Money (insert opening bars of Pink Floyd song here)

I just realized this is the first full week of work that I've worked since Easter. I don't like it any better now than I did then. And while I was bored and restless for that month here in San Diego, waiting around in my apartment for something to happen, it was infinitely preferable to being bored and restless in an office. Then again, it was the same feeling I had in New York before the road trip, just waiting around for something to happen. Lesson: something should always be happening. And not in the "I need you to schedule nine meetings for me with these 12 people" kind of way. Lesson: quit whining about it and make something happen.

That being said, my financial situation is nigh untenable at this point. Thanks to the trip, I've recouped all the debt I managed to pay off earlier this year. What I'm making as a temp now is better than nothing, but it's not enough per month to pay all my bills, and I'm not including food, transportation, or electricity in that. But now I'm just really, really tired of having to work bullshit jobs to pay my creditors. I want to be able to take a $12-an-hour job in a kitchen if I want, or to hit the road for a few days, or to be able to save money toward a house, or whatever. And John has debt, too, so I think we will need to come up with a game plan to tackle all this and get it wiped out as soon as possible. I'm not too proud to reuse Ziploc bags and make my own dishwasher detergent in the meantime, and I'm no longer interested in spending a lot of money on clothes and shoes (that's the good thing about California being so uber-casual; I no longer feel the need to continuously update my wardrobe the way I did in New York. Hell, I wear clean pajamas to the grocery store, I'm doing better than half the people there already), and I already know how to make delicious rice-and-bean variations, so hopefully it will just be a matter of carving out the game plan and implementing it.

Speaking of ways to cut back, I have discovered that San Diego has Zipcar. O happy day! I can walk or take public transportation to work, and then use Zipcar for my occasional errand-running/going out needs, completely eliminating any need for owning a car. Now, one day I'd like to get my A3 back; but even if I had a car (and the money to support it), I think I'd still want to walk or take the bus to work. I'm not a patient person, and traffic makes me want to shoot people. I don't need to deal with rush-hour traffic every day, I'd blow a gasket. At least on the bus I can read and ignore it. Plus it's cheaper.

I did break down and buy a new watch. I lost my old one, the one I'd had for ten years, somewhere in the Vancouver hostel. I've been without one ever since, and while for the most part I did fine without it, I did miss it. My arm always felt a little naked. Now it doesn't anymore.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of fiscal responsibility, I priced out Christmas plane tickets from San Diego to St. Louis to DC and back to San Diego again. The cheapest I could find was $600 apiece, with about nine different connections. So, fine, but $600 x three people = too much. The crappy-ass airlines don't need any of my hard-earned money, thankyouverymuch. But get this--it's actually cheaper to rent a car and drive three people cross-country and back again, even with gas prices being what they are, than it would be to fly during Christmas. What's that all about?