My Washington budget....because I freaks out about money and seeing everything laid out makes me :D

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Washington Budget Year One

Paygrade E-3. Basic Pay---Gross: $1,650.00 Net: $1,490.00 BAH: $1,276.00 Non taxed.

Net household income: $2,766

Household expenditures:

Auto Insurance: $104.00/month GEICO quote.
Car Payment: $380.00/month
Credit Card payments: $180.00/month collectively
Rent: average 2 bdrm apt $850.00/month
Electric: average of $100.00/month
Cable: average of $100/month for TV/internet
Cellphones: 100/month
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Total expenditures: $1,814.00

Surplus: 952.00 for food, savings, other necessities.


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Your trust means so much to me...and I will do whatever I can to live up to that.

Like I said, I feel we were designed for one another. For both the good parts and the bad, and all the little similarities in between them.

Heres to seeing how things go. ;D



<3

Everything seems to be coming together faster and faster now. I have my IFA for the Navy this Thursday. I've met all my goals in the past, so I'm anticipating that I should pass with flying colors. Which means I'm less then a month and a half away from leaving now. Which means that I'm about nine months away from being out of Florida, hopefully on my way down to the west coast...and on my way to a career and a life I can be proud of.

And then there is the other thing that I don't dare to analyze too hard in fear of knocking it down. Emotions are such a house of cards, a million little individual things tentatively balanced against each other. Just one little breath of air can destroy the entire thing. But for all of its fragility, its a marvelous thing to behold.

Im really happy right now, so please...nobody breath.

Closing my eyes isn't bringing me into sleep...its the same scene every time. A waking dream of flying, and I'm amidst the clouds and warm winds that carry me higher towards the sun, my eyes closed. And beneath me are the same old labyrinths I've always known, a maze of car crash day dreams and dead ends and words I could never put together correctly. But its all so distant and so far away right now I can almost pretend I was never lost at all.

I'm just content to be here, above where the sun rises and sets. The armor that I have surrounded myself with for years left rusting miles below me to be picked through by whoever would have it. And instead of looking back at the snapshots spiraling outwards of all the might haves and could have beens I'm instead looking into the horizon, into hazy possibilities of champagne shared in paper cups and laughingly leaping hand in hand off cliffs and into the deep blue sea. Things that may never be, but look all the more beautiful for that.

These thoughts creep uncertainty into a mind that felt like it had told the last story it had to tell. Clumsy and ill-formed. Forced at times. Out of practice when it comes to this whole thing. Softly strummed guitars and whispered lyrics in my ears coaxing their formation, sometimes taking their place.

To an extent, my heart still feels like its stuck in the neon cacophony of some neo-Babylon casino. A high stakes gambler, sure...broke and down on its luck playing a final hand against a stacked deck before it heads out penniless out west. A gambler that will dream about that jackpot up until the last card gets turned over.

But in the moment. I'm above it. I'm happy. I'm content with the sun shining against me. And my worries below me. Bell towers and labyrinths be damned.

And in my ears these words are whispered: Easy, Lucky, Free.

Hrmph. I can't sleep for more then three hours at a time. I always seem to get like this when I'm single. It's not even a loneliness anymore, just that somebody else being there seems to ground me where otherwise I tend to get up, wander, look up all the information I can about one of the million ways my life could go. I don't know what my life will bring next, but with all the free time I've had lately I'll be damned if I won't be ready for it. I don't know why but some of the biggest achievements I've made in my life, I've made to better my life with somebody else...and without the right person I just don't seem to have that driving force anymore and I just sort of drift listlessly.

Going back to Kitty was a mistake. We had so very little in common, and she had more personality invested in her online MUSH characters then she actually had in day to day life. The irony being that she was so good at conveying another personality online that even though I would leave every weekend a frustrated wreck over us screaming and bickering at each other, she would convince me online that we would work out fine and we were a great couple. jekyll/hyde. Its done, over and out now. She seriously expected for me to be understanding about a promise she made some guy months ago to take his virginity because he's "helped her out a lot" in the past. Ignoring the fact that reeks suspiciously of delayed blast prostitution, really I don't think the best way to kick off a new relationship is infidelity. Gameover man, gameover.

