There's a problem with the width of this box that I'm typing in. I'm trying to squeeze it down to the smallest possible size, because I'm in the Bellefonte Library in an exposed, open area where I feel as though I have 'shoulder surfers' standing behind me. And if I make the box too small, the words I'm typing don't show up on the right side of the box.
I never knew about the Bellefonte Library because I mistakenly thought they only had a small library of genealogical data, but actually they have two libraries across the street from each other, and one of them is a regular library with books that have nothing to do with genealogy, and also computers to use for internet access. I learned about it by reading an article in a little free local newspaper called The Gazette.
That newspaper had an article a few weeks ago about dairy farmers and how the price of milk was too low. If I could mention a book by Garet Garrett (I can't remember how many R's and T's are in his name - I have to look it up) called 'Satan's Bushel,' it talks about people using the Chicago Mercantile Exchange - actually, that might not have existed in the book, but there was something very similar to it - using that to make prices really low by speculating. The same thing is going on today. Prices get distorted because people are able to borrow lots of money and use it for speculating and controlling the prices of things.
I haven't had a chance to write about gold and silver recently - that's usually on eagledove9 - but Barrick Gold has changed its policies and they're now allowing the price of gold to go up, and the last time I looked at it, it was somewhere around $1200 a few days ago. And yes I'm still interested in gold and silver but haven't written much lately.
I also didn't write about how I recently finished my Schaum's Outline of Bookkeeping and Accounting. I am now changing my own record keeping over to the official double-entry bookkeeping system, for my mundane expenses like food and gasoline and rent. I'm using it as though I am a business instead of just an individual person, and that's how I'm practicing.
The cell phone hackers will have noticed that I stopped using my cell phone calculator to add up all my money, because a few days ago I just bought myself a printing calculator that I can type really fast on. It was very hard to thumb-type all those numbers into the cell phone. Even if my other calculators weren't in a box in storage, they're too small, too. And my computer calculator still isn't as nice as the printing calculator, or adding machine, or whatever it's called. I love it.
I love double-entry bookkeeping too. It's making me very conscious of my money and it makes me feel like I would be able to run a business, any kind of business, if only I learned more about accounting. I think bookkeeping should be taught to young children as soon as possible, and it should be a universal thing, like "readin', writin', and 'rithmetic," or whatever. I think there should be some more apostrophes in there. Maybe not.
But bookkeeping, and money, is essential and universal. It's everywhere. It's not just some useless knowledge that you have to memorize and you'll never use. As soon as you start using it, you feel more empowered and more in control of your life and less afraid of money. I read 'Your Money or Your Life' a few years ago and I wanted to do the things they were talking about, and I'm doing something very similar now. I like the phrase 'no shame, no blame,' because whenever you decide you're spending too much money on something, and you decide what to do about it - well, I had problems in the beginning of the attacks, years ago, where 'they' were constantly attacking me because I spent a lot of money buying fast food and food from Sheetz - they used the 'Shame And Blame' technique instead of the 'No Shame, No Blame' technique. They'd still be doing that to me if I were buying food on my bank debit card, which the hackers can see. But I can't, because my bank won't let me buy point-of-sale purchases on my debit card anymore, because I overdrew it too many times. I have to withdraw cash instead. The most common thing that they used to do to me was give me nightmares about 'shit' if I ever purchased anything from 'Sheetz.' I'd be angry about that, but I'm not in the mood to get angry right now.
My hours have been temporarily reduced at Weis. This is just one of those ups and downs. They've hired new people and they have enough people to cover the evening shift, so I'm not needed as badly as I usually was before. Plus, football season is over, and we have less business.
This is exactly the reason why I have a second job. I will be working a few more hours at McDonald's - in fact, I already told them that I will temporarily be available on Wednesdays. I'm going to call them tonight and offer to come in. Their response will be something like, 'YES, PLEASE, YES, OH GOD YES,' because they never have enough help on Wednesdays, since a lot of people aren't available on that day. So I will go to work tonight.
