and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

It's July - late July - and it's about that time again. It's about that time when I forget the rent and I forget the bills but it's okay cause my landlord is pretty chill and all the bills aren't due to mid-month anyway, so I always sneak by. Somehow it's the sorry ass broke bastards that never manage to submit their bill payments on time and end up getting late fee after late fee. I always get them in just on time - pure luck really, because I don't plan it. I just happen upon them, write a check, and send them in.

I hate writing checks because it means I need to buy a stamp. Only checks I write are to pay bills through the mail and if I'm writing that check I know it's gonna be another 37 cents out of my pocket to send it. 37 cents! Who does the U.S.P.S. think they are? Usury, I tell you.

I had a checking account at another bank for a long long time. I took out all the money from an ATM but I was too lazy to actually go to the bank and close it out. Finally, I called them up and found out I could do it through the phone. "Well, you have a remaining balance of 17 cents. Where would you like me to send you a check?"... Uhh.. Look lady, just keep it. It's 17 cents. Really. Next nice old lady that comes in for a cashiers check - just deduct 17 cents from her fee, cause we all know you're gonna stick it to her with a $2 or $5 or $200 charge just to write her a goddamn check. "Well, I have to send you the check to close out the account sir.". Yah. Whatever.

A bank can't do it - the very institution that is all about the money money money - but my local pizza joint can. American Pie Company down on India street sold me a pie the other day and it was $10.10, or something like that. I struggled to find the change deep in my pocket and the guy shook his head: "No worries, man". Ten whole cents! This wasn't like pennies from the share-a-penny-take-a-penny cup, either. This was ten cents. I found the change and I paid him the ten cents but that doesn't make his offer any less gratious.

Anyhow, it's July, late July, and it's about that time again. It's that time when I get antsy and think too much and money starts to burn a whole in my pocket. Being the thrifty and frugal (some say cheap) guy I am, I want to get that money out of my pocket just as fast as I can so as not to ruin a perfectly good pair of pants. I can't really explain what sets the money on fire. I can't explain when or why it happens, it just does. It's usually in the range of 5 or 6 months since the last episode. I know a lot of girls who manage to quash the attacks buy simply spending money all the time. They do it in small doses every day - like and IV drip. For me, though, I prefer the big rush every once in awhile. A recreational user, really - party hard when I do, but rarely. I know that if I start the drip I'll become accustomed.. and I don't want to become accustomed - I want to get high.

Last summer at about this time the feeling came on particularly strong and thanks to a healthy dose of motorcycle-mania from my pal KC I found my bank account woefully lacking in no time, though a nice shiny yellow bike sat in my driveway. The great thing about the bike, in this case, is that it's a Ducati, which makes for expensive and frequent maintenance.. If I do it right, I can time them with my bouts of money-spending and kill two birds with one stone. This spring I managed to line up a major service to the bike right as I was jonesing for a fix and the two sort of cancelled eachother out.

This summer though, it's been a slow fast summer. Slow drippy days like watching a popsicle melt in the sun but fast weeks, fast months, going by faster than I can count them and see them and feel them. I tried to stave off any major episodes with the occasional purchase of DVDs and CDs but the urge has caught up to me without any warning and I feel a hefty purchase coming on.

Often the urges come on with little direction as to what I should buy. I'm like a drug addict whose forgotten their drug of choice and I sure as hell don't want to waste all my cash on the wrong one. Uppers. Downers. Anti-Depressants. Fucking Ludes, man.. Ludes. I dunno.

Today I think it's back to the basics - the one thing that has always managed to be a good pick me up: computer equipment. The purchase of an iBook last year helped me satisfy the urge without breaking the bank and it's treated me well ever since. The discovery of my neighbour's wireless broadband has only helped matters. Recently, I've maxed out the space on the drive with MP3s and developer tools and other nonsense and I found a very unfortunate flaw in the otherwise sexy Mac OS X - the thing just craps out on you if you run out of hard drive space. iTunes resets itself and looses all settings, the dock, the finder, everything really - it all just gets discombobbulated - in a big jumbled mess, kind of like this sentence. The poor machine got so confused it needed a reboot just to recognize the space I had freed up.. Needless to say that was the end of it's uptime reign - coming in at 48 days.. not bad.

So at first I thought I might just stick a bigger drive into the thing. 40, heck, maybe even 60 gigs. Why not. I could get my spending fix, aquire a project (swapping out the old drive for the new - no small task on the iBook), and end up with a heck of a lot more space. But, the more I think about it it's just not worth it. $100 or more for the drive, $50 of my time, and a machine without $100 more in resale value. At the prices these machines are going at these days I'm convinced I'll do much better just buying a new (used) one.

I can't really add anything else, either. The problem with the laptop is that it's not really a very upgradeable machine. So since I'm onto these portables, I just need to start looking around at the newest models. Time to trade up. Trade in. Go new. If I do it right I think I can get out of the whole thing for a few hundred dollars and some pain-in-the-ass selling on ebay of my old stuff.

Anyone looking for a nice iBook?

12.1"
500 Mghz
10 gig
384 RAM
CD
8 VidRam

Runs and looks great .. it's just getting in the way of me spending more money on stuff I don't need ;)