October 2006
rambles
My school week is going good. I can’t believe how close I really am to finishing. If I had stuck it out and just went to school one or two classes a semester while working full-time somewhere, I would have probably made about $24,000 a year while sloooooowly getting through school. In the 4 semesters I have been here going to school I have taken 59 hours, or 22 classes. That would have taken me 11 semesters or 5 and a half years to complete, with another 7 classes to go (another year and a half). I would be making probably under $30,000 a year until graduating college.
I like to think that 7 years from when I graduate school I’ll have had the potential for earning at least twice as much in a college graduate level position. I have 7 classes left until graduation, and am signed up for 3 of them next semester. Here’s to hoping that they will allow me to take at least one more of the classes. It kinda sucks to know that I’ll be stuck taking 3 classes next Fall unless I can work something out this summer to take all three.
I mean it is physically possible for me to take 9 hours in the summer, and I’ve already been slumming a little now to save up and pay for summer tuition, plus I took out less in loans so I will have money to borrow for the summer. The only road block is the department offering the classes I need.
That’s where you come in. Sometime in March could you please start clapping Peter Pan style to make the department offer my last three classes.
My weekend so far
This weekend has been crazy.
Prefacing my Friday , My front passenger headlight went out about a month ago, and driving at night is a fun fun thing with one less headlight. Every single cop pulls you over because they have to. By pull over number 10 I had it down to a science and could get out of the ticket within about 2 minutes. I only got an actual ticket on the very first one, which was ironic since it was the only pullover that I honestly said “whoa, it’s out? I guess that’s why the road was so dark!” The ticket was for lack of insurance. I fixed it the next day (the ticket).
At this point you are totally wondering, “chris why didn’t you just replace the headlight?!” The process to replace the headlight in a 2001 civic is about a three hour process involving removing the front bumper to remove the entire Headlight assembly.
My job is not paying me the right amount of money, so every penny I earn goes towards my bills until the lady in my department in charge of purchasing and payroll clicks ONE button in our HR program. I have literally seen the window open on her computer with the mouse hovering over “approve” for some reason this crazy woman will not do her job and both me and my boss are not getting paid the amount we were promised. Another person in the department is actually sueing the department for backpay because of this stupid woman.
Because I don’t have extra money laying around, I’m using a lot of my student loan this semester, and couldn’t afford to take the car to the shop. Friday night I finally had 3 hours to spare, and a nice well-lit garage to do the work in.
I changed out the light in a record 3 hours and it’s beautiful.
Saturday I woke up, made an egg sandwich, got in my car drove to Austin, deposited some money into my bank account, and went over to Cassandra and Katherine’s place and hung out. We ended up going to eat some BBQ (mm mmm) and went to Toy Joy. I got Jason C a toy cellphone that looks pretty real for his birthday since he doesn’t have a cell phone. He laughed and thought it was pretty funny when I gave it to him. Cassandra gave me a shirt I bought a while back from her. And it’s awesome. Check out her designs. After I left their place I headed over to Town Lake met up with Jason and Aaron.
At town lake we filled up a big three person raft with air, then with supplies and headed out to the island on town lake. Some guy fixed up the island really cool. Dug a huge fire pit in the middle of the island, set a table up, and even used to have a HUGE rope canopy over a large portion of it, but when we showed up apparently one of the branches it was attached to died and fell off. We quickly collected as much firewood as we cool and generally set the place up before it got too too dark. I rowed the boat for about 3 hours whenever people would show up to get to the island. While I was doing that, Jason went out and bought a bunch of supplies. Including a very very long (500 feet) rope which we used as a pull line for the boat. It was pretty awesome after we got it all setup and the round trip turned from a 20 minute labor intense trip into a 6 minute round trip. Lots of fun was had on the island.
I am so insanely tired now despite the fact that we got an extra hour last night. My shoulders are dying, and my back feels weird. The best way I can describe it is that feeling you get when your back needs popped, but it just won’t pop.
I need to work out.
This was insanely long, sorry. If you read it, then awesome, if not, then you aren’t reading this, and I don’t care.
Grave Songs
Lee over at lanternwastecompany.com asked me to make a mix of songs that I would choose if I was told I would die in around an hour and had a jukebox in front of me with every song ever on it. Here’s the resulting mixes we all came up with
p.s. feel free to leave comments on my selections
a laugh
Are you havin a laugh? Is he havin a laugh?! HE’S Havin a laugh!
Note to self
(*this goes for anyone reading this as well*)
Remember… the worst that could happen, is already happening. And that thing is, you’re not dating her…. the only thing that could happen to change that is if you ask her out. Asking her out can’t make it worse, only better.
AP sticker
Kinda cool, this morning I was going to buy some soda drinks for the office before school, and as I drove by a streetlight that I pass just about every day, I saw a familiar looking Abandoned Pools sticker affixed to it. I don’t know if this image will show up in this post, but it’s a place holder, I’ll go back and take a picture of it later today.
Sick
Alright, for about a month now, I’ve been sick. It just keeps going away and coming back. I haven’t been sick in about 5 years, and it really stinks.
I’ve just had a crummy sore throat, but I fear that it might not be just a plain old sore throat and could possibly be my tonsils. I really hope that’s not the case, cause I’m sure getting my tonsils taken out would be a huge dent in my pocketbook (no insurance). I guess tomorrow I’ll look into how much my student health insurance plan is, buy it, get checked for tonsil problems, then after having them taken out (if something’s wrong), I’ll cancel the insurance. yay planned insurance fraud, and yay telling the internet about it!
p.s. love chris
Africam
Alright, I’ve been kinda addicted to this for the last few days, but didn’t really feel it needed posted here. But now I do. There’s a webcam that’s been setup in various formats and forms over the years (since 1998 or so) in Africa. It’s setup right next to a pond/watering hole. Soooo many different types of animals end up near this hole, it’s amazing. Saturday at some point there was a gazelle grazing and drinkin some water when all of a sudden, it just fell down. Turns out, the lion we didn’t see sneak up on it had taken it down.
There’s also a family of baboons that must live somewhere near the cam, as well as a big family of rabbits.
All in all, it’s pretty cool, and if you have two screens, you can just open it up on your other screen and enjoy the sounds of nature (a really loud annoying bird) Even the annoying bird is cool.
Oh, and don’t forget, you might get to see… monkey rape
