litch

So, to keep my head from exploding I started seeing a shrink again back when I was working for Lotus in 2001. I've seen shrinks off and on since I was in 6th grade when the school sent me to one for anger issues. Saw one again in college for more anger issues (not to mention the entire degree in psychology thing) and I tried again after I got married and we had our anger issues come up. Saw yet another after a couple years at lotus, about some anger issues that had come up at work.

I never found any of the people I saw up until I started seeing my current shrink very useful (the grad student I was directed to in college actually did help point out a lot of things, but our personalities never meshed). Some of that was I just wasn't in a place where I was capable of working on the underlying issues. A lot of it was lame ass incompetent shrinks.

Unlike them, the guy I am seeing now, Alan Griffen, has been really useful. He's retiring at the end of the month & I am not planning on seeing anyone else. I feel pretty good with where I am, and want to keep my own counsel for a while. I miss the anger sometimes though, that sounds so pathetic to my minds ear like I'm incapable of sustaining a hearty emotion anymore. But I've bought into the idea that the anger I had depended on for so much of my life is ineffective for getting some things I want and that the sense of power and strength and control it brought were illusory.

I am trying to look behind the anger these days, at the fear and the sadness that underlies the rich, verdant landscape of rage. It makes me feel wimpy a lot, but then that's a part of why I started getting so mad in the first place. I feel much less in danger of having my head explode.

Alan really rocks, he saw me through my two years of unemployment and been really cool while I have gotten my debts under control. But since he's retiring he'd like me to pay off what I owe him, so I applied for a 6k$ loan from the bank this morning

So there's been a lot of discussion about the housing bubble in america, whethere there is one, how big is it, where is it, yadda bladda wadda.

This link is to a press release from a company that offers PMI insurance. So this is what they think the real risk is, in hard numbers their actuaries have come up with.

Nationwide they see a 21% risk and the Austin area is only at figured with an 11.6% chance of a decrease.

The interesting part is going back and reading it from previous quarters, austin's gotten less risky in the last couple years (as my tax assement notes). I did see in one article where they noted that Oklahoma City was one of the few large urban area that had a negative risk, where they though home prices were notably undervalued for the demographic trends.

A/c is going now, actually it started going as soon as we powered it up. But the igniter kept going off continuously, and the only way to turn it off was replace the board. He couldn't see any reason for it to freeze up like it was, there was a little gunk on the coils and in ther drain tube but not enough to cause the problem. He went through and cleaned out everything anyways.

Cost me 470$, thankfully I get paid friday. Every month for the last 3 months or so I have had an unexpected 400$ charge, I had to pay for my truck, then I had to take the dogs to the vet, now this, I had to pay a couple hundred the month before the vet for refinance fees (inspection and something else that weren't covered by the refinance). and it is really starting to get to me. I am barely paying all my bills (even with the refinance) and this is just cracking my spine.

I've been angry today. Finding my coworkers irksome, customers inane, friends dull, and the universe as a whole unsatisfactory. It says something that my first thought upon realizing that is to wonder what I am scared of or sad about.

The thing that comes to mind is that I am sad about my divorce. It's been just over a year since Nancy moved out. I look back on my journal entries from last june and I am startled how little is in there, almost nothing of consequence. I can't remember my feelings from back then very clearly, there was so much anxiety and pain in the flashes I do allow myself to recall I wonder if that might not be a boon. My boss was just laughing about a time I got inapproriately upset about building management warning us they'd tow us if we parked in the wrong spot and I remember that that was from this time. I made a series of career limiting emotional displays that first summer at postini. It's placed a hard ceiling on my career here, it is clear though unsaid that I will not be considered for a management track.

My life is so much calmer now than it was then. There was always the effort of creeping around the edges of the eterna-fight just waiting to goose me into idiocy. I am happier but I worry about what kind of future is front of me, I feel like damaged goods, like everyone who knows me knows exactly how close they are willing to let themself get to me and ain't nobody dumb enough to allow themselves to get into any sort of real emotional intimacy with the trainwreck in the franz-joseph (that's what my face hairis called).

I'm also scared I'll never get to the level of financial comfort I want. I was so excited about having free cash but it didn't work out that way. Then I had 400$ in car repair I wasn't expecting and another 400$ for the vet last week. A few hundred here and a few hundred there starts to add up to serious money in very short order. This difficulty is scary because I base a lot of my self-worth on my ability to take care of myself financially. It's not about how much I make so much but "can I make enough, doing what I want and how I want (to a reasonable degree of aproximation) to live the way I want", I am working too hard and living too close for my comfort.

I have bought 367$ worth of gas this year.I could have cut something like 200$ off that if I had used a motorcycle for my daily commute.

A used bike in the 750cc range will cost me 2500-3000, around 500 for helmet and other crap. It could pay for itself in 6 years.

I keep looking at this listing, it's a bit more forward lean (aggressive posture) than I would like but probably better for a starter bike than the cruiser style I'm more attacted to.

I am concerned about my appearence, I don't want to look rediculous, I'm cared of being an outrageously fat guy on the motorbike. I remember a picture of fat kids on minibikes in advertisements for fat camps from when I was a kid and they haunt my imagination

I also want a bluetooth ear piece and I need to pay off my shrink and I need to get my truck inspected and registered, and need some more clothes and new shoes.

I got my truck back, and it only cost me 405. He said the other plugs he could get to looked like they were in good shape but that the coolant was extreamly rusty, figured I would probably need to replace a waterpump or radiator in the next year.

I don't want to buy a new car! But from here forward I think my truck is going to cost me more and more. I was making noises a while back about getting a motorcycle and I wonder how much that would extend the life of the beast. I will still need something for groceries, lousey weather, taking the dogs places, and thatsort of thing. I want a car co-op damn it.

http://www.creamright.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=NOCBO2-PW

Awww crap!

So my bank did a apprasal on my house and came up with a value of 143k. The value dan gave us that we used to determine nancy's equity was 150k.

The pay off for the existing loan + nancy's check is 112, they can only give me a home equity loan for 80% of the appraised value minus the mortgage. Since 80% of 143 is 114 I only qualify for little more than a couple thousand for the home equity and it's not worth their time to make a home equity loan for that small a number.

So somehow I need to come up with my share of the money I need to pay off our credit cards and close out the account to meet the demands of the decree.