10 posts tagged “money”
Mmmmm today was a good day! Not only did I get my PS3 with MGS4, but I also GOT A JOB! :D It's at the liquor store near my house. Excellent! No more lazy Katie going batshit insane playing video games all day (wait...). Also, this means money. I haven't held a paycheck in my hands for a while, so I'm very excited.
This also means an HDTV may actually be in my future! :D Awesome.
Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. Resident Evil 4 for Wii. Xbox 360 with Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto 4. All games I want to check out...And I'm kind of interested in the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix game as well, because who can resist casting wingardium leviosa with the Wiimote?
But...What is a jobless college student to do? :(
In other news, confusion abounds with my "hybrid" (part online, part in class) public speaking class (maybe I should have payed more attention to that "Are online courses right for you?" mini-self-evaluation before I signed up for it), so that totally popped my bubble of happiness and joy surrounding my current enrollment at Metro. Not only am I feeling horribly behind in that class (and we haven't even had the first actual class yet!) but now it's causing me to get flustered with my other classes. No dice.
So what do I do? Spend my entire weekend playing Zelda: Twilight Princess, of course. Woo! I beat the game about two months ago, but that was on Ben's TV in Barcelona that for some reason displayed the Wii in black and white, so I felt compelled to play it again, now in color. It took me 41 hours to beat it the first time, and this time I'm trying to get all the pieces of heart/golden bugs/Poes/etc, so it'll probably take a good 50 or so. Maybe not, I dunno, but anything more than 30 hours is a lot for me. Once I beat this I think I'm going to buy one of the new Pokemon games, then probably RE4 as well (hey, $30 for what's supposed to be a really awesome game, plus I need more Wii games, so I'm all up on that.)
I was seriously pondering getting a MacBook, via certain means, but now I think I'd rather use my money towards video games than a computer that I definitely don't need (even though this thing is starting to act up. Wtf with the DVD burner only working half the time? And why is Finder crashing?) Unless my mom finds a loophole in my college fund that will allow me to take money out for a computer (hey, it's educational!)
I've been sort of job hunting, sent in a couple applications and so far haven't heard anything back, despite my efforts. I've been doing a lot of work around the house though for some extra dough (yay for being 20 and still having to do chores for an allowance!...), and fortunately this year it's been raining quite a lot, so I've been mowing the entire lawn once a week and getting $40 a pop for that, so I have some sort of income, however piddly it may be.
Anyway...I think I have some reading to do for tomorrow, so I should probably get that done. Hasta pronto.
I applied for summer classes at Metro State College of Denver (five days before the deadline...hey I never procrastinate!) I'm only going to take two classes, and it's pretty easy to get to on the Lite Rail (heck no am I driving all the way downtown several times a week with gas as expensive as it is) so I'm kind of excited in a nerdy way. I'm actually just excited to get back to real classes where I have to do real work. I'm also excited to meet people who aren't students at Western (cool as they may be, Western kids usually aren't my cup of tea).
I'm also planning on selling some stuff on eBay to make a bit of extra cash. How much do you think I can get for my 200-odd Beanie Babies? How many will I actually be able to part with once I open up the giant box where they're all housed and see how cute they are? (I already know I'm keeping Velvet the panther...she was my first one ever! Give me a break!) I've got some video games, FC Barcelona boys track pants (don't ask), and some other odds and ends. If I get on a roll I might even sell some of my great aunt's dolls that she bestowed to us. We have easily over 100, most of them packed away in what I call "doll coffins" in the basement, though some of the less-frightening ones are actually in cabinets and on tables and stuff. My parents still want to get rid of them, and if I sell them maybe I can get a slice of the profits, so that would be cool. Sort of a little summer project for me to do, plus it'll mean getting rid of the scary dolls. Yes, I'm afraid of dolls. Anything non-human that represents the human form in any sort of realistic way bothers me.
In other news, I made a bit of bank today (all I had to do was be born 20 years ago! Sweet!) so I'm putting that away in my "360 Fund." Two words: Mass Effect. And Gears of War. And Halo 3. And sexiness.
One final left to go, and it's one of the easiest ones (Cine Español) so that's peachy. Though I do have to write a paper for my lit final that was about a half hour ago and turn it in tomorrow. It's on a story that I haven't read in full, and the little bits I have read I don't understand, so I don't know how I'm going to come up with a one-page response to it. Oh well, I'll figure it out. I had my historia de españa final yesterday and I got all of the 10 multiple choice questions right, and I know I did pretty well on the small written part as well, so I'm happy about that.
Aaaanyway tonight I think a bunch of us are going to the bar and stuff cuz none of us have early finals tomorrow and it's kinda the last night I can go all wild and crazy. Even though I probably won't go wild and crazy...but still. Hopefully we can get a decent crowd of people there.
