All week I’ve been talking about worries I have about going back to school apart from money. Well, the last one is money. I’m so worried about money it even shows up on the list that explicitly excepts it.

My financial state has not been good this year, that is for sure. As you may recall I even went so far as to get a roommate to help with rent because I wanted to climb out of debt (that hasn’t worked, by the way, what with the roommate apparently deciding that paying rent was optional and leaving half-eaten plates of food around would suffice). So here I am, kinda screwed. Still in the worst financial state I’ve ever been in and I’m quitting my source of income to go to school, which I have to pay for. Not the wisest plan.

I have no idea how people afford things. People out there have cars and smoke and drink and can apparently pay for all these things somehow. People have pets and children that do nothing but drain their resources. I don’t get it. At the job I am leaving I made a pretty decent amount of money, but it never seemed to get me anywhere. After rent and bills and stuff, I made enough to occasionally buy a dvd or a book (though not as often these last few years). I guess I did travel about once a year, but always as cheaply as I could. And anyway, it seemed like that was always coming out of credit, rather than ever being the result of any amount of money being saved. I’ve met people who can go on week-long trips at least yearly, whereas all but two of my trips in the last five years have been crammed into weekends without missing work. No monetary progress has ever been made.

I guess a lot of the people out there have people helping them, spouses or families who also have an income to help out. But still, it seems like I should be climbing out of this hole faster than not at all. I know I pay a lot for rent, so that’s a big chunk. I also give a little to some charities every month. That takes up a little of the money too. I am lucky that I don’t eat much, but when I do eat it often includes restaurant takeout and fresh produce oranges/apples/grapefruit/melons. That stuff probably adds up. I have always tried to pay back more than the minimum payments on my credit card, but the debt just grows and grows. Every time the statements look good some other fee comes out of nowhere and keeps me from getting closer to paying anything off. Are those four types of expenditures enough to use everything I earn?

And if they are, how am I going to manage without the money I make now? It looks bad.

Continuing my attempt to look on the bright side I find that the bright side of this is pretty bittersweet. First of all, I’ve cut my charitable donations by more than half. That makes me hate myself all the more, but it will probably be helpful. I always credited those as the reason for getting so much back on my income tax, though, so I sure hope I don’t end up with less coming back to me, or worse, owing money.

Another sad victory, Amazon has told me it can’t find a copy of the Black Panther Masterworks to give me. It’s good because it saves me like forty bucks, but also it is sad because I want to own those comics.

Perhaps I have to look for this silver lining from a different angle. How’s this: I’ve got a paying job now, which means I can just barely afford to buy a laptop before I go to school. So I did that yesterday. I have a new laptop. I’ll talk more about that in the future.

Today my computer got a virus. It was pretty minor affair compared to the last virus attack I had to put up with. The virus cleverly tried telling me that I had viruses and that I should download something to fight them. No doubt if I had I’d be in worse shape than I am now. But I recognized that since last time I’ve been paying for the full AVG-anti-virus software and that it should be enough to take care of anything. So I ran that scan in safe mode and it took care of things.

Of course doing that took a bunch of time I’d have preferred to spend on other things. Computer viruses are stupid.

Only one page of Secret Government Robots today:

I have a Little Choy comic over here:

And over here, Phone Guys:

There was meant to be another strip today, but my computer just froze up on me and I lost all the work I’d done on it. I guess it is partially my own fault for not saving even once, but it should not be forgotten that the computer froze up, not me. Man, my Computron Rex has so many bizarre and unusual problems I forgot that something as mundane as freezing up was a thing that could even still happen to computers. Oh well. I don’t feel like starting the strip over, so I’ll save it for next week instead.

In the past hour my laptop has gone to a blue error screen four times. Suddenly and without warnings. This is pretty much a terrible thing. I do not want to lose another computer. I have already begun backing things up. If I disappear for some days, this will be why. Let us hope it doesn’t come to that, but the computer has not even been staying alive long enough to finish a virus scan. Not ideal.

A Little Later: I successfully did a system restore deal. Let’s hope that helps. Now I’ll try the virus scan thing again. I mean, it scans daily anyway, but it is worth a shot.

A Little More Later: I was just urinating and I could hear the person in the apartment above me also urinating! What are the odds that I, with my non-normal living schedule and whoever that is would just so happen to need to urinate at the same time? Man, coincidence can be astounding sometimes. Who is even awake at four thirty in the morning aside from me?

More More Later: Well, my scan is complete without having found anything yet and it has been over an hour of successful computer running. I should get some sleep, but I will do at least one more update when I wake up. Here’s hoping all is well.

A Lot More Later: Well, the computer remains alive leaving me much relieved and wondering just that was all about.

And suddenly another year is gone. Too fast to be properly appreciated and the new one will likely wind up the same way. Everyone be sure to light a candle so that the Dark Lord Char’Nagh can see properly as he makes his rounds this year-end.

I feel that 2010 was a pretty decent year. Granted, I may just be feeling that way because the last few weeks have been pretty nice and the rest of the year was just mediocre. I mean, I’m poorer than ever and I didn’t get to do any travelling whatsoever in 2010, but hey, at least I didn’t have a computer die on me like in stupid 2009. I’m getting comic strips done at a rate that I’ve probably not met since the death of Contains2.

2011 however is going to be the year for the Book of PDR and its related endeavours. I will make this true. So bring it on!