Author: Teel

Today was my second day of classes, which meant that today I found out whether I would be able to register for both classes or only one, and what art supplies I would have to buy just to take the classes. It also meant that i had to scramble to try to get all the art supplies before Drawing class tomorrow, despite my lack of transportation and the bulk of the materials required. So tonight after class I found an open, local art supply store (Wet Paint on Forest just North of University) and managed to get all of my art supplies for the low, low price of $303.58. I had to split it between two cards because of recent overspending and poor choice of credit cards for certain transactions. When I came home freaked out about spending so much money, I opened up quicken and started playing around. Assuming that the rent payment that I plan to make Saturday or Sunday doesn’t clear before Friday (not unreasonable, considering how long they’ve taken to clear rent checks in previous months (not less than 5 days past the first)), I won’t even have to activate my overdraft protection. If next month’s rent payment doesn’t clear until at least the 4th, I will have plenty of leeway to apy all outstanding debts without going below zero or above the credit limits of any of my accounts at all, accoring to currently understood debts and incomes. If I get bonuses every month (expected, to a certain degree) I will be able to do things like spend a little more on the vacation I will be taking in Hawaii next month (airfare and hotel covered by a prize package, food and incidentals covered by me and Angela) and pre-pay on some of my accounts sooner.

Anyway, I came home from class and from shopping and was feeling pretty stressed out and awful (worse, considering the near-migraine I had right before leaving work (subdued by a few appropriate pills)) and realized that I still had 5 alcoholic malt beverages (approx. 5% alcohol by volume, each) in my refrigerator. I started with two twisted teas, and then by the time I was halfway though the Captain Morgan Gold that followed, I finished finessing my accounts into a reasonable balance and didn’t feel as bad. I’ve had the DNA Incredi-blu and part of a regular DNA since then, and I’m somewhere past a buzz now. I’ll be going to bed soon, and we’ll see how I feel in the morning. Right now I mostly feel numb. Not worried about money, and whether that’s because of the alcohol or because I made some graphs look like I would have enough money for a while, I don’t know.

I haven’t been posting in the last few days because I’ve been feeling a little down. I worry that if I say anything about feeling down, people will want to ask what they can do or offer advice or suggest therapy or something, and I don’t really want to feel like I have to turn comments off again, but I don’t want to hear about it. You may not want to hear about what I have to say, either.

I guess I don’t have much to say. I have no justifiable reasons to be feeling down right now that I didn’t have a week ago when I was feeling fine. Or maybe I do, but I don’t think of them as good reasons. School started today, which is not only an incredible burden of time, taking up every Monday through Thursday afternoon entirely and dedicating me to quite a bit of work outside of class as well, but also a financial one with tuition at around $800 and art supplies probably additional hundreds of dollars. Beer Club looks to be going the way of the dodo, with Zoe giving up drinking coinciding with my classes pushing even the possibility of my availability back several hours, some regulars moving out of town, and others long gone. Maybe I’ll buy the new T-Shirt in the December/January, when I have a few weeks off school and Zoe’s started drinking for the holidays. The Mac event that I had hoped would lighten my spirits was disappointing at best, and the three extra hours sitting around for my computer to be ready ‘any minute now’ I could have done without. I haven’t started working out yet on the Bowflex, and that’s looking like a vicious two-step; I don’t work out because I don’t feel good, I don’t feel good because I don’t keep in shape. I guess I could go on like this for a while…

But that really isn’t it. I feel down inside, and feeling down I become introspective and negative and cynical (and I overspend) and I take the time to find all sorts of little things that aren’t the greatest, but when I think about feeling down, none of those things seems particularly the cause. Those things feel like justifications or rationalizations for an emotional state I don’t understand. I don’t even understand it with my heart. I just … it’s just a part of me for right now. Like a guest in my chest (or a wocket in my pocket), I didn’t ask for it but I’m not asking it to leave either, and I certainly don’t know what it is or where it came from.

Site traffic has been going up again the last few days. Unique visitors to Modern Evil broke 100 for the first time this year today. Not as many people have been visiting as did over the entire course of last month, but the peaks are getting higher. What doesn’t help is that the traffic started going up when I started posting less. (Or was it when other people started posting more?) Will traffic start going down again when people see I’ve posted about my emotions instead of about my phone or my exercise equipment? Who knows? Who cares?

