Got dressed, checked email and RSS feeds, and waited. Sure enough, eventually the right page came through. I hopped in my truck with my camera and headed down (would’ve liked to ride the scooter due to the distance, but it was drizzling). Went everywhere I could think of where it was safe to do so and shot all sorts of pictures. Growing bored, I hung out with Annville’s fire police captain at the rehab tent, where we discussed the fact that an awful lot of tankers have been rolling over lately.

Aaaanyway… we happened to be right next to a wire fence. Nobody really paid any attention to it, myself included, as it’s just a fence, and it’s not like it’d be comfortable to lean against or anything. Well, in my moseying around, drinking my water, watching them prepare to foam down the truck, I apparently got a little too close.

Let’s just say, I’m glad I was wearing my jacket. It probably would have hurt a lot more on bare skin, and probably would have burned me too, for that matter. Since it didn’t even send me to the ground, I briefly considered trying it again, just for kicks, but decided not to press my luck

I drained my emergency fund, all $600 of it, to hope and pray I can take care of things. I’ve still got to pay my rent, a $24 electric bill, $20 to the collections agency, and the other day I got a nice fat $75 bill from Comcast. Apparently I didn’t pay up last month, hence the size of it. My records corroborate this, which makes me wonder if I ever got the bill in the first place, or if it was just lost in the mess.

I also got a letter from Capital One apologizing for screwing up my payment. Why a check for the amount couldn’t be included at the same time, I do not know. But whatever. Maybe it came in the mail today and I just don’t know it because for some reason the post office was locked.

The rebate is still in limbo, but I believe I’ve figured out why. In actually reading the statements accompanying the much publicized rebate schedule, it only applied for those who filed early enough for their taxes to be processed by April 15th. My tax return was processed April 28th, if you want to judge it by the date they cashed the check.

My next pay will be on the 16th, for a relatively meager but lately pretty good $400 or so. This whole working 12-14 hours a couple days in a row (my first taste of which was this weekend) blows. As if we didn’t see that reaction coming. If I think it’s bad now, though… every week will be another day added on. The search for a new job has been unsuccessful. One option I’m considering is becoming an electrician apprentice. I’m not so sure about that, though, particularly due to the fact that it takes a few years (up to 4 or 5) to get through it, and because I’d feel like I’m in school, and we all know that never works out well.

Right now I just want to find something suitable that I won’t be sick of in a matter of months, so I can get out of the park and not have to work myself to death whilst having no life. It’s already killing my feet worse than ever before. *flashback* The weekend before last, I broke a toe acting like a jackass and/or monkey. The middle toe on my right foot, if you really wish to know. It’s fine now, bruising’s gone with the exception of one spot under the nail. On Saturday, walking around the park all day pretending to be a manager it was fine (and a beautiful day, at that). Until about 8 hours into the day, mister toe didn’t want to do any more walking, and all at once, mid-stride, started hurting like a fiend again. The rest of the day, my left foot was killing me from all the limping I was doing, until eventually I didn’t have to limp anymore and now both feet hurt. Sunday, which required minimal walking but plenty of standing in one spot, was no better. Getting ready for work, I could hardly walk around the apartment, my ankles felt exhausted and didn’t want to allow my feet to work right. Standing in the stand all day, at one point my right heel just started throbbing for no reason. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. And I swear, my heels are reshaping themselves to conform to the shape of my boots. I’ve always had problems with my feet and knees, but this weekend makes it seem like we’re going to be taking it to a whole new level, and I’m not looking forward to it.

And no, a new pair of shoes is not the answer. These boots are the most comfortable footwear I have, as proven in the warehouse, where they suited me just fine. All I have to be able to do is sit down every once in a while… not once or twice throughout the whole freaking day. That’s why I almost busted up laughing in my dispatcher interview last year when I was asked if I’m able to sit for long periods of time. All the more reason I need to get out of the park and find a new job as soon as possible.

P.S. I missed half a day of work on Friday to go to a school fair with the girlfriend. She asked me if I remembered how lame it was. My answer? No, I never came to it when I was here because I knew it was lame. She’s got some pretty interesting friends, though, including one who is practically a mirror image of someone I knew a long time ago. Which kind of freaked me out. I was bored out of my mind, but just happy to be spending time with her.

Also, I just noticed something. In editing my About This Blog page, my Capital One balance was only $1700 when I decided it was high time to get out of debt. So why the hell is it $7000 now!?

Aaaaanyway… here’s the deal. We were supposed to hang out tonight, but I it was too late, apparently. However, she did ask what I was doing Thursday (nothing). Why? Eeep! Dinner at her place to meet her parents!

Okay, let’s review (though it’s not really a review, as you guys didn’t know)… I’m 21, she’s 16 (but hey, she’ll be 17 next month!). I’m a college dropout (x2), she’s still in high school.

Okay, not much more to review than that, but whatever. And yeah, that was the first thing I asked her, was if they know how old I am (so they don’t shit themselves at the dinner table when they ask me). The problem is, this is the first time I’ve really done this. Every other girl I dated long enough to bother meeting her parents, it was done very casually, in the course of going over to her house usually. Talk about nerve racking. And it’s still 4 days away Imagine what my nerves will be like on Thusday…. sheesh. This is gonna be a real trip, let me tell you what.

The Good

• Extra $217 payment is being reversed.

