So this is it--tomorrow I'm out of here for good!  Recently, I've been shocked because the parents activated a credit card to help me get stuff.  And at Target, they even picked up a "going away present"--Batman Begins, the one Batman flick I don't have.  What's ironic, however, is that the card provider locked their card because it was recently activated and a large purchase was going to be made on it.  What's equally ironic is that, in the end, I ended up purchasing my own going away present...because what's more ironic is that I expected to have to gradually get a bunch of stuff slowly.  No, instead I just end up with a $500 credit card purchase at Target.  Tack rent and my phone bill on...wow, a thousand dollars of credit card debt!  Then again, I had jack shit.  Except for my twenty-three boxes of books.  I just can't wait to get my student loans and use a loan to pay off debt.  This sounds like a slippery slope.  At least the parents say that they'll "give me some money" to help out.  I don't know why that's in quotes.

But hey, I now have a communist crock pot (it's red!  RED!  Like Chairman Mao!) and an adult beverage shaker that has this rotating cup with slits in it--and you line up this arrow with the name of a beverage and it shows you all of the ingredients you'll need.  So when any of you fine ladies visit, there can be adult beverages.  I could even make a vodka martini, shaken--not stirred--and watch James Bond until I realize that I get bored watching things by myself.  Then I'll take something off the shelves and read for a spell.

I thought of valindamar the other day when I was playing tunnel rat in the attic.  Why?  Well, there's a Gambit action figure up there!  That was about the time that I got attacked by a crate of National Geographics and hit my head against the roof braces.  Ouchies.

I still need to find my copy of Detective Comics #700.  The cover has Batman with a sword on the front.  Mint condition.  How cool is that?  But the damn thing grows legs every time I'm looking for it.  And KitCat might have to go to the emergency room--she apparently mucked up her knee today at band practice, but she's being a trooper and sticking it out.

Goodbye, Hellwood and cramped living conditions!  Hello, Lewisburg and the Garret!

I'm subtly exerting my influence.  I've finagled an eye appointment for Thursday morning at 11, so I should (knock on wood) have new eyes before the venture to readingirl's abode.  And this is actually good timing for the eyes, too.  I've noticed that, with my bass guitarist glasses on, things up close (i.e. words) appear a lot smaller than they really are.  I'll have to ask the optometrist-type person what that means.  Hopefully it means I can get back to being mistaken for an English professor.

But I'll see how far I can push things and see how else I can get my parents to bend.  <waves hand in a circle>  You will purchase these items for the Red Mage....

Speaking of guitarists with funky glasses, I had a dream where I was in a rock band with Dr. Black Jeans.  Really, that's all.  No need to take it any further than that.

In other news, I really need to get to a computer more than once a week.  It would be nice to actually see the news every now and again.  Just a little.

Also, I miss all of my girls a lot.  Seriously.

A terrible thing has happened.  Tragic, woeful, unexpected.  No, I'm not talking about retiring from the knife-selling gig (which, by the way, I did!).  No, it's far worse than finding myself suddenly and pleasantly unemployed.

I...(this is hard to admit, after years of making fun of this group)...I like a Coldplay album.


But friends--any miracles/conversions in your lives as of late?  Please, feel free to share.  I hope that I'm not the only one with such a...bizarre life as of late.

I have returned to using my old laptop for accessing the internets.  The IBM Thinkpad 380XD--the first Lappy--she's the pinnacle of technology, the wave of the future.  With an awe-inspiring four gigabyte harddrive, 256 MB of ram, a Pentium II processor, a battery life of one half of ten minutes, the ol' girl (she was born in 1995) weighs in at an allegedly portable ten pounds.  Seriously, 380XD is awesome--and she converted to Linux a few years ago (read as:  I no longer need to play around in DOS to solve her problems), and she still starts up faster than my parents' computer.  Also, using 380XD prevents my parents from stealing my good laptop for their evil purposes.  Yes--my parents pilfer my computer when theirs isn't working.  So I'll hide it and use a computer they won't understand.

But that's not the point of this post.  The point is...I'm getting there.

I spoke to chiara_suzuka on the phone today, and she said that I had to post this story for your reading pleasure, dear readers.  I drove around Blair County today to drop off applications and such at a few local papers--the Altoona Mirror and the Tyrone Daily Herald.  Altoona was the second trip and happened without a hitch.  Tyrone...now that was special.

I was dressed like...well, a college English professor.  Brown shoes, brown herringbone twill pants, blue shirt and tie, jacket...if you stuck a bow tie and my brown fedora on me, I would've looked like Indy rushing to teach class.  I dropped off the application and such inside the building--so I was gone for all of five minutes.  I come outside and find that this Tyrone streetrat is trying to pilfer my bloody hubcap.  So I yell at him and wave my arms in the air.  Who would've thought that tweed could be so terrifying?  Not me.  But it sounds like something out of an Indy Jones flick, and that almost makes me feel cool.

Also, some outstanding things I've been meaning to say:
1.) Glenndolyn got me a graduation present--a bottle of port.  Watch out, nikeshizu, it's from Portugal.
2.) The other day my high school English teacher saw me when I was picking up Cat--I was wearing a fedora, and Mrs. J. called me Indiana.  I responded without missing a beat.  Maybe it means I'm the one true heir to Indy's kingdom of cool.  As long as I don't have to inadvertently spawn Shia LaBeouf in the process, I think I'd be cool with that.
3.) Because I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that my existence in Bellwood is nugatory and worthless, I'm taking up pointless quests as a hobby.  Last night I searched all of the local thrift stores for bow ties and found nothing.  But I can't search for nothing in Blair County--because I would find a lot of it.

Hmm...it seems to be pseudo-raining, so it doesn't look like I'll be able to do my two-three hours of walking this evening (it's becoming a prerequisite for acquiring a meager amount of sleep.  probably not a good thing).  Maybe I'll go mallrat, since I've got a full tank of gas and nothing to do with it.

I'm trying to do better out here.  Right now, I feel largely unappreciated.  So it goes, I suppose.  Now to go mallratting.

So yesterday, after a delightful little pizza lunch and a happy-birthday-to-readingirl screening of Batman, the parents came up to turn my room into a white space slightly reminiscent of a psychiatric ward, except without the padding.  Lots of white, though.  During the course of packing up Marsha's SUV (named "Shadowfax," after Gandalf's horse--we're all a bunch of dorks) and Al, the Deathtrap Skylark of the Apocalypse, I think that Beardilocks the Viking was trying to knock me off.  It all started when I joked, "Hey!  In a few months we get to move my twenty boxes of books again!"  Then the beatings commenced.  He kicked the doorstop out every time we left the room.  He shut a door in my face.  He smashed my knuckles between a bookshelf and my bike when loading the Marshamobile.  Back at Bellwood, he hit me in the crotch with the bike, and then he knocked a sixteen ounce can of tomatoes onto my wrist, which is somehow not bruised.