Well, today is my birthday, and at the last minute, all my Allen Hall
friends managed to pop over to the house for a big ol' Taco party. I think
Scott, one of my roommates, was a bit perturbed by the sudden onslaught of
people, but after proving themselves to be a mostly harmless bunch of geeks
who then proceeded to watch a movie titled something like Cane Frogs: an
Unnatural History
, I think he was put far more at ease.
I bought a bunch of food, invited a bunch of people, and the rest kinda
took care of itself. I tried to be helpful and unobtrusive to the numerous
womenfolk who busied themselves in the kitchen preparing our feast, and made
sure the place was clean afterwards, and tried to graciously accept greetings
of Happy Birthday
, which I still don't know how to respond to too well.
My usual inclination is to wish them a Happy Birthday right back, but you
wouldn't be surprised at the confusion this tends to inspire.
Anyhow, my plan for last week was kinda disrupted by the Beetle's final decision not to put up with it's Engine Oil leak problem, which as far as I can tell, had been bringing slush into the oil system. Setting out for Urbana in freezing weather, it decided that it'd sooner just stay at the Amoco station. Uncle John has since ferried me down twice in mom's minivan, which is a lot of fun to come to Urbana in because of its fuel efficiency and its ability to travel at a pretty high speed safely. Still, I miss the Beetle, which if he has not done so already, Uncle will be taking to a place that Bill the Mover recommended in Evanston called Rolf's.
My Secret EnterSanta gave me a black-light sensitive, trippy-looking Beetle candle for Christmas. I set it alight at the party and it's on my desk right now, burning in vigil for my comrade, I like to think.
I've also to replace my Palm Pilot, which is still broken from the Spring. It is all the more useful during the semester though, with numerous contacts and a shifting schedule to track.
Today I also did balance the old checkbook. I'm using this rather overgrown Perl script called cbb, and it generates nicely-formatted reports. Here's what it sums up for me, for last year:
Total Monthly Average Income = 2652.46
Total Monthly Average Expenses = 2231.86
Total Credits = 23872.14
Total Debits = -20086.72
Balance = 3785.42
Not bad eh? Three and a half thousand dollars is about what I have available in savings to make it through the semester, never mind extra income from working. It's a good thing, I believe.
5 January
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