Con-ventional Wisdom

We've both been really looking forward to going over to Seattle at the end of March for the Emerald City ComiCon. The plan was to take a week so we would also have time to see people while we were there and do touristy type stuff as well.

But we were talking it over and decided we'd be better off not going, even though we really want to. Jenny got the time off she requested, and we'd probably have enough money to generally enjoy ourselves. But there are a lot of other things we want to spend that money on - things we've been really needing and keep having to put off. Like a new computer, or a new bed, or just moving into a better place.

We did  get our taxes filed, and are getting a decent (but not huge) refund back. And that's definitely going to help our plans for this year.

So we'll set that money aside, and probably use the week off that Jenny's getting to look for a place to live. We at least now know the general area we want to move to, and can start looking for a house to rent.

We still would like to get over to Seattle to visit, since we haven't been since the 2010 ComiCon. We might try for later in the year, once we (hopefully) get into a new place and everything's settled and straightened out. There is a smaller one day convention in September we might try to hit; I might even see about getting a table at it depending on how things go. The Spokane ComiCon is also coming up in May, and I'll definitely be splitting a table with my friend Matt at that one.

And for now we'll just try to be responsible and save, and not splurge on anything not in the budget...

Odds & Ends and even some Art

A few miscellaneous things that I haven't really blogged/twittered about. Just trying to catch up....

• Our local bank is Washington Mutual, which is of course now becoming Chase. Not particularly pleased about that, but we don't do much banking anyway, so it's probably nothing to worry about. I am glad that Jenny and I both hung on to our credit union accounts in Alaska when we moved...
  
  
• I'd mentioned the wasps coming back - I did get the maintenance people over here to spray bug killer and knock down their hives, and it seemed to have done the job. There's still a few around, but they're not swarming directly outside our windows anymore. It got really bad last year, with wasps regularly getting into the house, even after we got the new windows installed.
  
  
• Avista is our local electric utility provider, and they've already been catching a lot of flack recently for raising their already high rates in the face of the current economic conditions. We normally pay our bill on-line, but when we logged on last week we found they'd switched to a new 3rd party company to handle their billing transactions. With this comes the new requirement that we give them our bank account information - even though we're paying with a credit card. We said no, and sent them a check. Just rediculous...
  
  
• We hadn't been watching Chuck, although we had caught bits and pieces of it (since it's on right before Heroes). Jenny decided to start watching it on-line, since about half the series is available, and now we're both huge fans. The show's hilarious, with a lot of geeky in-jokes, and has got some awesome guest stars. Luckily we got caught up in time for tonight's episode, which is the season finale. Unfortunately, it's not certain whether it'll be around next year. Just our luck that we'd get hooked on a show right before it get's cancelled... :)

Also, the AFL tournament I was participating in is over, with Gene Kelly being the champion this time around. For his final entry, instead of just an illustration or comic page, Gene actually made a 2 person flash video game pitting his character against his opponent's! It's really impressive, and can be seen here: AFL 3 - Final Battle

I drew up this pic of his character Rocket, as a congratulations for his well deserved win:

We Need to Get Out of Here

I went to make our appointment to sign our new lease today, and was reminded exactly why we keep saying we want to move. I'll refrain from going into details - just to say that they keep exceeding their previous record levels of stupidity....

So, instead of a year lease, we're going to try to go for a 9 month one - because we have to move, and we realize that we won't want to move at New Years (with a year lease) and there's no way we'll have the money to move in only 6 months. We figure the end of September will be as good a time to move as any. We're hoping we'll have the money in 9 months, but I guess we'll just have to find a way.

We've been saying we need/want to move out of the apartments for years now - we just need to do it.

Otherwise - the snow has halted temporarily, but there's several more inches on the way in the next day or so, and then again around New Years. Road crews are working 24/7 trying to clear everything, but I'm more worried about the snow building up and caving in our car ports. Yet another thing I'll need to harass the office about on Monday....

Apartment Stuff, etc.

So we got a note from the apartment people today, saying that the appliance replacement process will (supposedly) begin this week, and will take place over the next 2 months. That's something to look forward to, atleast (new, working, oven!).

Our lease is also up at the end of the month, so we'll have to sign another one of those. We haven't decided how long to go with, but we're leaning towards the year long one. We've been wanting to move out of here for ages, but have never had enough money set aside to do it easily. Now we don't have enough money to do it at all, and until we've got some more coming in, it's going to be quite a while before it's possible.

