(no subject)

Hmm... It's been a busy 24 hours.

Yesterday, Greg, Sara, Mikey and I spent about 5 hours playing a home-brew RPG. It was a nice pick-me-up after my revelation yesterday, and took my mind off my financial situation. Greg's still developing some of the supplemental material, but the core system is complete, stable, logical, and easy to play. Our current campaign has us caught in the middle of a mystical, supranatural war between the forces of Nature/Magic and Technology with hints of a third side advocating the Balance between the two. Specifically, yesterday's session had us trying to get help from a local Dwarven kingdom to fight off an Orc horde, and accidentally getting involved in a snatch-and-run robbery by 7 power-suited dwarves wearing stylistic psuedo-kabuki masks. Can you guess what the expressions were? :-)

After we finished, I went over to a friend's 30th birthday party and had a fun time. KJ and Duane are good guys, and they also invited Kevin & Fernando and Jennifer, good people all. KJ and some people from the mortgage company he works at said that it looks like they may have a intro-level position opening up soon, so I may have a new job sooner than I hoped! Anyway, I started getting sleepy about 11 PM, so I came home and crashed.

This morning, I had a SAT tutoring lesson at 11 AM. The student is currently in an odd situation that may preclude further lessons: last Tuesday, he was arrested at school for drug possession. And apparently as part of the sentencing, the court ordered that he enter a rehab program before the end of the month. I'm not sure of the specifics (and I shouldn't be since it's not my family) but I think that they mandated that he enter an inpatient facility, as his mother said that he'll probably be totally unavailable after next weekend, possibly sooner.

Just as I was getting home from the lesson around 1:30, I received a call from the garage: my car was fixed and ready for pickup. They told me that they flushed the radiator 3 times and there appears to be no damage to it from the oil leakage, so (thankfully) I won't have to replace it! Now I just need to invest in some clear plastic and duct tape until I can scrape together the cash to fix the window.

Finally, my sister Katie (the one who doesn't live with me), came over and we had a nice conversation. She's taking the March 12 SAT and wanted to know if I could give her some quick tutoring, and I agreed, so my next 3 Saturday mornings are now booked.

All in all, 'twas a busy but overall satisfying weekend. Now to finish writing up my lesson report, and I can play some Arcanum.

(no subject)

I have Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on in the background (damn you, trollprincess! Damn you for addicting me!) and while I think that they're doing wonderful things for these two families, I find the shock that the cast/staff is displaying to be mildly offensive. Every week, they help families that are only marginally better off than these two families. In fact, the only thing qualitatively different is that they don't have to demolish a house before beginning. I especially find ABC's gimmick advertising of the episode as "OMGHomelessness!!" to be very bothersome. Again, what they're doing for these families is wonderful, but how the situation is being presented bothers me.

Aside from the approximately 3 million homeless in this country (of whom about 20% are working) there are an additional 5 million who spend more than half their income on housing, which means that virtually any unexpected monetary setback can easily push them into homelessness. Thankfully, there are organizations such as Habitat for Humanity that help these working homeless construct and own their own houses. I've helped to raise money for HoH, and both of my sisters and my mother have donated time and labor.

Luckily, although I'm poor, I'm not that bad off. Close, but not quite. But I am distinctly and constantly aware of how easy it would be for me to end up with nothing. And especially in this economic depression "jobless recovery", I don't understand how people aren't aware of just how tenuous the positions of literally millions of people are.