Windfalls

Blah blah blah, haven't updated in a long while, blah blah blah.

At least now I finally have some interesting things to write about. The biggest development is that I hit some money in Florida's lottery. God, it feels so good to be able to write about it without worrying about who is going to read this! Well...no-one reads this so I figure I'm pretty safe. Anyway, I was one of three winners of Fantasy Five, which is our "low rent" lottery game; it's a daily drawing of 5 out of 39 numbers. Since I had to split it, I won in the neighborhood of $82,000 - which after taxes came to a nice check for around $61,000. Considering that's more than I make in a year, it was a nice boost to my income. I'm doing all the typical things with it: paying off bills, helping out family, buying various toys that I've always wanted, etc. The biggest thing I plan on doing with it is putting a nice chunk into retirement since the only thing I have put away now is some money left over from my last job's 401K program. Yeah, the toys are nice (one of which I'm definitely going to expand upon in a bit) and it's nice to get out from under much of my debt but really, my favorite thing so far has been helping out my family and friends. So far I've taken care of a couple of debts for my Mother, gave some cash to my sister to help her out, taken my friends on a subsidized gambling trip...and needless to say, everybody's going to have some terrific presents this year. One of the most fun things I've done yet was to take my Mom's partner and my sister out to the supermarket, instructed them to each grab a shopping cart and just fill it with groceries. It cost me over a thousand dollars between the two of them but it was just fantastic watching them trying to get everything into their vehicles. Doing stuff like that doesn't just give me peace of mind, it's just plain old fun being able to spoil those around me, even if I know it won't last forever.

Of course my motives aren't all altruistic. The day after I claimed my money I bought my biggest toy so far. I drove down to a local Apple store and picked up a 17-inch MacBook Pro...and I am now in love. I've wanted a good laptop for a long while now (almost going so far as to put myself further into debt by financing one through Dell) and after Apple started putting Intel processors into their Macs I've wanted one. So I combined two geek lusts into one and picked up my new baby. It's been a little over a month and I think I can safely say that I have now become a "switcher". OS X is just so damned nice, from it's sweet desktop to it's Unix underpinnings, anytime I use anything else now I miss my Mac. Even nicer, with Apple's Boot Camp I don't have to give up PC gaming and this little silvery beast has been able to handle any game I've thrown at it in either OS X or Windows XP. I really have become a convert; I'm even been considering picking up an iPod, regardless of the fact that I'd have no real use for one...and I'm not even going to get into how badly my geek lust is burning for an iPhone. Being the ridiculously sentimental fool that I am, I now look over at my old PC that I used to proudly dual-boot Windows XP and Kubuntu Linux on and just shake my head sadly. At least it's still going to good use as a wireless file server...well, until I just bite the bullet and pick up the iMac I've been eyeing as a replacement.

Along these lines, one thing I did want to mention was the whole hassle of controlling what I say to certain people. I know when it comes down to it, I really didn't win that much. Winning $61K is not really what one would call a "life changing event", more like a "life enhancement" more than anything. The problem is that a lot of the people that I associate with, either by choice or otherwise, don't have a whole lot of money to throw around. My ex-wife is a great example. She and her new husband are actually doing quite alright financially with their own business, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if she knew I came into some money, regardless of the fact that my debts to her are long since paid, she'd do her damnedest to try and get a piece of it. So I have to lie to her and, even worse, my daughter about what I'm doing and how I'm paying for things. My sister is another person who will try to get a piece of anything anyone else has. Hell, even after telling her I won less than I actually did, when I gave her a check for a thousand her first response was "this is it?" I've had to lie to her as well, telling her that the majority of my money is already gone into retirement and I can't touch it anymore. The saddest part of this was during a point that my ex-wife was talking about sending my daughter down here for the summer because they were having problems getting along. My sister immediately pipes up with the idea of my daughter staying at her house so they could have all kinds of fun with various activities, she could take her to her church (that's a story in itself) and of course, she'd need some extra money for groceries and she'd need help with stuff she had planned. The thing is I really like spending money on other people, I've had a fantastic time helping out the people that are close to me. However, at the same time I'm already at the age where I should have had a decent amount of money in retirement. I don't, so I need to take advantage of this little boost I've been so fortunate to get and plan for my future. My mother, I'm more than happy to help out; she doesn't have a ton of time left on this world and if I can help her live a little more comfortably on her fixed income, even if it's a short-term thing I still feel like it's worthwhile. My sister and her husband make just about what I and my roommate make, which means to me that they should be able to live fairly comfortably if not extravagantly. I don't think it's selfish to tell her what I need to avoid her making a grab for what money I have left. There are definitely times I'm amazed we grew up in the same family.

Wow, I really didn't mean to turn this into a rant about my sister but I guess when the ideas start flowing you've got to either get them out or bottle them up and anyone who knows me personally will know that I'm not real good at keeping things bottled up. At least I found something to write about this time! Other than all this, there's really not a whole lot happening in my life. I still have the same shitty job, I still live in the same house with the same roommate and the same cat. I'm planning on a taking a nice little vacation in a little less than a month which I'm really excited about since it's something different from the same old trips to New York to see my daughter (although I still plan on taking more time a month later to drive up and see her anyway). I am going to try to write more often, especially since I now have a nifty portable method of doing so (I even love the keyboard on this thing!). Finally, as my posting time will reflect, I still stay up far too late for my own good. Gotta love it.

Party on, dude

I had my first party in a long time today and it turned out to be a very different experience than the one I was expecting. See, I have this thing that I call "party anxiety" which I suppose is a remnant of the parties I used to go to when I was younger; as the party approaches I start getting afraid that I'm going to go and not have anyone to talk to and end up bored and miserable in a corner somewhere. Why I'm like this, I'm not sure - I can be really outgoing when I'm in the right situation, even with new people. I think it just becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy: I get nervous about being bored at a party, so when I go I'm nervous so I don't socialize and end up being bored at the party. I probably need to just loosen up, maybe take advantage of alcohol's value as a social lubricant, I don't know. Regardless, that's not the real point of this post.

When I started getting that feeling of dread once again I decided to look at this party a little differently; I made up my mind that I was going more as a writer than a guest. In most parties, there's little stories going on all around. This person talks to this person, this girl flirts with this guy who is oblivious to her advances, this woman gets a little too drunk and starts spewing forth with personal details no-one ever knew about her. All around there are little dramas going on which could be used as parts of a bigger story or even become stories in themselves. This is really the first time I decided to do something I don't normally so I could get more experiences to add to my writing and, to my surprise, I started really looking forward to the party and the rich material that awaited me there.

Naturally, it turned out to be a complete bust...at least for the writer side of me. The party itself was actually pretty nice. Our friend had a great time doing the "Halloween Thing", hiding himself as a prop to scare people coming in and even converting his small garage into this remarkably elaborate haunted house. There weren't too many people and the ones that I actually talked to turned out to be pretty cool. The food was great and plentiful, nobody got really drunk and there weren't any real awkward moments. Maybe this is the type of party that goes on once you get a little older. Or maybe we're just boring - something I don't mind all that much, as there are times that "boring" is not such a negative thing as it once was. The only unfortunate part to the whole affair is that my inner author left relatively unfulfilled.

Edit: Ouch, I just realized how dry and boring this whole entry was, which I think was the point. I'm discovering more and more how much I need to start experiencing new things...or if I can't do that, at least use some imagination to make things more interesting. But even with the time change it's too late tonight, so I'll have to think about this and write more bullshit later.