Hacked.

Someone hacked my WoW account. They sold all my gear, sent all my money to someone else and looted my guild's vault using my toons that had access to it. Transferred my daughter's toon off of her server and onto another one.

I believe I will get everything back. Eventually. Life goes on. Right up until...

Whoever did this made my daughter cry.

I am suddenly not okay with any of this. I am furious. I am going to cry myself... right after I get my schoolwork done for the night.

300 pounds...

That's the maximum weight that can go on the back extension machine at the gym. It feels like there is nothing on it still. So my back is strong but it is still defective. GRRRRRRRR

Money, money, money...

Money can't buy you happiness, but in the name of science, I would like to test that theory out for myself.

Right now, money could buy me 'things' that would make me happy. As it is, I can just barely afford to make minimum payments on all my bills, including the credit card I have to buy groceries on or starve since I did not start a proper garden earlier in the year. (I do have things planted now, but my first tomato has not yet ripened even, just have one sweet banana pepper, edible weeds and herbs so far this year.) Okay, I've given something away. I could probably fend off starvating by foraging for at least a little while, but it is silly that I can't afford to eat. I would like to be able to eat with out going into debt. Debt tends to tilt my mood scale towards depressed.

I maintain that happiness for the most part is a choice and I try to choose happiness consistently. Some people choose to be unhappy and as much as I can love my fellowman, I can also choose not to let them drag me down then they are murdering their own joy. However, certain things in your life can tilt me towards depression or joy. A paycheck that allowed me the basic necessities of life would tilt me towards joy while one that just barely slows my descent into bankruptcy is more of a neutral thing. The slow descent itself tilts me towards depression.

All of that said, I am going to be spending some time assessing finances, mostly mine, over the next few weeks. I believe there must be a way out of this hole that is being dug, but it is going to take some work to find it. Work doesn't scare me. Balloons do! (I have a perfectly rational fear of balloons. Trust me. They are scary!)

Addiction

I am starting to wonder if I am addicted to caffeine. I seem to need it to get through my day at work with out making a lot of mistakes and I seem to need it to deal with people in the morning.

I don't notice when I don't have it other than that I don't feel well though.

Food for thought for another day.

New Plan!

Build a better internet!

Okay, the internet is fine, but the connection options for people who live away from populations hubs are failing those people. To get anything beyond dial-up, we have to pay an inordinate amount of our income. Dial-up is not working for us because not only is it slow if everything else works perfectly, but our phone lines tend to have static and head-ache inducing hums that also foul up the computer trying to have a chat with the world wide web. Is it really too much to ask to be able to talk to mom with out having to take medication afterwards?

It took me 30 minutes to turn in my assignment at my online college last night. The research took several hours and should only have taken about 30 minutes, and writing it took 15 minutes. By my math, I wasted just short of four hours by having a poor connection.

I think I am going to have to spend more time at the library which is just going to be great fun since the librarians at the Jefferson-Madison Regional Libraries seem to regard my occasional muttering to myself as speaking to someone via a cell phone or internet connection. I find it odd that speaking in a voice that is at least as soft as a whisper has them hushing me, but I can talk to someone across the room and it does not bother them in the slightest. The atmosphere at Pamunkey Regional Libraries seems to be much more conducive to the living breathing humans who are library patrons. The librarians at the second system also seem to be proactive and eager to offer assistance when needed.

Other fast internet options usually involve buying food somewhere, which does offer more available research hours, but is less cost effective. Aside from the actual food purchase, there is also the cost of travelling to these places and how long can I justify camping out in the back booth at Panera even if it is not crowded?

I love my fast connection!

But I hate that I have to go to the library to get it. Thankfully my new computer has a long battery life.

Still working on a solution, obviously there must be one, it just is not obvious!

Priorities

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who assume I am wasting my time on things that should not be priorities. When I complain I do not have time to do anything else or for something to go wrong in my plans, I am told to only do what is important.

So let us discuss what is important.

I work. I have a physically and mentally intensive job that pays slightly more than minimum wage. I have spent the last fourteen years dedicating myself to my family and when I remarried eleven years ago, I found myself in the position of having to ask if I could attend college. The answer was never quite an outright “no” but it was some variation of “you have to find the money”. Now, I realize I could have argued fiercely, etc. but my reality involved trying to please my husband and him never actually being pleased, but I still made the effort. So I have a job that pays less and it is my own fault for making assumptions about the future. Pay less though it does, it is income and we need it. I feel comfortable making the assessment that this is important and I have not received any feedback stating otherwise.

I attend college. I do this online on a piss poor connection. It takes me longer to wait for web pages to load than it does to actually read the page. This makes research fun! Five minutes to get a page to load if I do not have to reload it because my connection broke and maybe 10 seconds to realize that it is completely irrelevant to what I am researching. I stick with it anyway. Why? Because by going to school online I can be here for my children still. Because, I do not know if I brought this up, but I do not get paid enough at my job to support myself and my children. I am attending school full time and sometimes I do really well and sometimes I struggle to get a passing grade. I feel comfortable making the assessment that this is important and I have not received any feedback stating otherwise.

I spend time with my children whenever possible. Sometimes between keeping up with my schoolwork, working and lack of sleep, I just crash when I get home, but most of the time I would rather be doing something, anything with the children. We have projects we work on, sometimes we sit and talk, and sometimes we play games together. I take them with me whenever I have errands to run outside of doctor’s appointments. We go check on the horses and sort the storage unit and talk about the future. This is very important.

I have medical issues. I do not want to go into detail on them here, but suffice it to say, they are serious enough to be a threat to my life if I neglect them, but just keep me tired if I keep up with them. I am seeking solutions that are permanent as possible with out contradicting everything else. We will see where that goes as soon as possible. In this category I will also include that I do work out either at home or at the gym when the opportunity presents itself.

I am selling my house. There is work involved in keeping it up and in continuing to improve on it. I will not bore you with the details of that right now.

I am also getting a divorce. Before anyone asks, no, it is not salvageable and it really is not up to me either way. My husband wants a divorce and has been rather certain of that since February of 2008. He will not let me move out with out punitive action till the house sells though. This is really stressful, but this is my life right now.

I occasionally sleep. I try to sleep more when my schedule permits, but it does not always work out for me. I have had sleep issues since I was an infant and they have not really gotten much worse but are having more of an effect on my life due to my hectic schedule. Usually this is the first thing that ends up suffering when there is simply too much to be done in one day.

I play an online computer game called World of Warcraft. Since being house bound for a time after my first surgery, I have really enjoyed playing this game and have made some good friends playing it as well. It is my stress relief, but since starting work and school, I mostly log on and use it to chat with those friends since they are playing and it is easier for them to have only one program opened and not have to try to talk on the phone at the same time. Since my connection is so poor, I do not get to raid[1] most of the time anyway, which is the aspect I enjoy most about the game. I spend maybe 20 minutes on average per day actually playing. I would like to spend more, but I do not have that much free time. I believe for the relaxation value and entertainment value allowed it is very cost effective at only $15 a month. When you consider the other entertainment options that appeal to me, this is an incredible bargain.

What is important? It seems that everything is.

I want more. I want to do more and find the time to do it. So, in all likelihood, when I do finally get my head above the water in regards to actually having a few minutes of free time for myself, I will find something else to throw myself into full tilt. It will probably be ‘important’ too, but not as important as what I am doing now.

1- A raid is a planned event involving 10, 20, 25 or 40 players acting in cooperation to achieve goals that would be unattainable in smaller numbers.