2 months left. And I'm counting down every day. Though lately I have a secret that makes me happy and makes the time go by a little quicker. ^_^

http://www.sandiego.gov/economic-development/glance/quality.shtml

Sigh...I can has basic training now?



San Diego is a safe and beautiful city rich in culture and entertainment. Since the weather is usually warm and sunny year-round, outdoor events, activities and facilities abound including water sports, major attractions, annual festivals, professional sports, community fairs and parades, and more than 40 City recreation centers. But there are plenty of indoor attractions as well with an abundance of museums, art galleries, concert halls, and stage and movie theaters.
Climate

* United States Weather Bureau describes San Diego's weather as the closest thing to perfect in America. Holiday Magazine described San Diego as the "only area in the United States with perfect weather." Pleasant Weather Rating Service Poll voted San Diego as the best year-round weather in the nation, and the second best in the world.

Public Safety

* San Diego has become the safest big city in the United States due to an aggressive anti-crime stance taken by local governments. For more information on public safety programs and crime statistics, visit the City's Police Department web site.

Parks and Libraries

* Parks: The City has 34,260 acres of developed and undeveloped open space, including three regional parks, 190 community and neighborhood parks, seven open-space parks, 26 shoreline parks, and 25 miles of ocean and bay beaches. There are also 52 recreation centers offers a variety of programs, two municipal golf courses, and 13 permanent, municipal swimming pools.

* Libraries: The City has a Central Library and 35 branch libraries. Several new branches are being built or are in the planning stages, and others are being expanded. The City also plans to build a new main library in downtown.

Housing

* From coastlines to inland valleys, San Diego's unique geography provides a landscape that has something for everyone when it comes to housing. The metropolitan housing market has opportunities for households of every size and income level. San Diego offers a wide array of housing opportunities including affordable apartments, first-time-buyer condominiums, suburban single family homes, and luxury oceanfront or rural estates.

Public Health

* The healthcare system in San Diego County is among the best in the nation. There are 26 accredited hospitals with more than 6,600 beds available. Six hospitals in the region offer AMA residency programs. According to a report by Northwestern National Life, San Diego ranked in the top three cities for quality and costs of healthcare.

Sports Activities

* With its year-round mild weather and multitude of beaches and parks, San Diego is a sports haven. It should be no surprise that outdoor sports are extremely popular, and spectator sports are major draws including professional football (Chargers), baseball (Padres), and hockey (Gulls) teams. San Diego State University and the University of San Diego have several NCAA Division I teams.

Major Attractions

* San Diego is known world-wide as a popular destination for major attractions including Sea World, San Diego Zoo, San Diego Wild Animal Park, Old Town State Park, Birch Aquarium at Scripps, Del Mar Thoroughbred Races, Legoland California, and Cabrillo National Monument.

Arts and Culture

* Dozens of museums, many located in Balboa Park, abound in San Diego focusing on history, technology, culture, and art.

* Annual music and stage festivals in the City include the San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera, La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe Theatre, Mainly Mozart Festival, San Diego Street Scene, Adams Avenue Music and Arts Festival, and Adams Avenue Roots Festival.

* There are nearly 200 movie screens in the City featuring everything from blockbuster motion pictures and other current releases to foreign, independent and cult films, and major film festivals.

Shopping

* San Diego is a shopper's paradise. There are many regional and community shopping centers and shopping districts throughout the City including more than 30 unique neighborhood business districts.

My Urban Dictionary contribution under the Habeeb The Defiler handle (and I'm pretty sure I actually was drunk when constructing this...):

Drunkenese 24 up, 1 down love it hate it

The prevailing language of Alchoholopia and its prevailing Drunken Commonwealths. Considered by many as one of the easiest to learn and most universally popular of the languages, Drunkenese is still not considered a viable language credit in most accredited institutions of higher learning.

