the name frequently) weighs entirely too much and actually requires effort to lift, so I shouldn't be surprised if any cat feels light to me.

Thunder always sort of qualifies as my cat though. Not technically, I suppose - but I was the one who's bed he used to sleep on back in the days when he was a 'young'in' and he still has a habit of doing the same thing now. Difference being, of course, that now he takes up entirely too much space if he lays on the back end of it, and he can nearly cause my lungs to collapse if I'm laying on my back and he decides to crawl on top of my stomach to sleep.

But I digress.

So the story, as I understand it, goes something like this: My mother goes for a walk one day at work because her job is getting to her or something, and she hears some strange screaming sounds coming from somewhere. Further investigation determines that the sound is coming from some type of sewer/storm drain, and it sounds like a huge freaking cat or something else, even. My mother, being....well, my mother, takes to trying to feed the thing while it's stuck down there, but can't coerce it to come out. She gives a ring to Animal Control to get help in getting out, but they decide they aren't going to bother - the cover to the thing it's stuck in is heavy, and not worth lifting to get to a stray cat. Better to just let it die, supposedly.

My mother keeps feeding and talking to it for a bit more after this - the total elapsed time that she knew it was down there was three days, but it could easily have been stuck down there from before - until they end up taking some new action. This apparently involves yanking the cover off by tying it to a truck or somesuch, and then blasting the thing it's stuck in with water from a fire hose to flush the cat out. Jerry gets a net and holds it over the opening, and they let it fire.

He catches himself a cat...or rather, a kitten. There's talk of taking it to an animal shelter, but my mother and Jerry both sort of exchange glances before my mother says something to the effect of "Fuck that. I've been feeding and trying to get this guy out for three days now. That's my cat." They decide to keep it, which is probably better than letting it go to a shelter or it somehow getting into the hands of Animal Control, who will basically just toast a stray feral cat.

Mom, on the other hand, already raised a feral cat. Sure, Hailey's freaking retarded and chases everything under the sun, but she's a good cat and turning out rather healthy, despite having difficulty breathing when she gets too worked up.

Anyway, this kitten is tiny with dirty golden fur and what looks like are going to be green eyes. Already, I'd say it's just as fast as Hailey who's coming close to two years his senior, and this cat hasn't been in the house more than two days. It's probably from living in the wild; it's reflexes are top-notch, and I can barely keep up with it's pouncing. Survival skills basically. I was impressed.

He hasn't gotten a bath yet though, and isn't allowed to leave the master bathroom because they haven't gotten bloodwork done on it. The veterinarian my mother goes to was afraid she couldn't even find a vein to test it with because of how thin and frail it was, so they're waiting a bit on that. In the meantime, it can't be exposed to Thunder and Hailey. Apparently Hailey underwent similar treatment because she was feral when they got her, and couldn't be around Thunder. Beyond that, it's so tiny that it would be dangerous to allow it to run around the house unless it was fully supervised, whereas the other two cats can pretty much go and do whatever they want - even if they want to go down into the basement to sleep with the bunny.

Craziness. But the kitten is totally adorable even with it's semi-retarded name. I took some digital camera pictures just for the hell of it, so let me know if you want to see.

~Don

#214 - Kokoro

"I have so much...I long to ask you. But now...the chance is gone."

Sometimes you don't really know what to say. Sometimes you do, but a plethora of things prevent you from doing so.

Sometimes everything sort of happens at once, and you can only take a moment to reflect on what you should have said.

That being said, I'm a jackass. I don't really know what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to say, or what I'm supposed to see in any of these cases. I can sit there and laugh and smile and talk for a bit, but it just feels like everything I say isn't what I'm wanting to say.

I can kind of imply how her presence makes me feel, but I'm not even sure how I feel. It's always good to see her, but when I do I feel like I'm dancing around the things I'm supposed to say, the things I want to say, and things that I actually say.

I suppose you can attribute it to social ineptitude. I should just say that I'd like to see her outside of work since I always have fun while she's there, but I can't find the words, the opportunity, or the courage.

I know I have the capacity to do so, but at the same time it feels like it's just out of my reach. One could use the usual comparison of standing at the edge of the diving board - you should just jump, after all - and I get on my toes to do so and then curl up into a ball on the front end.

And that's sort of a glimpse of me in any situation, really, but today just sort of inspired me to write a bit about it, as if putting it into words would somehow make it easier, but I'm not really sure what I'm writing at this point.

Yeah. I know. Just jump. If that's the comment you're going to leave, or it's along those lines -- don't bother. I don't need to hear it.

Beyond that, today was a horrible day. Tomorrow's probably going to be horrible too. I'll get by; but I don't really want to. I'm starting to think I should do one of those short sabbaticals to 'find myself,' but I'm not really sure where to go just to do that. I don't really have a special place to run to, and I don't have any desire to go anywhere besides Japan.

Sure, I could just quit my job and go to Japan, but I'm not ready for that. And that's going to be with Dave and possibly others.

I'm thinking I need to just take a day trip somewhere by myself. That's somewhat strange to read, I'm sure, because I spend most of my time by myself anyway, but it's just something I feel.

