Jake’s Life

The other night my landlord called me at work and let me know that he is going to be renting the house to a family instead of more individual roommates and gave me thirty days notice. While I can understand, this doesn’t leave me much time. Thirty days has never been enough time for me, simply because I am the kind of person who would rather plan ahead for something and take it in stages instead of all at once.

So far I have looked at one house, met with another potential roommate, and sent dozens of e-mails on Craigslist. The cat is a big turn off, so I’m having to combat that. Anyway, one house I looked at was a nice house, but one room smelled like it had been smoked in for twenty years, the roommates seemed very stand-offish, the owner slimy, but the room was nice. The street was dark, the nicest car on the block was a mid-90’s Eclipse with iced out taillights. That place is out.

I had lunch with a potential roommate, and there’s a story to this one. She’s really nice, but while waiting for her I was doing some calculatin’ and realized that even penny pinching I wouldn’t be able to afford living with her, even though the area is spot on where I am looking. I called her and let her know but she still wanted to meet Sandro and I. I want to be up front and say that she seems like a great roommate. Her personality though is, and I hate to say it, too uppity for me. She’s very happy and bubbly, and I don’t know if I could handle that daily. She told me that she has a great feeling about me, loves the gay thing, loves the career field thing, and isn’t worried about money. While many people would jump at the chance for that, it makes me very uncomfortable. It’s hard for me to accept money from people in my life, let alone a stranger and for months. She said that as long as I paid close the amount that she can cover the rest, because God put me in her life for a reason.

In between looking for a new home, I’ve been posting CL ads to sell a lot of stuff my roommates have left behind: Queen and full size futons, desks, tables, TVs, a camper shell, book shelves, and some other stuff.

Having just left college about a month ago I seem to now be fining several blogs and sites focused on student productivity. While I still enjoy reading them, I wanted to publish them in hopes some of my readers ca benefit from them.

• Taking notes that work at Lifehack.org
• 4 Ways to use Wikipedia (without citing it) at Gearfire
• Don’t you dare…in a formal paper by That College Kid
• The burnt toast method (for helping hangovers) at Hack College
• Possibly the Best Way to Increase your Idea Output by Gearfire

Say what you want, but it’s true. I can admit it.

Last year’s storms were bad: 100+ MPH winds, floods, downed power lines and trees, whole sections of the city closed to any traffic at all, and over 200,000 homes without power. It looks like this year won’t be much better. My basement’s already flooded. This is Interstate 5, the main freeway that runs from California to Canada.

This is from what was taken blocks from my house:

And this is the lovely area I work in:

It all kinda looks the same, doesn’t it?

I have to admit, I’m a fan. Good fancy driving music.

And here’s one for the Bo Jangles.

Stephen over at Inside Stephen recently admitted that he has been doing some reflection on his position lately, and so has Closet NS. I have to say that I have been too, and without their posts being catalysts. I am looking at two things, which are related in many aspects, and a third that is always looming over my head.

Finances. While the Holiday Season overtime is nice and certainly helps any time of the year I hate having to take away from sleep or my time with Sandro to be able to save money or just have enough to get by. With student payments looming over my head on top of other bills I’m going to be heading into rough times in the coming months.

Last year I was in a similar spot and looked at my monthly income. I owned my car, paid very little insurance, downgraded my cell phone plan, got rid of my storage unit, and took care of some other things to bring monthly expenses down. This year I’m looking again, and have financed a brand new car, pay twice the amount for insurance, will now have to pay student loans (an extra $138 per month), as well as having my rent raised. I also need new work boots and contact lenses. All of my current bills are mainly based on need or obligation and therefore cant be realistically eliminated.

What I have done is look at my daily spending: Starbucks twice a day on work days means $132 per month, on top of my stops at fast food and convenience stores while at work. That’s my loan payment right there and then some. I’ve also canceled a few…ahem, web site subscriptions…which should add about $40 per month.

Work. Travel to and from is perfect (a take home car would be better though!), and despite the previous work issues I’ve had the atmosphere is fine now.With my shiny new degree I would also like to be able to tap into more of my potential and continue upwards. Its the money that is killing me, though. Which leads me to my third item.

Fitness. I’ve covered it before but not recently, and that’s my issue! I need to test for a better job, but the physical area is the worst for me in the testing process, specifically core strength and pushups. Yeah the test isn’t that many but for me it seems very daunting. There’s really only one way to combat that though!

A friend of mine, the ‘tard from the Cheese Factory post, has been battling with his overly gay roommate lately. You know, jumping on the couch screaming if he sees a stuffed rat cat toy, screaming over his toilet overflowing, an industrial douche attached to his shower, etc. So, I have to share this…it was a great way to wake up.

	Voicemail You’ll Love Share this …

A friend sent me this picture of his tour to the cheese factory a few weeks ago. Okay, they make ice cream too but he was miffed that they weren’t sampling any. Anyway, here it is.

Now, I have to call into play another story he told me from high school. Evidently a few days a week he wasn’t able to take the traditional school bus to school, so his mom came up with the ingenious idea to schedule rides with the county short bus. You know, the one with the wheelchair lift that you drive past and people are making funny faces out of. That’s right, he pretended that he was retarded a few days a week in order to get this ride to school. The visuals he gave during the story can’t be shown here, but they made the story.

Anyway, in my mind the tour mimicked that story in a way, and all I imagined was Cartman going to the Special Olympics, and laughed my ass off for about two days straight.

Today when Sandro left he looked outside and said, “The snow’s almost here.” About two minutes after he left my driveway it was.