So on Tuesday, after getting off the phone with Shannon, I started the process to have my student loans consolidated, and also have the payments for my newly consolidated loans, auto withdrawn from my account (0.25% reduction in interest rate). After 6 c consecutive on time payments they'll also reduce the interest rate another 0.75%, bringing the total up to 1 percent reduction. So that'll bring it down to a massive 3% interest rate. This should free up a lot of day to day moneys.

I'm also looking consolidate a lot of my other debt into my 2nd mortgage and change my spending habits all together. In doing this, I'll be able to cancel all but one of my credit cards and free up money from week to week.

As far as money has gone, I've made a lot of bad decisions, and I'll be paying for them for years to come, however, even if my decisions have been bad, I have always made sure to be dilligent about paying things on time, so I still have a pretty good credit rating. So I got together a bunch of documents on Thursday night and faxed them off to the best offer that I've gotten so far.

So one thing about this past week that has been stressful, is all this thinking about money. For me, I've never really worried about it to much, but with the house and the car (which I probably shouldn't have bought) and some debt movement that I just did, I would've only had oh...$43 a month to live on (excluding the months where I get three paychecks) after bills were all said and done. And when you consider I fill up my car every 2-3 weeks and it's over 20$ every time I do that (yay for a car that takes premimum gas only). $3 Dollars buys a whole lot of ramen, but not enough to live on during a month. So every night this week I've had a little crutch to calm my nerves a little bit. Laphroaig, Dewars, Guinness, bass. It's funny how a crutch can be so calming. That is one of the things that kept me smoking for as long as I did (other then the whole addicting properties). Lot of stress, 5 minutes outside, influx of nicotine, come back, boom feel better. It's funny, cause I've been going outside with friends at work and taking a "Union break" which is basically us stepping away from work, talking and me watching them smoke, has had the same effect. Maybe it wasn't the smoke, but just the stepping away from the work. Anyoo...enough tangent here...Anyways, I've been thinking about money a whole lot this week and it has sucked.

So Wednesday, Shannon came over to do laundry. So we finished watching the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I made some tequila lime chicken and corn and baked potatoes. I did cook the chickent too long, cause I should've put the potatoes in way before I started the chicken. Oh well...you live and learn. It really is getting harder to say good bye to her and let her go home. Even such a plain activiity as hanging out and doing laundry makes me smile. Just having her around or talking to her on the phone, just kind of melts away the problems of the day or the week. It's been a long time since I've even thought about another person in this type of way. I look forward to seeing her, I like making plans that are in the future (Grease and Miss Saigon), I like being near her. I've already had an offer to help shop for shiney things a few months down the road (that's shiney, not sparkley). Shannon had splurged a bit on herself and got her hair cut and dyed and also bought herself this chocolate mousse body lotion at bath and body works. It, well, smells...just awesome. And her hair cut was very pretty too. Many layers and colors.

So Thursday night I thought I'd be helping my Realtor's wife get her laptop setup fully. I installed windows XP on it, and am ready to go over and hit their software pile and install office, their ISP dialer and anti-virus on it, but it got postponed until Monday. So instead I got my hair cut, hung out with Josh for a little bit and came home talked with Shannon on the phone and searched for various papers and documents.

So Friday comes. More award essay writing at work (which is far more diffucult then I remember it being). And then around 3 my boss suggested that we head down and get a drink at 3:30. So we, Proctor, Brandon and I, headed down to Sulley's and were joined later by Deb and much later by Michelle. It was nice just to be social with my team. Just relax a bit and not talk about work. So I head home, take a shower, and wait for the call from Shannon to tell me that she's ready. So earlier in the week, Josh came up with the idea that he would throw a party. He initially asked if he could use my house, and I said, I'd have to think about it, and then he talked to his mom and his mom said she'd take off for the night. So I picked up Shannon and we headed over there. We hung out, Josh, Drew and I played some video games. Eventually we played some Scene It, watched the Dark Side of Oz (Pink Floyd's Darkside of the Moon replacing the sound to the Wizard of Oz), had some pizza and then I took her home. After making our good bye's I headed home.

So here's one thing that's awesome about Shannon, other then her skills at Scene It, I was talking about how much I'm really starting to enjoy the Laphroaig and Josh or Jen made a comment that I should be quiet about my other girlfriend, and instead of being offended, she rolled with the humor and said they knew each other and were good friends. I really like her sense of humor...even when I'm the butt of the joke.

So, Tonight, We're celebrating Shannon's birthday. We're going down to Centro to have dinner...and then I'm not sure what we're doing, but that's up to her. We're gonna dress up a bit and have a good time.