Sometimes I wish I were an Eloy

Wow, so once again, I haven't posted in like a bajillilon years. Or a couple weeks, you be the judge.

Working a full time job while also tackling a four-class graduate school schedule is a royal pain in the ass. It's probably not nearly as exhausting as actually working two full time jobs, but it's still pretty heavy. I'm glad the semester is about to end. I've pretty much decided that I'm keeping the job, which means I won't be graduating until December of next year. Boo, hiss, and damn.

On the plus side, I get to build some work history, take the academic side of things relatively easy, and whatever CPA tests I don't finish in the summer, I can wrap up during my very moderate Fall semester. Furthermore, even if I don't find work right after graduation, I should be able to do the HR Block thing again next tax season to make some money and pad my resume a bit more.

I'm exhausted almost all the time now, though. I have no energy to go out, hit the gym, or even make more than a minimal attempt at my schoolwork. The stress is definitely taking a toll on my sanity. Between Thanksgiving break this week and the two weeks I'm taking off for my finals, I should be fine in terms of my grades, but I definitely would not even consider trying to work this schedule for an entire semester. At least I'll make enough money to fix up my car and go Christmas shopping.

Oh, yeah, my car needed fixing up. Wednesday morning, I awoke to my cat biting rather harshly into my arm. I swatted him away and went back to bed, not realizing that this was cat for "dude, your alarm didn't go off, you were supposed to wake up like 20 minutes ago!" Eventually, I saw the clock, and it was almost an hour later than I typically wake. I sprang out of bed, ran into the shower, shaved, and ironed a shirt in just 25 minutes. I actually had a chance of making it to work until I blew a tire. Unlike the first time I had a blowout, I noticed this one quick enough to pull the car over to the road instead of driving on the rim.

So I get out into the very cold November morning and small the burnt rubber. Grimacing, I go into my trunk and extract the spare tire and car jack that I keep there. What I don't extract, for lack of owning one, is a tire iron. Can you tell I'm not a car guy?

So out comes AAA to save the day, and I really have to give that company credit. They were there in like 15 minutes, and the guy worked fast. Unfortunately, his jack wouldn't fit under my car because it had sunk a bit in mud, and the only solution he could think of was to drive the car a bit, even on the bum wheel. Eff that, says I, and I just lifted the back end of the car a bit for him. Cars weigh a few thousand pounds, but most of that's in the parts. The frame itself rarely weighs more than 500, and I was only lifting the corner. I got it up just enough for his jack to slip until the frame, thus saving me at least from further damaging my wheel. And now I had a valid excuse for being late.

So I had the next day off from work, and I spend part of it taking the car in to the shop. They charged me over $130 to buy and change the tire, but whatever. Took them longer to bring the tire out and change it than it took the AAA guy to arrive and do his whole thing, but again, whatever. I was able to knock out a tax class project while I waited.

A few other less significant things contributed to this being a generally bad week, but it's over now. I have no class next week, so I won't be dealing with work and school at the same time, and I get at least one of these days off. Starting the following Friday, I'll begin my reclusive finals prep week, and I won't be going back to work until the semester has been behind me for 24 hours. So right now I'm enjoying my last free weekend for a month, and taking it easy. I've got some personal long projects I've been meaning to start, I finally got to get down and dirty with some zombies in L4D2, I finished almost all of my Christmas shopping, and I got my back yard raked. I used to define "down-time" specifically as time that I spent relaxing and doing nothing productive. Now I define it as things that are productive for me instead of my employer.

I think this feeling means that I'm growing up, but it might just be gas.



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[UPDATE: coming soon, how Ben will attempt to both keep his job and graduate on time after all]