I have about 60 cents in 1- and 2-cent coins (who decided we needed the 2 cent coins? Obviously you need 1 because it's the smallest unit, but 2? Why do you need that?) and have no idea what to do with them. I'd give them to the old gypsy begger women who always hang around the school area, but I'm scared of homeless people and even more scared of old gypsy women. I also realize the obvious solution would be to spend it, but people here get pissed off if you give them a 10€ bill for something that's 6€, just because they don't want to count out the change. They'd be really rather unhappy if I handed them a pile of 2 cent coins to pay for a Kinder Bueno (which are amazing candies by the way...totally going to miss those.)
But, yeah....I walked around quite a bit yesterday in search of a dorky Catalunya tshirt, but no dice (I guess there's a group of people who set up a stand selling Catalunya stuff down by the Columbus statue, but it's only there on weekends, so I'm out of luck). I'm pretty much all packed up except for clothes for the next two days, toiletries, my Wii and some other odds and ends. Two days left...I have my camera on me, I think I'm going to go pop a squat in Plaça Universitat before I go home for lunch and take pictures of all the funny people in weird clothes.
I might go down to the beach later too...it's really hot out and I need to go to the beach today or tomorrow for one last hurrah in the sand. Maybe I'll see the guy who sells donuts from a box balanced on his head, or the guy with underwear tattooed on who always walks around naked strutting his stuff (which I'm told is really rather impressive, actually).
What's your musical horoscope? (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
Inspired by Stephanie.
This is going to be rather scary, given that I have everything from Marilyn Manson to Mary Poppins to Tiny Tim on Ye Olde iPode.
The Stills - Still In the Love Song
Blink 182 - Peggy Sue
The Rolling Stones - She's a Rainbow (finally, one of these actually fits!)
Sublime - Get Out! (Remix)
N*E*R*D - Don't Worry About It
*Nsync - I Want You Back (well that's embarrassing)
Nelly Furtado - I'm Like a Bird
Counting Crows - Carriage
Mandy Moore - Love Shot
James Horner - A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics (A Beautiful Mind soundtrack)
Well that wasn't so bad.
Anyway, I booked two of the three necessary flights for my grand tour of the UK. Now I just need to get myself from London on a train up to Edinburgh, then from Edinburgh to Dublin, which shouldn't be too bad. I looked into some hostels as well, and so far my rough figure for airfare, train and hostels is right under $500. Yowza...but, considering that I'm going to be spending 11 days in the friggen UK and Ireland, I don't think that's too absurd. Plus I got $200 for my income tax return which always helps. My parents are being surprisingly supportive and non-bitchy about this too, usually they're like "omgwtf you spend too much" (which I do).
I think I might be going to Equus alone though, just because it's kinda pricey as well, and because I'm an incurable Harry Potter fan and simply MUST go. I have to give the box office a ring tonight and see about availability, hopefully it's not sold out or anything any of the nights I'll be in London.
Dude, I'm way stoked.
This weekend was absolutely GORGEOUS. It was 27ºC (80ºF) and not a cloud in the sky on Saturday, so a group of us went down to the beach for a couple hours. The water was FREEZING but it was a nice complement to the horribly hot weather (yes 80º is hot, damnit!) Evidently it snowed a ton in Denver again, so I'm glad to be here in the heat and not there in the cold. Saturday had that sort of vacation-y feel to it, probably because the only time I ever go to the beach is on a vacation (this was the first time I'd been into the water here in Barcelona). It was really nice. That night some of us went back down to the same spot we were at to see the lunar eclipse, which was pretty cool.
I don't think I'm going to go to Ireland...I want to but it's going to be horribly expensive and complicated enough as it is with just London and Scotland, so adding Ireland into the mix would be, I think, a bad idea, since I wouldn't have enough money to enjoy myself, and the more shit you have going on the higher the chance of something going horribly wrong. So, yeah. Kinsy's been kind of weird and distant since Mel got into town, but she leaves on the 11th so hopefully after that we can actually sit down and plan something. All I've been able to discover so far: Airfare is friggen expensive, and so are train tickets to get from London up to Scotland. Grr...
I realized last night that I'm a couple weeks shy of being halfway through the semester. That is way, way horrifying. This semester is FLYING by, which is odd because if I had to compare this semester to last semester, I'd say last semester as a whole was more fun (though I guess I should wait until this semester is over to compare them fairly.) Still though, it's almost over and I don't know how I feel about that.
