This month I really really don’t want to go into my overdraft. With things like vet bills, council tax, electricity bills going out it’s going to be extremely difficult.

So, from this point on I’m limiting myself to £50 a week, total, on everything. If I stick to that number then I’ll be just short of my overdraft. Unfortunately for me I have two bills coming out which usually total £50 each, and so I’m not going to be having very much fun for the next few weeks. No money = no fun.

Dave came to college and hung out yesterday. It made a nice change. We both arranged appointments to donate blood next Wednesday at about 18:00. After college we went to the vet with Bono and he had his first injection, as well as a flea treatment. It cost £36 to have it done, and took about 2 minutes, tops.

After the vets we went up to Dave’s house and we played a few games of pool against a computer player as changeable as the English weather. I didn’t lose one of my 10 or so games. After that Dave started playing some Drag Racer flash game, and I pretty much sat there for 45 minutes watching him play. It was just a bit less entertaining than it sounds.

Today I had to run to get to work on time. I’ve decided to stop being a couple of minutes late each day. Imade it on time though, for the third day in a row. I’m going for 10 days in a row before I consider my goal complete.

I decided to call the technicians to get this computer sorted because it’s a pile of crap. Nothing’s happened yet, so I sent an email to the guy who was my temporary boss over the last two weeks and pointed out that all I’ve been doing is imaging computers, surely if that’s what needs to be done first to this one then I could do it just as well, if not better, than any of the technicians. I haven’t received a reply yet, and knowing the guy I sent it to I bet he says no.

If he does say no then I guess at least the email will have brought my problem to his attention and perhaps he’ll get it sorted faster. Ideally I’d like to get a new computer, but if imaging the system solves some of the problems I’ve been having then I’ll be happy enough.

There should be some students coming in to do some of their tests soon, so I’ll have a few things to keep me occupied for about an hour. Almost certainly it’ll just be printing problems, or people losing their results.

Well, here they come.

Bono has fleas. I’m not quite sure how it’s even possible. If he’d had them when I got him then I would have noticed before now. It’s been a few weeks… He hasn’t been outside anywhere since I got him, and no other animals have been in the house. It sounds horrible, sort of, but the only thing I can think of is the homeless girl my mum brought home one evening to help her out… Perhaps she had some. Some homeless people have dogs, and I doubt they have anything to stop the fleas, so perhaps on her clothing or something. I dunno.

So yeah. I noticed when I started getting an itchy leg yesterday or the day before. By the end of yesterday I’d sprayed everywhere in my room with flea spray and I haven’t been bitten again since then. It’s still remarkably itchy though. I counted 36 separate bites before I gave up counting. All in a few square centimetres of skin 🙁

So, poor Bono has a lot of fleas. In fact, he’s got more fleas than the Japanese police force (“Evelybody fleeze!”). More Flea body mass than the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If he were at the scene of a crime he could flea it easily… *sigh*

He’s off to the vets tonight, which should be fun. He’ll be able to go outside soon.

Umm…

Japanese police plan for the first time to offer cash rewards to people who provide information that helps them solve serious crimes.

The reward system is expected to be introduced by March 2008 as part of “urgent security measures” to combat crimes like murder and robbery as well as offences committed by syndicates and foreigners, a police spokesman said Tuesday.

Urgent? March 2008? That’s brilliant, but why rush it? It’s only urgent!

Today’s my first day in with a decent amount of students present. About 100 new students came in today and they all did their initial assessments. Hardly any problems at all. Just slow printing because of the print server.

I’m so glad it all went well, because I’m knackered and not in the right mood to be dealing with problems. A lady came up to me and started talking about the switch to a new server (she meant an authentication server, not a physical computer, but she’s clueless) I said some stuff to dismiss her so I could continue procrastinating and she said something like “well I guess you don’t really know much abo…” and I interrupted her and said “we’re not using the old QLX server any more, we’ve moved over to the ProSolutions authentication, but it’s not linked up to the BKSB assessments yet.” and she shut her stupid mouth.

The reason behind my bad mood is that my mum came into my room at about midnight, sat down on my bed while I was in it, and said “so, what’s occuring tonight then?” in her usual conpiracy-theory, they’re-all-out-to-get-me tone. I sighed and said I was going to sleep because I had work the next morning. She spouted some crap about me plotting with people to get the house burnt down. I pointed out that if the house was going to be burnt down then I wouldn’t want to get to sleep so desperately.

An hour later she finally stopped shouting at me because I completely blanked her. She said she suspects me of murdering my uncle, and she thinks I’m going to murder her so that I can have her house. She also told me she sold the house over the weekend for £1. I told her that’s silly, I wouldn’t have paid twice that, but that she better get packing her shit because someone will want to move in.

She said a great deal of other things about me, my friends, and the rest of my family that I don’t particularly want to get into… But I did record 48 minutes of the argument on my phone. Maybe I’ll upload an MP3 one day or something.

I think she’s making me as crazy as she is. I need to get out of there.

I think I’m going to die of happiness!

I found a place I can order a bunch of the foods/drinks I miss from America… If I don’t mind paying £1 per can, that is. I don’t particularly mind paying that much… I pay 50p per can for regular drinks, this will make me so much happier.

It’s ridiculously tempting to just buy 20 of the things I really miss, but then I’ll end up even more financially screwed than I already might be by the end of the month. I’m supposed to be saving money for something that may not even happen.

But oh oh oh, I want some A&W Cream Soda.

I got woken up at 09:30 by a car alarm right outside the house.

When that was over with I just stayed awake pissing about on the computer until Alex came online. We chatted about some different crap for a while and watched a lot of silly videos.

JonP eventually came online and we arranged to play pool.

On our way over to pool I called Dave to see if he wanted to come along. I convinced him to come, after a while. JonP, Alex, and I went to Dave’s house for a few minutes while Dave ironed his shirt. We all walked to Towers together.

We had 5 or 6 games of pool doubles and then headed to the Talbot via Alex’s house for some food. With it being a bank holiday the 2 for 1 deal was off, so we decided we’d rather be at Wetherspoons. We walked down there to find that they weren’t serving food.

JonP and I had a Subway while Alex and Dave went home instead. After our food we went back to Wetherspoons for a drink, and then we walked home too.

I saw a girl that I work with. I had walked past her three times without acknowledging her :\ I finally realised on my way out and waved to her. She’ll probably be back to her normal quiet self tomorrow. She seems pretty cool, but shy. Oh well… I can’t remember her name at the moment… Claire? Something like that. I’ll find out somehow.

I just searched Google for essteeyou illuminated because I wanted to find out when I read Everything Is Illuminated for my English class at Diablo Valley College… I came across the MySpace page of someone else who uses that as his name! He apparently also read the book a while ago.

I decided to look through his pictures and I was quite surprised to find that he has this picture:

What are the chances?

I ate kangaroo with JonP in Nottingham.

He was tough to catch, but worth it in the end.