If you are unsure whether or not a speaker of an unfamiliar language is in actuality speaking Drunkanese, look for these tell-tale signs: Excessive salivating, repeated catch phrase quoting, propensity to trail off or tell stories that never really go anywhere, horizontalness, spontaneous projectile vomiting, and a tendency to overestimate audience's level of interest in speaker.

Speakers of Drunkenese are occasionally confused with having a degenerative brain disorder.

If you are interested in learning more about Drunkenese, check out a bottle of Royal Crown from your local liquor store and study, all night if you have to.


Man 1: "Hey...thees parteee izzz tha...shiiii...uhm...hey...man I just like totally downed uhm 5 Jager shots and...Im Rick James bitch!"

Man 2: "Im sorry. I dont speak Drunkenese. Where are your pants?"

I always seem to come back to LiveJournal for all my blogging needs. For some reason I never saw fit to delete this page like I have my multitude of Myspace pages.

Life has been interesting lately. I'm waiting for my deployment with the Navy, which comes in October at the latest. I'm really hoping to get in sooner since I have less money right now then I have since I was sixteen. This economy of ours needs to die a quick, brutal death.

I look forward to it though. I have spent my entire life in Florida...its time to see what else there is in the world, and to conquer it one dockside bar at a time.

Just got out of a long term relationship...and I'm still kind of working that all out in my head.

Dealing with 25 looming on the horizon. A quarter of a century old. I feel like I should have empires established by now, or at least a few monuments placed strategically in town squares.

Okay, heres the deal. Its Ryans 21st birthday party. Its going to be in a hotel. Your mission: drink everything in sight. If you dont come you are lame. I mean, cmon, whats your alternative? Watching the Andy Milanokis show while wearing nothing except brown socks and eating cheetos until you finally cry yourself to sleep? Thats pathetic. Come to Ryans birthday party. Trust me, you need this.

Leave me a message on LJ and I will get back to you with the vital stats of the party.

Erica and I went to Daytona this weekend. The first thing we did when we got there was take a nap. Typical, eh? Anyway, after that we went down to the beach and fought waves. I love Daytonas waves but the whole place smells like fish. But thats okay. You are forgiven Daytona...you and your fishey self.

After that we got drunk and stumbled around the beach. We had plans to have sex on the balcony outside the hotel, but in our drunken state we ended up getting a pizza and some manicotti instead and passing out while watching some thing on the Burmuda Triangle. In the morning we went to this miniature golf place where they had gators out front, and you could feed them off these pole things. Which of course Erica loved, because there is apparently nothing better than watching gators fight for scraps of hot dog.

Afterwards we loaded up on about seventy dollars worth of fireworks. After loading them into my trunk, it brought the list of contents up to Fireworks, Booze, and Porn. The essentials for every car.

Im so sick of AOL. I swear to god this thing is frying my brain. Im going to start hunting around for a different job, but Im kinda limited since I just enrolled in PCC. Erica reassures me that everything happens for a reason, and she says that me not being at GC anymore may open doors for me since Ive started back at school.

Ive also started collecting cookbooks. Which I know seems lame, but I really enjoy cooking for whatever reason. I have this idea in mind for a really trendy sort of restaurant, and I think once I get my BA I may check out culinary school and see what kind of options are open for restaurant management. Everybody seems to enjoy my cooking, and Im trying to experiment with cross mingling different cultural styles to come up with something unique. Cooking is sort of like math, once you figure out the rules, you can solve any equation.

So in short Ive come a long way from burning Ramen Noodle.

I still miss all of my childhood friends, but I guess Im getting into the swing of this growing up thing. Erica and I are talking about moving to Georgia, due to several factors, the main one being the low cost of living. I have mixed feelings but at the same time, I dont feel theres much left for me in Lakeland. Most of my friends have moved on, my job currently sucks, Im stuck at home because all of my money is spent on damn car insurance and bills. I love my car, but sometimes I wish I still had the van so I wouldnt have to worry about it.

