As in, the opposite of “income.” For those who want to be “in the know,” yes, I did get that loan check I was itchin’ for on Saturday. I paid my rent, paid my web server rent, bought dishes, bought shelves for the living room, bought my books for class, bought some groceries, and bought some crap I need for the computer (a new CD-RW drive among the crap).

I also did a rudimentary budget for the semester, since that plan seemed to work out so well for me last time. I wrote all my checks for all my regular & static bills, so I know exactly how much I have to spend on the eating and any sort of entertainment that I care to enjoy. The final verdict? I need to find a job reeeeeal bad. This is one of my goals for the day, I’m going to head to the union and check out the “employment” office, see if they’ve got anything for me. As I told Joe M yesterday, I’m looking for something with lots of mindless paper or computer work at a desk; y’know, a job I’m reeeally qualified for.

The sun’s shining again today, after some snow again last night. The temp had been in the 40’s for three days, and most all of the snow/ice was gone from the roads, then it rained for about an hour before turning to snow, so you can bet walking and driving are fairly treacherous today.

It occurs to me that I should call Ewan & Meredith, find out what happened to their jeep.

You should really see these mountains. It’s somethin’ else, on a nice day like this. The “out the window” shot really does them no justice.

Hey, buy me a digital camera if you’ve got the cash and inclination.

Oh, the Writings section is now online, but it’s all stuff that was on the old site as well, so… well, I guess Blender has been revised, so that may be worth your time. I dunno, whatever.

Finally, in about… 4 hours, Katie Mac is going to be taking a GRE test. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is the college equivalent of the SAT or ACT. It’s the test they give you to find out what you learned in college, intended to reveal whether you’ve accumulated enough knowledge to go to grad school. Understandably, Katie’s a bit nervous going in… if you wanna know about nervous, just ask D Slotten. Anyhoo, if you happen to remember, send Katie some positive energy right around quarter-to-three Central.

So I dunno if you tried to get online last night (or, technically, I guess, early this morning) but there was ZERO chance of it hap’nin, my friend.

I was a bit pissed cuz I meant to send a file via the Internet to the LA Boys, and of course, was unable to do it. I watched a full hour of “Blind Date” on TNN, though. Those people are pretty hilarious. Especially when you just don’t have the energy or necessary motivation to change the channel.

Today I play the waiting game once more with the loan check. So you know how that goes.

I’m hoping it comes, though, because Ewan & Meredith’s jeep was in a accident in the parking lot at Barnes & Noble yesterday, and they need a ride about town later on, and if they’re at all like me (or other normal people) they’d like to get their shop on.

No major advancements on the page here today… hey, it’s the weekend. I think I’m going to shoot next week’s video later today, though.

There’s other stuff I could talk about, but I really wanna take a shower, so I’ll just leave you with the photo here, which Wordy took, which is of me, outside of Field’s in Oshkosh, on New Year’s Morning. Have a good weekend.

It was a very good year.

The sun is blazin so bright today, I have to wear sunglasses while I’m sitting at the computer… really! Look at that “out the window” shot from today: see the sun comin over the X? Damn.

Really excited to have a phone again… yes, in case you missed it, it was turned on yesterday, so you can now call me if you like, or maybe just maybe I’ll get in touch with you. So far I’ve called Mom & Dad (although Mom wasn’t home) and Mark Knuetson. I fielded a brief call from Wordy, but that only to confirm my cordless was still working.

Last night, went to see LOTR for the 4th time. Went with Mike, Natalie, and Ben from class. Mike & Ben had each seen it once before, Natalie not at all. They were all quite flabbergasted to learn I went to the flick four times. Hey, some people just like movies.

I was finishing up the Links page last night, and I was meaning to put a link to every single one of my bookmarks in there, but realized some of my bookmarks were fairly useless, thank God, cuz then I didn’t have to bother. What you have there is a mostly complete list.

Trying to think of things to get for my sisters for their birthdays, which take place 6 days apart in early February. Drop a line with ideas, if you have sisters, or have purchased gifts for other people’s sisters, or are a sister yourself (in the genetically related sense).

Based on an e-mail received from Josh Schneider earlier today, I was going to have a “guess the dufus in the bed” on the Interesting & Factual Tales page, but, it turns out I’m not crazy, and I did say who it was. So that sorta cashes that idea.

I’m reeeeeally hopin for the loan check today so I can buy some more food and a few other essentials (like some cheap dishes I saw at Wal-Mart), but I’m not holding my breathe. I’d also like to go see Confessions of a Dangerous Mind later on, but again, the financial concerns. I’ll keep you up to date. In the meantime, you should probably look at this.

