To Play As We Please (Geekgasm Edit)

I don’t quite have the wherewithal at the moment to write an entry that isn’t just a bunch of randomness thrown together, so you’ll just have to deal with a lack of coherence this time. Not that I’m guaranteeing coherence in future entries, I’m just saying.

I’ve been trying to figure out ways to cut down my car insurance payment since I got Penelope. And though I love her dearly, I started to resent her a little bit because my car insurance was so.freaking.expensive. Ryan asked me the other day before his show why I had taken the second job at Michaels and I explained that it was to pay for my car insurance, which is essentially true. Without that payment, I have enough money to cover everything. Maybe I don’t have a lot of disposable cash afterwards, but still. So I got a ton of quotes online about 6 weeks ago but everything was around the same price, $170 or so. I didn’t figure it was worth it to change my insurance just to pay the same price anyway, so I kept mine the way it is.

I got a letter from Capital One Auto Finance telling me I needed to adjust my coverage, and I dreaded the idea of calling my insurance broker who was less than friendly and helpful the last time I called him to get my policy switched over from Otto to Penelope. Also, my six-month premium time is up on 10/10/08, so I figured I’d try again. I did a quote with Esurance.com yesterday because I remembered that they did a discount if you purchased all six months of the premium ahead of time. (I just got a small loan to try to clean up my finances and to do responsible things like this which is the only way I could afford all six months at once.) So the first quote they gave me was $811, which would be $135 per month and would have been worth it. I filled out more information on the application and they were able to run a quick credit check and then they reduced my premium quote to $540, or $90/month. Score! So I kept going and filling things out and put in my debit card information to pay for it and then they reduced the premium again! So I paid $487.70 for six months of car insurance. Or $81.28/month. Compared to $170/month. I’m stoked and am totally in love with Esurance now. And it’s going to be awesome when I don’t have to pay my insurance premium for my old carrier and can just kick them to the curb. Woo! Also, not paying insurance for the next six months will be quite handy too. I think I will try to save up about $500 to make sure that I can pay the six-month premium in one fell swoop again, when March rolls around.

Yesterday at lunch I went and bought shipping boxes at Target for the goodie bags I’m sending to the participants in the Altered Book Group. After lunch, as usual, Kerri asked what I did at lunch and so I told her. She asked what I was sending and I said, “Ribbons and beads and things.” She asked why, so I told her about the Altered Book Round Robin we’ve got going on. I had avoided mentioning it because it’s one of those things that is really hard to explain. And it’s important to me and I don’t like sharing things that are really important to me with some people. So instead of putting myself out there, I just went and grabbed one of the library books I had in my car and showed it to her (and by that time the other girls in the section of our office as they were curious as well). It kind of took them awhile to get it but they did eventually, I guess. They were in awe and saying how I’m ridiculously creative and blah blah blah. It’s an awkward situation for me because on one hand they can admire the creativity I have, but on the other hand, I think there’s some resentment there too. That’s usually how it is, I guess, whenever you’re good at something though. So they asked me to bring in the altered book I’ve done before, my movie one. I forgot about it this morning but was reminded again by Kerri when I got here, so I will bring it in tomorrow and hopefully that’ll be the end of it. I love sharing this stuff with people I trust and love and all that, but sharing it with my coworkers makes me uneasy. I’m weird like that, I guess. Maybe Katy will enjoy altered books and I can share them with her, that’d be awesome.

Katy, by the way, is someone that Kyle knows through work and he suspects she and I could be BFF. Like, totally. Evidently we’re both very similar in a lot of ways and we’re both kind of craving a close friendship with a girl that we could go do things with, so he thinks we’d get on quite well. She’s in Boston now until Sunday sometime, but once she gets back the three of us are going to get together to have a game night. I can’t wait. I’m excited because the possibility of having a girl friend that I can hang out with or call whenever is freaking fantastic. And having a game night is also something I’m looking forward to. One that isn’t filled with dice and testosterone, not that that doesn’t have a place in its own way because I am looking forward to that also, but variety is nice.

So we’ll see how that goes.

I’m looking forward to next Monday as it will be the first day I’ve had off from work in like 16 days. How crazy is that? I’m really beginning to think I’m unutterably nuts for doing this second job thing. I figure I might last through the new year, maybe until around my birthday and then I’ll be done with it, hopefully. By then I’ll have had another review (and hopefully another raise) at my regular job and maybe even I will have moved somewhere even less expensive, but closer to work and with more room if possible (even if only on a month-to-month lease until other arrangements get worked out). So I shouldn’t need the second job afterwards, but we’ll see. I’m going to try to save up as much of it as I possibly can so that I can actually have weekends again at some point in the future.

Also next week (!) is the Three Doors Down concert which I am looking forward to immensely. It’ll be my first, so should be a ton of fun. Kyle and I might stay up at a hotel in Blackhawk that night since it might be a little closer than driving all the way back home right after the concert, but we’ll see. I’ve got another complimentary coupon for it, so that would be neat. I’ll have to figure out if that’s what we want to do and if so make the reservations soon.

I should get back to work. Joy!

Geekgasm Edit

I check the mail, which is nice because I get to look through things before Rachel can. So if there’s a coupon I really want to use in one of the flyers, I nab it. One of the little postcard advertisement things in there today was a thing about all the performing arts concerts and events and things going on in the Denver area through November. This is awesome to have it all laid out because it can be a pain trying to go to all the different performing arts websites and trying to figure out what would be worth seeing. So I’m perusing the list and on November 1st it says “CSO Goes to the Movies-Trek: The Concert.” CSO is the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the only possible thing that “Trek” could mean is Star Trek, so I hop online real quick to find this.

I so want to go.