Do you know that cigarettes cause increased heart rate, feelings of euphoria, and a calming effect on nerves? They’re not bad after unprotected casual sex with multiple partners either. – Dave Chappelle

So anyway. Life is good. But then again, life is bad. To me, you can split up life into a number of different “facets”. Each facet consists of a particular group of thoughts, feelings, and goals, focused on that subject. Subjects like work, school, home life, relationships, etc. Each person has a different set and number of facets. The interesting part is that these facets, when singled out, might contain positive, negative, or mixed feelings. Though in that particular facet you may be extremely happy, or extremely sad, this may or may not effect your wellbeing as a whole. For example, one of my “facets” would be “video games” or more appropriately, (being goal based) “video game completion”. Within this facet, I pour my excitement, frustration, and boredom, and turn those feelings into a tool to complete something. To each his own, right? Some people get angry and clean, cook, or whatever, and I play video games. Anyhow, in my “video game” facet, I have goals, and those goals are to beat games, and/or buy new ones. At this point in time I have about 6 unfinished video games in my library, and with the arrival of this new computer, I’ve neglected those “duties”. Now part of me wants to go back and finish those games, and one day I will, but it doesn’t effect my overall happiness as a person. I’m not pissed off, because I know that those games are meant as entertainment only, and it’s not like I get paid to play them. I’m sure you get my point.

If I had to sit down and split my life up into these facets, they would be: Work, Living Situation, Car, Relationships (friends), Relationships (Girlfriend), Video Games, and Life Goals. Now, for the sake of continuity, I will bore you with a further analysis.

Work: Work is good so far. I started working for Edge Development in early November, after quitting Pep Boys. I started at $10/hr. which isn’t too bad (better than the $7.50 I was making at PB), and the people I work with are pretty cool. Supposedly after 90 days we get a raise to $12/hr., and that would be groovy. The other possibility is going on a crew, making prevailing wage, which varies between $15 and $25 an hour. Great money, but hard work. Obviously this is getting me back into shape, and I definitely needed that. It pays the bills, but lately it really hasn’t been on account of all of the rain. In the past two weeks I’ve accumulated around 40 hours, so I’ll be getting half a pay check. Other than that, work is good.

Living Situation: My living situation sucks. I share a three bedroom (1 bath) house with 4 other people. How do we do it you ask? Well, I have my own room, my two friends shared a room (until the one hitched up and kicked him out), and a sister to one of them has her own room. To top it off, the ol’ lady has two kids that come in and out of the picture. Additionally, it’s in the middle of nowhere, (a couple of miles from most stores) there’s dirt everywhere, (I drive a honda and try to keep it clean) and we can’t get fucking DSL. Sweet Christ. It’s like a bad episode of Friends, where everyone’s been with everyone and talks behind each other’s backs, complete with swearing, nudity, drugs, alcohol, and backstabbing. But, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. The roomie that got kicked out of the room to sleep on the couch wants out, and so do I, so we’ll be moving within a month or two. Let’s hope my last shreds of sanity can hold on until then. Two thumbs down on the living situation.

Car: I drive a ’93 Honda Accord. It’s in pretty good shape body-wise, and motor-wise, but the tranny is on it’s way out, and she needs a brake job. Unfortunately, when I purchased the car, at the time I wanted a automatic. Now, I want a manual transmission, and I can’t really afford to buy another car. So the idea is to either save money, or trade this one in. Either way I’m taking my gauges and system out before the deal goes through. Also, either way, I’m buying rims with my tax return this year. So I’m pretty unsure about things with my car.

Friends: I’m pretty up in the air about my friends. Some friends stay with you forever, true to the end. Others seem to come in and out of your life when it benefits them. Still others weren’t really friends to begin with. The tricky part is figuring out which friend is which. I can honestly say that I only have a few true friends. They know who they are. There are a few of my friends who will all remain nameless for the time being, whom I really can’t stand. I’ll put on a happy face and be civil, but when they leave all I can think is “good riddance”. Friendship is such a hard thing for so many people to understand. Some figure if it fits within their “sphere of what’s right and wrong”, then it fits in everyone’s sphere. This of course, is not true. They’ll do what they think is ok in your house, and you’ll end up kicking their ass. It’s cause and effect at it’s best. I could go on, but I’ll spare you more ranting. In the friends category, I’m 50/50.

Girlfriend: I have absolutely no complaints.

Life Goals: I do have some long term goals, aside from moving out and getting a new car. These I would consider life goals. “What you want to do when you grow up”, and all that bullshit. Personally, I want to be a writer. I just don’t know what I want to write, hence the e/n webpage. I also have a retirement plan that I would like to begin implementing within the next 5 years. This would be to buy a house, own it outright, then start finance on a new one, and rent the first out to pay the current mortgage, and so on and soforth. Those are the only two I can think of for the time being. Obviously I haven’t really done anything to improve my quality of life in the furture, so I’m unhappy about this facet. But, does it really bother me? No. I’m in the mindset of living for today.

With that my friends, I’m going to say goodbye for now. I had my rant for the day. As far as content goes, I’m going to be writing a few essays soon, and I also started working on the history page, so check back later for news on that. Pasta.

I’m back. Nearly a whole day off will do things to you. I’ve sat at home on the computer almost all day, and I’m dying from lack of human contact. No one was home all day, so I had to make due. It’s strange how out of the loop you can feel when you don’t have to go to work. Usually you miss work because you are sick, or because you have something important to do, or in the rare instance, simply to play “hookie”. Then there are the days when you show up to work, and the “game is called due to rain”. Fucking sucks. I could have made $80 today. Instead, I made $30. I’m making lots of headway towards getting my own place. I’ll make even more with the whopping $300 I make on this check. Just when I got used to making more money, something gay like this happens, and I’m stuck with the shitty wage I had before. Oh well. I’ll get by.

In my surfing today, I found a few interesting tidbits, and added some links appropriately. First, I visited a page called Edge (not the Edge I work for). It’s a very intellectual site dedicated to the world’s most brilliant minds, and is also home of the “Edge Annual Question”. I plan to tackle this year’s question in an essay. Anyhow, that has been added. Also, a link to Maxthon, which is a new (well at least to me) browser, much like mozilla. Fully customizable and all that. I just love browsers that use the “tab” feature. Other than that, I just fucked around with the links, and changed the link color. I was told it’s too dark. That’s about all. But hell, no one is reading this anyway. When you get ready to leave, check out the AFI webpage. They did a cover of the Nine Inch Nails’ song “Head Like A Hole”. It’s good shit.