Anyway, its just more or less a pipe dream right now. Even if it happens Ill still be only a couple hours away. Whatever happens, at least Erica and I are doing very well. I think I spent my whole life overestimating who I was, looking for somebody who I could have earthshatteringly deep conversations with, et al, that whole goth introspective bull shit. Instead tonight we wrapped fireworks in ducttape and scurried to get the fuck out of the way as they bounced and sparked all over Ericas front yard. And I wouldnt have it anyother way.

Shotgun weddin' here I come.

Ive been feeling so weird lately...like everything that happens in life is happening to somebody else and Im floating outside watching it happen. Everything happens in a flat two dimentional kind of way, like everything that happens to me is happening on TV. And everything just feels weird. I dont feel grounded in anything familiar anymore. I turn on the TV and nothing is really just familiar. I find myself watching reruns of old Seinfield episodes or Friends or anything like that, just because it makes me feel normal. Its like, not that Ive lost touch with the trends of today, but that Ive lost touch with life in general, like Ive been in a coma for five years and just awoke and cannot quite place my finger on whats wrong. I cant shake this feeling. Comfort eating doesnt sway it, exercise doesnt really dampen it...the only thing I try to do is distract myself with something else so I dont really think about it.

I have this really crazy idea sometimes that my life is a TV show and that they are wrapping up the final season due to lack of interest. The main characters show up less and less, and acting is subdued, as if nothing is as important as it used to be anymore. Its like Im waiting to be cancelled or something.

This is stupid. But its also kind of scary, because Ive never really felt like this before, at least not for a long period of time. I wonder if this is what it is like to go crazy? Grrrr...Im probably just depressed over my situation right now with my job and all, so hopefully after I get back into things with PCC it will set me right again.

I keep thinking that if I had my whole life to relive, how much I would change. Which in itself is kind of alarming, thinking that if I could, I would erase everybody I was and everything I have ever done. I dont know. I just feel like Im so much older than I am, and I want cross that out need to get out and to actually start forging a decent life as a human and create something to work towards instead of look back upon.

So every now and then I will go to my alltime favorite reference for finding obscure music, www.allmusic.com, and when browsing through top albums, I will stumble across Bjork. And I will look at the rave reviews. And I will think to myself: "Oh yeah, Bjork."

This will sit in my head for a couple of days. Bjork Bjork Bjork Bjork, until finally Im at a record store and suddenly: BJORK! And at that point I black out and when I come to Im down 14 bucks and up 12 tracks of Icelandic GIBBERISH.

SON OF A BITCH!!!

Now I pride myself on eccentric music tastes. And I try to like Bjork. I keep listening to CDs, because Im waiting for the one time where it will click and it will validate the Bjork CDs I own. But it never happens. Somehow, admidst her yodeling and whispering in broken English while the goofiest music ensambles ever composed bleets and blats away behind here, I for some reason cant appreciate it.

Bjork therefore needs to be seperated from other music in a catagory called Artistic Music-Like Flavored Crap. And stores will keep this genre in a bin. Located outside the back of the store. Also used for the storage of garbage. Okay, so its artistic. But so is that picture of Jesus some guy painted with shit so long ago. Fine. But I dont want shit-picture hanging above my living room couch either.

So in conclusion: Fuck Bjork.

This user is migrating to MySpace. Please slide comments and complaints under the door.

Im stuck in a labyrinth spidering away from under my feet, like cracks on a thin sheet of ice, and I walk as quick as I can not to fall through. A labyrinth of brick buildings, empty pools, glowing blue. Umbrellas standing sentry against lonely tables, facing defiantly into the empty night. Rivers of asphalt under streetlamps heralding city after city of ambiguity. A labyrinth of ideas and feelings taking the shape of people and places. Nothing seems too real anymore.