They're raising our rent again, but atleast if we sign a year long lease, they hopefully won't be able to raise our rent in six months (it's only been six since our last lease/rent hike). And I suppose if we were somehow able to afford to move (win the lottery, find a big bag of money, etc.), we'd probably be able to afford to break our lease as well. Oh well....

My head's hurting again. I thought it was a tooth ache at first, but now I think it's just more sinus problems. Fun.

It's cold here (like, it seems, most places right now). Cold enough for us, I think. Seems like we might be finally acclimating. If it was 4 years ago, I'd probably be wearing shorts - now I just keep turning the heat up.... :)

December

So, it's officially December, let's see where we're at.

I'm still jobless, which isn't helped by the now "official" economic status of recession and the ever-dwindling job market. With that lack of job comes a lack of money. We're just getting by, with not much left over after bills and what-not. Normally I love Christmas time, but I love it more when I can actually afford to buy presents for people. Oh, well.

And speaking of lack of money, both our Flickr account and my deviantArt account subscriptions are up in just shy of a week. I don't know if we should really spare the cash to re-up them right now, when the money could go to more "important" things, but I don't really want them to lapse either. Hmmm.....

November has come and gone, and I'm now quite convinced that apparently writing a novel in a month is not for me. I've ended up with some great ideas each year, but that's about it. This year saw considerable progress in the amount of words written over previous attempts, and I atleast got a decent outline done. But I'll need to do an immense amount of research before I can get any real work done. But I guess that's what I get for only being interested in crazy semi-historical concepts.

Hopefully I'll take some time in the coming year to dive into that research, for atleast one of the ideas, if not all of them. There's also Script Frenzy - NaNoWriMo's sister event, which may be more my cup of tea. I might be able to use it as an excuse to do some serious work on my various comic ideas. We'll see, I guess.

So, this week's agenda should include:

• Job hunting.


• Some overdue art projects/commissions and possibly work on some new projects which are only in the planning or pre-planning stages.


• A super-secret project involving much heavy lifting over a couple of days.


• The apartment really needs to be cleaned. I mean, really needs to be cleaned....


• A hair cut appointment (exciting, I know - but definately necessary).

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of at the moment, with the NyQuil starting to kick in and do it's thing,

I hope everybody had a Happy Thanksgiving, and the rest of your coming holidays are shaping up to be appropriately festive. Also, a happy beginning of summer to those of you in the Southern hemisphere... :D

Giving Thanks

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and is able to spend the holiday with their family and loved ones. Jenny and I will be heading over to her parents' place tomorrow morning and spend most of the day there. Aunt Joan should be there, as well as her Uncle David, who's driving up from Kennewick. Should be fun, and relaxing, and filled with pie.

Even though sometimes it doesn't seem like we have much, we really do have a lot to be thankful for, especially in the current economic climate. I'm still looking for work (like a large portion of the population), but Jenny does have two very reliable jobs, one of which even provides us with benefits. We don't really have any disposable income right now, and Christmas presents may be in short supply, but atleast we can afford to pay our rent and put food on the table (and even still buy comics once in a while). And we've still got the internet and the library for free entertainment. So, we're doing OK, I guess.

I've been getting sick over the last couple of days. I think it's just your run-of-the-mill cold/flu thing (whatever's currently making the rounds), but it's still knocked me out pretty hard. Hopefully I'll shake it off relatively soon. Funny enough, I had some horrible illness last Thanksgiving as well - I remember spending most of the day passed out in a recliner at her folks' place. Must just be the season....

Commissions & Moderation in Sketch-Blogging

I'm thinking now, instead of posting whatever random sketches I happened to do for the day, every day, I'm just going to post 'em up once a week, probably on Sunday. Still trying to draw (something) every day - the blogging will just be more efficient this way, and hopefully be less likely to annoy the few readers of this blog with continual updates. So, yeah, that'll more than likely start next week.

I was inspired by an illustrator named Dani Jones, who has started posting her "Daily Doodles" in weekly chunks on her own blog as a similar "draw something for yourself every day" type of exercise. Her blog is here: Dani Jones Illustration, and she also has a website with a lot of cool tutorials and information for artists: Dani Draws. Awesome stuff - I'd recommend any artist to check out her site!

While I have been trying to draw stuff for myself, as well as work on a couple of commission projects, I've also spent time (still) looking for a day job and worrying about money. Jenny's new job is awesome, and pays more, but we were really counting on her first "new salary" paycheck to be bigger than it was... but we hadn't figured on how much was going to be deducted for insurance and benefits. [Ouch!]

