For a roll of quarters...

So, I needed to get a roll of quarters to do laundry and decided to go to my bank. Mostly I was trying to avoid paying a fee at a Currency Exchange to do so, but also I knew where my bank was, whereas finding a decent Currency Exchange downtown can be a challenge. I hadn't been to the bank in a long time. I check my account nearly daily online, I get cash from ATMs and I almost never need to make a deposit, so I admit I must have looked lost while searching for the tellers.

"Do you need help?" a pretty woman asked me. She was polished, wearing a dark suit and looking well above handing out change. I told her I needed a teller to get a roll of quarters and she laughed and directed me to her cubicle. If I had my ID card and my debit card handy, she would be happy to get my quarters.

That's when I realized my blunder. You see, I am broke. I have been living from paycheck to paycheck for months. The reason I check my account nearly daily is to update a detailed spreadsheet of expenses I keep in hopes of getting myself out of this mess. So I knew she would find out what I already knew: my credit card was maxed out and checking account had fallen into the negative.

I had already resigned myself to the additional fees. I had made a mistake and forgotten to add an automatic payment in my spreadsheet which caused this expensive blunder. I'll get paid soon, the fees will be paid and I'll move on. I told her I had some cash in hand (borrowed from a friend), that I didn't need to withdraw it from my account, but it was too late. Her face fell when she saw the negative balance, the credit card straining its limit. She left me alone for a moment and I wondered, weirdly, if she was checking with some supervisor who would confiscate my $10 to pay off some of the late charges. But she didn't; she returned and with a cheery smile, handed me a roll of quarters.

"Even though your card is maxed out, they've approved you for another smaller card," she told me. She turned her screen towards me so that I could see my banking information for myself. I pretended to look while the buzz of embarrassment filled my mind. The antidepressants must be working, because before I would have flushed and choked up with tears of shame.

"It's only a $300 limit, but it will certainly help in an emergency," she added. She didn't need to add "like now."

I wanted to say, I don't need another credit card, I'm trying to get out of debt, not wrack up more, but I just said, "I'll be fine. I get paid on Friday."

'It's Wednesday," she countered. I'm a decent judge of people. I get that she's a salesperson, that she might even get some sort of bonus for each new card she talks someone into, but there was an edge of pity in her voice. She pressed the point only a little: how are you getting by, are you sure you don't need it?

All I wanted was a roll of quarters to do laundry.

"I will be fine," I insisted.

She pressed her business card into my hand before I left, in case I should change my mind and accept her offer, and advised me not to use my debit card and make things worse. Yes, I know this already, and no, I haven't used it all week, but there was no point in telling her these things. Why do I should I care what she thinks of me? What use would it be to say, no, I'm usually very responsible, I've been a self-sufficient adult for a long time, honestly!  But as I walked back to work, I couldn't help replaying the conversation in my head. I saw the concern in her face, heard her perky voice, over and over, her misplaced sympathy. I'm not sure which makes me feel worse, the lack of money or the pity of a complete stranger.

But tonight I'll do my laundry.

My New TV Boyfriend

Yes, I such a geek girl that I develop crushes on TV characters. My newest crush is Marshall Mann, one of the U.S. Marshals on the show In Plain Sight. Of course, I like the main character, Mary, his partner, too, but Marshall has slowly been winning my heart. He has a dry voice, a quirky sense of humor and a head for trivia. This last episode, poor Marshall got shot and he walked Mary through inserting a tube in the wound to help him to breathe, all the while explaining the science behind it. I think I fell in love with him when he was explaining to Mary why he was considering leaving the Marshals: "It's like you're this exotic animal I'm in charge of and I have to protect you from the world and the world from you." Not exactly poetry, but it is delivered with such pain that you could really see how much Marshall loves Mary. And dammit, I have a really big soft spot for protective guys.

watermelon

So, I'm at my friends' (Terry and Lisa) house, having a barbecue in their backyard. We've had steaks, chicken and some giant hot dogs. I'm full as a tick and I'm amused as hell that I can blog without a computer.

Earlier today I went out looking for an iced americano (and found one at Metropolis Cafe down the street) and saw one of those guys with the bicycle-driven ice cream carts. I decided needed a popsicle; there is a mexican brand of fruit-flavored ones that I love. The man didn't have those, but he did have watermelon ones. I discovered these were actually slices of watermelon frozen on sticks. They were very sweet and had intense flavor. It reminded me of the watermelon we had on Emeishan in Sichuan, which in turn brought up a flood of memories of the students who befriended us, temples overlooking cliffs, thunderstorms on mountaintops and thieving monkeys.

