subjects

Yesterday was my little brother Sean's birthday. He came over to my house around 1pm and I made him some hash browns with fake meat and onions and some toast. Then we played Wii for awhile and just chilled out and hung around.

Then we met downtown and met Kristina and some other friends. We just walked around shopping, it was fun even though I didn't buy anything. Sean had to take a shower so he went home early and then we walked to Natalie's house which was like 30 minutes walking distance, my legs are a little tired still.

There we played with a white Cat named Malkovich named after the actor. Natalie then drove us all to Sean's house where a show was underway. Sean was drinking some whiskey someone gave him for his birthday. He was mildly drunk. We all played Katamari Damacy which was pretty fun. At one point Sean was downstairs alone with this girl he had mentioned a desire to makeout with and Kristina and I tried to guard the entrance to downstairs, but no one wanted down. Eventually I found out that nothing happened, but it was fun to try to help.

Kristina and I got home around 1am I think, which to us is very early so we ate some cheese and tofurkey sandwiches and played around and just talked for a long time. Its crazy how I can talk to her about anything, and she understands me so well that certain things I can't even explain in words she just knows what I mean. I feel very fortunate for that!

Some people I can't talk to, I just feel so weird or awkward at times in conversations. And sometimes I want to talk about weird or crazy subjects which require the other person to know of all these other weird or crazy subjects we have discussed previously.

pacman

lately me and kristina have been playing lots of pac-man on the wii. each of the four ghosts have their own personality. the red one aka shadow aka speedy aka the devil is the worst. he is always breathing down your neck.

the pink one is a sneak. he is always teaming up with red to come at you from two sides. the orange one is stupid most of the time but occasionally will smarten up in certain stages. the blue one is just a dumbass plain and simple.

the high score is somewhere in the 77 thousand range right now, but i think it is close to being broken.

as toad on standard s bike

last night i stayed up late...until 5am! tonight i would like to go to sleep earlier. here is my list of goals for tomorrow/this week:

go to the bank and discuss my savings account with someone

finally mop the kitchen and bathroom floors

vacuum

go downtown to the library to pick up the graduate and drop off the other dvds

finish a drawing to cover up the bare wall

make sure i get unemployment insurance for this week and part of last week if possible

study my bosnian study guides

read more of my book

write more in my notebook (maybe go to fuel cafe or some other cafe on alberta)

make pasta sauce from scratch

try making vegan Caesar dressing again with less honey mustard

beat all the cups in mario kart wii on 150CC

Hobo Tip of the Day

a few days ago i spent a long time blogging and my post was lost after writing for a long time.

today i finally gave in after realizing that my extra backup hard drive i purchased a few months ago has failed and i am not left without all the files i put on there.

fortunately i still have all my pictures. i would be devastated if i lost them. i must reback them up now. i have all the music that was on mine and kristina's ipods. i lost lots of music, but i kept most of the best.

i lost all the documents i have saved since high school. i also lost all the ds games i downloaded that are not on my ds card as well as all of my computer games (civilization 4, fallout 3 [the reason i upgraded all of my hardware], colonization, some others games too i think, and a huge list of downloaded movies and shows i had planned to watch.

there is probably other things i cannot think of now that were lost, but it is okay because all the most important stuff was backed up and most of it is replaceable.

kristina's external hard drive also has recently broken ( a few days ago ) so i am feeling very upset with technology. i am currently reinstalling vista on her computer after uninstalling it and reinstalling XP because vista was running crappy. microsoft made all of the drivers for her hardware vista only so she would not be able to watch movies or listen to music or use her network card on XP....so stupid!

Im excited about Obama...more excited than I have been so far with him...he is actually doing things he said he would. I just wish he would close guantanmo bay sooner than a year from now.

Being unemployed so far has been nice. I have been getting some small stuff done and relaxing quite a bit. I need to make a new list of goals and try to focus on getting things done next week. I wanted to sell my car but looking on craigslist I have seen that my car is selling for half of what I was expecting to get for it. This might be from people not having money because of the economy. Maybe I should hold on to it longer...at least until the President gives out either refunds or more stimulus checks. I don't want to sell too low.

Tonight me and Kristina broke out all of my old CD's, it is fun to look at all the artwork. I haven't looked at some of the artwork in years. I sold some of the ones I never listened to or didn't want anymore sometime when I was in Las Vegas but I still have about 150-200.

Soon I am going to get a replacement needle and stereo system to play my record player and then I can break out the record collection which will be even more fun to look at. One thing I read to do to save money is to go through all your old things instead of buying new things. You might have something you forgot about or haven't played with enough! That is my unemployed hobo tip of the day!

fuck IE

I jsut wrote a blog entry for an hour....I did all this research online while I was writing it....citing studies and stuff. And it ALL GOT DELETED because of STUPIDASS internet explorer! ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

doing nothing

i've been playing lots of video games lately. pac-man and shining force II

it is so nice to have this free time. my goals for today are:

get a letter notarized for my sister and mail it out, to prove my niece was born and should get a birth certificate ( i already did this one, im just putting it on the list in order to feel productive)

do the dishes

vacuum the floor

maybe mop

fix kristina's computer (wish me luck!)

make a grocery store list that will include:

garbage bags
toilet paper
potatoes
rice
pizza
fake 7-up

some other stuff that is cost effective

plans change

THE PLAN

My job hired me at the end of October. My first day on the job was the busiest, it has become slower every day. Sometimes I would just walk around downtown dropping off invoices which could easily have been mailed out. They hired me when they didn't really need anyone and they were paying my a salary of 30,000 a year. I knew that they were going to have to let me go eventually, I was hoping it would have been closer to May, because that is around when Kristina and I are going to Europe.

