Shorter hours, upcoming vacation, new laptop, featured on WTPT!

The last couple weeks I haven't been getting a lot of hours at work, usually the bare minimum (24). Last week, I worked 6 days but only worked 4 hours each day. Doing sampling, this sort of shift is fine, but doing production (working in the bakery) it's not very useful cause it doesn't give one a lot of time to do anything. This week, they gave Monday-Thursday off and then have me working full shifts Friday-Sunday (so I still get 24 hours). Mind you, I did not request 4 days off. They just gave it to me.

Shorter hours means less money, just when I need money for books and stuff. Now is bad as well cause, with only a little under two weeks till my vacation starts, I don't have a lot of time to build up my checking account before I go on unpaid vacation, and I nearly drained it last time thanks to two trips to Balboa Park where I took out a lot of cash each time, and spending $70 at Comic-Con. Thanks to my low hours, I didn't build it up by much since after taxes, my check was just under $200. After paying $90 to Mum and Papa for rent and my cell phone bill and $49 to Cal State for my August bus pass, that doesn't leave a lot of money. And now I have to buy a new work shirt, even though the two I have are still fairly new and work well, just because my collar gathers when I have my tie on and won't stay down, and Diana (store manager) and Sandra (my department manager) have both said I need a new shirt. It's like, GOOD LORD I CAN'T AFFORD THIS RIGHT NOW!!! If I could delay it, I would, but I can't. I have to have it by Friday, when I work next. Thus I am having to be really cautious with money, not eating out as much. And if I do get something to eat en route to work or something, it's something pitiful like chips, a drink, and some small sweet (which is what I had for lunch today, en route to Cal State to get my bus pass).

The problem is, it's really hard to find shirts for work in my size (I'm a plus size person). I've already been through this anyways. The shirts I have now are Dickies and we had to order them online because I couldn't find anything after scouring several regular stores. And I can't go for mens' shirts like some of my female coworkers, cause I tried one on before and it didn't fit well over me (obviously, since I've got a big chest -- mens' shirts aren't made to go over big chests). I don't know a polite way to communicate this to my boss and my boss's boss, however, so tomorrow I'm going to go look again.

As I said before, my vacation -- probably my only one this year -- is coming up. I originally tried to get the week off before school starts, but I had to adjust the start date slightly due to my parents revealing that they will be out of town next weekend (15th-17th), helping Andrew move I think. Thus, Sunday especially, they won't be able to drive me to work, so it is best to have those days off. When it will end I am not sure, since everyone has to work the 24th (according to Sandra -- I overheard her telling Joseph this, and she didn't say anything when I mentioned it while she was confirming my vacation start date with me), which was my original requested end date. I suppose I can find out, just in case.

Fall classes start the 25th, which is exactly three weeks from now. Scary!! Fall booklists will be out next Monday, so I am going to try to order my books if possible. Mum was saying she thought they were trying to prevent people from doing that by publishing the Fall booklists so late, but I'm going to try anyway. Some of the extra $640 that is supposed to come to me due to the difference between my tuition and fee total and my provided financial aid will probably go to books, and also some towards getting my new laptop if I haven't been able to transfer more money to savings. The one I want is $649, and I have $400 toward it already ($300 from my economic stimulus, plus $100 I transferred from checking to savings a little while ago). I need to figure out how much shipping will be.

Hmm tried to run the thing like I buying it to see the shipping, but I guess maybe you have to add it to your cart and all first. I also went to the Dell Discounts page link on my union's webpage (you can get 12% off through them) and found out I can get $13 off the laptop I want. Not a lot, but every little bit counts. That makes it $636. Oh but it doesn't include the built-in webcam; that's extra. Eh well. I'll go back to my original plan then I guess.

There is another cheaper laptop in the same catalog that interested me, but it doesn't have much more hard drive memory than I already have (80 GB compared to my current 55 GB).

Hmm the laptop on the cover of the catalog is only $599, with $25 more to get some color other than black. With $19.99 shipping (if I do 3-5 days, which is fine with me), that's bound to be less than the other one. Hmm, did the math, it's less than the base price of the other one ($649). Again, the webcam's extra.

Ok one last thing then I need to go to bed. I wrote an e-mail to answer the Question of the Fortnight for the Female Trainers episode (an episode about girls who play Pokemon) and THEY READ MY E-MAIL ON THE AIR!!! I heard this on Saturday before starting work and it really made my workday.

I have also been catching up on older WTPT stuff. I downloaded as many of their older episodes as I could (one of them wouldn't download for some reason) from their Digg site, and I also subscribed to their Itunes feed for WTPT Live. I even made a NowLive account and downloaded Gizmo, in hopes that I can get onto the next live show.

Talk about "My Pokemon Ranch" (a Pokemon WiiWare game that was released in June) on the most recent WTPT Live episode I've listened to has made me really want a Wii, though I'm still not sure as far as the prices.

Ok I really must go to bed now. Good night.