Happy Buddha Day

Today, Buddhists everywhere celebrate the life of Buddha. Sort of like Christmas, except without the crass commercialism.

I have always loved Buddha. As a kid, we always had at least one statue of him around the house. Officially, we were Catholic, but it was also the 70s and everyone was a little bit hippy. My mom loved incense and wind chimes and Indian and Chinese art (my older siblings simply loved pot). My favorite Buddha, somewhat ironically, was a plaster coin bank that was so heavy with change that it was nearly immobile. I wonder what Buddha would have made of that.

Regardless, as a child, I could relate to Buddha more than I could Christ. Even off the cross, Jesus was serious and sad. And a little bit scary: we had a picture of him on our stairs that showed his heart outside of his body and either on fire or crowned with thorns.

But Buddha was either cheerful or beautifully serene. His statues were magnets for children; as kids, and later my nieces and nephews, we loved rubbing his tummy, which we were told would bring us luck. As an adult, I feel such peace and love when I look at paintings and statues of him.

Unless it's the buddha bank, which is now at my sister's house. Then I'm thinking about how I can steal it from her. She can keep the money, I just want the statue.

What I'm Listening to Now: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

Downloaded this last night and installed it on the iPodPerson. On first listen, most of it reminds me of the music from Ghosts, although a little harder and fuzzier, maybe. I haven't deciphered the lyrics yet, but I'm intrigued. Some sound on the angry political side, others seem to be giving a big "fuck you" to Reznor's critics. In between Downward Spiral and Ghosts, I didn't buy any NIN because I didn't think he (they?) were doing anything all that interesting. But his sound since Ghosts has matured a little; he's still as angry and self-indulgent as ever, but now he's producing lush, eerie soundtracks to dystopia that raise the hair on the back of my neck. And really, isn't that what you want from a band called "Nine Inch Nails?"

Happiness is a warm computer...

The Satellite of Love (my Toshiba Satellite laptop) got a well-deserved overhaul last night. I archived big files, got rid of bloated programs (good bye Nero and BitDefender!), defragmented the hard drive, and ran CCleaner to get rid of unnecessary files and fix any registry problems. It's so nice to have a clean computer again, but the bloat was only part of the problem. My real problem is RAM. I have only 1 gig, but I'll have to upgrade to 2 soon. Of course, maybe if I wasn't running resource hogs like Photoshop that would help.

Now that my computer is clean, of course I added a bunch of new programs. I downloaded Avast (because I'm too nervous to go without) and CDBurnerXP (a free and much, much lighter DVD burning software) to replace the horror that is Nero. I had to install a torrent client in order to download the new Nine Inch Nails album (more on that later) and I finally got around to installing that free version of Bryce (3D modeling software). That last one is the least necessary and may be uninstalled depending on how much I like it.

The Satellite will be 3 years old in June and I'm hoping to squeeze a few more years out of the old boy yet. :)

Summer 2008 will be amazing

This summer is going to be crazy-busy and fun.

For one thing, there are so many movies coming out that I think I will be back to seeing at least one movie a week, something I haven't done since my film school days. Off the top of my head, I can list at ten movies I am dying to see and there are probably ten more that I am forgetting or am not as excited about but will probably see anyway.

On the top of my list (and probably everyone else's) is The Dark Knight. I saw I Am Legend at the IMax just so that I could see the "trailer." I put the word trailer in quotes because it was about 5 minutes of actual, completed footage from the movie. You can find some pretty awful video of it on YouTube (think hand-held camera smuggled into a theater) if you want to see it, but trust me, it was well worth the inflated IMax ticket price alone.

At the very least, I have to see my city stand in for Gotham. I can't tell you how proud I am that Chicago is Gotham; I truly love this city and it's nice that someone else appreciates it enough to use it as the Batman's city.

True story: my friend Keidra attended a meeting recently and realized that it was being held in Bruce Wayne's "bedroom." How cool is that?

Aside from movies, Lollapalooza happens in August and I have to see Nine Inch Nails play in Grant Park. Also in June is Wizard World Chicago, our answer to ComiCon - that deserves a post of its own for several reasons. And summer wraps up with Nick Cave and Bad Seeds playing down the street from me at the Riv in September.

This is going to be spectacular.