Behind the counter

Got a couple of important bits of mail today, the first of which is the announcement that my student loan is being consolidated. This saves me a considerable chunk of change over the next ten years, because my loan rate is now locked in at 5.5%, as opposed to the possible 6.1% it could have been.

The other piece of news was that I’m eligible to take place in a class-action lawsuit against Progressive, whom I had as an insurance provider for all of a year. Granted, while I had them as an insurer, they were fucking top-notch. Our idiot upstairs neighbor backed into my old truck and dented the hell out of it, and they managed to get me reimbursed for the damages within a week.

However, since I’m poo, I’ll take any easy money I can get. I’ve managed to get $15 from PayPal and another fifteen when the state of Kansas did their whole lawsuit against the record companies for price gouging. If nothing else, it appears I’ll get a free copy of my credit report out of the deal, and I’m curious as to whether or not my score still makes people nauseous.

Paying off debt’s pretty hard when you’re dealing with a new house, going back to school, kids’ stuff, and all the while paying for it with a job that pays less than ten bucks an hour. Oh, for the days of delivery driving when gas was cheap and tips were plentiful. I don’t miss the lack of sleep, alcohol and drug problems, or various obnoxious bosses… just the money.

That’s why you should stay in school, kids. You don’t want to end up 26, writing on some dinky blog about your money woes to total strangers, and inching along at a degree. School might seem boring now, but doing the same repetitive shit for five years and barely eeking out a living all the while is worse.

In the spirit of that, I offer these Shakedowns and Six Gun Radio tracks, which pretty much sums up every day of my working life for the past five years. As an added bit of irony, both bands are broken up. Guess you can’t write shit like this without experiencing a little misery yourself.

the Shakedowns – “Retail Jail
Six Gun Radio – “So It Goes