I'm a little airplane nyow...

I remember a time when the songs that got stuck in my head weren't intended for toddlers and preschoolers. I can't say that I don't mind it. Sesame Street is my new Buddha.

Things are looking up!

So, the past three months have been very difficult financially. With only one income, my wife and I have felt the weight of our monthly bills and due to late payments, our credit is taking some damage. However, because of our apparent difficulty, two of our creditors have offered solutions to help us out.

Chase bank, who owns my credit card debt, has offered a plan, which reduced my interest rate significantly and sets up a schedule to have my balance paid off in 5 years. Now, we're talking a reduction from a 30% interest rate to 2%. Yeah. And our payments will drop almost $150 a month.

The other is EdFinancial, who own my student loans. They have turned me onto a Unemployment Deference, which will defer my loan payments for 1 year, and the federal government will pay my interest. All I have to do is register with the Unemployment Commission, and fax them a letter of intent. So guess who's registered with the Virginia Unemployment Commission, and guess what I'll be doing tomorrow.

So once all the paperwork is done, our monthly bills will drop almost $350. That is so huge. We're also going to look at other monthly expenditures, and see what else we can dump.

The Target job fell through, which is upsetting because big box retail should be a slam dunk for someone like me, and I'm just not sure what's going wrong. Someone suggested Wal-Mart, but I feel like that's a step towards a bad end. The idea makes me feel dirty.

I'm heading back to the Friday night gaming table for the first time since October. I'm going to be super far behind as far as the story and everything that's been going on with D&D as a game, but I'm excited to be gaming twice a week again. We're starting Shadowrun up again Monday, and I'm excited about that too.

Does anyone want to buy a old style PSP, a few games, and several accessories for a reasonable price?

Ok, so once a week is more realistic...

So, I've got an interview at Target in about an hour and a half. I thought I did well at the Best Buy interview, but that fizzled out as if it never happened. I'm trying to stay optimistic, but constant dissapointment (in the world and in myself) is a tough storm to weather.

On the up-side, we've got a new gamer at the table. I'll have to wait to see what she names her character so I'll know what to call her here. We played Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, which I haven't played in some time and it went fairly well. Sven was fed to the crocodiles, and I eeked out a victory over Mal. She-who-has-not-yet-been-named didn't do well, but it was her first game out the standard Milton Bradley fare and she was just playing a little too safe.

Afterwords we talked about Shadowrun and I gave her my book to look at. We'll probably sit down before the next week and get her character made. Which is exciting. There's nothing like making a character with someone who's almost never gamed before.

As promised

So Calidax (I'm going to be using D&D character names for my friends instead of their real names when applicable) is in Illinois again this week. I remember him saying that he would be gone for only three weeks, but now I'm believing he said five. As it's been three weeks and he won't be back for another two. So there's no role-playing until he gets back because we're going to be getting back into Shadowrun.

So for the past three weeks we've been playing board games, which I am super-excited about as denoted here. The first week we played Arkham Horror, which is a very large game, but can feel simply overwhelming before coming to a anti-climactic end. For the past two weeks, we've been playing Puerto Rico, which is much lighter in size but still has plenty of strategy to keep everyone's attention.

My weekend went well and while I showered and such Saturday, I just let myself go entirely on Sunday. Didn't shower till today, and have imbibed nothing but Dr. Thunder since Friday. I watched movies and spent hours playing video games without a care in the world. I did miss my wife and daughter, but the weekend was a nice palette cleanser.

Still jobless. I'm having trouble securing even the menial of positions, so if anyone has an inside track on a position... any position... I'd like to hear from you.