My sleep schedule was sort of f-ed up from the Tom plane incident on Monday so today I fell asleep watching American Idol. It’s no surprise that the teenage popsters would knock me out, but now it’s one thirty a.m. and I am wired for sound. Not good. My real mistake was that kitchen snack. It woke me up too much.

I’ve been trying to make small progress in lots of areas. The booth is doing well. I made a profit of two hundred bucks for February. Local friends, I’m only going to keep it open another two months so if you have stuff to sell best contact me asap.

My house is ridiculously clean since I steamed it Monday, carpets and couch. I cleaned out the garage and the basement today. I took in the dry cleaning. I did the errand running of post office, booth, unemployment office. Tomorrow I will do laundry and wash the car. I applied for several jobs online and snail mailed my resume to a few places.

I went to the wine and cheese place and talked with the owner – it was less an interview than an inquiry. There might be a job there for me if I can stomach the pride swallowing – what the hell, it’s a service economy after all.

I have pride issues. I don’t want to devalue my education by taking yet another underemployment position, which is why I haven’t snapped up the few jobs that have come my way – I’ve obviously been able to creatively maneuver my finances to give me this three month break – and after three years without a vacation to speak of – one week off a year – I think I’ve earned a break.

I balanced my checkbook and paid my credit cards. While I still have a lot of debt I am doing slightly better there than I thought I was. The utility situation is a little ugly. I changed the phone services and shaved off twenty bucks in monthly charges. I’m locked into contracts on the killable utilities, smart bastards on the contract front, so I’ll have DSL until June 30th and a cell phone until August 30th, but then you can say goodbye to them both. I made my break from cable last year and have been on the rabbit ears December 2003. We are on the simplify path.

I’ll have to set up a payment plan on that thousand-dollar gas bill (did I mention that they want to re-bill us at a higher rate from August on – can they do that – apparently they can). The gas folks are evil bastards. It seems like they are trying to force people into budget billing. My sister shut the gas off and got space heaters, she doesn’t want to give them another dime.

Ah, well – I’m getting sleepy again. Chow kids.