good to see the poorhouse has been well-tended in my absence.

every once in awhile, i like to shake up the content here on the ol' blog for all of you loyal readers. so today i was thinking "what can i do to deviate from the usual fare? what can i do other than whine about how hard it is to be living in a studio apartment in pullman washington? or whine about how hard it is to write music? or whine about how hard it is to sleep? or whine about how hard it is to live up to other people's expectations? or whine about how i like this one girl but i'm pretty sure it wouldn't work out for no good reason?"

then i said to myself: "self, why don't you whine about how poor you are? you haven't been extremely dirt-ass stupid-poor for at least a year!"

so it hit me. i would whine about being poor.

i am going to be so poor for the next four years, even a carafe would be jealous.

get it? moving on...

even with some financial assistance on the part of my parents in moving and in paying some of my double-rent (westview and emerald downs) over the summer, i'm still looking at being at zero dollars when my rent check clears tomorrow, which puts me about 40 days away from a paycheck and nothing but my credit card between myself and utter destruction. good god.

who even knows how much debt i'll rack up in that amount of time? even with normal living expenses, we're looking at close to a thousand dollars. that doesn't even take into account the fact that my car is falling apart, the only optical drive on my computer just broke tonight, i'll still have to dump a good hundred dollars at least into basic equipment (router and wi-fi card) to get my internet working, the table i bought last week is falling apart and needs major refurbishing (or i need a new table) and so on a so forth.

i had planned, when i went home for the summer, to live pretty carefully and come back here with enough money to last until september and to have a little extra to go see wilco in spokane...but as it often does, life cost about a thousand dollars more than i expected it to. and now i'm in the hole.

this wouldn't be such a big deal if i also hadn't figured out my budget for the next nine months and realized that i'm going to be able to put away (at most) a hundred dollars a month. so, provided the ONLY extra expenses i have for the entire rest of the year are the ones i incur in the next month, that mean 100 * 10 = 1000 = ten months just to pay off the least amount of debt i'll incur. right. but in ten months it'll be summer again and i...won't have a job at all!

as john travolta as castor troy would say: "what a predicament!"

so first step: everything goes on credit card until october
second step: don't do anything for nine months but save every penny and attempt to minimize credit card debt
third step: find a job over the summer and forget going home or doing anything fun or enjoying life
fourth step: repeat for three more years

so yeah, i'm freaking out a little. anybody want to rent a room in a cabin in the mountains? and by "rent", i mean "pay for by occasionally picking berries and giving them to me so i can make pies in the cast-iron stove".