So, while money's still getting tighter for the time being, I wanted to mention I have put up some basic commission rates for illustration-type work, which can be found in the sidebar over to the right, or by clicking here: Commission Info . Some examples of my art can be seen over at my deviantArt page. If you're interested in getting some work done by your's truly, hit me up by email: peterfoglesong (at) gmail (dot) com . Thanks!

Update

The side windows on the truck are finally fixed, and it cost us less than $300 for parts + labor + tax (hurrah for small victories). Now we just have to hope that we won't have to get everything fixed again before we're able to get a garage (or give up and move out).

We went out to CdA yesterday - hung out at Borders for a while and did some laundry at Jenny's folks' place. Also found the tattoo shop that Lucky's working at now and hung out with him for a while there before heading home. We'll probably head back there this week sometime, since Jenny needs to get one of her ears re-pierced (one of her lobes closed up).

Talked to the IRS today about our business/tax issues and got some answers on that front. Things are in motion to getting that all cleared up. It'll take a while before it'll all get paid, but it will happen, eventually.

And I found out that WalMart owes me a day's wages for a day of orientation that I went to back before I left Fairbanks and briefly thought about working there. I had completely forgot about that, actually.... Oh well, I'll take the money. :)

While I'm sure there's plenty of other things I meant to write about earlier, that's all I can remember right now. Guess one of us will write more when we think of something. For now, it's off to watch Studio 60!

Quick Update

Both of us have now got paid, so we're doing pretty OK financially. We have food in the fridge, gas in the truck (and a bus pass in my wallet), and we bought half of the $200 (2 months) of comics that were sitting in our pulls box at the Comic Book Shop.

We went in to CdA on Saturday and saw a bunch of peoples at Borders and Hastings, and even stopped by Gamer's Haven and talked to Bob for a while, which was cool (we hadn't seen him since before we moved). Being back in a game store around miniatures and other geeky stuff makes me want to game again.... at the moment we're stripping the paint off a bunch of our old minis, so that's something.

At Borders, I picked up a giant book on Adobe CS2; I've been messing around with it some, and there are tutorials included, but I just really prefer having a book in front of me that I can look at when I'm figuring things out. It's already helped a lot.

Work is going well. I'm fairly well up to speed now, so I'm answering phones like normal and can answer most general questions, so I don't feel like the third wheel there anymore. It's much more interesting now that I kinda feel like I know what I'm doing.

Jenny's slowly getting worked into the framing department at Michaels, although she still get's stuck on register way too much for her liking. She did pass her framing certification test today, so that's cause for celebration.

We're still planning on going to the Emerald City Comic-Con in Seattle on the 1st & 2nd, provided that Michaels will give Jenny the weekend off (fingers crossed!). In other geeky news, the new X-Men 3 trailer premiered tonight on FOX, and it's already up on-line. It looks awesome, check it out:

X-3: The Last Stand Trailer

Back In (the) Black!

I finally got paid! (actually a day earlier than I expected)

Jenny's at work until "close", probably 9-9:30, but after she gets home we're going to go grocery shopping. Real Food!

I picked up a March bus pass (only $33) at the downtown station today before heading home, so that should save on our gas a bit.

And I can't wait to get comics....

Clean Slate

Today was spring cleaning day. I finally cleaned the shower (and the rest of the bathroom), as well as finally getting the ledge in the hallway cleaned off (Jenny started cleaning it a while back, but she was too short to reach most of it). It's basically clean, although it's still pretty grimy up there; but it's clean enough to put the extra boxes we've had sitting around up there.

So now the hallway is clear, the floor is all vacuumed, all of the dishes are clean and most of our clothes are clean. Yay! I wanted to get the whole apartment clean, so now we can do a quick clean every weekend and keep it that way. No more waiting almost 2 months to clean the shower....

We're just waiting to get paid now. This whole "only getting paid once a month thing" has made this February the longest month ever. Even though we have basically no money at the moment, I get paid on the first and Jenny get's paid on the 3rd, so everything will be back to (relative) normal again.

We can pay our rent and our bills, put food back in our fridge, and go to the comic shop and pick up the 2 months' worth of comics that have been piling up. Just as long as we have enough gas to get us to work for the next 3 days.... I'm going to try setting up Quicken on the computer, so we can manage our money a little better. It'll be even more important with us having to budget my paycheck to last the whole month.

The plan is to hang out with Jamie tomorrow, since we haven't seen him in forever. He's got a copy of Zardoz on VHS, and neither of us have seen it yet, so hopefully he'll bring it with him. And after we get paid, we'll try to go up to Tigger's place and hang out with her too, but they're about as broke as us - and they've got mortgage payments and a menagerie to deal with.

