Month: June 2005

this story would make it seem as though we’re not too far away from the technology that would allow folks to be preserved indefinitely. at first I thought it was a pet sematary sort of thing, where they were reviving dead animals. but apparently not. how boring.

my landlord told me the other day about a bike that someone traded in, one that he said would probably be just about perfect for me. I checked it out, and he wasn’t lying. he put some sweet racing slicks on it and tuned it up, and now it’s ready to rock and roll. I’m excited. he made sure that I got a lock, too. . . and not just a U-lock, but also a cable for the U-lock to rope through. very nice.

in other news, I quit smoking. it was tuesday afternoon, and I was giving it some thought. I happened to be feeling the motivation at the time to go ahead and get started, so I packed up all of my paraphernalia and put it in a cigar box, sealed with a sticker, and gave it to my girlfriend for safe keeping. if I wanna start smoking again, I’ll have to clear it with her. I mean, I could always just bum them from friends or something, but that’s not the way I wanna go out. it feels awfully strange, suddenly being a non-smoker. I don’t think I’ll ever really consider myself a non-smoker, though. I’ve just stopped. that’s all. I’ll have another cigarette when my novel gets published 🙂 or when my youngest kid graduates high school.

the solutions have come to a couple of those problems I mentioned in the last post. last week I took out a loan and got a car: ’95 Honda Accord with 150k miles on it. it’s a five-speed manual transmission and I expect that I’ll get mileage in the high twenties, for in-town driving, and thirty to thirty-five miles to the gallon on the highway. it has a cd player and leather interior. pretty good body condition, and it’s nice and clean inside. I’m very happy with it so far! I’m going to have to get some work done on the brakes (probably just new pads =$50 or so) and do an oil change (my friend will show me how to do it so that I don’t have to shell out money anymore).

I had to borrow money for the down payment, too, but if I live on some sort of budget, I might be able to get this all taken care of.

my girlfriend bought me a bike, too. it’s not quite the quality of bicycle that I’d grown accustomed to, but I imagine that if I tune it up really well, it’ll do the job until I can afford something better. I live above a bike shop, and I’m nervous about what my landlord will say if he sees this thing. after all, he did offer to give me a loaner to ride until I can buy something. oh, well. I’ll explain that it was a gift and let him know that I’m still planning to get one of his bikes by the fall.

finally. . . there’s the whole thing about the teeth/gums. I didn’t mention in the last post, but I’ll have to quit smoking after the surgery in order for everything to heal up okay. it’s also not a bad idea to not smoke at least a week before the surgery so that I can get the chemicals out of my system. so that amounts to about three weeks of not smoking. if I go three weeks without smoking, I’d be a real fool to start again. the first few days is supposed to be the most difficult, and if I can get three weeks into it, then I oughtta hold off on smoking for at least a year. and if I can go a year, why start again, ever? the prospect of making a change like this is staggering. smoking cigarettes has been a part of everything that I’ve done for the last ten years. suddenly I will do everything without cigarettes. wow. “you’ve only got to change one thing–everything.” one day at a time, right?

I used to tell people that I’ve got a head start on my career because I work in a coffee shop, which is just about the best job a creative writing major can hope to get when they’ve earned a degree. now I’m feeling the burn as I suffer the loss of a stolen bicycle (=$250), the need for a new car because mine is falling apart (=$4000), paying off these damned braces so that I can have pretty teeth when I go on book-signing tours (=$2000 left to go), and now a periodontal surgery to the tune of $800 to repair receding gums. apparently they’re going to graft gum material from the roof of my mouth onto my gums above my two front teeth, and it was explained that it will feel like I’ve suffered a two-week long hot-pizza burn. ughh. if it’s going to hurt that bad, couldn’t I get some kind of discount? riiiight.

anyway. I’m getting pretty nervous about all of these expenses. . . and it makes me wonder if I was right to say that I wanted to be a starving artist when I grow up.