I'm a high school lover.

[raybear]

I haven't quite decided if I'm amused or fascinated or frightened that I dream in ipods and livejournal entries and e-mail. I guess I'm all of the above. Last night there was an amusing guest appearance featuring mintwaster riding the bus with me.

The fluid has moved from the back of my head and throat to the front of my nose. My voice sounds foreign to me, as the echo has changed in my head. I'm not sure if I sound funny to others or not, but I'm self-conscious either way. It's jarring to open your mouth and not hear yourself, the other side of the coin to hearing your own voice on a tape recorder. But symptomatically, I'm doing okay. The congestion and a little tiredness, but nothing I can't ignore or rather push past. I'm not even taking wellness formula since I took it a lot last week and I don't want my immune system to become dependent on boosters.


I did my taxes three times last night -- once using the tuition deduction, once using the education credit, and then once more with the education credit because that yielded a higher return and I wanted to check my work. I mailed them off today and utilized the direct deposit option. It's not quite as much money as I dreamed, but it's still a nice chunk. It's still unbelievable to me that I might be consumer debt-free by the summer. Last night I even called a cancelled a couple credit accounts I'd paid off, to streamline my credit. Next step will be to call the remaining cards and ask for lower interest rates -- all of them are ridiculously high except for one. I worry I'll pay them all off and then I'll have to load them back up again to pay my tuition in June. And then I'm paying double-interest, because it's loan money that I used to pay down debt rather than tuition, but then I pay tuition with a credit card. Right now I'm hoping I can pay half of my tuition out of pocket for next semester, and the other half on credit cards, which I will also prioritize in paying down. And in the meantime, save money like crazy wherever I can. Today's not a good start since I didn't bring food for lunch. But I'm planning on buying a can of soup from the drugstore which will be cheaper than food in the Loop.


I'm wanting to streamline lots of things in my life lately, including my possessions. I need to go through my closet and pull lots of clothes to giveaway. I have lots of records to giveaway too. I'm holding off on CDs because those I can sell and save those for times when I'm more strapped for cash. But I think I will go through my library now and pull books to sell, especially if we end up moving soon because it will be less weight to carry.

When not fixated on my lifeplanning, including starting my own website, finishing my advice column to pitch, making a CD sampler to get DJ gigs, and researching literary submissions, I'm reading Monique Truong's The Book of Salt. For some reason I didn't want to like it. The premise was too....premise-y (woot! I'm a writer!) and the musing of the narrator were somewhat self-conscious. Except, so far, I love it. It's beautiful and amazing, fifty pages into it. Hopefully it will stay great.

Comments

[mintwaster.livejournal.com]

I can't remember what I did last year. And I sure don't remember where I put last year's returns.

We don't have to put school loans anywhere on the sheet, right? And the educational tax credit is a thousand dollars, right?

[raybear.livejournal.com]

You don't need to put loans down anywhere. You need tax form 8863 and the w2-type thing from your school saying how much tuition and whatnot you paid to calculate how much of a credit you get. It was somewhat easy, though you wouldn't know it from the IRS instructions at times.