A midnight journey that will be forgotten in the morning. A place that will be dead as the sun breaches the horizon, and reborn into another set of thoughts and feelings that will declared fake as it sets again. So many places altogether that Im not altogether sure which one to put my trust in. The perfect evolution in a disposable society, the disposable reality, layered one atop the other to conceal something that will be questioned even if it is discovered after so many other layers have been pried apart. When will I know when I find what I am actually looking for here when I do? Of all the realities that I question, I just want to feel secure in this one.

But I dont. A maze inside a maze.

A car pulls up beside me, black, a pool to cast the moonlight back at itself. Different everytime, but unmistakably HER. This time her hair is red, she is skinny, freckles dot her face. We have never greeted each other warmly, it is always the same cold but knowing gaze. We both smoke of course. As I do, so does she. We speak and there is no need to know which one is speaking because we share the same thoughts.

"I thought I had found you"

"Maybe you have."

"I...dont know. I still cant really find my way. Im still lost. When I found you, I thought I would have the key to get out of here, to leave this place. Its growing around me. Im not making any headway, Im just becomming more lost."

"It was never going to be an easy solution. You could just content yourself with giving up. Just finding a little corner of the maze to call your own. Eventually it would become more and more real to you. You could forget that you were ever trying to get out."

In the absence of a ciggarette I chew on the skin of my fingers.

"Dont give up on this path yet. Through its twists and turns, through the shifting, through the light and the darkness of the path. Dont give up yet."

"But the path is broken. And I dont have the tools to fix it. And it has come so far from where I started I cant see the beginning anymore."

But she is no longer there, her car is dissapearing into the streetlights and around the corners of the labyrinth. And Im left, wondering, if some nights she dreams of me like this too.

For some inexplicable reason Ive been feeling kind of weird here lately.

The last couple of years have really been full of parties, fun, the sort of thing that I worried that I missed out on to a great extent during high school. But here lately it just seems that everything is grinding to a stop. We went over to Winter Park a lot this weekend to visit Drew, and he took us to a couple of parties over there. It just really doesnt feel the same. The parties were very different of course, there wasnt the nonsensical craziness that seems to take center stage at all of our parties, but Drew seemed different too. More quiet, less crazy. Is this just the state of everybody getting older, settling down?

Everybody seems to be drifting apart, off in their own directions. Ive felt like this before in the past, and for some reason I always get the same fear. Like my life is a show that just got cancelled and all the actors are leaving, or just coming back for walk on parts and soon it will just be me alone with the backdrops.

...

I feel like a phase of my life is ending, and I want to be ready to start the next phase. I want to move out, because I feel like my house is no longer my home. I feel like more of a roommate here.

Maybe this is just the feeling of stagnation. Im so weird, I feel useless unless Im working. I hate feeling dependant on other people. I wish I were still at GC. I go back to work tomorrow so maybe that will at least give me something to channel my energy into. I need to go back to school too. Im so sick of the TV, of sleeping all day simply because theres nothing else to do.

Im hoping that as soon as I start steadily working again everything will balance out.

Erica is a smelly pirate hooker that says she doesnt read my LJ page, but in all actuality lurks on it.

Also, my phone is temporarily turned off because somebody was smoking Salvia when they created the pricing structure. So I probably wont be able to turn it back on for a while. If you need me give me a shout via LJ.

The subject is pretty irrevelant. Just rockin out with Skynard. I need a mullet and a Natty Ice. *nod*

Erica and I went canoeing in her creek last night. It was insane since we spent more time lugging the canoe over logs and trees that had blown into her creek during the last hurrcane. At one point we took this fork in the creek and ended up floating past a golf coarse so we got out, covered in mud, Erica with a paddle over one shoulder and wandered around the 12th hole. Unfortunately only one person drove past and stared at them, but I bet they were pretty freaked out. CREEK PEOPLE!!! *cue dueling banjos music* We want to go back and put the canoe in the water trap and pretend like we are fishing in the middle of the golf course to piss off old people.

