One could do worse than be a swinger of birches

My usual Saturday night of sitting around and relaxing has once again repeated. I even added a nap in for good measure today. The Saturday Brunch shift of 8-5 just beat me down pretty good today, especially after waiting tables from 6-11:15 the night before after teaching all the day. I'm not complaining, just saying that these Saturday nights are becoming a welcome respite from having to be somewhere, from having to talk to people, and from all other responsibilities. I plan on sitting back in my living room in my underwear and watching Flags of Our Fathers, then deciding between Bamboozled and Anchorman. All are here from Netflix. Other than wishing I had someone to share my couch with, there isn't much more I could ask for.

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I've made some intimations on this blog about my tentative plans to visit Costa Rica for spring break. A friend is teaching there. Two friends/colleagues want to visit her and explore the country and I would like to join them. We've got a place to stay and it would be my first real travel vacation in a long time. However, the money issue scares me. It would be a relatively cheap vacation - like Italy a couple of summers ago, I will have a place to stay and a local to be a tourguide, making my cost mostly my plane ticket. Therefore, it would be a huge opportunity to pass up. However, the roughly $600 plane ticket is nothing to sneeze at, and there's a reason I work two jobs: student loans are expensive, and taking classes are expensive. I also seem to just have bad times with money. For example, this month I make a double payment on my car, putting me less than $300 from having it all paid off, and then right after I did that my car's window was busted. There is a $250 deductible and the $200 or so I'll be spending on this rental (insurance pays $25/day, but the rental costs $38/day, plus the additional insurance I have put on it, and I'll have had it for seven days after the window is finally fixed). Therefore, I'm still not 100% sure. I'm about 75% sure at this point. It sure would be nice, though, to go somewhere warm and relax for a bit in the midst of this year, which I still say is my hardest-working year yet.

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I'm dogsitting for this naughty little dog who has already pooped twice on the floor.

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Tomorrow is a friend's 31st birthday and I somehow have scored a day off. That's two in one week, one of them being Thursday's snow day, after just one the entire first five weeks of 2007. I hope to get some school work done in the morning and afternoon, as well as a nice long workout to make up for today's day off from exercise, then maybe catch a movie and be ready to meet him and the the youth of Hamilton and Parkville when we hang out at Dead Freddie's for the night, starting at 9pm. Yay for President's Day Weekend!

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Bobby update: I was worried about him for a little bit in the fall. He didn't like University of Maryland. He thought about transferring, a decision that would have been horrible, since it would have negated his full scholarship. He had his growing pains. But he got through that first semester with average grades, and now is enjoying school. He visited yesterday, and I gave him the hundred-dollar bill I made on Valentine's Day to buy some of his books for the spring semester; apparently some screwup with his refund check from the university, I don't know, I just want him to do well.

He has decided against doing the army reserves (good move, I say) so he can concentrate on school. He is no longer trying to also go to carpentry school. He's got such big goals for himself, but I think he thought college was going to be easier than it is.