I feel a lot of things, but over the years of shutting myself away, I've forgotten how to express them. And so now, moreso than ever, I'm burdened with an overabundance of emotions that I can't release.

Typing doesn't seem to help it either.

I'm probably just tired, though.

~Don

#213 - Write More

"Because Justine said so, and she's the only one who checks frequently enough for me to care."

It's getting cold again, and I loathe the cold really. For one, this season will inevitably bring me the usual four months of misery, mostly in the form of basically everything you see in a NyQuil commercial. Two, the likelihood of accidents or otherwise sudden destruction of my form of transportation probably increases threefold. And three?

I hate being cold.

At least I get to wear some of my nicer clothes nowadays. My 'wardrobe' is remarkably unbalanced in that sense; there's just about nothing but t-shirts to wear in the summer, but I have enough fleece and sweaters and such to last for several winters to come. It wouldn't hurt for me to go out and buy some more slacks to wear, since I just enjoy wearing those over jeans, but...it just seems like money I don't really need to spend right now.

I'd rather have other stuff or pay bills or something. It's not like I go out all that much, so I don't really require the use of tons of outfits; really I just need something to wear to work and a few things to wear on the rare occasion where I go into public, which will probably become less frequent as the temperature drops anyway.

The winter seems like it's going to be colder and otherwise more irritating that usual as well. It's already pretty cold here as it is, and it's only mid-November. At least compared to past winters anyway. We seem to be getting an earlier start this year.

Otherwise, there's really nothing exciting to discuss. I'm a bit tired from going out today, and I get to work Monday through Friday this week, which I'm looking less and less forward to with holiday shopping nuts already getting started. Christmas is already affecting our mall. I haven't been able to get done even a fraction of what I typically could during a normal week.

Thankfully it's more or less ignored the arcade during the week, though I'd say some of the days have been rather irritating over there as well. Hopefully none of the days that I work over there this week though. I just don't feel like dealing with this holiday shopping nonsense again.

I have half a mind to quit again, even though I don't really have much of a reason to just yet. Then again, sometimes the holiday shopping isn't all that bad. What I really should do (besides look for another job) is just focus on doing what I need to get done at a particular time, and less on what I'm supposed to get done, if that makes sense.

Meaning that I shouldn't push myself to get things done so quickly because I'm just going to get interrupted with retarded questions anyway.

Anyway, going to sleep relatively soon.

~Don

#212 - Musings

When The Old Words Inspire The New Ones

Today I bought more anime. To be precise, I bought the limited edition Fushigi Yugi - Eikoden DVD, but not entirely by choice -- we didn't actually receive any copies of the regular version. The pencilboards that came with it are cute, but certainly not worth the difference in price between the two. At least there's a bunch of different ones. Anyone notice that Pioneer, particularly with more shoujo-esque anime, likes to include pencilboards in their DVDs?

Probably preaching to the wrong choir here, aren't I? I'm the only one who buys girly drama anime, last I checked.

Today was work once again, but unfortunately it was work with Diana, which ultimately left me wishing I had another job once again. She's just frustrating to work with, but I guess I'm probably no picnic either. I suppose there isn't much I can do to help it; it's not my fault that most of the people that work there are barely competent...but perhaps slightly my fault that I've gotten an ego about it. That's how I know that the place is starting to get to me again though. I've become a lot more outspoken and frustrated with it lately, but I guess that's to be expected given how business is picking up and our store coverage is not.

It's more than a bit sad how long I've gone without a full-time job. I honestly haven't made any effort to look as of late; I've been kicking back a bit in the past few months having a good time and trying to put the pieces of me back together that shattered from living with my father and his girlfriend. I haven't gone to see them at the old house yet, and likewise have not returned to pick up any of my old stuff. I really want to do these things, but the thought of going there by myself and spending time doing those things ( or anything else with them, for that matter ), still doesn't sit well in my mind. I've wanted to see my father for some time, but I cannot bear dealing with the woman or her daughter again. It's going to end up being one of those deals where I'll visit when I have my brother and his girlfriend with me, or stop by if the Justice crew happens to be in the area for some reason.

I can't fathom why we would be, but you never know.

I've been sort of reminiscing tonight, and while doing some different Google searches, I actually came upon older blog entries of my own, which I find somewhat fascinating for some reason. Anyway, this led to me checking up on my Wasted Thought archives (which needed to be reuploaded, because I only had one link on the archive page that apparently people didn't even realize existed), and ultimately brought me to start reading from roughly about the time I was about to move from Westminster to my father's new house in Frederick, until just recently.

It's both the charm and the curse of blogging - I can go back and get a good idea on my own frame of mind from any section of the past year or so and realize how much better I'm doing, but it also brings back a flood of memories, some of which are unwanted. For the first time in a long time I was reintroduced to the feelings of intense rage and hatred directed mostly towards my stepmother and stepsister, and while some of the entries were either funny (me leaving the stepsister out in the cold with her snotty friend for twenty minutes while I pretended to be asleep), others were somewhat embarrassing to read. Still, one thing that I noticed was that I wrote with an intense passion in some of those entries.

