Northward Midget

Category: Me

Posts primarily about myself.

  • I Brake For Debt

    We’ve been trying a “cash budgeting” system for a few months now, and it’s going pretty well.  That is, it covers our variable expenses.  I still use a bank account dedicated to relatively fixed expenses such as rent, utilities, membership dues, and minimum credit card payments.  Most of those are paid automatically, pulled directly from the account.

    Unfortunately, there are two places where the system falls short.  This isn’t so much because of any flaw in the idea of cash budgeting, but due to our limited funds.

    The first is that we don’t have anything left over to pay down the debt besides the aforementioned minimums.  I’ll be relying on my annual bonus to hack away at that fecking demon.

    The second is “unexpected” expenses.  We didn’t fully account for birthdays or other special occasions and gifts.  “Gifts” for us mostly means for the kids (and the increasingly frequent parties they attend), since we don’t usually give them otherwise.  School lunches we could roll into groceries, so that’s not so bad.

    However, there are those big ones that hit you now and again.  Although we do have a “Car” envelope (cash allotted for each expense goes into an olde-fashioned paper envelope), it builds over time.  Over the past week, my front driver-side tire has been angrily grinding under 20MPH.  I finally took the day off today to get it into the shop.  It’s the brakes. And the rusted calipers.  And over $600.

    We ain’t got that much in the envelope.

    So, it’ll probably go on the credit card we just managed to pay off, with last year’s bonus, and I’ll try to pay it off again with the two “bonus paychecks” a year direct-deposited into the dedicated bill-paying account.

    Oh, and I put about ten bucks on the same card for Star Wars miniatures from Miniature Market in an attempt to find one suitable to represent my scoundrel in our Star Wars Saga campaign.  Of course, since these are mostly under a dollar each, I had to buy a dozen or so to avoid paying more for shipping than for the actual merchandise.  Maybe I’ll post a picture when they get here.

    That’s not irresponsible spending, is it?  $10 for my only hobby?

    Back to “working from home” and waiting for the car.

     

  • In Other News

    We had a great role-playing session Saturday night.  I found a group through meetup.com and we’re playing the “Dawn of Defiance” campaign for the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG.  It was mostly combat this week, but quite involved with some good character twists.

    The campaign has a section on Obsidian Portal.  I took a lot of notes in anticipation of doing a writeup from my character’s perspective.  Our GM gives us an extra 100XP if we do it, but I usually only bother if things were interesting for my character.  So, I stayed up Saturday night into 3AM Sunday morning writing up a play-by-play of the session.

    Besides role-playing, I’ve re-invested myself in my old website, TijuanaBibles.org.  It’s been years since I’ve done an update.  Lately, I’ve prettied it up and slapped on some explicit sex ads from JuicyAds.com.  A generous visitor to the site sent me an email asking about something he’d bought.  It was a German version of a Tijuana Bible titled Schneewittchen und die 7 Zwerge.  That’s Snow White to the rest of us.

    He gave me permission to post it, and so I did.  With the help of Google, I attempted a translation of the libretto, with some hilarious results.

    You can check it out at the site.  It’s linked in the bottom menu here.  I won’t link it directly into the post, as it’s got some explicit content and I’d rather not have you stumble over Popeye ramming his cock straight up through Olive Oyl’s mouth in case the kids are in the room with you.

     

  • MAOI Stage 4 – Crash!

    I sat in a pool of milk and wondered how it got on the floor.  I knew I’d spilled it on the countertop trying to pour it into my cereal, but how did it get all over the floor?  I stood, shakily, and saw that the half-gallon cardboard container of organic whole milk was tipped over, as was my cup of cereal.  Milk was everywhere, soaking boxes, creeping under the toaster, dribbling into the sink.

    Wednesday afternoon, my psychiatrist upped my dose of Parnate to 10mg four times a day.  He said I could start immediately, and that some people take two in the morning and two at night.  That’d be a lot more convenient  and better distributed than the three times a day I had been doing: 8AM, 1-2PM, 5-6PM.

    After the appointment, around 2PM, I took my second of the day.  When I got home, I waited, as I sometimes did, and took the double-dose right before putting the kids to bed between 8PM and 9PM.   The eldest was sick (just getting over it), so the youngest went separately in our bed, and didn’t take too long.  Then downstairs to put the sickie down.

    Around 11PM, I rolled out of her bed for a snack.  Nothing wrong yet.  Got to the kitchen, grabbed my glass (I eat cereal in drinking cups), poured some knockoff Wegmans brand of Cinnamon Life, got the milk, began to pour, then…I started to lose consciousness.  Not straight-away faint, but light-headed, and the milk wasn’t hitting its target.

    So, I slumped down to the floor to give my head a rest, then rose a few minutes later and tried again, but now the carton was tipped over, the glass was tipped over, milk was everywhere, and my ass was wet.  I grabbed paper towels, then towels from the dirty basket, then took off my shirt and wiped with that.  I may have tried another few times to make cereal, but ended up just eating a few scoops of the dry stuff after sopping up most of the milk, then gave up and put everything away.

    The light-headedness lasted for a few more hours.  By Thursday, the next morning, it was gone, tested by my wet-shaving with the safety razor and taking a shower.  I went to work, and all seemed well.

    That day, I waited until noon for my first 10MG, then another when I got home, then another around 11PM.  Today I did the usual 8/2/5 and I’ll try the fourth as late as possible tonight.  Maybe Sunday, when nobody has anywhere to go, I’ll try the 2/2 morning/night schedule.

    All this after I’d told the doc “No, no light-headedness at all!” when he’d asked about what is a common side-effect of the drug.

    In any case, my mood does seem somewhat improved on it, and it’s only been a little over three days since I began the initial 10MG/day dose.  This is the worst side-effect I’ve ever had on an anti-depressant.  Not the most interesting (that would be the chronic wet dreams), but the worst.

    Maybe it was an empty stomach, maybe it was the combination of my nightly 1MG of Klonopin.  I dunno.  We’ll see.  I’ll be careful.