My mom also called and we had a nice little chat about my money situation, and I'm not nearly as screwed as I was initially afraid of. So that's good. My neighbor Mary, who studied in Barcelona with ISA as well a couple years ago for a semester, is coming to visit with her mom. They get into Barcelona on March 24th, then are going to Lisbon for a couple days and then back to BCN and will leave for the States again on the 30th. So they're not going to be here for very long, but still it'll be nice to have a nice familiar face here. The only bad thing is that Mary loves paella and so my homestay is probably going to have her and her mom over for paella, which means I can't avoid it (she had my same host family, I requested them because of her). Oh well I haven't had it for like 3 months so maybe by now my tongue has forgotten that it doesn't like the taste and I can make it through one meal.
Um.
I just logged into my bank account, and while I knew I didn't have a -lot- of money left, the fact that I have a mere $480 for the next two and a half months here was a major kick in the pants (to put that in perspective, I spent $1200 last semester which included everything from drinks to clothes to traveling). I'm probably going to spend that not-quite-$500 just on going up to the UK alone. Fuck. This means I'm going to have to take a loan out from my parents, and I already owe them $300 from last semester.
I have a feeling I won't travel...well...anywhere except up to the UK. And I also have a feeling that by the end of April, beginning of May, I will be so incredibly poor that I literally will be fully incapable of going out and getting a simple café con leche. Fuck me. And fuck you Barcelona for being so damn expensive.
Anyway I'm not really that upset, the worst thing is going to be asking my parents for money, because I hate asking them for money.
February 18, 2007. Sala Razzmatazz, Barcelona.
Nine Inch Nails.
:o
No idea how excited that makes me. I don't have a ticket yet, but I'm going to buy one today if I can. My friend Ben told me about it and he has a ticket. Omgomgogmog. *does happy/nervous dance* :D
Anyway, not much else to report. Only that Spanish men are creepy, and that it costs a lot of money to do things that aren't really that fun anyway. Going out is overrated I decided. I'm totally saving money for things like traveling and crazy NIN concerts. You know, things I'll actually remember and care about in 5 years.
I had a moment of fear just now when I thought that I hadn't confirmed going to Sevilla for three days with ISA. It's supposed to be the best excursion we go on so fuck if I was going to miss it. But I DID confirm it, I actually confirmed it so long ago that I had forgotten about it. So yeah, I really am organized and on top of things, I just don't know it half the time.
So I spent way, way too much money last night. I don't even know how much, but my guess is around 40€ or 50€. ON DRINKS. There wasn't any food or anything! I guess that's what I get for trying to keep up with the O.C. here, all these richass Californians who probably go out and spend that much a couple times a week. Ah well, I feel guilty now. I have 70€ in cash on me and I'm going to try and make that stretch for the next 3 weeks until I go to Paris.
Anyway Amanda and I started our escapade at a German bar that we go to all the time (they know us as the crazy American girls who always get dos Voll Damms). Then we went down to the metro station in the middle of Las Ramblas and met up with like a million girls who all came for Julie's birthday, which is actually today. We went to two bars, and everyone was pretty sloshed, which was interesting. The second bar we went to everyone sort of spread out, so we were no longer this massive knot of 17 American girls, so that was nice.
Anyway it's sad that I'm all the fuck way over in Spain and all I write about is drinking. lol.
I uploaded more pictures to my LJ, this time they're hi res.
http://pics.livejournal.com/aerisstrife/gallery/0000ebc7?page=1
enjoi.
I spent way too much money the first couple weeks I was here, so now I'm trying to not spend anything for a while. Ainslie, Amanda and I are going to a play tonight (we bought the tickets pre-Ainslie Bitch Mode) so I won´t be able to go home for din din. Other than that, for the next week I´m going to try and not go out and spend money on shit. If I go out I´ll take an empty wallet and a couple Euros in change, but THAT´S IT DAMNIT. D:
Anyway I spent the last couple days not really doing anything, and it feels nice. I´ve been playing some GTA:LCS on PSP, which is a pretty nifty game...It´s so loud here with people and traffic and everything, sometimes it´s just nice to tune everything out. When GTA starts to bore me I think I´ll read HP again. Bwahaha.
Vall de Boí this weekend. It´s a town/place/something in the mountains, but I don´t know if it´s MOUNTAINS or like a hill that people are just confused about (on the drive from Madrid to Barcelona we drove through a hilly area and someone was like "omg mountains!" >.>). So we'll see! Oddly enough I'm most excited for the 4 hour bus ride. I love car/bus/wev rides where I can just look out the window and kind of zone out and listen to music. It´s nice compared to most times when it´s so loud I can barely think.
Anyway I came to the ISA office this morning because this is the only time when no one else is here (after about noon it turns into a zoo) and it´s nice. I have a Spanish language class at 11:30 until 2:30, then history from 3-4:30, and literature from 6-7:30. As I told Deltan, it sounds more impressive than it actually is, but we can pretend.