Another reason why I'm temporarily available on Wednesdays is because I requested a four-day unpaid vacation in January from both jobs, and I think I would like to make up that lost revenue ahead of time by working extra hours. I'd like to do it again, too, in a couple months - I could do another four-day unpaid vacation in March.
When you're just moving out on your own, or when you're still young, or when you're still in 'rumspringa,' that's a time when you still want to buy stuff. You want to spend money on things your family never had, fun things. I was looking at a catalog that I got in the mail - I got some catalogs from Fingerhut (Finger Hat, or thimble, in German) and Bed, Bath and Beyond, and I was wondering, who would ever need these things, who would ever want to buy these things, and why? But people do buy them, people who've never had them before, people who are moving into their own homes or apartments and they've never seen bedsheets like this at Wal-Mart, these sheets and blankets with dragons all over them, and they decide they want to buy the whole dragon bedspread set and make their whole room into a dragon theme (yes, that was the only thing I really liked in the catalog and thought that I might have wanted to buy sometime, except I don't have a bed right now, but that's a long story). I forget which catalog it was - I'm assuming Bed, Bath and Beyond, but I'm not sure.
But anyway, now that I'm in my thirties, I discovered that 'Time Off' is all that I ever really wanted, and it's all that I care about. When you've been working at pointless, going-nowhere jobs for years and years, and you don't want to do that for the rest of your life, you start to feel that you want to save your money so that you can take time off and still pay your rent. (Also, another reason why I don't want to buy stuff is because I contaminated all my belongings and have had to throw so much away. But 'time off' is the other main reason why I don't want to spend money on stuff.)
So I'm excited about my unpaid vacation in January. It will be ten days: from my Monday off until the Thursday of the next week. Maybe that's eleven days. Oh well. It's a lot of days. No, ten. Thursday I would go to work. Anyway, that's confusing, but it's because I usually have off Mon-Wed, and I only go in from Thurs-Sun, which I've talked about before.
I did actually reduce my exposure to the drug residues recently, and it made me a little bit less cheerful and friendly, and somewhat more formal and cold, but not too badly. I have stronger inhibitions now. 'Low inhibitions' is one of the things the drugs do to me. I'm talking kind of indirectly about this, but let's say that there's something I always want to do, but I stop myself from doing it. It would be something that I always want to do, very frequently, but I don't do it. If I am on the drugs I get enough courage or have low inhibitions, and I do this thing more often than usual. It's something that takes courage and it causes a lot of anxiety. So I have stopped doing that particular thing, or have done it a lot less often, but it is still something I wish I could do. I don't want to cause problems by writing a blog about this, because it's very easy to google my name and find all the blogs that I write, in a few seconds, and I never really know who's reading my blog. But anyway, that's why I have more inhibitions lately - it's drug-related and I was able to get rid of some of the residue contamination on my car seat and my clothing (I have a vinyl cover on my car seat now).
They just now reminded me of an incident which was relevant and I can mention it. A few months ago at McDonald's, I think on a Sunday morning, when I was getting ready to leave and the morning people were coming in to start breakfast, there was a very young girl who I had never seen before. It turns out that she is seventeen, if I recall. I was doing things around the kitchen, putting some stuff into the cooler, and getting ready to leave. She said, 'Are you here to help me?'
I am NOT making fun of her, but, her tone of voice was trusting, almost awed, and when I thought about it later on, it was like she said, 'Are you my guardian angel?' or 'Are you my fairy godmother?' I know it sounds funny, but I am not making fun of her. I thought about what it would be like to be young and trusting - I was always very, very socially restrained, inhibited, shy, afraid of people, and I was never very friendly or trusting even when I was young - I had only a couple of friends and I avoided almost everyone else.
So I helped her a little bit before I went home. The next week, when she saw me, she reached out her arm as I approached, and she gave me a hug. How do you hug a complete stranger after only meeting them one time? How did she know that I liked her, and she liked me, after only spending a few minutes together? I've never been able to touch people, not men, not women, in a friendly way.
