I came home from work to find a $100. check from my father for Christmas. There was also a very nice card saying "I'm glad you're my daughter". I had received a rather thoughtful email from him right before I went to Detroit so maybe we were both just in a foul mood over the holidays last week.
The downside of this was that I received a bunch of stuff from the student loan people saying that I needed to start paying fifty dollars a month every month for the next three years, just for the one semester that I received loans. Ugh. There was a coupon book with payment forms for each month for the next three years. I saw my future illustrated before me, and this is just for one semester! The irony, of course, is I figured out the whole school thing while in Detroit and felt pretty damned good about it. I had decided to give it a shot and had an incredible sense of direction. Then I saw my life illustrated by payment coupons, knowing that if I don't go to school I could get a job where I'd make decent money and the fact that I don't know if I'd make any more money after five years of schooling than I do now.
How depressing.
And then there's my credit card debt which isn't much fun either. I owe way too much to way too many people and I don't even know how this happened. I'm relatively low on the whole borrowing totem pole, but even small amounts can get out of hand really fast. And then there's that whole expense of moving and every day living. Arrgh.
It seems that the world is full of institutions that want as much as they can get, that every system in our society is set up so that we need to borrow just to live, and when life gets a little bit fuzzy there's always some underpaid and underskilled paeon to hassle us on the telephones and tell us how we're deadbeats because we fell behind on paying off a system that is designed to have us fall behind, because the bulk of their money is made from late payments and interest.
Bah.
I don't understand why everyone hates telemarketers and market research people. They're just trying to make a living, and are fairly inocuous. All you have to do is say "take me off your list" and they will. Try that with creditors. No luck. They can call your home, your work, anything, just because the credit card payment is a few months behind. They'll outright lie to you to scare you into paying, and they're basically sadists that get off on hassling people who are already struggling. I'd rather a telemarketer than a creditor anyday.
Don't get me wrong. I am not hounded by creditors and in fact providian's creditors are afraid to call me now because I give them such a hard time. I read them the full on riot act and intimidate the hell out of them and I do it out of principle. If someone is going to lie to me or insult me to get money out of me, it won't work. The fact is, although I may get behind sometimes, I always catch up. Anyhow, their damned credit card company knew I was lousy with bills when they gave me the card. They have my credit history. So quit bugging me just because I'm paying my bill three weeks late.
I didn't mean for this to be a full blown rant, but it is. I guess the student loan thing upset me worse than I wanted to admit.
Christmas...
Christmas came and went. Hung out with Rob's family. I got a lot of money for Christmas, about a hundred and thirty dollars between the entire extended family. So, on the way back we stopped at Dick Blick's art supply store where I bought a hundred bucks worth of art supplies. Well, they had a acrylic paints for four bucks a pint, so I got a bunch of them, then a half gallon of black paint for eleven bucks. I also bought six canvasses and about eight brushes. All of this for a hundred dollars is not a bad deal at all.
Last night, we went to some friends' house, where we got stoned and played scrabble. Scrabble while stoned is a tough game and I got totally creamed. Well, I haven't gotten stoned since last summer and it's been about fifteen years since I played scrabble.
Anyhow, excuse me, but I need to get drunk and watch the Drew Carey show.