From here, I think I’ll start complaining about medical conditions I haven’t bothered to contact a doctor about, so if you’re not interested in that, don’t read on:

Continue reading Feeling a little down

So one of the exciting new features of the new version of OS X that I just bought is that it has a built-in, Apple-designed chat client. Now, this chat client works over the AIM network, but I get to use my existing .mac account name. Problem is, I only ever used MSN IM before, so I don’t know anyone’s AIM names. I have this powerful new software for communicating with people, and an empty “buddy list”. I added my sister’s AIM name, but I’d like to add more. Maybe get an actual list going. So I’m inviting you, all of you who read this, to add me to your ‘buddy list’. From what I can tell, my AIM name is probably tmcclanahan@mac.com. I’d be glad to hear from you. Especially if I’ve never heard from you before.

I guess I’m digging myself a hole. I just ordered a hard drive upgrade for my Powerbook. Two and a half years ago when I bought it, 6Gb for a laptop was pretty good, but for a couple hundred now I’m getting 40Gb for the same slot. Plus getting copies of Jaguar (Mac OSX 10.2) for my iMac and Powerbook. I want to set up a dual-boot on the Powerbook so I can run the version of VirtualPC I have on there without shelling out more money… so I’m not having them install that with the HD… Or … I’ll ask them Friday how much extra that would cost…

Anyway, Friday night is a release party for Jaguar, so I’m going to go up to the place (MacMedia) on Friday night to pick up my copy of Jaguar, drop off my laptop, and hang out for their 10:20 to midnight party/giveaways/whatever. I’ll also have to be down there on Saturday, so on either Friday (preferred) or Saturday, I’d like to find someone who’d like to go see The Good Girl with me at the Camelview right near MacMedia. You know, kill two birds with one stone. Trick to finding someone for Friday is finding someone who not only wants to see an independant movie with me, but also likes Macs enough to want to spend 100 minutes at a Mac store surrounded by Mac fanatics with me. (They might win an iMac! Other prizes, maybe!)

So, where am I finding the money for this? Well… Getting a bonus on this week’s paycheck, plus had several hundred dollars set aside for bicycle maintenence that I’m putting off a couple months anyway, plus … I’m betting that a seat doesn’t open in at least one of the classes I need, saving me hundreds of dollars next week. Not a good bet as far as me wanting to take classes goes, but a pretty good one based on everything I know about the situation.

Of course, I feel like I’m spending “too much”, but I couldn’t let myself spend so much that I couldn’t make appropriate payments on everything. Missing a payment on a credit card or a loan or paying rent late or any of that is simply not an option. Spending “too much” just means I have less cash for eating out and buying DVDs, and making payments closer to the minimums for a while. I really need to get this under control, though. I need more focus. I need to choose something to focus on…

I haven’t posted in a couple of days, and people start complaining. Look, guys. Sometimes I go a couple of days without anything interesting happening. The same is obviously true for the other 10 people who have access to post here; they go weeks or more between posts. One of them doesn’t post at all; I have to log in as him and copy/paste his entries because he can’t remember how to spell his password.

I’ve been reading a lot at work instead of posting constantly. Monday night I slept straight through twelve hours. Last night I watched some TV. The most interesting thing so far this week is that the replacement phone I requested arraived last night and has already cut out on me a couple of times. Oh, and of course, all its settings are wrong and AT&T still refuses to believe that they’re supposed to help me upgrade from the T68 to T68i software, even though the website they keep directing me to to get it tells me to call them to get it.

Umm… going to read all day again at work. Tonight … let’s see… Angela will probably stop by after work with the XBox games she called me about last night (The Zia near her started offerring used XBox games, so she picked up Jet Set Radio Future and Dead Or Alive 3 for US$15.99 each for me) and maybe I’ll play those a little before trying to get to sleep at 9.

Then tomorrow night (Thursday, 8/22/2002) is Beer Club. After this week if it doesn’t change nights, I’ll be showing up after class gets out at 7:30, but this week I expect to be there between 4:30 and 5PM. As always, Beer Club will be at Prankster’s Gar and Brill (1024 E. Broadway, Tempe, AZ; on the North side of Broadway a few blocks East of Rural/over 1/2mile West of McClintock). Great food, drink specials, friendly waitstaff, and of course, Beer Club. We’d love to see you there this week!

What else? I guess we’re supposed to do a movie and then Saki bombers at RA this Saturday night. You should probably call myself or Zoe for more information, since I don’t think we’ve nailed down a movie yet. (Looks like Simone, Undisputed, Serving Sara and maybe One Hour Photo open this weekend, so probably one of those.)

Anything else? I guess I posted this in the forums, but I’ll re-post it here, briefly: My Bowflex is here and together, but no, having it in the house has not transformed me into a greek god. Only a lifetime of dedicated work on time travel can do that. Oh, or… maybe it was working out several times a week forever. Also, I’m still not registered for classes, and won’t even know if I’ll be able to register for classes until possibly the second week of classes. Woo hoo!

Oh, and a friend of mine and I are considering making a comic called “Fucking retarded bears”, though we’re not sure what the details would be.