Cleaning up my life.

Dude, I am STOKED!!

All this dealing with hard times and suffering is starting to pay off. My life is finally starting to get back into check. I just payed off 2 credit cards, along with most of my bills, and there's still a good chunk of change left in my bank account. My yearly raise kicked in this month (which was better than I thought it would be). It's been close to 6 weeks since I've seen a paycheck, so it's nice to have money, again. I went to lunch yesterday not realizing I didn't get paid 'till midnight. Checking my balance enlightned me that I wouldn't be pulling anything out of the atm with my $1.31 balance. Good thing I had $4 in my pocket and generous friends with me. ;) What's even better is I filled out my tax return, and I'm getting a phat check from the IRS. Since I'm horrible with finances, I tend to let them keep my money throughout the year so I can buy cool toys after each filing. With the return, I should be able to pay off a 3rd card. That leaves me with one card (the home entertainment upgrade from last fall) and my Jeep loan (which is paid off in June). After that, I'll be pretty much debt free! Yes, folks, all those tv talkers are right: you too can be debt free! LOL! My way was probably harder than what any of them had in mind, but I don't believe in easy money. ;)

So part 2 of my stoke-ed-ness is midnight tonite marks the beginning of phase 2 for the Halo 3 beta eligibility. I have to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live! for 3 hours, then sign up. They're taking the first 13000 (it's open till midnight Sat, but I'm pretty sure it will fill up before then). What's even cooler is I cornered my boss yesterday to ask him if I could show up late because of the marathon... and he said YES! How many ppl working full-time "real world" jobs have a cool-ass boss that would let you do that. Admittedly, he was cracking jokes to my co-workers at my expense for the next hour, but it's still so frikin' cool!

Part 3: I'm finally "officially" calling it quits with smoking. I'm slowly weening my way off the habit. I've found I can go without the nicotine for extremely long periods; it's just the act of smoking I'm having issues with. Of course, I just finished one (my second for the day), and it made me sick to my stomach. bleauck. ... uh, brainfart. Hmmm... it's hard to type and try to carry a conversation on the phone at the same time. ;)

Well, on that note, I'm gonna go be more stoked (LOL) for the next hour before I start gaming. :D Oh, and my sleeping is starting to get better; sort of. I'm making myself start packing up for bed around 11p, so I'm usually laying there by 11:30p. In this, I'm usually out by midnight. Wow. Who woulda thought it coulda been that easy? ;) I'm still not showing up to work on time, but I'm working on making myself get up earlier. That's always been a problem with me (even when I was a kid). It's just a matter of programming. Ok, I'm outtie.



l8rs.