Payday...

...otherwise known as "Sarah has to act like a grown-up for eight hours."

I've already paid off two bills, and it's not even 10am! Have I mentioned recently how much I love all the current variations on online and phone-based bill payment?

Hey, make that five bills. Go, me!

I'm not precisely in a good mood this morning, but I'm at least feeling energetic because this is one of the two days a month when I can directly do something about the financial stressors.

And I just discovered two old bills that I thought had balances that I'd already paid off -- very cool. I'm counting that as #6 and #7.

And paid off another old one -- That makes #8.

And I think that tops out what I can make happen this pay period. Still, that's keeping up with all utilities, paying off a ticket that had been stressing me out, and actually getting a bit of old junk taken care of. Nice to feel like we're catching up every once in a while. And it occurred to me when I was looking through my bill spreadsheets that I'll be done with one particularly onerous bill as of December (paying off a defaulted student loan; I set up a $157 payment/mo with them, and that's been eating a chunk of our income all year). Hey, I'm not feeling utterly hopeless about our finances; that's new and fun!

And I just sent out email about coming in late in the morning so I can stop by the optometrist's on the way in and get my new glasses fitted and all that jazz.

Becca got a callback about the Rock Hall job; it looks like she'll have an interview next week. If that comes through, and it's for as many hours as we think (32 a week), it'd be perfect; it's a job she'd like, and it'd provide enough income to almost remove our current financial stresses entirely -- we'd probably be able to catch up on most important stuff pretty damn quickly. I'm really pleased that she's been actively working on other options in the last few days, too. Hasn't found anyone hiring in our neighborhood yet, but she checked a good dozen places yesterday. And we talked last night about financial goals for the next ten months, and what it's going to take to make sure she's in good shape when I leave, and we've got agreement on all of that (a job or jobs that'd reasonably cover half the living expenses at our current place, and enough of a cushion saved that she could cover the entire rent for a month or so if necessary). Things got messy enough last winter that I've been stressing a decent amount about trying to make sure they don't end up there again this year, and it's a big relief to see that they don't seem to be going that direction at all at the moment, and we really seem to be on the same page.

Oh, odd random note. I happened to run across another link to one of those "determine the gender of the author" thingees yesterday. I popped my most recent journal entry into it, and it came up male. This kind of surprised me, since those usually tag me as female. I tested it a few more times with some other entries of mine. It seems that I write like a "male" when I'm depressed, and a "female" when I'm not, according to these. I think it's because my writing gets much terser when I'm down.

*buzzzzzzzz*

Maybe a Laffy Taffy Bar and a 24-oz coffee wasn't the best breakfast plan.

Damn, I'm shaky now. Jittery and mis-typing. It's kind of funny...

Article: Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids

Intentional misinformation always makes me angry.
Intentional misinformation campaigns that are going to kill millions in the interests of preserving a particular worldview? There aren't words...

Well, "genocidal pigfuckers" does kind of come to mind...

( Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids )

Link thanks to joedecker

Caught up, kind of, and a quitting smoking update.

I just cleared out all the outstanding comments in my email account. Some of you may have just received some very belated replies. Sorry for any confusion.

Oh, a few days ago firinel passed along this link: http://quitmeter.com

Here are the current stats (they're a bit different than what I sent to you, Fin, since I forgot to put in the right time of day for the beginning date):

Time Passed: 1 week, 2 days, 13 hours, 54 minutes
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 287 (actually 286, due to the cigarette I had on Sunday)
Money Saved: $32.29 (I smoked the gas-station brand cheapies in a state with relatively low sin taxes)

I'm actually still in the hole financially on the quitting effort, given the $90 startup costs on the Nicorette stuff and the $20 in random sucky-candies and such. But, the Nicorette is definitely helping, and I'm using it much more slowly than I expected (I'm still on my first set of 6 little cannisters, and there were 30 or 40 in the package -- it says not to use more than 6/day. I'm rarely even using an entire one, and that's doing fine). And it should only have been $45 is starting costs on that, except that my doctor prescribed me both the nasal drops and the inhaler accidentally, and I didn't realize until after I'd picked up and opened the scrips. Not a real problem, though, since Becca's made some noises about maybe trying to quit, so she can try both and see what she likes, and we can refill the scrip if we need to, but will probably have enough extra that we won't.