We've certainly learned to be more... creative with our cooking, to make the little food we have last as long as possible. Rice + Spam = Mmm Mmm Good.

Otherwise, we haven't been doing much of anything. We've been too poor to go out, and lack of food has drained us of much energy to do anything else. I've been really tired every day when I get home from work, and have been getting to bed really early (for me). We did stay up really late last night playing chess; that was fun.

I'm almost finished reading My Silent War, Kim Philby's autobiography, which has been quite entertaining. I've been meaning to read it since I first read Tim Power's Declare, which features Philby as a main character. There's something about Cold War espionage and the "Great Game" that intrigues me.

"And We Would have Gotten Away With It, Too, If It Wasn't For You Darn Kids..."

We called the Western Union people today and after I punched some random numbers, I was able to break through to a real live person! Jenny talked to the operator, and found out that both MOs had been cashed on the 8th of August and that we should be receiving the copies by the 15th. And lo and behold, I checked the mail and they came today.

So we open them up and check the endorsement on the back to see who deposited them.... Vintage Acquisitions, our landlord's company! They had our money this whole time and said they'd never received it, and we paid the extra $24 to find out otherwise. And because they didn't know they already had the money, and thought we still owed them, they might have cost us the apartment we wanted! Grrrrr..... We should be getting the money back from them "sometime this week".



And thus ends the Mystery of the Missing Money Orders....

Jenny's over at Heidi's right now for her Mary Kay open house, so atleast she's getting to spend some time with her friends on her day off. After she gets back, we'll be heading into Spokane to pick up our comics (yay!) and a Spokane newspaper (so's I can find me a J.O.B. and maybe a house). I'll probably try to get some packing done today as well; I brought home a stack of boxes from work last night, so I can start boxing up books. We'll see how that goes....

Useless, Useless, Useless....

Our landlord was supposed to stop by the other day after work to pick up our (August) rent, but instead she sent her husband (Earl), who didn't show up till 6. We're pretty sure she didn't want to face us after acting like such a bitch to us and being completely wrong about everything. Well, atleast we're all paid up with her, so that's cleared up (but no less stupid).

This has been the longest week ever at Borders. We've been super-dead, and noone's been motivated to work. I thought I was going to have the whole weekend off, but I re-checked the schedule today, and I'm working on Sunday. Yay me. Yeah, next job is going to be a fixed schedule, Mon-Fri 9-5 type job. Working at the bank is looking more and more appealing....

We still haven't heard back from the apartment we want to get into, but we won't be surprised if our land lord has screwed over our chances with them. There's still Meadowridge, the other place we really liked, but we don't know if they have any spots open right now. I tried to call them (twice) before I went to work today, so I could set up an appointment on Saturday, but no one ever answered the phone. You'd think, in this day and age, they'd atleast have an answering machine. Yeesh!

We also haven't received anything regarding the AWOL money orders yet, so Jenny'll try to call the Western Union folks tomorrow and beat some information out of them....

Guess that's it for the moment. It's late and I need sleep. Sleeeeeep..........

Say What!?!

Does no one understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? I love Chris Tucker, but his words are appropriate today. So last weekend, Peter and I dropped off our applications at one of the places we liked for appartments, and saw "Transporter 2" and otherwise just relaxed.

I spent today answering the phone every minute (literally) because some automated calling service has our number at work and we have to answer the phone each time with the whole "Thank you for calling Budget Blinds. This is Jenny." schpiel. There is only dead air whenever we pick up the phone, but we are pretty sure it is a telemarketer, or at least the calling service machine thing. This has been going on since Monday last week, but the number of phone calls had gone down each day till there was only one or two each hour on Friday. Verizon said there was nothing they could do about it. It wasn't that we were having problems with the lines, anyone could call in, it was just that someone/thing was calling us too, but not talking to us when we picked up. So today was the worst day for these calls ever. Our boss had us writing down the time the dead call came in, and he would talk to the phone company to try to track the number(s) down and have them blocked. After about 2 1/2 hours, with some phone calls coming in at the same time and tying up 2 or more of our phone lines, and between 10 and 11 AM, there being 2 calls every minute, sometimes every 2 minutes, he took our colums of times and called the phone company. I don't know what conclusion they came to, but I know they didn't get the calls stopped. At least the calls scaled back to 1 every 5 to 10 minutes though.

