Does Boredom Excite You?

So I am always being begged by my adoring readers: tell us more about the mind-numbingly boring minutia of your life!

Well you’re in for a treat. Tonight I need to clean all of this crap off of my desk. There are three giant piles and I normally like to be a pretty organized person, so I am going to get all of this squared away and YOU dear reader, get to hear about every fascinating detail of the crap on my desk.

- A cable bill I recently had to pay, for $333.85 because Violet and I are not very good at remembering to pay the bills each month like we’re supposed to. INTO THE SHREDDER!

- Six months of paystubs that had been stuffed into the bottom of my work bag. These go into the drawer of my desk where I keep paychecks and all of my receipts, stuffed into envelopes. One envelope for each month for the last three years. Violet says that I can get rid of them, but there was a time when I was convinced I was going to get audited. I don’t know why.

- A check stub for the, not one but TWO writing awards I won from CSU Northridge last semester. I cashed the checks, so maybe I can frame the stub! For now I will tack it up on a bulletin board.

- My check from jury duty in January: $19.42 for two days that I didn’t get paid for at work.

- A flier for IndieCon. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it appears to be a convention for Indie filmmakers. Oh. And apparently it happened last month. INTO THE SHREDDER!

- Health insurance paperwork. This blog post keeps getting more exciting.

- My Progressive Direct car insurance online renewal confirmation. From September 7th 2009. INTO THE SHREDDER!

- My very nice and cool soft-cover Moleskin notebook (with graph paper pages). It is so pretty and cool that I can never bring myself to write in it. I just jot things down on post-its and stick them in the back. I don’t want to mess it up by scribbling in it. I always end up using a cheap 9.5 x 6 inch spiral notebook for the real work (though more and more now I go straight to a keyboard for most first draft writing. Can you tell?).

- Sparknotes for The New Testament, simply the best pocket reference guide for the on-the-go writer.

- “Holman QuickSource guide to Understanding The Bible” by Kendell H. Easley. This is one of those books that explains how much sense the Bible makes and how totally real everything in it is. I own it because, among other things, it has a color-coded day-by-day map of the week of The Passion. I know, you can hardly believe how much of a roskstar I am.

- “I, Rigoberta Menchu” by Rigoberta Menchu. This is a book that I have to read for my History class. It is about a Guatemalan peasant woman. It won the Nobel Peace Prize. Or something. I haven’t even cracked it open yet.

- Copies of a short story I wrote called “Deftron Goat”. I took them to an outside-of-school writers’ group and I need to go back and rewrite the end of the story. Some of these notes will be helpful.

- Copies of stories I need to read and comment on for my Senior Seminar Creative Writing class.

- A completely empty manila envelope.

- My folder of all of my court paperwork from Burbank (from my car accident and all of that other nasty business). Which reminds me, YOU need to remind me to go this week and pay them again(every month I pay $185 in court-ordered restitution). I would tell you about all of that, but it really is not a funny story.

- My label maker. You know it is mine because it has a label on it. That’s sooo meta, I know.

- An entire folder of paperwork from Chase bank. Why they need to give you 800 pieces of paper when you open a basic savings account is beyond me.

- Post-It pads that are mysteriously similar to the kind we use at work. Hmmmmm.

- A set of Shakespearean Insult Gum. Yes, that’s right. My youngest brother The Kinesiologist mailed them to me. Each of the little packages has two gumballs and an insult from one of Shakespeare’s plays. For instance, “Thy wit’s as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard” (Henry IV Part 2).

- A postcard from the optometrist office in Costco where I got my glasses.

- A donation card from HELPING HANDS OUTREACH in Lancaster. They are always hanging around at school and last week I gave them some cash and they gave me this card which entitled me to a free pancake breakfast at their shelter in Lancaster.

- A letter from the United States Department of Commerce telling me how important that it is to fill out the Census (which Violet and I have already done, because we are a couple of awesome Caucasians-of-Hispanic-decent).

- My rejection letter from the University of Iowa (still all warped and stained with my salty tears).

- My rejection letter from the University of Michigan (still all warped and stained with my salty tears).

- My rejection letter from the University of California, Irvine (still all warped and stained with my salty tears).

- My rejection letter from Cornell University (still all warped and stained with my salty tears).

- A letter from Progressive Direct car insurance telling me that I need to renew my car insurance. This is from sometime last year. TO THE SHREDDER!

- Some paperwork about my school loans. TO BE FILED!

- A receipt for $594.00 from my dentist for like nine different painful things that they did to me in February.

- One of the monthly newsletters I used to get from the debt consolidation company that I was using to pay off my credit card debt. It is all paid off now, BTW. I am very proud of that (it was mostly fees and interest anyway. In California, if you get past due, they can change your APR to 29%, which they did to me). The newsletter is called “The Road to Financial Freedom” which I always thought was kind of patronizing.

- A booklet of coupons from CORNER BAKERY Café. All of the coupons expired last month.

- A list of the 50 Greatest Movie Zingers of all time, that my Mother sent to me (thanks Mom!). The #1 “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Clark Gable, GONE WITH THE WIND, 1939.

- Paperwork about student housing at the University of Oregon (which later rejected me via email). TO THE SHREDDER!

- YES!!! JACKPOT!!! I did not know that I had this! A certificate of completion from my debt consolidation company. It has a gold seal on it! This is awesome. This is going on the fridge right new to my (three) Dean’s List certificates.

- My lab results from a physical I had recently. I am happy to announce that they checked the NORMAL box. My cholesterol is 162 (normal is less than 200), my HDL “good” cholesterol is 55 (normal is greater than 35), LDL “bad cholesterol is 76 (normal is less than 130), my Triglyceride level is 156 (normal is less than 160). Since my Triglycerides are on the high side of normal, Violet got on the Internet to see what the hell a Triglyceride is and it turns out that it has something to do with the amount of fat moving around in my blood. So basically, I have fatty blood. All things considered, I can live with that. I drink 19 cups of coffee (with cream and sugar) before Noon and then I general have a couple of Rockstar/Red Bulls throughout the rest of the day, so I’m happy that there is any blood in my blood.

- A green plastic bag full of random old photos that Violet and I bought from several thrift stores in Clovis several months ago. I hope to build a story around them one day.

- An unopened bank statement from Washington Mutual. Sad face. I miss WaMu. TO THE SHREDDER!

Well, that is everything that was on my desk. You should see it now. It is empty except for this junky old laptop, a cup of juice and The Kitten (she is a little Siamese terror, but when I’m writing she likes to nuzzle against the warm side of the laptop).


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