I talked to her a couple days ago. She told me that she was having insomnia and it had only started a couple months ago. She said she was waking up after sleeping only an hour or so, and then, she would be awake for a few hours, and she would want to go get on the computer, before going to take another nap. Her sleep is now disturbed and it only began recently. It's not really insomnia, but just interrupted sleep and irregular sleep at the wrong times. She used to sleep just fine, up until just recently.
Why?
I don't have much time left on this login - only four minutes - I'll save a draft and start over, because I can log in again for another hour.
Okay, good - my saved draft survived the logout and login. I'm back for another hour. I'm afraid I'll lose something, so I even took precautions and emailed it to myself, too, in addition to saving it in a draft.
Here's another thing that I didn't mention that happened recently. I had just left work at Weis and was going over to McDonald's, but I had a little bit of time in between to sit down, get off my feet, eat something, and listen to the radio in the car. There was something playing on public radio, something orchestral, music without words.
This was probably November 15th, because I looked it up on the internet, where they have playlists written down for what was on the radio at a particular time, and I found a playlist that mentioned it for that day. I think that was the date. It doesn't matter. So I heard this orchestra playing, and it did something strange. Maybe it was just the mood I was in. Sometimes I am able to cry, and other times, my feelings are not very responsive to music. But this song did something strange with its chords and its intervals. It was not like the music I hear all the time, doing the same predictable chord progressions and the same predictable intervals between the notes. It didn't do it just once, it did it again and again and again. I started crying. Not only that, but it was violins and cellos, and I love those. The cello that resonates in my chest and in my throat. I would sing with it, but it's too low, and I have to sing an octave higher. It was like the music I'd be writing, if I were free, and if I had free time, and if my brain didn't get interrupted when I write music, and if I weren't getting zapped, and if I didn't have a million other things to do.
I waited for the name. It was 'Alan Hovanis.' I didn't know how to spell it. I found out it's 'Hovhaness.' The song was 'Concerto for harp and string orchestra.' But I wasn't sure I found the right thing, because it turns out that this guy wrote millions of songs, and it could be 'Opus 3,478,298' or it could be 'Opus 1,289,996,' or something. But I bought the CD and it was the right one.
I don't cry every time I hear it. I only cried that first time. But it's my favorite song on the CD and I listen to it again and again. There are non-European influences in his music. I forget which country - it might have been India or Arabia. A lot of his music sounds like it came from there. I have been interested in the less familiar chords and scales from other countries, and I always wanted to learn them and use them in my music so that it won't sound like the same old stuff we hear every day.
I have to mention William Russo and Jeffrey Ainis's book, 'Composing Music: A New Approach,' which gives you music composition exercises to do. I was going through that book doing the exercises on Propellerheads' Reason program, but I haven't had time lately to do that. That book talks about scales and intervals and chord progressions.
Anyway, I don't necessarily LIKE the extremely unfamiliar, foreign-sounding scales. They don't make me cry or move my emotions as intensely as the chord progressions that are more familiar. It has to be mostly familiar, with just a little bit of strangeness and unexpectedness. If it's totally unfamiliar, I don't know how to respond to it. I don't know whether my response to music is 'objective' or whether it's 'cultural.' If I'd grown up hearing nothing but Arabian scales, would I recognize them enough to cry when I hear a song written in Arabian scales? Musical scales and emotions are connected because whenever we talk, whenever we are speaking a sentence, our voices go up and down in pitch and rhythm. Every sentence is a line of music. This is why our brain is able to understand music even if it doesn't have any words in it. We read people's feelings in their tone of voice. We understand feelings of safety, or feelings of danger and emergency, if someone is talking in a calm voice, or a panicky voice. We recognize happiness and excitement, or sadness and despair.
I have about fifteen minutes left. There's a whole subject that I want to write about. I won't be writing about it today. It's better to DO things than it is to write about them.
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