So... After that kinda day, I get home and there is a call on the answering machine from the landlord, saying that besides the Aug. rent that got lost in the mail (literally), she hadn't got the Sept. rent either, and that she had gotten a call from the place we put in our application and wanted to know what the hell was going on, 'cause she hadn't heard from us that we were leaving. Following that was a call from my Mom saying that she had just gotten off the phone with our landlord and that she was a huge bitch. So I called the landlord and repeated what Peter had already told her about the fact that we had to send in the originals of our money orders to the Western Union place, all in writing, and that we have to wait 30 days while they track it down. I don't know why we couldn't do it online and why they couldn't track it over the 'net, but I think it's because they're fucking stupid! I then told the landlord that we have the money to cover that rent (again), and that she could have it tomorrow. So she said she'd pick it up after Peter and I get home from work. I told her that Peter had dropped the Sept. rent off with her secretary on Friday (turns out it was on Thursday!) and she said she'd give it to the landlord. So if the landlord hasn't been to her own job since Thursday, when she KNEW that Peter would be dropping off the rent (he called HER to get the exact address to her work), I don't know what the fuck she's been doing. And about the fact she didn't know about us moving out, Peter didn't get it written up till last night, then when my Mom was driving him to work, he had her stop by the landlord's job on the way to his to drop off the 30 days notice. I didn't know he went to her work when I talked to her, but neither did she, so I told her that it was put in the mail today. It blew the wind out of her tirade sails, but WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!! Pissed me off to no end that our ending with this place would be so... STUPID!!!

So... Then I talked to Mom, who was also pissed, and she only talked to the landlord for a few minutes. The landlord said that she was updating her files and needed our "new" phone number. Which is bullshit, she's called us here several times over the past year and more, plus her husband or whatever has called us once or twice too. So I don't know why she lied to my Mom, but that was wierd. I calmed my Mom down, then called Peter, who had talked to Mom too, but earlier when this all went down. The landlord didn't call Peter at work, and I guess she doesn't know that I no longer work at Hastings, 'cause on the mesage she left on the machine said no to call her too late, like Midnight when I got off work. Nr.

So... That's my bitch/rant. I needed to get that out. I LOVE my new job by the way, and my bank finally deposited my $700. paycheck today which I love too.

Gots to Pay the Man

Good news on the "dragging my self out of financial ruin" front -- The Fountainhead debt is payed!

So, I talked to Chris (bud and ex-business partner) last night, and he's the one still in Alaska and tying up all the loose ends as far as the business is concerned. Well, it turns out we still had one more debt we hadn't payed (on top of FH): Alliance Games, to the tune of $4400. That $4400 had now turned into $7700 thanks to interest and legal fees....

To remedy this situation, Chris' parents have now taken a $20,000 loan out, Chris has payed off FH entirely, and is about to send a check to Alliance's lawyers to pay off that as well. As far as we can tell, we are completely payed off, the accountant is currently working to clear up the store's tax problems, and we'll be paying off the bank/his parents at $300/month for the next 5 years. So that's $150/month per person, which is actually cheaper than we were paying to FH! I can dig it.

It was good talking to Chris again as well, getting caught up on all the craziness in Fairbanks and everything.

Looks like our apartment building is up for sale; there's a realtor sign in our yard by the street. I'm wondering when they were going to inform us, the tenants, of this little change. Perhaps we will be moving sooner as opposed to later. We've been thinking that if we do end up moving, since we'll have to go through the effort of moving and probably sign a lease where ever we end up living, we might as well move to Spokane.

The whole point of moving down here was to give us more opportunities, have more to do, meet people, and save money. Realistically, Coeur d'Alene does none of these things for us. Staying in CDA when we first got here was great, since we were close to Jenny's folks and we didn't know anyone else or our way around. We'd get paid more in WA, have better options for jobs, and we'd have a couple of friends (Tigger & Lincoln) close by. I'm guessing I could even transfer to the Spokane Borders, although I probably wouldn't be up for a Supervisor job, although with them having a full size store and an SBC cafe, I don't think I'd want the added responsibility.

I switched shifts with Laura yesterday, so I've got today and tomorrow off, as well as Jenny (which was convenient). We slept in, did our laundry over at the folks' place, and went to Spokane and got comics. Then went over to Jamie and Maria's place to watch the second season of League of Gentlemen. He's also got the third season and the Christmas special. That'll be next week....

I still haven't cleaned the damn bathroom, maybe tomorrow. Otherwise, tomorrow will be drawing, writing, relaxing and wrestling (Smackdown!). Now, I believe, it's time to read some comics.