Bank of America Account Summary
Current Balance: $174.68
Available Credit: $1,825.00

Current Discover Balance $0.00
Last Statement Balance $849.04
Minimum Payment Due $0.00

My primary goal this summer was to pay off my debt, and it took until the very last week before the start of new semester to (more or less) achieve it, but I did it nonetheless. I'm not returning to class with the hoardes of extra money I dreamed about having in reserve, to be tossed here and squandered there at my idlest beck and call, but I am going back with no debt and a lovely new computer, and all things considered that's good enough for me. Aside from this monetary quest and completing the move to Matt's place, I did not do a single other thing I hoped to this summer. I visited no one, I wrote nothing worthwhile... My days consisted of pockets of frivolous uselessness in between shifts at either job.

My own lack of initiative both disgusts and disturbs me, and I'm quite aware that the blame is all mine. Being in school seems to help me stay active, though, and this semester looks like it will do that in spades. All of my four classes-- Shakespeare in Film, Humanities Computing, Introduction to Computing and Programming, and Introduction to New Media-- serve as a nice segue between English, my major, and Infotech, which I hope to study in grad school. I'm genuinely looking forward to all of them and I predict that this piqued interest will spill over into my personal writing. Hopefully that will also include this journal.

Matt's and my three-year anniversary was last weekend. In gay years that's like half a lifetime, and there's no one else I'd rather spend that time with. At the moment he's up north visiting his mom for the weekend. I haven't had the weekend to myself like this in as long as I can remember, the quiet was pleasant at first but is now steadily growing unnerving. I've been reduced to sleeping on the couch just to have the dogs nearby in the kitchen. On the good side, I've spent my time doing the things I tend to put off most other weekends, like reading and cleaning out my car and office. Funny how not living in chaos and filth can raise one's mood.

Now that I think about it, I did begin one hobby worth mention. Its name is Disgaea, and it has consumed my soul and left me a quivering, addicted shell of a man. If you've never played it, don't, unless you find all of your free time a massive inconvenience in need of remedying. And I used to mock the way people could play Everquest in hours-long stints of item-refining and character-levelling and then converse about the game at length with a complex, incomprehensible vocabulary. Oh, the irony. Someone please send help.

More to come soon.

Hats off to you, Summer of 2004. You really sucked.