I spent the day transferring old VCR tapes to an external hard drive.
First, I took all the tapes out of the tv cabinet and plastic totes and lined them in rows on the floor beside the television and in stacks on an end table. I counted over 140 tapes. That means I’d have to go through 10 tapes a day for each day of my two week break to get through them all.
But then I remembered the Once and Again 3rd season tapes upstairs. And beside those tapes is another box full of four seasons of thirtysomething; but I doubt I’ll transfer those because I was unhappy with the edits Bravo had made.
Today was spent transfering old SNL skits, a MST3K episode I didn’t know I had and few episodes of Jordis Unga on Rockstar INXS.
It’s weird seeing commercials from years ago, especially advertisements for movies that were hyped but tanked at the box office and heavily promoted shows that were cancelled only after a few episodes.
For the next two weeks I’ll be playing a bit of budget hopscotch, jumping from day to day with only so much cash to get by and calculating when to put a check in the mailbox so it arrives on or after Wednesday’s direct deposit–but not a day before. This week’s unemployment check will instantly be swallowed up by the mortgage and credit card payments.
I’m living on financial life support, and yet I love that I got to see Coraline today. It’s one of the most original films I’ve seen in ages, and seeing it in 3-D only added to the experience. Yes, going to a film is a pricey indulgence nowadays; but it was worth it just to enjoy a well-told story.
I finished my last test. I got an A on the test and an A for the course. Straight A’s for the term.
I stopped by Second Street Market and bought a loaf of vienna bread and a couple bagels. On the way home, I tore off a piece of the loaf. And then another. It was so satisfying. So fresh and crusty. But also carb-y. And yet these were organic nutrient calories. I’ll be able to burn them off easier than artificial perservative calories. When I got home I warmed up some homemade soup and then proceeded to finish off the rest of the loaf. Then I lugged my soup-and-bread belly over to the couch and slept for a couple hours.
I had to wait a whole day before someone called out that ass on CNBC for his rant against the President. I’m so tired of people in the financial world complaining. Sorry, but there’s no silver bullet that’s going to be found and loaded into the big Magic Economy Gun so the big bad Recession Monster will disappear.
People are facing this financial crisis as if were the morning after a wild party and realizing not everyone’s going to get asprin right away.
My last final exam for the term is tomorrow, and I’ve been wasting time on the internet and watching the news.
I should know better. Yesterday I was in class until the last minute finishing my computer troubleshooting exam. (Still got an A though) And tomorrow’s exam will be an essay exam. That should motivate me to study even more; but it doesn’t.
Instead I find myself writing a blog entry about how much I hate writing answers to essay questions.
It has nothing to do with hating the subject because I’ve enjoyed my Human Relations class as well as the instructor teaching it.
Maybe this is about hating the idea of being judged and graded by how clearly and concisely I answer a set of questions under a set amount of time. There comes a point where memorizing definitions and facts on one sheet of paper just to write them down on another sheet of paper seems tedious.
I didn’t have this problem with my final web design project. Maybe because there I was putting all the ideas and code I’d learned into practice. I went above and beyond for that class. I even went without sleep for that class.
I dreamed I was sorting through items in a cluttered room in a place that seemed like a house but then later seemed more like an office building.
I found a hummingbird feeder filled with liquid and inside, submerged, were three dead hummingbirds. I poured out the liquid and held the little birds in my cupped hands. I noticed one was browner than the others. The others had their original color; and I wondered if only the brown was dead and decomposing. Maybe the other two could be revived.
Suddenly I noticed the wings on one start to flex and twitch. I started toward a water fountain, thinking washing and cleaning the living hummingbirds would help them recover.
Then I woke up.
Looking up the symbolism of hummingbirds, the dream might signify “making progress even when it seems you’re stuck”.
The fluid the birds were submerged in could be nectar, which might symbolize “the sweet things in life”, or finances.
The fact the birds are bottled in the nectar could represent drowning in financial trouble. Or some part of my life being submerged or stagnant.
Two of the birds reviving could mean my long financial troubles could be nearing an end. Washing would suggest revival too.
Overall, a hopeful but strange dream. I’ve never dreamed about hummingbirds before.
I received my property tax bill today. My property was devalued by $10,000, and yet I’m paying $100 more in taxes.
And paying more for what?
The privilege of constantly reminding prostitutes and panhandlers to loiter somewhere else? Watching lives go down the drain forty ounces at a time?
So right now I’m playing a waiting game with the tax return. Once that arrives I’ll have enough to pay the first half of the property tax bill. What I’m really waiting for are the gas and electric bills. Those could siphon off everything I have in checking right now. And that means I’ll probably be juggling to make insurance, car and mortgage payments. Funny, but if it wasn’t for unexpected financial boosts such as the company severance check last month, I wouldn’t have anything in my checking account right now.
I just finished watching the new video for Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You”. The song itself is okay, but the video? It isn’t what I expected. I’d read it was “cute” and “fun”, which sounds like the real Kelly Clarkson. The Kelly in this video? Not so much. What might have been an attempt to portray the “fun” of a dysfunctional relationship ended up being a disturbing glimpse at two people who shouldn’t be together. It’s more like “My Life Is Guaranteed to Suck With You In It”.
The Kelly in this video is an immature mess straight out of reality tv. (A “Beautiful Disaster” perhaps?) It seems whenever the Kelly in this video gets upset she basically drops her boyfriend’s belongings in the toilet or out a window for kicks and then laughs in his face about it. Sure, Video Boyfriend tries fighting fire with fire by throwing some of her clothes out the window. But CrazyVideoKelly is more than up to the challenge and ready to up the ante by sending a goldfish bowl sailing out the window. But not before the timely intervention of Video Boyfriend, who stops the damagefest only long enough to scoop the little fish out of the bowl and into a glass of water. That is, I think it’s water. Maybe it’s vodka. If not, he’ll probably be chugging the stuff regularly in order to cope with this emotional child’s tantrums.
I can see this guy at the next tenants meeting. “I’m sorry for those of you who slipped on the broken glass and aquarium gravel in front of the building last week, but my girlfriend was having a really bad case of the Mondays.” And the tenants would say, “Actually this meeting is an intervention. Dude, you’ve got to get out of this relationship!”
Seriously, I was hoping the younger version of Kelly at the beginning of the video would show up during the fight in the apartment much like in the “Because of You” video and show Kelly how unhealthy her outbursts are, and there are better ways to resolve conflicts.
But, heck, all the near-fatal car accident at the end seemed to do was get her turned on.
I kept asking myself what had the guy in this video done to deserve this treatment. The men in other Clarkson videos like “Low”, “Never Again” and “Since You’ve Been Gone” deserved some retribution. But this guy?
Would he be thinking his life would suck without Kelly? What song would sum up his feelings? The Offspring’s “Self Esteem”? Perhaps there’s a song out there titled, “Stop Treating My Soul Like Toilet Paper”.
I also thought about the trashing of personal property in this video and “Since You’ve Been Gone”, and it made me see the latter video in a whole different light. What if the relationship Kelly had had with the ex in “Since You’ve Been Gone” had been much like the relationship shown in “My Life Would Suck Without You.” Suddenly, Kelly isn’t a woman scorned as much as a hot mess that had been dumped because the guy found a more stable woman to be with; and Kelly just couldn’t resist trashing the guy’s stuff one last time.
When the guy comes home to a trashed apartment, he isn’t so surprised. He just thinks, “Oh, Kelly’s been here. I hope the goldfish managed to survive this time.”
Freezing cold weather, but I had to get outside.
