Blood, Milk and Sky
"Her name is Renee. If she told you her name was Alice, she was lying. And your name... WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR NAME?"
My thoughts have been very random and disjointed lately. The past, present and future all seem to be blurring together. For some reason, my normally hazy and fragmented memory is coming into sharp focus and so many things that I've forgotten over the years are suddenly rushing back into me. I'm thinking so many things at once that I can't focus on anything. It's really quite agitating. I'm apparently getting so disturbed that other people are noticing. People at work keep asking me if I'm "okay." I just tell them I'm tired. Which is true. I've been staying up rather late every night. I don't want to risk going to be and being awake enough to think. I can usually distract myself long enough in the evenings to stay sane. It's just the dead times at work and the silence of the night where I can feel the madness eating away at my mind. No, sometimes it happens during the day. I keep seeing things. Glimpses of my past. I find myself turning to say something to people who aren't beside me and never will be again. I find myself dwelling on friends forever lost. I don't even know why I care. I don't want to care. But I do.
Ironically enough, I actually ran into someone from waaaaaaaaaaaay back today. Furlong and I went to get a pizza at Hellam. Mind you, Hellam already is for a me a place of ancient memories. Hellam is the land of Boy Scouts and the land of Sunshine. My crazy cousin lived in Hellam. My grandmother still lives in Hellam. Anyway, as Furlong and I we walking down the sidewalk, some girl with an annoying dog says, "Hello, stranger." Confused, I give her a smile and walk on. As we enter the pizza shop, Furlong asks, "Who was that?" "I don't know..." "Was it... Frogfruit???" "Nahhhh..." So we ponder it for a while and can draw no conclusions. Leaving the pizza shop, I see her again. She's talking to the dog and... yes... the voice DOES sound familiar. And then I looked at the face. Yes. Yes. Now I know. It was... Buzz Buzz Girl. Buzz Buzz Girl was this girl I dated for two years (seventh and eighth grade). She had hacked her hair short and dyed it blond, hence my difficulty in recognizing her. Having identified her, I proceeded to not talk to her and promptly left. I saw another person I knew from high school at the York fair this past weekend. I also saw two other people that I knew from school a couple weeks previous at one of Furlong's little parties. They're coming out of the woodworks. Fortunately or unfortunately, I've yet to come across someone worthy of remembrance. Even so... it's very odd that I'm suddenly running into people from my past. Hell, even Peach apparently saw me at Hershey Park a couple months back. Curiouser and curiouser.
On a completely different note, I've begun to work myself into a financial bind. I am no longer able to pay off my monthly credit card bills in full. My goal is to pay off 100% of my bill every month. To figure out why I am having so much trouble, I decided to look at what I spend my money on in a month. I spent $950 via my credit card this past month. I discovered that $200 of it went towards groceries and gas. (That is excluding restaurant food and alcohol, mind you.) In other words, I blew around $750 on shit I don't need in *one month*. So, in order to combat my apparent lack of self-control. I am coming up with a system. I am going to budget my pleasures for the first time since I obtained a full time job. The limits run as such per month:
1. Concerts - $100
2. CDs - $50
3. Video games - $55
4. DVDs - $45
Groceries, gas and restaurants will have no limit since I am generally responsible with all of that by default, though I do intend to cut down on my groceries a good bit as well. Alcohol I am going to completely stop buying as I hardly drink any of it anyway. My CD limit can be applied to CDs bought at concerts in order to give me some extra spending money for such events. Now here's the cool part. If I underspend my limit for the month, the unspent money will "roll over" into the following months budget. So... if I don't buy any video games one month, I can buy a Game Cube the next. Or if I don't buy any DVDs one month, I can buy a boxed set the next. So on and so forth. I'll be keeping track of all of this on an Excel spreadsheet. I think actually paying attention to what I buy as opposed to doing whatever the hell I want will go a long way towards keeping my monthly bills at a minimum. We shall see...
I have more to write and a couple music reviews, some long overdue and some not, but tonight is not the night for that. Perhaps tomorrow. Don't hold your breath.
