Well, bugger. 2012 has been the year of peeing in my financial wheaties. First, I come to find out that my landlord has arbitrarily decided to stop paying his mortgage, so the house is being foreclosed, even though I've been paying my rent on time. Awesome.

So, I started looking for new housing. Everything of suitable size and price was either in a nasty part of town, or else in southwest Chesterfield county, adding another 15-30 minutes to my commute. Ultimately, I found a place in northeast Chesterfield county. The price is right, and the size is right (3650 ft^2, much more than I expected). It's a bit of a fixer-upper, which is pesky for a rental, but I can deal. But of course, fate wasn't done whizzing on me.

I was driving to work one morning a few weeks ago in my ratty, but paid for, '03 Kia Spectra, and decided I needed some Pepsi, so I pulled into a 7-11. No indications of trouble, of course. But when I got back in the car, the engine wouldn't turn over, at all. It was trying, just completely failing - so I knew it wasn't something so easy as a dead battery. So, figuring it was a toasted starter, I popped the hood and started poking around. Immediately I noticed the coolant was low - odd, because it had just been topped off when I got my oil changed the previous Saturday. On a hunch, I checked the oil - and it was completely bone dry. Not a bloody drop on the dipstick. Fuck.

So, I had it dragged across the street to a mechanic, who looked at it and pronounced the engine thoroughly dead. Seized. Self-destructed. A new one would have cost me $5200 or so to replace - not worth it in a car that's worth $3000 tops. Well, crapola. Don't have enough in savings to cover it, even if it were. Looks like my only choices are no car - which means no work - or else debt. Fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck fuck fuck! Either I go into debt to fix a buggered car, or I go into debt to replace it.

So, left with little option, I got a car loan - one of the things I was hoping I wouldn't have to do again - and I went out and got a used car. This time it's a 2005 Mercury Montego sedan (basically a Ford Five Hundred with a Mercury nameplate glued on), with only 27000 miles on it. Not a bad deal. Still, this, at the same time as having to move, is a major embuggerance. Why can't things ever be straightforward?

Remember when you were little and you used to get the little blue net from under the fish tank-

that was supposed to be only used for fish, but you didn't care because a net was a net

-get a jar or a clear glass bowl from the kitchen cupboard, and then go outside and catch one of the many, many yellow jackets flying around? Remember how they'd be so mad and you could hear their angry buzzing through the glass and you just knew that, even if you were to let them out right then in a gesture of peace, the second they were out, your ass was grass?

What? Just me?

Well, my brain has been feeling like that, lately. Like a clear glass jar with a couple yellow jackets buzzing around furiously, hitting their little yellow jacket heads against the glass so it makes little 'dink' noises. I can't stick with anything for more than am minute or so before I get the urge to run around or so something else, and usually by the time I start on the next thing, I suddenly have the urge to do something else-else, which I guess keeps me busy but it's always weird thinking about 'whoa, I've done so much today!' only to actually have fifteen different things in varying stages of 'almost halfway done'.

Me and my brother from another mother (who is actually my sister from another mother but 'brother' works better in that phrase-thing and also she's not really my sister just my best friend) are tentatively working on story thing which is neat-o because she never writes nor has shown any interest in writing since we were highschool and we did that God-awful stereotypical medieval stasis chosen one fantasy steaming pile of crap. We got all of like fifty thousand words done before we realized that:

1. About 30,000 of those craptacular words could cut without hurting anything, and

2. We had no idea how this was going to end anyways. Besides, wasn't there something cool on TV right now? Come on, we can leave it here for a bit, it's not like it's going anywhere. . .

It's going to be crap, I know, but it's still fun throwing ideas at one another. Right now it's just a match to see who can out-quirk the other with funny weirdness.

Yesterday after work, my mom kidnapped me to a BBQ. See, a few months ago, the church more or less let go of Pastor Carl and his wife because they (the church) are cheap bastards who thought they could save money by having one children's ministries pastor go back and forth between San Jose and Milpitas, rather than have two pastors working each location. Since then, they've managed to hook my mother into church hopping with them and their son. Every Sunday they visit a different place (Unless it's like the beginning of an interesting segment, in which case they'll stay the whole two or three weeks until it's done), then go out to lunch. Since they've started, my brother has started going with them.

