Thanks for your comments and tips, guys. I am a lot calmer about the rent increase today. I'll be exploring a few options this weekend and refrain from any rash decisions. There happens to be a lot of other stuff going on with me, so I really did just need to vent and have somebody tell me some reasons to stop being mad about it. When it rains, it pours. I just have to keep my head up.

They are raising my rent starting starting December 1st. By $20 a month.

Now, I understand that I have an improbably good deal here. My house is across the street from a metro station, walking distance from school, has free parking out back, also walking distance to a beautiful little lake with a trail around it that leads to another system of larger trails that run for several miles. I know that the housing market in my college town is ridiculous because the university loves to accept WAY more people than it can house. I am walking distance from the OSO and only a 25-minute drive to work. Utilities are included in my rent, and I get to live ALONE for at least $250-300 less than I could at any other studio in the area - let alone one ACROSS THE STREET FROM A METRO STATION. I know this. I know this.

But I am irrationally mad and looking on craigslist for other options. And I am having crazy ideas about selling all of my belongings and crashing with...

I talk a big game about how much I fucking hate the two-party system and how people need to start thinking about their values instead of what team they're on. I usually wince when somebody says something about not wanting to "throw away" their vote on a third party candidate. It really makes me want to punch them in the face.

But of course, my thought processes being as complex as they are, I ended up voting for one of the two party-bots anyway. NOT BECAUSE VOTING THIRD PARTY WOULD BE THROWING AWAY MY VOTE. REALLY. I suppose I am a little bit excited about the possibility of him winning, but I dare not get my hopes up. I just keep reminding myself that the terrible visceral reaction I get to both options are just two possibilities, neither good nor bad. There are two versions of the future that might unfold and both will be historic outcomes. When I start to really get attached to the one version and feel even a little bit entitled to it, I think about...

I am in that magical moment near the end of the movie where Frank and Dwayne are bonding on the pier and Dwayne says, “You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work… Fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I’ll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest.”

I have been spending an awful lot of time worrying about stuff I don't love and neglecting what I do love. I'm tired of secretly plucking out the gray hairs that have been growing in because I'm killing myself over the possibility of not getting A's and B's. Fuck that.

To quote from another movie I love, as Kaylee put it at the end of Serenity, "The hell with this - I'm gonna live!"

I have a feeling my little mileage game of cheering myself up is not going to work for the next several months. With morning shifts at work and generally very cold days, there is this thing called a foggy windshield. I can tough it out and be cold without turning the heat on in the car, but I can't drive if I can't see. I always forget about winter and this mandatory idling bullshit. Today when I filled up, I saw that I only got 29.26mpg and that is after only using defrost maybe twice for about 5 minutes each time.

But, I did take my first trip to Trader Joe's in a few months today. I used to go with my big scary-looking friend because I have to drive through this huge community of Latino immigrants where the popular roadside pastime is to make kissy faces and say inappropriate things at girls alone in their cars who are stuck at stoplights. Now my friend is studying abroad in Japan and the whole ordeal kind of makes it not so worth it to drive the extra couple...