DarqByte

Regardless of if I actually have less things to do recently than the last three weeks, I feel productive again. I feel a little energized to get stuff done. Apparently all I need is the feeling that I’m not overwhelmed. Even if I really am, haha.

I’ve only been able to explicitly work out using Wii Fit four times this month. Today will be the fifth and last, since April starts tomorrow. Other than working out today after work, I will also be tidying up the yard by bringing in a shop vac from the neighbors and vacuuming up all of the dead leaves and debris in the yard. I’ll also clean dishes and put the ones in the dishwasher away. Oh, and lets not forget about folding the laundry that I did over the weekend.

But I still feel good about all that. I’ll probably still have time to mess around should I choose to. I may end up troubleshooting the extra desktop system I’ve got to try to get the hardware working, then I’ll install Gentoo on it and turn it into a monitoring station for my web server, which this blog is on.

Oh, I’ll also probably shred some more old documents that need to be shredded. And I might start sorting out the last three months’ worth of sales tax receipts.

Also, money kinda sucks. It’s nice when Laura and I get little spurts of extra cash to get some things done, like coach lights, a Blu-Ray player (wait, I never posted about that?!) and trips to Disneyland. But some of that extra cash ran out and we’re wanting to keep more of a buffer in our checking account than we were, so it’s back to curtailing spending. Especially since we’re finally getting my life insurance setup. Beh. Money sucks.

I don’t really have much to write about at the moment, but oh well. I wanted to post to keep in touch with all of you wonderful people.

So money sucks… It seems like every time that Laura and I make a sizable purchase, something goes relatively wrong soon after. After getting our iPhones and HDTV, we’ve seen our bank account plummet with some unexpected expenses… Oy. But we’ll be alright. I’ve already started identifying areas where I will be spending less, such as canceling my Sports Illustrated subscription (since I haven’t been reading it much), and I’ll probably be quitting soccer for awhile. I haven’t had a break since I started playing again 5 years ago and I think I need one.

Anyway, Christmas is coming soon and the whole commercialization of it has started to bother me a bit. Everybody just expects gifts unless you explicitly tell them “Hey, we’re giftless this year!” Then they may get upset, especially if said person just purchased an HDTV… Yeah, I know. I just got an HDTV, so I ought to be able to afford gifts for everybody, right? Well, I’d done freelance work this fall and saved it up, not to mention I’ve been wanting one for 2 years and a great deal finally came along. That, and unexpected expenses.

I regrettably ended up telling all of my friends that Laura and I are focusing gifts this year on immediate family. We needed to do it. That, and we have a very large number of friends, so it would have been mighty expensive on us to get gifts for everybody, even if we were buying affordable gifts.

That, and we don’t really have a big list of things we want people to get for us. We usually just get things that we want or need when we want or need them (although sometimes we should wait, i.e. HDTV and iPhones…). Really, I’d just be happy to get a text message or a phone call from friends and family that aren’t in town, wishing me Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah or whatever they believe.

So Samantha is doing well now. She’s settled in to the whole house finally. She hangs out wherever we’re at in the house now, which is nice. Before she would only hang out upstairs, but the breakthrough really came when we moved her food and water downstairs. Previously, they were in the master bathroom on the opposite side of her litter box. We’d read that you should separate good & water from the litter box as best you can, so we moved them downstairs to along a wall in the kitchen. Since she was forced to go downstairs to eat, that worked.

She’s gotten into a habit of waking me up at 4:30-5:30 area by purring in my ear and walking all over me. Oy…

Hm. Can’t think of much else to yak about. See you later.

The trouble with money is, nobody seems to have enough of it. As of yesterday evening, us included.

We just bought our house in late April, and it is brand-new. Just built. Wich is kinda nice, given that we know the entire history of the house — us. Unfortunately, now we’re in a pickle and I’m finding it more and more increasingly difficult to find a way out

We got a letter/bill yesterday from our mortgage company. They deal with paying the county taxes for us. Back about a month ago we got a bill in from the county that had a lump-sum bill in it to cover a short in our property taxes. Apparently, on newly-built homes, Clark County doesn’t properly set the tax rate. They have to, after the fact, adjust the taxes on a property once the structure is completed. I called our mortgage company on this and they said that there would be no problem, that they are handling it.

I ended up forgetting about it until the bill from them came in yesterday. It’s asking for a sizable escrow account payment by December 1st and also informed us that our now-increased county taxes have pushed our mortgage payment up… By $200 per month. Please, tell me a family that could handle that kind of expense increase easily. Yeah, didn’t think so.

So now we’re in a pickle. Not only do we have to figure out how to come up with a big chunk of change (at least it’s one-time), but we have to carve out another $200 per month to cover our increased county property taxes. How much fun is that?

Laura and I have already talked a little bit about how we’ll probably end up handling this. The problem is that we don’t have any obvious place to cut expenses from in our budget. We’ve tried addressing different areas but the best we can come up with is cutting a small amount from our home phone bill. We both have an “extracurricular” activity that costs money each month, but we’re trying to figure out how to not cut those out, because we’re human and need recreation in whatever form we can get. Without that, we’ll have a tougher time coping.

So we’re officially under the gun financially. I’ve been worried about money for a couple months, but now I’m worried about things like Christmas. I don’t think we’ll be able to get many gifts for people this time around, and I feel kinda bad about that. Ultimately, I guess it’s better to not be able to buy gifts for loved ones rather than sink further into debt. It sucks, but I think our family members will understand.

This economic crisis is starting to worry me, and greatly. I thought Laura and I were on solid financial footing, so if we’re having issues, what’s it like for other people? I’m also curious to discover how other people are dealing with issues like this, perhaps to find some inspiration on what we can do.