My thoughts have been very random and disjointed lately. The past, present and future all seem to be blurring together. For some reason, my normally hazy and fragmented memory is coming into sharp focus and so many things that I've forgotten over the years are suddenly rushing back into me. I'm thinking so many things at once that I can't focus on anything. It's really quite agitating. I'm apparently getting so disturbed that other people are noticing. People at work keep asking me if I'm "okay." I just tell them I'm tired. Which is true. I've been staying up rather late every night. I don't want to risk going to be and being awake enough to think. I can usually distract myself long enough in the evenings to stay sane. It's just the dead times at work and the silence of the night where I can feel the madness eating away at my mind. No, sometimes it happens during the day. I keep seeing things. Glimpses of my past. I find myself turning to say something to people who aren't beside me and never will be again. I find myself dwelling on friends forever lost. I don't even know why I care. I don't want to care. But I do.
Ironically enough, I actually ran into someone from waaaaaaaaaaaay back today. Furlong and I went to get a pizza at Hellam. Mind you, Hellam already is for a me a place of ancient memories. Hellam is the land of Boy Scouts and the land of Sunshine. My crazy cousin lived in Hellam. My grandmother still lives in Hellam. Anyway, as Furlong and I we walking down the sidewalk, some girl with an annoying dog says, "Hello, stranger." Confused, I give her a smile and walk on. As we enter the pizza shop, Furlong asks, "Who was that?" "I don't know..." "Was it... Frogfruit???" "Nahhhh..." So we ponder it for a while and can draw no conclusions. Leaving the pizza shop, I see her again. She's talking to the dog and... yes... the voice DOES sound familiar. And then I looked at the face. Yes. Yes. Now I know. It was... Buzz Buzz Girl. Buzz Buzz Girl was this girl I dated for two years (seventh and eighth grade). She had hacked her hair short and dyed it blond, hence my difficulty in recognizing her. Having identified her, I proceeded to not talk to her and promptly left. I saw another person I knew from high school at the York fair this past weekend. I also saw two other people that I knew from school a couple weeks previous at one of Furlong's little parties. They're coming out of the woodworks. Fortunately or unfortunately, I've yet to come across someone worthy of remembrance. Even so... it's very odd that I'm suddenly running into people from my past. Hell, even Peach apparently saw me at Hershey Park a couple months back. Curiouser and curiouser.
On a completely different note, I've begun to work myself into a financial bind. I am no longer able to pay off my monthly credit card bills in full. My goal is to pay off 100% of my bill every month. To figure out why I am having so much trouble, I decided to look at what I spend my money on in a month. I spent $950 via my credit card this past month. I discovered that $200 of it went towards groceries and gas. (That is excluding restaurant food and alcohol, mind you.) In other words, I blew around $750 on shit I don't need in *one month*. So, in order to combat my apparent lack of self-control. I am coming up with a system. I am going to budget my pleasures for the first time since I obtained a full time job. The limits run as such per month:
1. Concerts - $100
2. CDs - $50
3. Video games - $55
4. DVDs - $45
Groceries, gas and restaurants will have no limit since I am generally responsible with all of that by default, though I do intend to cut down on my groceries a good bit as well. Alcohol I am going to completely stop buying as I hardly drink any of it anyway. My CD limit can be applied to CDs bought at concerts in order to give me some extra spending money for such events. Now here's the cool part. If I underspend my limit for the month, the unspent money will "roll over" into the following months budget. So... if I don't buy any video games one month, I can buy a Game Cube the next. Or if I don't buy any DVDs one month, I can buy a boxed set the next. So on and so forth. I'll be keeping track of all of this on an Excel spreadsheet. I think actually paying attention to what I buy as opposed to doing whatever the hell I want will go a long way towards keeping my monthly bills at a minimum. We shall see...
I have more to write and a couple music reviews, some long overdue and some not, but tonight is not the night for that. Perhaps tomorrow. Don't hold your breath.