Every time in the last two days that I’ve walked past the phone hanging on the wall, I’ve picked it up, checking for a dial tone. Hasn’t been there. This last time I did it, which was about 28 seconds ago, I realized, “Oh, moron, the ‘Line 1’ button isn’t depressed.” Push the button, BOOM, dial tone. So who the hell knows how long my phone has been on without my knowledge?

Damn, I guess I shouldn’t have hoped for snow around here, or wondered repeatedly and openly why the hell none was showing up. Cuz now it won’t stop. Last Tuesday we finally had a significant snow, with about 6 inches overnight, and since then it’s snowed… three..? days and we’ve got another 4 at least. Today it’s really wet and thick, and I was walking around campus early this morning, all the snow was sticking to my hat and coat. I had to shovel the lobby after I shook off inside.

Class wasn’t bad yesterday, the consensus of my closest colleagues in there was that it’ll be nice not to have to write a short paper on the readings every week. But, it’s time, of course, to start thinking about what I’m going to write my seminar paper for that class about. And I have to think about what my thesis is going to be on as well… Oi. The paper that I wrote for Composition Theory last semester was well-received by Phil, my prof in that class, so what I think I’m going to do is have some of my classmates and/or other professors read it, see if there’s something there I could expand on. Who the hell knows?

After class, I joined fellow English folk Mike and Natalie at Ben’s house for dinner and most of a movie. It was nice. I spent 2.59 on salad dressing at the grocery store, though, so today I had to rush to the bank and put 3 bucks into my account so as not to be overdrawn in case the check I wrote to Pizza Hut last weekend for 10.49 goes through today. This bein’ broke crap really sucks. Apparently, my loan surplus check is getting cut today, so I hope I have it in the mail by Saturday. I could reeeeeeeeeeeally use a little money; y’know, bills and whatnot. Anyhoo, check up on the Interesting & Factual Tales, the first one of Volume 2 is online today. It’s about traveling again, this time my mini-adventure on the voyage home to Bozeman last week Monday.

Still deciding whether or not this font is going to work for the page as a whole in the long run. Still deciding whether or not this is the format I like for the “blog,” still deciding on a number of things, but realizing that if I didn’t get something up, and soon, we’d be left with nothing but a glorified Word document for another semester, and wouldn’t that be boring as hell?

I struggled over the last few days trying in vain to learn how to successfully use either Macromedia’s fine web publishing software, Dreamweaver, or Adobe’s offering, GoLive, with minimal success at best. I was chatting with Nick Petters about it, and concluded two things:
1. This is just a little, personal website for chrissakes.
2. I need to be able to set all the stuff I want on the page, then easily grab them, move them around, etc.

So here I am, back where I started, on Microsoft Publisher. Eh, it’s what I know.

What else do I know, you ask. I have yet to be in class, but that’s ok, because my first week back in Bozeman was chock full of movin-movin fun. The Family & Graduate Housing office called me, quite unexpectedly, last Tuesday to say they had an opening in the building I wanted to live in from the start. I hadn’t anticipated that call for a couple months at least, so it was kind of a rush to pack everything up, arrange to move it, then get the goods over to my new pad. Here’s a link to an “info” page on where I’m living, complete with floor plan.
Oh yes, and here’s the video, first one of the Spring semester, taken amidst the shambles of the new apartment on Saturday morning, the day after I did the bulk of the move. I was quite glad to get help from the boys from Johnstone, as well as Ewan & Meredith with their jeep, and Meredith’s personal sacrifice of the use of one of her digits, given up to protect my television.

You will notice that some of the links above don’t work yet. Generally, if they are blue, they work, if not, still a work in progress. As the days go on, we’ll come up to full operating capacity, but at the moment, the site’s on auxiliary power, moving at half-impulse.

Well, time to start getting ready for the class I am ill-prepared for, thanks to my non-having of the loan surplus check I need to buy books, hope all the reading wasn’t reeeeeally important, but what can you do sometimes?

Oh, finally, Erika celebrates a birthday today, so click here to send the gal a beer, her address is “Erika_Joy_ at Excite dot com”

EDITORIAL NOTE: I was going to merge all the posts from the first semester of the blog into its current incarnation as well, but then looked at it again and realized that for me, it’s like a page of Internetting history, akin to an electronic scrapbook. You wouldn’t trash your scrapbook and re-type a bunch of articles you had pinned in there because they would look cleaner, or re-pose and take new versions of pictures because you bought a higher-res camera. With that in mind, please follow the link below for my first 4 months of blogging…