I would be able to take a short vacation before the real vacation and collect unemployment while I am in Europe. And I could just cut my expenses during the period between being let go from my job and when I leave the country.

REALITY

I was let go "due to restructuring" on Wednesday. I knew it was coming long before it came. This is actually a blessing though, I went straight to the unemployment office after work. I made a list of things I need to do, including cutting expenses, getting on food stamps. I need to sell my car too, and now I have no excuse! If I am able to sell it for at least 3000 dollar then I will still be able to meet my 2009 resolution of paying off my debt.

NEW PLAN

I am going to enjoy this time off, unlike last time I was fired (378 days before). I am going to definitely collect unemployment this time, because I was not fired for something I did, I was let go due to restructuring. I am going to find new sources of income that I won't have to declare. I am considering selling some of my old CD's and records because they just sit there going unlistened to, but I think I might regret that someday.

I am going to try doing simple work online for amazon.com in order to pay for internet and a new phone (my work phone was obviously taken away from me). I also want to explore the option of selling stuffed animals online. I am also going to enjoy not waking up at 7:30am 5 days a week. I will enjoy the Wii my brother let me borrow.

One bad thing about that job is I was being forced to dress a certain way, shave, comb my hair a certain way, look normal, clothes must not be stylish in anyway. It was turning me into a person I do not want to be and I am glad that I have moved on from that place. I can wear tennis shoes and orange heart bracelets and whatever else I want.

Maybe it is wrong to collect unemployment when I could easily get a job if I just tried. Perhaps I should not be using food stamps when I could afford food if I just worked. Most of the arguments against this that I have come up with are fallacies: the government spends half our taxes on bombs, this world is messed up and I shouldn't have to work 40 hours a week, if I don't collect some fatcat will collect it instead, the deficit is in the trillions and will continue to be in the trillions until the US government collapses. Really none of these arguments address the fact that I am taking money from a fund which is designed to help those who need the money, when I do not in fact need the money. I don't feel bad though.

Mario

Today I drove the company van to Astoria, Oregon. Astoria is a small port town about 2 hours drive from portland. The drive is very beautiful and has many interesting things including bridges, many rivers to drive nearby, creeks, swamps, farms, and other things too.

The drive was very nice and now I'm back at work which is not so nice. I ate a cheese and fake turkey sandwich while I drove, I also listened to my ipod and sang real loud while driving. I prefer the car radio over the ipod but this radio had no reception and I don't like the radio songs anyway.

My grandmother (aka nanny) sent me some soft pajama type shirt and a check for 30 bucks which I used to buy the board game Pente. The game is fun, but got sort of boring after a little while. I think it would be more fun with more people.

Sean let me borrow his Wii, I have been playing Mario Kart trying to get all of the trophies in order to unlock extra characters and cars. I always play as toad on a bike. The courses are so fun and cute...such an improvement over the last Mario I played.

you

Kristina and i are working through our problems. We both want to be together and still move in together. We spent friday night, saturday and sunday playing wii, talking, eating, grocery shopping, watching football with jeremys new baby, watched harry potter leafed out. I went to bretts work and had a pretzel and some apple cider. Then we went to seans house for some hanging and played some crusader game. We also all hung out friday night and rearranged my house. It looks really good now. I also hung a bunch of stuff from the ceiling with kristina. Some origami animals, the scarfed octopus of yarn which harper made for me, and some cubed paper things.

This weekend has put a lot of things in perspective and i feel really good about everything.

2009 resolutions

last time i was at the grocery store i saw some sweet potatoes and i decided i wanted to try making some mashed sweet potatoes. i once tasted a dish from this soul food/ethiopian place in portland that i remembered really liking. it tasted almost like maple syrup mashed potatoes.

last night i made them, a little brown sugar and a tiny bit of syrup went into 4 giant mashed sweet potatoes with a little fake butter and some salt. it was okay but not great and a little weird. i made way too much and kristina didn't really like it so i decided that it would probably go bad and be thrown out but we went to a viewing of 2001: a space odyssey at this place called the doll house, which is just a house where some friends live who own a projector.

they were all pretty high so they ate it all up, they were also watching the 1998 x files movie instead of 2001 when we got there, but they changed that soon after. it was kind of boring but also kind of fun. i drank one shot of tequila and drank a miller high life which was kinda gross. but im not sure if it was gross because of my perception of that beverage or if it really is gross. i might have made up my mind about that beer when i read that it was a union made beer/champagne of beers. oh well!

my new years resolution this year is to pay off my credit card debt and save money for europe this summer. my credit card debt was up to 4300 but not it is down to 3800 and if i continue putting 200 dollars from every paycheck toward it as well as stop using it completely i will have it fully paid off by the end of the year. i feel this is a good goal because i have been doing it and i know i can continue to do it. the savings part is the same, i am putting 200 a paycheck into a savings account.

my other resolution is to be more adventurous and try to break my routine as much as possible. this will be very difficult but making that sweet mashed potato was a start and it will continue!