Zen and the Art of the Burn

WIFEZILLA: Why are you always so down on yourself?

TACO: Low self esteem.

WIFEZILLA: Come on.

TACO: [trying somewhat artlessly to dodge the question] I don't make enough money, I'm terrible in bed...

WIFEZILLA: Ohhhhh... you make plenty of money.

[10 second pause]

TACO: Nice one.

WIFEZILLA: Thanks!

It's gonna be one of those lives.

So, my car is dead. That's basically... carry the one... zero surprise to anyone who's ever seen my car.

I wound up with this gorgeous piece of machinery through a series of missteps that began with my layoff in 2001, while my wife was 7 months pregnant with our first child. That was a fun experience that left me with a bunch of credit card debt related to medical exams and procedures that were rather necessary and subsequent baby food and such that were rather unavoidable.

My wife and I had never actually had any debt before, so we got pretty upset about carrying any. We entered a cycle of paying all our bills each month, then spending every penny on our debt. Turns out that's a losing strategy. A good friend of ours is a debt counsellor, and helped educate us a bit. (He offers this service for free, by the way -- their money comes from other services they offer if they're able to help you, which they're quite open about -- and he's fucking awesome. If you find yourself in a similar sad situation to mine, let me know, and I'll gladly give you his info.)

So we got our finances sorted out. Yay! We started the process of buying a house. Yay! We started thinking about what to replace my aging car with. Yay!

A deer does a half-gainer into my wife's car. Shit.

Totals her car. We didn't want to replace her car while our home loan stuff was in process. I gave her my car, and carpooled with a friend. We purchased our home. We purchased a new car for her. Wife and kids have a car that's safe. Yay!

My car dies. Shit.

My dad, who is fucking awesome, gives me a beater that he was going to donate to charity. Yay!

I drive this until it dies. My finances are still not such that I can really afford another car payment, even a modest one.

My dad, who is fucking awesome, gives me another beater that had been rusting in his driveway. Yay!

I drive the wheels off this one, too. It doesn't take long. My wife drives me to work for a few months.

My father-in-law donates his old beater to us. I'm really starting to feel like a fucking loser mooch. God damn it.

The car's on its last leg, but our finances are in pretty good shape now. We've paid off my wife's car, our credit cards are in a good place, we're saving some money... life is looking up. We start doing our research to figure out what kind of car we want to replace my bucket with.

The IRS sends me a letter. I fucked up my taxes a few years ago. We redo our taxes with help from our lawyer: it's not as bad as the IRS thinks, but it's more than we can put our hands on at the moment. We set up a payment plan. I start crossing my fingers that my car will hold together... not for the duration of our payment plan (I'm under no illusions there), but every month helps.

This car has run on sheer fucking bloodymindedness for a long time now, but today it gave up the ghost.

Two steps forward, eight steps back. I realize that kicking me in the spiritual nuts is pretty funny, but I'm pretty sure Bob Saget gave you the $10,000 prize a long time ago, God. Please stop. I'm sore.

Diabetic cat is diabetic.

Wheee.

So now we have to feed him prescription cat food. After a month on the (quite expensive) food, they'll test him again, and if it's doing the trick, we're set. If not, we have to go to supplementing the food with shots.

Wheee.

The vet told me on the phone that, on the bright side, "You can tell people you put your pet on the Catkins Diet." I responded automatically with an, "I hate you, Larry." This left the vet confused. :)

It takes three moneys.

DAUGHTER: [hands me fifty cents] Here. Use this to buy my lunch.

TACO: Do you think this will be enough?

DAUGHTER: No, that's only two moneys. My lunch costs three moneys.

Another weird day in Tacoslavia

I'm cornering the market on weird. I know that sounds great now, but once I've done it and you guys are clamoring for a little oddity to spice up your mundane days, I'm going to charge ten times as much. You've been warned.

We took the cats to the vet for their usual checkups this week. I got a call from the vet today with the results. Said results? One cat's in perfect health... and the vet thinks the other one may have diabetes. They're doing a test to verify that now. We're supposed to know by Monday.

In retrospect, naming the cat Twinkie seems kinda mean now.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! Release Date! Release Date! Release Date!

Got an email yesterday from the fine folks who are bringing us Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! They finally announced a release date for the DVD. I preordered my copy yesterday. In less than a month, I'll be watching glorious strippers vs. zombies action.

Why aren't you ordering? This is high cinema, people.

Another whoseywhatsit post

Once again I find myself in a position of having nothing particularly interesting to say, but wanting to maintain the dubious discipline of periodically posting.

1. We got a call from my son's school last week warning us that he may come home with some bruises. Seems that one of the kids in his class decided to take up bullying. So I guess we get to start dealing with that kind of bullshit now. We talked about it with my son at length, and all seems to be well on that front. The school seems to have handled it adequately, which is good, but also robs me of anyone to yell at for now.
2. I've tricked a few of my friends into running a game of Serenity on my website. I've never run a real game before, much less in this format, so it may be a spectacular failure. I'm really excited though. And that reminds me, I need to get off my ass and update them with the latest info. Slack, Taco, slack.
3. My friend Bill came up from my old home town to visit us this weekend, which was awesome. We got him to bring up some peaches from the orchard back home. They're fantastic, but I misjudged how much I'd ordered. I've been giving them away to everyone who gets within arm's reach for a few days. Still... these peaches are dangerously fucking delicious. NOM NOM NOM.
4. I got Bill hooked on WoW battlegrounds while he was visiting. He's already better at it than I am, which I suppose is no great accomplishment considering that my own talent for it seems to run mostly in the vein of being patient enough to grind endlessly until I can have the gear. It's fun having more friends to rip it up with though.
   
5. The dog seems to be settling in somewhat. My daughter annoys him frequently... she loves animals and no amount of scolding will keep her from getting right in his face, pulling his hair, etc. Even so, when Bill was saying his good-byes this weekend and placed a hand on my daughter's head, the dog flipped the fuck out. Had to put the dog out into the back yard while we finished our farewells.
6. Friend of mine got a new job that sounds fucking awesome. No intention of stealing his thunder or any of that, so I'll leave it that vague, but yay!

Guess that's about all I've got. Carry on, citizen.

Bag of what now?

Noq: This AV is a fucking joke. WoW is minimized right now. That's how little i care about it.

Taco: Wow. That bad?

Noq: Yes.

Taco: I was in one of those last night. Pissed me off.

Noq: Imagine two bags full of retarded children being swung against one another.

Taco: *choke*

Noq: That's this AV.