The Bad

• It’ll take them 5-10 days to process it and send it out, and them supposedly another 10 days for it to get from them to me… which doesn’t make much sense, but whatever. Thought the postal service was better than that.

The Good

• Interest rate lowered from 17.8% to 14.9%. And why not? I’m a very profitable customer, after all.

The Bad

• It’s a 2 month “introductory” rate, after which it will be based on Libor + whatever, at which it will still be 14.9%, BUT after the 2 months, my cash rate will be 5 points higher than my purchases rate, rather than being the same as they are now. I’m still benefiting in the end, however, as my cash balance is $410 vs purchases balance of $6700 or so.

And, of course, that cash balance will stay there until I pay off the purchases first… naturally. At the best I can figure, though, about $20 more of my (minimum) payment will be going towards the principal instead of interest. Or, rather, I’ll be paying about $20 less interest every month (at current balance).

In any case, I still haven’t made my $165 loan payment this month, my $20 (though I’d like to keep paying $60 as I have been) AES bill is due May 2, I have a $20.50 bill here from the collection agency for back taxes due May 14th, and my rent at the end of the month. And, oh yeah, $500 for rent at the end of the month (ugh). I’m also expecting roughly $200 on May 2, maybe another $150 that same day, as well as my $300 “rebate” from the gov on that same day.

Let’s add all that up. $650 in, $745 out. I might be able to swing it. It’ll still likely involve dipping into the fund. I’m then expecting another $1100 or so during the month of May, which will be cutting it close, but I guess we’ll see how things work out, won’t we?

P.S. Time to organize. My desk is a slew of cash, empty envelopes, pay stubs, bills, and receipts. A dollar for a pack of push pins to post my bills on the wall next to my desk ought to help. To not lose them, that is, like I did with my last AES bill.

Bastards. Now I sure as heck have no way of getting by this month.

Sometimes I wonder why I even try. Seriously, what’s the point?

I also just updated all my debit card transactions through ClearCheckBook, and was surprised at how much spending I’ve been doing lately. Nothing big, but many small, and pretty typical (you know, beer, gas, and smokes). All said and done, I have a whopping $39.38 in my checking account (but they don’t know that… yet).

The emergency fund currently stands at $587.18. Not too shabby, I know, but not where I want it to be (that’s a month of rent!), and certainly not where it should be right now. I currently owe it $285.20, which means I should be standing at $872.38 (damn close to my goal). I had already planned on my rebate check going straight into the emergency fund, but now this begs another question: I owe it nearly $300, and my rebate check is $300, so… should I just pay off that debt with the check, or make it in addition to that debt?

Remember when I said earlier that this month was going to be really tough? Yeah, well, the two days of work I missed last week are going to kill this week’s paycheck, and I already missed two days this week (if you’re wondering why, it’s because I really, really, really, really, really hate that job, coupled with the fact that I know it’s not like I’m going to be fired or anything - probably won’t even get written up - first job I’ve ever had where you can pretty much screw up as much as you want without getting fired, which only serves to make employees not give a shit even more because they know nothing will happen… myself included, which is pretty sad, and not the way I wanted it to go, but oh well. It took enough effort on my part not to write a resignation letter completely berating upper management for being worthless sacks of crap). I am getting paid Friday from working at the park, but I don’t expect that to be too terribly much, little over $100 maybe. Granted, it helps, but not nearly enough.

All in all, I’m currently $1800 further in debt right now than I was at the beginning of the year (not including the scooter), I’m definitely going to have to dip into the emergency fund to make my payments this month, and all of next month will probably be spent catching up for this month. Which reminds me, I need to calculate an estimated take-home pay for next month’s work. Ah well… learn it, love it, right?

For just these purposes, I put my direct deposit info on my tax return anyway. If it works out the way I want it to, I’ll have an extra $300 in my checking account on May 2nd, rather than 2 weeks later on the 16th. But I can’t very well plan on getting this extra money if I don’t know when it’s coming, right?

Some simple investigative work on the IRS website solves this problem:

Be sure to choose direct deposit when you file your tax return, even if you aren’t due a regular tax refund on your tax return. That way, the stimulus payment will go right to your bank account.

Yay! I so smart.

The damage? $29.63 local, $26.77 federal (thanks to the one employer who refused to acknowledge my fake exempt status, and another who ignored it for a while), and…

*drumroll*

One thin cent in state taxes. Darn mathematical rounding. Know what I did? Forget wasting a check on that… I threw into the envelope exactly that - one thin cent (you know, the official name of what we usually call a penny). Screw’em. If they don’t like it, too friggin bad.

Of course, my mistake in all this is those fun little things called deductions. If I would have actually kept track of the probably hundreds of dollars in gas I used as a fire police officer (and other fire dept activities), I’d be in a good place. Okay, no, I’d still be stuck here in Jonestown, but whatever. I know I tried to do it some time last year, it just didn’t work out. I couldn’t find an organized way to do it, and wasn’t sure what all information I had to log to make sure I wouldn’t have any problems. In short, it was a mess, and I gave up. I also seem to always have an incredibly difficult time finding some examples online.

So, anybody have any ideas? Anyone here deduct fuel expenses, and could show me their logs?

P.S. Jake is in a relationship for the first time in ages Bout time! Let’s hope it lasts.