So Goes The News

Hello!

Yes, I'm still breathing and I still have internet access, fear not...

As you might have guessed during my little unannounced writing vacation (which turned into the entire month of February), things have been really slow around Chez I Am A Bug, with very little of note to report for a while now in the ongoing Life Of The Author. At least until now.

So, what's new since the last time I posted anything but an updated store sales list? Some damn good news balanced out by a little bit of bad: this past Wednesday I moved out of debt and made it out of a month with money in the bank for the first time since the Great Financial Automotive Holocaust last July. Yessss! For two wonderful, carefree, glorious days, all was good and right with the world.

But then along came earlier this evening ... my car now refuses to start. Hoorah. I left it at work for now, and my current thinking is that it must be some kind of fuel injector/pump issue since everything seems to be working save for the engine actually kicking to life.

God fuckin' damn it! How's that for timing?

As of this writing, my current car problem is not yet a disaster (and I'm trying very hard to forget that last year's Voyage Into The Abyss started off as a minor annoyance as well), as I have some money in the bank to get this taken care of relatively quickly. Since I'm off from work on Monday, this is at the very least a minimum transportation inconvenience as long as it is a routine kind of repair and not, say, a fuel injector shitting the bed on me. I have to head up to work at some point tomorrow evening to retrieve paperwork and generate orders for this week, and I'll give it another try at that point. If it doesn't start, I'm going to have to set up a tow. If it does start, however, Mr. Beretta is headed straight to the garage for a look-see (and an oil change while it's there, what the hell).

In far better news, after three months of wondering what in the hell was going on with her bank situation, Sarah finally got back a little more than half of the funds she had lost from an apparent hack of her account. This was about what I'd expected in a best-case scenario (though I still wonder how and why her account was drained into the negative four-digits before anyone let her know what was happening), and though she still lost a couple grand when all was said and done, she was at least finally able to get her financial situation righted at last. Whew.

In matters of work, things went absolutely beautifully at the store in January: possibly assisted by the unseasonably balmy weather (well, it certainly wasn't a plethora of new releases), we managed to exceed our target by 10% that month and start off 2006 way ahead of pace. February, on the other hand, was a very slight loss (to be fair, we were up against a rather freakish total from last year that defies easy explanation), but thankfully nowhere near enough to derail the year to-date.

Finally, The Best Winter Ever just couldn't last: after six glorious, Goat-given weeks of amazingly temperate conditions (as mentioned above), the cold and white finally came roaring back at last as February got going, and we've been back in that on-again, off-again melt-off-and-then-snow-some-more cycle for the last few weeks. As I type this, it's feels almost like spring outside once again, though the current weather forecast portends more hateful snow, rain and cold by Tuesday. Huzzah. Just in time for my latest car drama ...


NP The Orb Brighton U.K. 9/27/91