Majcher.com

I hope this whole mortgage loan thing goes okay. I'm not really working right now; although I am still theoretically doing consulting, no money is coming in, which is bringing a little bit of stress at this financially delicate juncture. I've still got a good bit saved up, but the down payment is going to wipe out most of that, so my slack cushion is pretty much gone now. J. O. B.

The other funky thing is this: last year or so, I helped out my cousin, and became a co-signer on his student loans. He's had a rough go of things in the last several years - in and out of jail for drug stuff (harmless hippie drugs, not nasty gang drugs) and all that. But he's pretty much the closest thing I've ever had to a little brother, so when he decided to go back to school and get everything up and up, you know, gotta help the guy out. So, he's all finished, and his loans are deferred while he's getting set up in northern California. Unfortunately, the lenders see "co-signer on student loans" as "you've got loans out, and we have to assume the worst", which means, they figure the cost of the loans into my money situation as if they were defaulted, and I got stuck with them. I think everything is going to come out cool, but it's just one more thing.

I'm not sure if it's the house stress, or something, but I've been having some pretty unpleasant abdominal distress in the last day or two. Feels sort of like gas, moving around in the right lower side, only, it doesn't go away. A couple friends of mine have had their appendixes out recently, so I'm sort of paranoid that it might be that. The situation is complicated, of course, by the fact that I don't have any health insurance right now. Since I work for myself, I had individual insurance through Blue Cross of California, and I haven't gotten an official "you don't have insurance any more" letter form them yet, but I haven't gotten any bills since I've moved to Texas, either, so I'm just going to assume that they figured I skipped town, and shut me down. It looks like the soonest I can get Texas individual insurance to kick in is the first of next month, so if something bad happens, I reckon I'll be paying for it myself. Bah. So, I got myself some herbal tea and stuff to sort out the various unfortunate digestive symptoms that come along; I'll give it another couple of days to settle down before I start worrying too too much.

Other than that, I'm feeling sort of antsy here. Stuff coming up, and stuff to do, but I'm in that "gotta do something, but don't want to do anything" set. And the video game thing isn't cutting it. Reading a lot, though. I've still got another half dozen books on the stack that I've picked up in the last couple of months, so that should keep me out of trouble for a while...