Here is some good wholesome 'me' stuff for those of you who don't seem to read enough about my anti-social pack rat lifestyle.

I got paid Sunday. $394.50 for 65.75 hours. Not too bad. The pay cut is official, and I've dropped 40 cents to 6 dollars an hour. $120 went to my boss Linda (from work) for the money she loaned me two weeks before, and I spent $115 on groceries. I'm sick of running out of food, and I'm sick of eating crap because I ran out of the good stuff. I'm sick of being hungry and having to make myself wait just a bit longer to eat a meal so I won't be as likely to pig out later in the evening while I watch some Buffy. I'm at about $150 in the bank and sitting pretty for now. If I can save about $150 from every check, then I can pay the $400 I owe the college before too long, then start saving up for my camera. I wanted to buy it for myself for my twentieth birthday, but I guess that it isn't going to happen. We'll see when I get there.

The Gideon's were on campus this week. Tuesday and Wednesday from daylight to dark they handed out emaciated green holy books to anybody who strayed too close to their withered hallowed hands. They gave me a bible every time I passed, and I grew so tired of it that I asked how many they'd give me at once. They gave me 14. The next day they gave me more and more again, and then they left a box on a wall near the library where I went, in hopes that people would take one on their own. Now I have about 50 little green bibles stacked in neat piles on a Gideon's Bible Box outside my room.

I've met several new friends since I started this semester and I wish I had more time to spend with them. I see only faces and smiles in passing mostly. I carry on small, almost meaningless conversations that leave me empty inside and even thirstier for the chance at something with a bit more meaning. These days, my motto is: Take what I can get. I follow this plan by taking any chance I can get to be more than a face across the hall.

My grandmother has taken ill. All I've heard from the home front this week deals with her. I really don't know what to say about it. Being hopeful from here doesn't fix much when I can't be there beside her. Nobody knows for now if she will live or die. There is a part of me that says I should leave here and go back, but I'd fall behind in my studies so much that I wouldn't recover the semester and I might not be able to make it back to school. I got this feeling she wouldn't want that at all, but I could be wrong. There is just an overall feeling of the end of days approaching, and the sickening feeling of the world full of information and life inside her that will be lost when she ceases to exist. It is like this with all of us. So many of us live a television fantasy that we will be known as somebody to everybody, and that we will live on forever in that way. Sadly, very few people live on like that. Of course, we live on in those we are close to in life, but even that will pass away.

So, it's been a busy week, as usual. School would be great, if I didn't work when I wasn't at class. I'm steadily moving on down the road towards the end of semester though. We are approaching mid term I believe. Feels like it's going fast as a whole, but I wish each day didn't feel as long as the road to forgiveness.