Hey, it’s PDR! The PDR from now, in 2017, not the PDR from 2016 who scheduled all those posts this month. 2016 PDR left November 30th blank with a note that told me-now-PDR to put a PDR Update here.
Well, the main thing on my plate right now is some seemingly expensive car repairs. It seems my shift motor has corroded. That’s punching my wallet right in the nuts, that’s for sure. Apart from that, things are as they have been all year for me. 2017 has not been a great year for me, but neither has it been for the world at large, so at least I’m not alone in that.
Haiku!
Twenty-Seventeen.
My finances remain poor.
Not been a great year.
It’s not all been a bad year, though. I’ve been listening to the Superman radio show from the 40s as I drive, and during the serial “Is There Another Superman” there was a scene in which Batman and Robin were investigating and Robin got kinda bored, noticed it was snowing out, and sung a few bars of “White Christmas” only for Batman to reply: “I’ll Christmas you unless you pipe down” so now I know the best Batman line that has ever been written.
So anyway, we now go back to not having a new Super Sunday post every day. The site will probably feel pretty empty. I do still miss my Twitter posts manifesting here. That was nice.
Yesterday, I got out of jury selection because I am too poor. That kinda counts as a victory, right?
I got the summons to appear for selection for jury duty. I did that. I had to wake up to be at the place for 8:15 in the morning, at time when I am usually beginning my day’s sleep. The place was crowded with a few hundred other such potential jurors. There was a roll call done by verbally calling out names and responding with “here” that seems like an outdated method of dealing with this in this, the age of computers. Anyway, that took half an hour or so and then we had to wait another long while before the crowd was ushered into two courtrooms (because we couldn’t fit into one). The judge was introduced. Then we got the chance to ask to get out of it for “Medical, Employment, or Personal Hardship” reasons.
I overheard the judge tell one of the people asking to get let go that the trial was estimated to run about twenty days. Though jurors do get paid about forty dollars a day, that would leave me pretty darn broke. I got into line and presented my reasoning to the judge, that being on the jury is something I can’t afford. It seemed to me (or maybe I was just projecting my own guilt onto him) that the judge thought I was just being whiny, but he did accept it and allow me to go. That’s what really matters. And it isn’t like I was lying. I spent half of this year in shoes that were a size too small because I couldn’t afford new ones. Maybe I’m not going to die if I have to be on a jury, but it could seriously make me unable to pay bills and such.
And I didn’t even get into the fact that being awake in the daytime is a hassle. I would have been a real risk for falling asleep during the trial.
Anyway, it’s kind of a shame, because if I was in a financially stable situation, I’d actually be pretty interested in serving on a jury. Maybe someday down the line.
Probably time for an update. As I believe I mentioned last time, I have had to deal with various things of a monetary nature. The current status is that, for the first time in my life, I own a car and I own a flat screen television. The latter was free, so that was nice, but it turns out that cars are expensive and owning it is not immediately improving my economic situation. Hopefully this is one of those “in the long run” deals. Still, I’ve acquired two of the material goods that capitalism tells me should make me happy, right? (Side note: Do televisions get channels without cable, or is this thing just going to work with my laptop?)
If the site had an audience, they’d be noticing that SecGov has been stuck for a while. It’s just that with all the things I’ve had on the go, it has been the lowest priority. Hopefully once I get back into the swing of it, I’ll be able to push through and end it once and for all, because then I’ll have one less thing on the go and that’ll be nice.
The Dark Lord Char’Nagh rides anew, sending lightning bolts flying and creating vast, coastline-shattering waves. Will we be able to stand this? Only time will tell.
Okay, another new year. This is definitely the year that Secret Government Robots will be ending. I’ve been slacking for the last few weeks, and this story has already grown two chapters larger than it was when I first plotted it out, but I should soon be back on track and we’ll get through it at last. One thing that will help, is that I’ve done some damage (thanks to effin’ snow) to the car I drive for work. This is going to set back my climbing out of debt by several months, but one the “bright side” I am unemployed while it is being repaired. If nothing else, that’ll give me time to work on stuff…
At this point the city is teeming with students again, and classes have begun anew. I am not attending them, though. Intent on becoming financially stable, I am taking at least a year off of my schooling. This is the monetary saving that I should have before I quit my job to go back to school, but that I had not the forethought for.
I am a little sad that I won’t be in school (though if I can find some that fit into my schedule, I may sit in on some larger, easy-to-blend-into classes), but I was also getting pretty tired of all the stuff I hate about school too. Perhaps this break will allow me to refocus on the positives sides of schooling before I go fully hateful of the system, as I did back in my teenage years.
And also, maybe I’ll have more money when the year is over.
But I will to work on my education in my own way through this year. I have taken fifty books from my Unread Books bookshelf and set them aside in a pile. I plan on reading the heck out of all that pile before this time next year. Some are the kind of works of literature that could come up in my education. Others are not. Either way, it’s more reading than I’ve been able to do during a school year, which is generally close to none. Here goes.
