It's hot as BALLS in here!

Summer has "officially" (finally?) arrived in the shitty state of Connecticut. And it is balls-sticking-to-your-thigh HOT. I'd complain about the humidity too, but growing up in the south has pretty much desensitized me to humidity.

So, I'm having a crisis and a battle of wills with myself (myselves?). My apartment has central air conditioning. I've never had an apartment with central air before, so I know that I don't need it. I also know that running the bloody thing will drive my electric bill through the roof. These two things are what's keeping me from turning it on. I've promised myself that I wouldn't ever turn it on, because I know how horrible my bills could get (or I fear how high they would be).

But still, sitting here at dusk in a pool of my own sweat, I'm tempted to turn the frakker on. Last night, I rearranged my bedroom furniture so that my bed could be by the window with the fan blowing directly on me. It helped some, but I still yearned for the dry frostiness of the central air.

I think I may need to break down and turn it on when Dr. Faith comes to visit. But I fear that I won't be able to make myself turn it off when she leaves.

Oh but it would be so nice not to be sweaty and gross all the time I'm at home.

**sigh**

One day, I'll be financially stable enough that I won't have to worry about spiking my electric bill in the summer and my gas bill in the winter.

History of My Wordle - Parts I & II

Dr. Faith discovered this wonderful website the other day (wordle.net). I thought it would be cool to make one from my blog. The following image was created with Wordle using the History of My World Parts I and II.



I find it interesting how prominent certain words are. Really makes me think.

Seriously Addicted to Toaster Strudel

Since I shut down my personal website a few months back (I didn't feel like spending $10/month for something that never got updated), I needed to find a new place to host my photos. Who wants a blog without pictures? Not me!

Anyway, I got a Photobucket account, and I wanted to test it out. Here's a current shot of my freezer, just to emphasize just how addicted to toaster strudel I really am.



I seriously need a 12-step program.

Woah. Too much data in a short amount of time.

So, I'm sitting here tonight, awaiting the impending thunderstorm and watching The Bold and the Beautiful, and I get to thinking about my money. Well, I was thinking about all kinds of things, really, and chatting with Dr. Faith. She's got me excited about something that I never thought that I'd be excited about (but that's for another post). Anyway, the conversation turned to finances. She pointed out to me that Debt Ninja posted about getting your free credit report today.

Of course, I check it out. Holy crap! There is a ton of information out there about me, and there was a lot of stuff that I hadn't thought of in years on there. So, I've got 29 pages of my own personal financial data to go through this weekend. Most people would yawn or scoff, but I'm excited. At first glance I've noticed a few things:

(1) I'm not as horrible as I thought I was.
(b) No one has stolen my identity.
(iii) My total revolving credit is down to 47% (meaning that 53% of my credit card debt is paid off).
(4) My student loan is kicking my ass.
(e) I (again) owe my parents a HUGE truckload of gratitude.

It's getting late, and I still want to watch these two episodes of Samantha Who?. So, I plan to tackle all this head on this weekend. I don't have to work this weekend (thank GOD), and I've got 30 episodes of Days of Our Lives to watch. So, I'm going to multi-task some major PF blogging with some hot soap watching tomorrow.

I intend to discuss my student loan in more detail, which will probably come in the form of the long awaited History of My World - Part III post. I'm going to use the summary table from the credit report to rekajigger my status bars (and possibly adjust my 2009 goals). I'm going to figure out how I'm doing on my $100/week plan for July, and figure out where my money is going this month in a more systematic way (instead of a haphazard list). And we'll see what interesting information we can gather from my credit report. I'm totally stoked.

But for now, I'm going to enjoy (for probably, and hopefully, the last weekend of my life) my one remaining bad-vice, and then settle in for some more TV.

My PF Mad Lib

Yanked from Debt Ninja (Thanks, Dr. Faith for the link.)

Hi my name is Okturn DelMoniq. I currently have $1 dollars in my wallet. When I started managing my finances I was worth -$45,807, and now have a net worth of -$46,097. I currently work at a university and have been doing it for 3.5 years. I make roughly $45k per year. I want to have money waiting for me when it comes time to retire. Aside from learning about finances, I really enjoy soap operas, toaster strudel, and my cat. I think the world would be a better place if Connecticut didn't exist. I had Raman Noodles for dinner last night and it was beeftastic. I have had 30 total and 6 major significant others over the course of my lifetime (counting awkward middle school relationships). One thing that makes me different is my ability to be obsessively organized and haphazardly messy at the same time. Now that I'm done with this mad lib, I think I'm going to find something to eat in the kitchen and finish my Jean-Claude van Damme movie.

Okay, that being said, I feel like crap that my net worth went down by $290. Mainly I attribute that to the difficultness surrounding the events of June and finally getting my taxes taken care of. The bulk of my debt at the moment is my student loan ($34,575), so if we don't count that, my net worth looks much better. But still not good. But I've only been anally keeping track for about 6 or 7 weeks. There is much more work to do still.

The first step on the path to independence.

I know that this isn't exactly financial-related. Well, kinda tangentially, it is. Sure, yeah. Totally!

Anyway, off and on I've been toying with ideas for independent research projects. Independent here meaning my own research idea that I can start now and get some preliminary data that are also related enough to my boss's research to justify spending her money on the project but also something that she herself doesn't want to persue, so I could take it with me when I get a job. Basically, if I can get this started, get some sexy data, and write a great grant application, I can get a job. WOO!

Anyway, I've been thinking of ideas in whatever downtime I have for such thoughts. And I was toying with sticking in the polymerase field and possibly working on polymerases related to the one on which my boss (and I now) currently work. I hadn't nailed down anything specific, but I had a jist (a couple of proteins and a vague plan). Well, in the past month, I've stumbled upon some fabulously sexy results with my current polymerase, and at the same time, discovered that two other polymerases have the exact same structure and the same key conserved residues...these residues are conserved through practically every species that has these polymerases (human, mouse, chicken, dog, bacteria, virus, etc.). It's totally awesome.

So... BOOM! I have a concrete idea and a plan. And not 24 hours before a meeting with the boss where I propose said plan, she emails me and suggests that I do my plan. AWESOME! She had the same idea, so I know it's a good one.

Anyway, this past week, I've decided is the "official" start of my independent project. And it's totally exciting, because for one of my polymerases, I have to clone it, and this is actual cloning (cells -> RNA -> cDNA -> plasmid), which I've never done before. So, yeah, I'm totally pumped on this. So much so, that I've been designing my cloning strategy tonight at home. (Yes, I am that much of a nerd.)

So, while not completely relevant for this blog, it indicates that I'm a smidge closer to being able to get a real job and do real work. It's a great feeling! =)