Today's rambling: It's here!
Written on Wednesday, Jun. 19, 2002 at 10:18 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Finally!

As I was further practicing Fur Elise today on Abby (my keyboard's new name, hehe), Mom came back from the mailbox saying, "You're popular today."

Eagerly, I grabbed three envelopes from her hand. Two from Clarion. One from Cingular, my cell phone company. Before settling down to business with college stuff, I decided to get the ugly stuff over with first...so I opened the cell phone bill. This was the bill that included all those calls I made while in Arizona.

161 dollars.

Ouch.

Considering my normal bills are all the basic fee of 30-some-odd dollars, this one was quite painful. I'm definitely going to have to look into free roaming and long distance, especially as their commercial is touting both of those features. It's not that I make calls on the thing all that often, but if I were to go visit Lola again--or if I decided to use it while at college--it would be nice to not be charged so much money!!!

The bank called this morning (I was asleep, of course, but Mom answered). My credit limit is exactly what I said it was in my last entry. According to Mom, that's even more than she and Dad had been given when they had a joint card from that bank! I must've been more responsible with paying everything off than I thought, huh? :oP Actually, whenever I charge something, I usually end up paying either all of it off at once, or at least a big chunk of it. Both of those are very good to establish credit. *nods sagely*

I forgot to tell Laura in my uber long, undoubtedly boring credit card email that she could probably get cards from various department stores and things, too. Their interest rates are a bitch, but they're more willing to give them out to newbies than other places are. My only advice for those is not to buy anything majorly big, because it'll take forever to pay it off, hehe...I bought my camcorder with a credit card from Sears (because they were advertising that you only had to pay like $10 a month on it if you got a card from there), and it took FOREVER to finally get it paid off because their interest rate was so high! I gave them $10, and over $6 of it went just to paying off interest! X_X

Mom asked the woman if there was any way my credit limit could be lowered, and she said that I'd have to come in and fill out some sort of sheet. I figure I might as well leave well enough alone, because the chances of me ever even GETTING that high are, at this point, nonexistant. It'll be good to have for emergencies, like if I'm abducted by aliens and need to call a...nevermind, you get the idea. ;)

I made yet another one of my refrigerated strawberry cakes today, but this time it's for a 'party'. Tomorrow is Bryan's last day (he's graduating on Sunday and moving back to California), so we're all bringing in food and soda and stuff and having a little going-away party. Before anyone told me about this party, I'd been telling Debbie about the yummy cake, so she and Karen came over to me later and asked if I wanted to make it. Like I'd pass up an excuse to eat more of it, LOL! ;) I just hope that a)I remember to bring it with me tomorrow, and b)Everybody likes it! After all the raving I'd been doing about it, it would be a little embarrassing to have nobody like it! Of course, now that I actually made it for someone else, the icing part of it was totally screwed up. Both times I made it for myself, the icing worked out fine, but I don't think I made enough or something, because it didn't spread evenly...and then the strawberry pur�e on top got all swirled up in it, so it's not all perfect and ivory white on the top. *sighs dramatically* I just can't win!

Going back to the whole college thing, I filled out the orientation registration form, and hopefully they'll schedule me for the June 27-28 one. I can't make it to the July 1-2 one! I thought about maybe just using Fed-Ex to send it, in an attempt to get it to Clarion faster, but hopefully it'll go just as quickly by regular mail. I'd already stuck the stamps on before I remembered my Fed-Ex idea, so it's too late, hehe...

The other envelope contained information about the different residence halls, and then there was a card I had to fill out and send back. The building I want, Becht Hall, is the only building that has carpeted floors...not that that necessarily matters, but I thought it was cool. :oP It's also a completely non-smoking building, which is nice. Givan Hall, the other all-women dorm, has a floor specifically for older students (age 22+). That might've been nice, to have a roommate closer to the same age! But I'm a year to young, hehe! Oh well, it's not all that important.

I'm just glad I got that stuff today, otherwise I might've just called them and said, "Screw it, I'm not going this semester!" Hehe. Right. Like I could've done that.

Mom bought stuff for my birthday party, hehe...I feel so silly and juvenile. Basically, all I wanted was just for all of us to be able to stand around and talk and stuff, but she's trying to figure out games and things? I would definitely not take part in those. She must not realize how uncomfortable things like that make me. And just having it themed, so to speak, with purple cups and plates and napkins...Am I 12 or something? :oP She means well, hehe...

Yesterday, Mom got a newspaper from her hometown in Virginia (she pays to have it sent here). On the front page was a story about my cousin Willie, who'd finally been released from jail. I don't know if I talked about that story in here or not, and even if I didn't I don't feel like going into it again, but the charges against him have been dropped because there was no evidence against him. I'd been thinking that the other two guys involved just lied about him...at least, that's what I'd been hoping. Willie, his sister Julie, and I had been companions when we were little (he's a year younger than me, and she's a year younger than him, I think)...we used to play all sorts of games, and even though we squabbled sometimes, I still really loved them. But then as they got older, they started behaving worse and worse, until finally I didn't even know them anymore...I hadn't actually visited them in several years. Anyway, there was a mug shot of Willie on the second page of the paper, and he looked so scary and criminal-like that I nearly felt like crying. How could this have happened to him?? Granted, he was always a little trouble-maker, but he wasn't a bad kid.

As much as I love that little Virginia town, it's nothing but bad luck. The lack of education, the prejudices and things...Well, that's all I feel like saying about that right now. :oP Suffice it to say, I pray that this will teach Willie a lesson or two.

John's off tomorrow, yay!! Even though he's been nice to me for the past week or so, I still like it much better when he's not around. Unfortunately, as I just remembered, Lester will still be there. He'd better not try to ruin the going-away party, or I'll kick him. Even Slaveway's gotta let us have a little fun every once in awhile.

Ugh, it's almost 11! Back to the same old daily routine tomorrow. Good thing Geoff's there, ha ha...