I generally don't like the nasal drops -- they burn like hell, and make me sneeze a lot, even when I'm really careful not to inhale them (you're supposed to drop the stuff on the mucous membrane inside the nose, but not sniffle -- ignore this at deadly peril to your sinuses. Ouch.) However, I've actually found that having a choice between the inhaler and the nasal drops is a bonus. I rarely puff on the inhaler long enough to get a particularly high dose of nicotine; it's mostly the action, the touch of nicotine, and the weird mouthfeel that curb the craving. If I'm seriously nic-fitting, I'll do the nasal drops instead of the inhaler, because it's a more substantial and faster dose. Seems to work reasonably well. And besides, then I'm all distracted by the sneezing and burning, and forget all about wanting a smoke.

I haven't actually gotten around to the knitting and exercising and such. Maybe I'll get it all sorted out this weekend. I keep forgetting to find knitting instructions online before I leave work -- I should go do that now -- ok, done and printed. And I need to go to Pet Supplies Plus tonight, which is next door to a craft store, so I can finally get some green yarn I like.

I bought an entire pack of CVS pens when I was getting ready to quit. It was a good use of a buck and some change; they're ideal for sucking on and chewing on, and having a dozen means that they're floating around at home, in my office, and in my bag. And having a wide variety of candies has been nice; when I get bored of one kind, there's something else floating around in my bag. The jawbreakers and the orange tic-tacs have been what I most commonly resort to, though. I'll most likely put on some weight with all this, but it's not something I'm particularly concerned about at the moment. I can shift ten or fifteen pounds without it making a difference in which of my clothes fit, and I doubt it would be more than that. I wish I could think of something long-lasting but not sweet, though. Eventually sugary just gets overwhelming. I want a celery-flavored hard candy.

Biggest challenge hasn't been anything situation-specific, it's been mood. When I'm feeling crappy and hopeless and depressed I also end up feeling hopeless about the whole quitting thing -- that I'll inevitably end up being a smoker again sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner, rather than fighting a pointless uphill battle that's just making my crappy mood worse. The jawbreakers from firinel and marnanel have helped immensely with motivation on that.

And I really want a nap right now. Errands tonight, though, before I can do so.

Silly TV...

So, I was thinking last night, between Smallville and Angel, about my particular guilty pleasures in television programming. It seems to me that there should be one genre description that covers all the shows I was thinking about, but I couldn't think of a pre-existing term for them. Anyone else?

Examples:
Smallville
Buffy
Angel
Charmed
Xena
Hercules
Tarzan
Sinbad (I'm almost certain there was one)
Cleopatra 2525

Now, I'm more fond of some of these than others, but there certainly seem to me to be birds of a feather. I got to thinking about it because I saw Charmed advertised as a "drama", and almost wet myself giggling. "Fantastic Camp" seems more apropos to me.

All of the above have:
some level of supernatural/superhuman involvement
over-the-top action sequences with a complete disregards for anything resembling physics
Often a strong and frequently self-referential comedic element, a very campy sensibility, and a sense that the writers are quite in on the joke (the disclaimers in Xena and Hercules come to mind).

They seem, overall, completely disconnected from other "dramas" on television; they feel more akin to live-action comic books of varying quality.

I'm just curious as to other folks opinions on this.

A smoking question...

In the encouragement department; those of you who used to smoke and managed to quit:

How long and how heavily did you smoke, and how long since you quit successfully? How many tries did it take?

(counting "successfully" as "since you were dependent on having cigarettes on a specific regular basis", not worrying about an occasional slip here and there since then)

To answer my own question -- 12 years, probably averaging to about a pack and a half a day, this is my third or fourth try, I think, and I'd say it's rather early to declare it "successful".