Me, myself and me

I have spent the past month and a half dealing with various financial issues.

While I prefer not to talk about money (in general and in the public arena), this has been an ongoing nightmare that has occupied way more of my time than it should.

As you may know; while a person serves in Americorps their student loans are put into forbearance, mostly because Americorps pays, far, below minimum wage and thus saving money or paying off dept is mostly out of the question.

Also, you may have heard, for various reasons, I have signed up for another 6 months of community service (if you will). The problem, however, is because I have signed up for less than a year of service my student loans are no longer in forbearance. And because I am, still, being paid less than minimum wage, paying the amount requested by Wachovia (worst bank ever) is difficult to impossible.

While I would love to go on complaining about Wachovia and the federal government, this is probably not the right forum for such things. It's not like I wanted to have good credit anyway...

Also, I tried to do my taxes the other day and somehow ended up with $22,000 worth of deductions.

Send help soon

Maggie and David left today. (or more accurately, they left 18 days ago)

They mailed pretty much everything they owned but still managed to find enough stuff laying around to fill up their car.

I ended up with assorted odds and ends, some soup and a giant container of trail mix.

One advantage to posting a month after something has happened is that I can tell you that they made it back to Atlanta un-scathed.

The Kozy Apartments will be a sad and lonely place without them

I heard noises coming from upstairs, maybe they had ghosts. Or maybe they let all the stray cats move into their apartment.

Who will park in their spot next to my fine automobile. By the way; if you know anyone in the Pacific northwest who needs a car...

Since they left; the stray cat count seems to have dropped significantly.

I just noticed that my next door nieghbors have been useing our dog run/side yard as an ashtray. Do chickens eat cigarette buts?

Maggie and David gave me this plant before they left.

They were a little reticent to give it to me based on my previous botanical track record.

This one I killed over the course of a couple months. However, it's posible that it's just resting up for the spring.

This is the Douglas Fir I killed. This one I'm pretty sure is NOT resting. Although, I thought Douglas Firs were un-killable....

Somehow, I ended up with the gold Bacchus statue.

The night is so dark on Klamath street tonight.

When you forget; you let THEM win

Just in case you forgot what I looked like.

I'm not sure if this is a poster for a fundamentalist religious group, or, possibly some sort of militia.

Up shizzle creek

Oh shizzele! This is really a test to see how many blog posts I can start with oh shizzel. The other test is to see how many different ways I can spell shizel, my guess is allot, I mean a lot (that was a joke for Megan, who has said that my poor spelling has made it difficult for her to read my blog).

Maggie gave me this lovely bowl that she made.

One wonders why I chose to frame this photo with the detritus of my apartment. And as always; I use the term frame loosely.

This is a much nicer picture of my new bowl, minus detritus.

The King and I

Here is Adam with a pipe cleaner crown.

Last week; there was a party to kick out the old Americorpses. This week is the party for the new ones.

Here is the after party at Little Murphy's.

At this official VISTA meeting it was decided, again, that I am an asshole.

Then VISTA Steve outed me as a Secret Smoker.

I told VISTA Steve that he was dead to me.

Things lightened up, slightly, when we were able to introduce VISTA Steve to Teacher Steve. This may have been another instance where me and Megan thought it was a lot funnier than anyone else.

Gweneth was in town for some sort of rock concert on Saturday.

Previously, it had been assumed this would result in a visit to the Sugar Pine.

However.

The night before; someone had been murdered at the Sugar Pine. Actually, according to the newspaper, the person had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

I assure you that I am not trying to make light of senseless violence and murder. I merely include this because we thought it would mean that the Sugar Pine would NOT be our final destination this evening.

Apparently I thought wrong. Also surprisingly, the Sugar Pine was hopping, maybe not at full capacity, but hopping none the less.

At one point VISTA Steve set his beer on the pool table while he tied his shoe. When he turned around there was a pool player, ready to take his shot. VISTA Steve picked up his beer and apologized, the pool player said "It's ok, we won't throw you out of the Sugar Pine, we might strangle you to death though."

The pool player turned out to be the owner.