Some of them, as angry as they are...I'm actually a bit proud of.

It got me thinking a bit to how much different I am right now, though. I read entries about how I loathed working at Record Town, for example, and while I'm kind of sick of some of it, I've been so much nicer to customers and basically just had a better attitude in the past months. There were entries about me staring out the window in my bedroom at my father's house because I was so deathly sick of being in my room but didn't want to leave it because I had no place else to go, and it would mean dealing with the father. I still take a stare out the window from time to time, but these days it's not out of depression or something. It's usually because of fatigue, or occasionally boredom.

I feel, as a whole, that my whole attitude on life has changed since then. I don't get to see my friends very often, but I'm greatly appreciative towards them. I could easily run down the basic list of people that have been awesome in the past year or so - these would be people I've known since that time, and how they've affected me. I actually started writing that list, but deleted it when I realized it sounded silly and needlessly wordy.

It's just nice to know that while nothing has changed statistically, that I can still find some measure of happiness even without a job or an idea of where things are going.

Now that I've taken a break from this entry (which I just did), I'm finding it difficult to pick it up again, so this is as good of a place as any to stop for the evening.

~Don

#211 - If You Were Here With Me

"You Could Feel The Way I Do Now"

Be warned. It's about to get out of control, and probably boring. It's a Dance Dance Revolution inspired blog, wasted thinkers.

I just happened to happen upon a piece about the very thing today that I was slightly disturbed by. Granted, it was a fluff hate piece designed pretty much solely to piss off fans of the game, or at least I'm guessing, but I know from staring on the outside and looking in that some of the things they brought up were true.

For example, it tends to be something anime fans are into, and not really too many others. Maybe this is true and maybe this isn't, but a popular belief is that DDR players are in it because 'everyone else in the anime world' is into it, or because it was big in Japan.

Naturally, if it's big in Japan (isn't Tom Waits big in Japan? Did I get the name right? Little not-pop-culture reference for "Corun-san" there), then all of us Japanese wannabees need to be involved in it. That's the idea, anyway, and I'll admit that it was something I got interested in through anime, though I'd say the connection is a bit loose. It was just something I noticed people were really enjoying at anime conventions, and that the people that talk about it seem to have their own little subgenre going.

Several words have been tossed out without the proper punctuation at this point, particularly over the 'e' in genre. Deal with it, folks. Justine can attest to the fact that I'm too lazy to deal with the Character Map.

Anyway, at first it seemed rather...retarded, for lack of a better word, but I think it's one of those things that the video gamer/sport person in me was fated to get into. It's a game, but it requires actual movement to play, and lots of practice, skill, and stamina to really master. Ever watch some nutcase nail 300 steps in a row on a really high setting?

Probably not, unless you've been loafing around DDR machines.

But yeah. Those guys have it down. You could easily say "So what, they memorized the arrangement," but even if you know the arrangement, you still have to get your feet in the right places, at the exact right times, for the entire song. It's not easy by any means, and anyone who's ever played the game long enough to get into it can probably attest to it. You'll be lucky to hit half the arrows on your first song.

Some people pick it up relatively quickly though, and might do well the first time through. Others fail out in a matter of seconds on 'one footers.' I've seen both in the past few days - Brent survived his first game and most games thereafter except when he tried something a bit above his current level, while Danielle got on the pad and was done before the halfway point of ...Have You Ever/Never ( don't remember ) Been Mellow?", which is one of the easiest tracks in the series on Basic.

You can never really tell who's going to make it, either. Vince and Charlie didn't do that badly when they first started, and I imagine if either invested some time in it every week, they'd be pretty decent in the long run.

So it's good times. Originally I felt like I had more to say here, but as the typing went on I felt more and more like I was throwing words around like a nutcase and less like I was actually writing something with a point.

But I do enjoy the Dance Dance Revolution. Fantastic exercise, and when you're able to clear songs, you can really get into it. Or something.

~Don

#210 - Canta Per Me

"Sing For Me."

That's a fantastic song, by the way, the Canta Per Me from Noir.

Anyway, nothing much to discuss. The arcade where I work finally got a Dance Dance Revolution machine, so Will and I have been playing that. Really good times, and I seem to do much better in the arcade than I do at home for some reason. However, I've played entirely too much of it over the past few days, both there and at home. I really want to get better at it, but pushing myself to play it too much isn't going to speed it up any. I do feel like I can hang tough a bit longer in it though, and I've been playing some of the songs on higher levels to get my footspeed and reaction up.

Otherwise, I've been trying to push myself into doing a bit more. I said it last time and I can say it again, Suikoden III sort of set me back for two weeks. Not that I don't have other RPGs I want to play and finish, but those just weren't as important to me as S3. Now I've just got to get myself back in the habit of practicing my japanese and watching some anime alongside it, and try to get out some of the ideas I wanted to do for Great Justice Dot Com, and really start trying to find jobs in the area.

Pennsylvania might be the better route to go at this point, but I'm not really too concerned as long as it's not too far away.

In any case, the usual nonsense. Still feel a bit lonely at times, but who doesn't? Besides, it's harder to learn to be around people then it is to learn to be by yourself, I think.

~Don