May 11, 2008
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Saying Something to Say Something
So I figure I’ll try doing like so many bloggers do and blog something every day. It’s not that I haven’t done this in the past because I haven’t had anything I wanted to say every day. I most certainly did. But all the things I wanted to say were too hard to say. It requires too much effort. I didn’t want to just ramble on about random stuff.
But hey, rambling on about random stuff aint so bad? I think I’ll do that for a while and see how I like it. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe the practice writing will do me some good. Maybe it’ll help me keep my sanity.
So today was Mother’s Day. I splurged and got my mother an Amazon Kindle book reader. This is the first time I’ve been so far away from home that it was virtually impossible for me to visit for mother’s day.
Anyway, I decided to get her something related to books since she is the person I know who loves to read more than anyone else I know, except perhaps two friends I recently met who are equally psychotic about, ur I mean interested in, reading. I read a lot too. And I like owning books so I’ve got quite a collection. But these days my obsession with reading books has been replaced by an obsession with reading on the internet. I read an insane amount of blogs and news sites and I think I could read Wikipedia all day every day until the day I die and never get bored. I love that site so much. Anybody who has a problem with it, is going to have to take it up with me. We might just have to go at it. I will defend the virtue of the Great Wiki until the day I die!
Anyway, not sure if my Mom will like the Kindle or not. She won’t get it for a few days, I ordered it late and I want to go through and configure it and put some extra reading material on it for her (which I will acquire through certain mysterious mechanisms better left unspoken). My Mom’s not big on newer technology though. But she loves her GPS and is just now starting to get into text messaging on her phone, so she might like it. One of the problems with mother’s day gifts, and to a lesser extent with gifts in general, is that they always *say* they like it, if they care about the person giving them the gift, even if they don’t really. Oh well.
I learned today that my credit rating is somewhat lower than I expected. Maybe I should have checked that *before* I spent $400 on a small electronic gadget eh?
Anyway, it’s not horrible, but it’s far from good. Yuck. I played a little game for about a year with surviving off of zero interest and low interest credit cards and bouncing balances all over the place. It was fun! And I love numbers manipulations. But there was just this one damnable card. I couldn’t get the internet online payment to work for the life of me and I got lazy and there were other things in my life vying strongly for my attention so I forgot all about it. Well more like I didn’t really want to think about it as it made me feel bad so I didn’t.
Well, soon, I had the debt collectors calling me. Oh what fun. It’s paid off entirely now, but grr stupid credit system takes a while to clear. Eh, at least now I know what it’s like.
Still, it annoys me cuz my low credit score means I might not be of as much help to my friends as I’d like…
Other than that my finances are looking damned good now. I’ve got a lot of income compared to the past, and very little outflow. A very cheap apartment that is a decent size and close to work and where all I have to pay utility-wise is for the electricity, not the gas heating. And I really don’t use much electricity (hooray for CFL!). I’ve got DSL now so I can drop my cell phone internet access so a lot less a month to pay for that and DSL is cheap. And I paid off my car entirely way back over a year ago so no worries there. It’s a 2006 and I intend to drive it into the ground. Student loans are trivial. Car insurance is not high (never been in an accident, unless you count that random encounter with a wall). I canceled my WoW account, my TiVo account, my NetFlix account, and my Amazon Prime membership. I’ve still got xbox Live but that’s free for 6 months, I’ll decide whether I keep it after. And right now I’m trying to go without television and watching TV online. I might change my mind and get DirectTV in the future but for now we’ll see how I like it.
And… that’s about it for monthly and yearly expenditures. I don’t pay a lot for food and my car gets decent mileage. And I’m great at finding good discounts on stuff online. It’s like a game for me. Fatwallet and SD are wonderful. I enjoy it so much.
Assuming this job goes well life should be financially easy. Of course if I get fired I’m screwed, but that’s always true. Maybe with less financial stress, or guilt over being a burden on others, it will make it easier for me to focus on trying to advance a real career in writing. We’ll see.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!
Comments (5)
i gave everything up about a year ago. Cable tele (though i rarely had it on for anything other than movies), home phone (their rep made the mistake of asking ‘Whatcha gonna do? Cancel? You need a phone’ when i called with a complaint so ‘yes, yes i am. Cut er off ya %#@!’ Hehehe) home pc (it died on me and as i was shopping for a replacement i decided i really didn’t want another) so that took care of the internet charges, too. It’s a wonderful thing not having that pile of bills come around every month. After the initial withdrawal, it was just YAAAYY!! After yay! This blackberry was temporary for a ‘special project’ and it’ll be gone this week, too. At this point it’s only fair to mention that i do have pc/internet at work, as well as a phone, so I’m not completely cut off. Really, we can do without the complications and not suffer in the least! Glad your ‘new life’ is working out well for you. Merry Sunday!
@qccan - Wow. That’s amazing. I never watched much TV, cable or otherwise except for a few key shows like Lost which are available online anyway. Actually *everything* is available online if you know where to look.
I’ve never had a home phone either. Just never thought there was a need. But I can’t imagine life without a cell phone. I haven’t had a phone at work for my last two jobs so my cell phone is my only phone really. And I think I’d just drop dead without a personal computer with internet access. Either that or I’d just never leave my job. Seriously I’d like drive home for an hour every day to shower and clean myself up and that’d be it. That’s how much I use the internet. Plus I use my PC as a word processor for my writing too and it houses my music collection.
But still I get what you mean, getting rid of bills is great.
Let me know how the Amazon Kindle works for your mom-I’ve been tempted to get the kindle thing from Amazon, but am a little timid about it-I like to read the old fashioned way. My credit score is whacked because of problems I had a few years ago (which I’ve managed to settle all debts but one credit card) so I know my credit score is way low…
@buckeyegirl31 - will do.
I sort of want an ebook reader for myself too, but I’m thinking I’d probably buy some sort of weird third party one that runs open source software. Or else I’ll wait for the second generation kindles to come out. Unless my Mom just loves it so much that I *have* to get one right away. I’ll let you know either way.
Wikipedia is omniscient. That’s why we love to read it.