On the way back we started talking how funny two emo people would be in canoe, and how it would make a great song. I think I should write it down and mail it to Death Cab for Cutie and see what happens...

And then Erica got caught in a tree and fell in the water....The End

I posted this in a friend's LJ, and figured I would repost it here since its the most Ive written on LJ in a long while



My 2 pesos on the subject of Christianity

(and please bear in mind that depending on exchange rate this might add up to less than 2 cents)

Imagine if you will a heaven that is mandated by the 'rules' in place by contemporary Christians. A heaven that would bar peace loving people with differing religious beliefs (e.g. Ghandi, et al) from its gates and cast them down into eternal damnation, while opening its gates wide to born again ax-murderers, Texas militia gun nut fanatics, white supremacists believing their hate to be backed by god, upper chairmen in corporations who in a measure to save a few dollars would sever the livelihood of numerous workers and then turn around and show up in church every Sunday.

That image makes me want to run as fast as my soul can flee into the comforting fires of bedlam.

What Christians propose is nothing more than a theosophical and eternal version of the Holocaust. Imagine the type of person who would willingly follow a doctrine that promises that all unbelievers will experience pain greater than any mortal suffering for all eternity, and think themselves good people for embracing this belief. To me this is one of the most unadulteratedly evil things I could think of. This is far worse than anything Hitler's Germany ever envisioned. An equivalency to a story book deamon that devours not only the body, but the soul too.

I guess my point is that Im just trying to convey my belief that I don’t feel its NECESSARY to worry about what comes after death, as long as you are a decent person. If there is a supreme being, and it is benevolent, than I have no doubt whatsoever that your claim in the afterlife will be doled out in accordance to the life you led, regardless of time spent practicing dogmatic beliefs. And if Im wrong, and this is not the case, then my choice to not believe any set doctrine remains, because I believe that any god who would cast aside a good person just because they did not pick the 'right' religion is not a good or just god, in fact they are just the opposite: a selfish, judgmental, and petty god. And to devote my life and my soul to that kind of god would be pointless and unfulfilling to me. Being a good person out of fear is not truly being a good person.

I think that this would be a much better message to preach, but the sad truth is that there is no fire and brimstone fear to fill your bank account up with money, so people with these beliefs are looked down on as bitter discontents and blasphemers just because they don’t have anywhere to meet on Sunday morning.

Thats my piece.

60 Second Garrett Update*

*60 Seconds is wholly dependant on reading speed.

I no longer work at GC Services, and will be starting at ICT starting next Monday. Working at a call center that used to be a flea market, what could go wrong?

Went to go see MSI, awesome except I was robotripping out of my mind and midway through the MSI set I almost collapsed due to fatigue, so I had to climb out of the pit over the wall and accidently climbed my way into the lighting area, getting pretty evil stares from the lighting guy.

Saw the new Star Wars Wednesday @ Midnight when it came out. I was disappointed in the lack of nerds dressed up as Star Wars characters, such as fat and balding Storm Troopers and wookies with bifocals. I also noticed that an exceptional number of hands and arms get cut off in the Star Wars movies. With that amount of limbs flying off, I imagine people have to kick piles of arms and legs out of their way as they shuffle down the street. The movie was okay I guess, definately the best of the recent ones. I wonder if now that the movies are done with if nerds will kill themselves like lemmings with nothing else to live for?

Erica and I went to her brothers graduation last night. We are still doing really good. Shes about to get her bachelors degree pretty soon, so she can be my suga momma heh. Im going back to PCC in the fall and working towards a degree in Finance, since while Im not sure what I want to do still, I know I love the flow of money. MMMmmm money, how I love thee. But even after 4 months we still stay up all night talking to each other until morning, sooooo I think thats a pretty good sign. We will seeeeeeeeeee.

::END::