I have decided that in all likelihood, after I quit my job in January, I will probably stick around the Denver metro area for a while. A few more months, most likely. This decision has been brought about by the realization that travel is expensive, whether by car or plane, and probably going to get worse before it gets better. Reviewing my online bank statement, and verifying every bit of activity against my own records confirms the dead awful truth that I couldn't quite believe when I looked at the ATM a few minutes ago. Current Available Balance (in the checking account): $-102.19. Ouch.

Well, at least I've still got something in my savings. (Same bank.)

How did it happen? I have been keeping pretty detailed and up-to-date records lately. I knew I would probably be spending some money in Longview, so the night before my big trip, I made sure to square everything away in gnucash so I would know exactly how much I could withdraw, spend in cash, put on credit, etc etc etc. I was certain I wouldn't even come close to the spending limits on any of them.

Silly me.

While in Longview, I was quite busily occupied non-stop throughout the weekend, but that didn't prevent me from making a couple of discrete trips to a lovely little local record store, where I paid in cash for my cherished music.

I didn't mind $20/disc when I could find stuff like an old-looking (copyright 2002) album by an artist named "Geoff Tate" (I believe he still lives up around the Seattle Area) which would probably never appear in my local Best Buy back at home. Ever. Too good to pass up. Way too good.

Plus some awesome stuff in the "Freaks Only" room in the back. I couldn't resist buying the Type O Negative album "Bloody Kisses". Beautiful cover art. ;) They used to play that music on the RADIO back here in Colorado in early '96, around the time I lost my mind and wound up in a mental hospital. (Gee, no coincidence there. Hah.)

Anyway, point being: I realized on that Saturday noon hour that the longer I stayed in that enchanting store, the more enchanting I would find it. So I took the treasures I had found (plus an old classical piano album in the used section for $6.99, whose "Brave New World" title caught my attention), happily forked $50+ over to the beautiful and friendly girl behind the counter whose chest bore the word "ROXY" in silver glitter. (The female clerks are NEVER that crassly sexual around here. They can't be, or they would get mobbed within 5 minutes, and no work would ever get done.)

She didn't even mind me flirting with her for a moment while I attempted to impersonate the one and only scottgalvin.com, sharing a brief business analysis of the shop. lol.

Anyway, point being: I spent cash there.

Any other Longview expenses? Yes. Bachelor party. I decided it would be better for me to just fund the whole bowling alley outing, since the price was more than reasonable (to my Colorado trained brain), and I knew many of the other participants were running a bit short on funds. Easier to just pay it all myself, since I knew I had the funds.

However, I was shocked to walk up to the counter, and find that such a business would not take a Visa-compatible card. HUH?!? But no worries. An ATM across the parking lot nearby. That would mean foreign ATM fees (plus fees from changed BY the foreign ATM. Confusing, right?), but no big deal in comparison to the importance of supporting a groom about to be married. Cha-Ching!

No withdrawls or charges on Sunday. Naturally. That was the wedding day. (But I did receieve a Best Buy gift card as evening approached, leaving me feeling all that much richer.)

During the night, feeling fearful about the possible searching of my personal belongings at the airport (especially some of the newer, more valuable ones acquired recently), I conceived a plan to put a mind bomb in my backpack so powerful that it would make any security people who stupid enough to delve into my personal private property think TEN times about their stupidity next time.

I hatched a plan to lace the pack with porn as hardcore as I could find. The logic was perfect, as I saw it. IF airport security were to try to terrorize me (or fellow travelers) again, they would have another thing coming. BIG time. THEY would be the ones putting it in the faces of children, because THEY were the privacy violators.

If they let me travel without bother or incident, nobody would get hurt, and then I might even have something nice to masterbate on back at home if I got bored later. (Not really though, cause that kind of porn doesn't turn me on nearly as much as some of the better internet cam girls.)

It would be poetic justice, either way.

So anyway, Monday morning, I made myself into a crack porn searcher, starting at my favorite local record store. The clerk there, who I convinced within 5 minutes of my impeccable logic, wasn't able to sell me any porn, but gave me clear directions to someplace where I could get it. All I had to do was inform him of my wonderful plan, and he, also favorinig civil liberties activism, became my instant best friend. (Of course he favors civil liberties; he works in a beautiful record store, set in the type of good Christian town that shuns that form of beauty.)

Where am I going with this? Well.... When I found the porn gas station (cover pictures barely above the eye level of children playing nearby), the magazines turned out to be costing quite a bit more than I expected. But this was GOOD stuff. They had it all. Hustler (and other S/M variations published under the Hustler brand). Playboy. A little of the younger pseudo teen soft stuff. Celeb porn. Yep. This would do just fine.

This would be a CREDIT transaction. Yep yep yep. After checking my id very carefully, the clerk loaded my stuff into a non-translucent paper bag, and I was off. Running around the corner to rejoin my mom and brother in the rental car. (This kind of stunt requires COMMITMENT and BRAVERY. Oh yeah, I was feeling brave! But looking back at it, the whole thing now seems rather silly and even a little stupid. But I still don't regret it. This is what I call FUN on a trip.)

Airport security did not fuck with me. I guess the confidence I presented was far too great to make them worry. Or something. Well, they weren't performing public displays of civil liberties violations in the Portland airport like they had been in Denver. But somehow, I still felt a little more secure with all that porn in my bag. Just in case. lol.

(I'll leave it to the reader to figure out how I found time to lace the bag, and get it all prepared even though I was with my mom and brother at the airport. Plus I had to dodge potentially suspicious security cameras. I found out a lot through that experience. Let's just say that if I had been a real terrorist making a bomb to blow up the plane, it would have been no trouble for me to slide it past their scanners. I think. And it would CERTAINLY be easy to put discretely powerful explosive stuff past the drone bag searchers in Denver.)

Anyway... that's a tangent. Cha-ching!

Well, long story short: Some incredibly lucrative deals I've been finding on items around town (like a rare Enigma DVD at Best Buy last Saturday) during the past week have let me to run up a few too many charges. I had also been procrastinating keeping up my records from the Longview trip. Couple bucks here, couple bucks there, $20 at the ATM here, sound card needing replacement here (on Argo), and then a rare Janet cd at the store yesterday, which looked like it could have been one of the originally minted copies of "Control" (I believe it truly is), and ... well... here I am.

So.... They let me overdraft by quite a margin. Over $100. Of course, some of that margin consists of the very fees for running overdrafts. ($29.00/shot will add up very quickly.)

So... Now I know what I need to do. I need to temporarily move some money from Savings to Checking. And stay away from Best Buy during the next month. Avoid that particular Temptation Zone like the plague. And eat Ramen. Lots of ramen. (Because I still have a commitment to see who woman who gave it all to me on my birthday, and I don't intend to let that slide. Yep. It's going to be tight for a while.)

So anyway.... Given this newfound knowledge about the hidden financial dangers of traveling afar, combined with my obvious lack of willpower, I will plan to stay around town for a few months after I quit in January. Maybe find a fast food job if nothing else shows up. I'd like better, but I'd settle for working at Q'doba if it were temporary. Pay old debt, and avoid new debt like a crazy plague. Better to live on the streets perhaps. That's my feeling right now.

So anyway.... these are my plans, and I'm sticking to them. Gotta run back to the ATM and transfer a couple hundred over to the checking. This is seat-of-the-pants engineered life planning. The only way to go.

Gotta answer email and check content tonight too. And I'm going out for another meeting with some old friends tomorrow evening. Busy, busy, busy. Eeek.

That's my content. Don't wear it out. Bye.