Yesterday, they decided to have a BBQ at their place. Mom picked me up from work and I fell asleep in the car until we hit the highway.

Zeph: *groggily waking up and realizing something is WRONG* Highway? Huh? Highway? There's no highway to our house!

Zephmom: We're not going home. We're going to Pastor Carl and Tanya's.

Zeph: But I want to go home! I've got Spanish homework and a couple things I want to do. . .

Zephmom: Too bad. They saved you a hamburger.

Zeph: *laying back in the seat* This is technically kidnapping, you know.

Zephmom: Tell the cops. Tell them your mother kidnapped you to a BBQ where you'll be surrounded by people who love you unconditionally and saved you a hamburger. I'm sure they'll rush right over.

Zeph: -_-"

So that was nice. Ticked Meg off a bit 'cause I didn't respond to her email when I said I would, but we were texting to each other the whole time anyway so it's not like it mattered.

After the BBQ, while they were loading us up with food to take home, Tanya took me aside and gave me a box of calligraphy stuff. Inks and jars of inks and pens and papers and little pamphlets and a thing of nibs I don't know how to work. I almost cried, I was so happy. I don't now the first damned thing about calligraphy, but it's so cool!

Also, that ink really stains. Like, I've been scrubbing my hand on and off for the past day, but my fingers are still stained. O_O"

Inform7. I like it. I'm just playing with it now. I don't even have a story or plot or anything, I'm just having fun making it possible to kick stuff and poke stuff and I made it possible to write with a magic marker and I figured out how to give pants pockets. :D

Saturday I went to a casino and gambled with real money for the first time ever. It was fun for like the first ten minutes, but then I got bored. But I went with my grandma and grandpa and mom, and my grandparents are the stereotypical little old people going to gamble and bingo and they know all the ins and outs, so we were there for a couple hours. I went in with twenty dollars and came out with twenty-once dollars and some change. A net gain for our family!

Just got my history essay/midterm back. Got an A. You know, when I first started writing all sarcastically and casual in my essays, my English teacher told me that "While I enjoy your writing style, other professors probably won't. You'd best be careful how you write your papers."

As did the next professor. And the next one. For a style that professors aren't supposed to like, a whole lot of them sure do seem to like it. Go figure.

I got into State college. I really didn't think I would. I've only got a 3.39 and they're SUPER impacted. What they do now is stack up all the would-be majors by GPA (4.0s on top of the 3.9s and 3.8s under them and etc.) and then scoop off as many as they need to fill the open slots.

I have the happy. I'm FINALLY going to get out of this baby school.

So I think that's about everything and jeebuz, I have been writing WAY TOO MANY logs lately but eh fuck it. It's not like anybody looks at these anyways.

I wrote an article for our local papers yesterday and today, but not a medical article. I did a press release for our synchronized swim team, because on Saturday our 13-15 year old Age Group team beat Seattle Synchro in both the Team Routine and in the 13-15 Age Group Solo. We only have the one age group team, which is half of our twelve girls. You can have up to eight girls for the team routine; we lose some points for only having 6. The girls were also in the figures contest, two placing in the top 8, 3rd and 8th. This win is a big deal because we are a town of 8925, and our county is 29,924. Contrast that with Seattle: 608,660 and King County: 1,931,249, with the greater metropolitan Seattle population at 3,344,813 (just under half of Washington's population). The Introverted Thinker is the one who was asking about relative population base, not me. We have 12 girls total on our team currently and no boys, though we had one last year.

Our girls went to Age Group Nationals last year in Federal Way, along with 36 other teams in that category alone. This year Nationals will be in Ohio in June. They have been working really hard, wanting to go to Nationals, but they were delighted and surprised to come in first at the first routine meet of the season.


USA Synchro
The Pacific Northwest Association of Synchronized Swimmers Hey! The Introverted Thinker is one of the swimmers on this page!
Seattle Synchro
Population figures:
Seattle metro
King County
Seattle city
Jefferson County
our town

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