I Just Keep Buying Stuff (Recovered from LiveJournal)

Well, it's been a couple weeks so I suppose it's time once again to drop in another update.

This past weekend was strange, but come to think of it when was the last time I could claim a weekend was really normal? Saturday was a day of sleep for Autumn. She woke up at about 11:30, watched some television, and took a nap from 3-7:30. I don't know how she does it. If I acted that way, I'd have one large eternal headache. But for her it's relaxing, and she loves it, so more power to her. That night, we went to the movies, and saw The Core. What a stinky piece of dangling crap that thing was. I mean, we knew it was going to be bad... shit, anyone could draw that conclusion from the premise and the trailers alone. The core of the Earth has stopped rotating? Wow. I guess that was the disaster next in line after "Aliens destroy Earth's major cities", "Volcano destroys LA", "President fights terrorist captors aboard Air Force One", Meteors destroy Earth's major cities", etc... Wouldn't it be fun if every movie had to be set on the same planet, so that all these disaster films would have a big cumulative effect? That way, we'd get Stepmom set in the charred remains of New York, and While You Were Sleeping in... well, regular old Chicago, because Chicago never gets destroyed in the movies.

Why do I remember where those two movies were set?

So yeah, The Core was crap. Crappy, nutty, corny crap. It wasn't even halfway fun to watch and make fun of... the film actually took itself seriously.

Sunday we were up and out of the house by eleven, which is a weekend record. We hit the beach after spending fifteen minutes in the parking lot, searching for a space (and fighting tooth and nail for the spot we did get, as a soccer mom tried to scoot past us and steal it). Joe and Tom were planning to meet us there, and we'd all head out for fun on their jet skis, but they were nowhere to be found. Finally, about half an hour later, as we were preparing to head out, we spotted Joe out on the waves and found the towels containing Tom, Dos and one of Tom's girlfriends. I took Autumn out on Tom's ski, while Joe went solo on his, but Autumn didn't enjoy the experience. Especially after we fell off, taking a turn a little too tight. I dropped her off, and took off with Joe for a little bit before returning to the beach for a couple hours. It's a wildly different experience, piloting one of those things on the Gulf, as opposed to the small lake we used to ride in Michigan. I can't wait to go again.

Unfortunately, despite the mounds of sunblock Autumn and I applied, we neglected to cover my face, her legs or the backs of my calfs. Thus, I'm currently peeling layers of skin away throughout the day whenever I stop paying attention to my own actions. Autumn actually missed two days of work, as her feet swelled up and she could barely walk. You'd figure after two years in Florida, we'd know better than that.

I couldn't really afford one, but I bought a GameBoy Advance SP yesterday, along with the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I rationalized it to myself by claiming "I've got a long plane ride ahead" (actually about two hours in the air, and it's not until mid June), and "I'll be getting paid for this music folder freelance gig soon," which is true. Truth be told, I really can afford it, but I probably shouldn't have bought it all the same. Because, you know, fifteen hundred video games are probably enough for me. What a gimp I am.

My Mind's Gettin' Too Grown (Recovered from LiveJournal)

I'm a lazy bum. It's not like I haven't done anything noteworthy over the last six months, or however long it's been since I've kept this thing updated, more like I just don't bother sitting down and recording it all.. which is the reason for this thing even being here.

Work is still going along in spurts. I'll be insanely busy for a week and then work on flattening my ass for a week, working sporadically on my own web page. At the very least, that's one of the nicest things about this job; I get free ColdFusion hosting, and all the live files are right at my fingertips, if I ever
want to upload and/or edit them. Previously, I'd have to create the files, proof them, upload them through FTP, check them again, correct any errors, upload them again, repeat, etc.. now I can just edit them, save, and check them.

Not that any of these changes are all that visible. I'm doing a relatively good job of keeping my recent purchases up to date, and I just changed the intro paragraph on the site for the first time since the new design went live, but just about everything I'm working on isn't visible to regular visitors yet. I haven't come up with a navigation for the photo section, which is a large portion of the site. When I think about it, I should just get a few of the easier pages up first, but whenever I'm working on the page it's on the photo pages. I've had this idea for years about including a set number of related links with each page, and now it's starting to happen and I can't believe how much work it is. I think it'll improve the worth of the site tremendously once I've finished with it, but for right now I'm just spending the majority of my time looking for sites to include, whether they're stored in my mind or on Google.

I purchased a new car this past Saturday, a Honda Civic Hybrid. I'd been planning to do so for literally months, to the point where I'd researched the living hell out of it, made up my mind, and just needed a little push to make the whole thing happen. That push came in the form of an out-of-the-blue statement from Autumn; "Why don't we go get your car next Sunday?" So we spent the week getting my poor, poor '91 Grand Am into somewhat presentable shape, and then went to the Bradenton Honda dealership Saturday, to give us the leverage of possibly coming back or hitting the Sarasota branch the next day if things weren't looking good. Both stores are open the last Sunday of the month.

The new babyWent in there with a good idea of what I wanted to pay, the knowledge of what was fair, and a willingness to go through hell for this car. I think we surprised the salesman right out of the gates, because he told us there was no way we'd get a price near $19,000, and we wound up paying $19,400, with a guaranteed $400 for my pissy old Grand Am. Research really does help.

Unfortunately, we were so worn out after the four hours of haggling that we didn't notice the APR on our financing papers when we were signing the paperwork; 9.9%. Not quite what I was hoping for, so the next day I went out to the local Bank of America, where I've had a checking account since we moved down here, and applied for a new car loan. Half a day later, I got a call at the office; declined. Shite.

Later that same day, I had to head back to the dealership to deliver the Title for my old car, and our salesman, Brian, told me he'd done some legwork on his own and found us better financing through SunTrust at 6.9%, which was better than I would have gotten through Bank of America, even if I would've been approved. So the end result is we got the financing delimma worked out through sheer luck, and I miraculously wound up with a $20,000 credit line all by my lonesome. I don't know how that happened, but I'm not here to debate it. It's strange to realize you're growing up, and people are willing to give you large sums of money.

Autumn and I made the drive down to North Port Sunday night, to watch Wrestlemania at the home of Jeff and Kristina, two friends I worked with at Circuit City. There were several faces I hadn't seen in a while in that room, and it was cool to catch up.. I wish we had an excuse to hang out with those guys more often, since we're so sorely lacking of friends down here. I'm not sure how it came up, since I didn't hear it myself, but Autumn claims they got their house (which is quite nice) with no money down and regular payments of $700 a month. That got me thinking immediately about getting a home of our own, which is probably a mistake so soon after getting a new car. Then again, we're paying $725 a month in rent, and that's as good as throwing the cash away. I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I wouldn't mind moving to North Port for a place like that. Maintenance might suck, especially since I'm no fan of mowing the lawn, but I'd love to have a house of my very own. Maybe something to think about in the near future, when our lease runs up at the Colonnade.

I'm thinking like a grown-up. Somebody needs to put a stop to it.