Bits

Just some random ideas, notes and other such things that have occupied my head over the course of the last few weeks:

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Between the rest of the earnest payment and estimated closing on our house, and the money owed for a truck to bring my Lovely Fiancee™ up here, I just spent close to $6000 this weekend.  

While that might not seem like a whole lot of money to some people (and let's be honest; if that doesn't sound like a whole lot of money to you, there is every possibility that I hate you just on general principle alone), and that cost might sound like a very standard amount to your average prospective home-buyer and mover, this is somewhere near a ludicrous amount of money to me.  I have never-- ever-- ponied up that sort of cabbage, let alone over a two-day span.  Hell, if I added up all my bills, it would probably take me a solid five months to come up to $6000.  When I bought Reno, new off the showroom floor, I only wrote a check for two thousand dollars, and even then it felt like having a sadistic dentist extracting a few teeth from me.

Without the benefit of good loopy drugs.

Using a pair of vise grips and auto-repair pliers.

And keeping me from fidgeting by attaching electrical clamps to my genitalia.

Really.

And what's the worst thing about it?  The fact that the four-thousand-plus-extras of the money on the house barely even scratches the surface.  In the grand scheme of things, I have officially dribbled a teaspoon of water into the rain barrel of what we will owe.  I haven't even managed to pay enough to fully constitute 5% on our house cost.  And since I got the money in the first place from my 401K, I have not only managed to barely ripple the water of our final house tally, but I've also managed to push back my retirement age to somewhere around 84.  Conservatively.    

Which coincides pretty nicely, actually, with when the house will finally be paid off.

Oh, and with all of that said, the thing that pissed me off most was having to spend $48 on windshield wipers for Reno because the store was out of the silver and gold series in Reno's size, leaving me with no choice but to buy the Platinum ones.  $48 for wipers?  Really?  Seriously?  Do they compose f**king sonnets while they're wiping bird shit off my windows?  Do they sing the chorale from Handel's Messiah while they're clearing road salt?

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We got information today at work about the possibilities that while in at work tomorrow, the weather may get really nasty.  Like, a foot of snow or an inch of ice (unilaterally, we would prefer snow, so in keeping with the idea that God Hates Me, we will doubtlessly get ice). In a not-quite-worst case scenario, we will lose power at our house.  Possibly for days.

In the worst case scenario, we will not lose power at work-- our work is in the medical field... so our building has been built to withstand oddities like Rain, Snow and the Wrath of a Wintry God Gone Berserk.  But there is always the possibility that the bad crap happens while we're here... which means, in such a case, a travel advisory could then blankets the county and we could end up stuck there at work. Warm (which is a plus) but without food, beds, or the ability to shower.

In other words, inside of two days we could become like the contestants in Survivor: Norway.

We could have to eat one another to survive.  Yes, I know there's a gas station a couple blocks away, but if we're under an emergency, who will let us in to raid the chip aisle?  Hell, who will be there to put the hot dogs on the rollers to heat them?

That alone should warn you how desperate this could become.  I could be stuck at here, at work, with only parental-guidance-blocked internet, and no heated meat entrees outside of the mystery stuff in the vending machines?  

Oh, hell with that.  I may just call in sick out of a sense of self-preservation.

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