Of sudden windfalls

Yesterday, I received a $1900 windfall that was entirely unexpected. It just...up and fell in my lap, pretty much.

This has enabled me to pay off $1400 in credit card bills, as well as my current phone, cable, and utility bills, and still have a good bit left over. Combined with the $900 I'm getting from the medical research lab at the end of the month (which will pay off the last $800 of the 2003 food poisoning hospital bill), I'm going to be totally debt-free by June! (Well, except for my student loans, which I consider not so much a debt as a force of nature.) This will enable me to concentrate all my effort on paying off those pesky student loans, and get away from the bleeding edge of debt that all these bills were slowly driving me into. I'll even be able to put money into savings permanently, instead of putting it in and then taking it out a couple of weeks later because I need it.

It all happened so fast...I went from $2200 in debt to $0. It doesn't feel like anything's changed. But...I suddenly have spending money again. And the irony is, I can't think of anything I really want enough to spend it on.

Native wildlife

Oh, forgot to mention...

When I was on the way home from depositing my windfall at the bank last night, I happened to see a fox. Small critter, maybe the size of a beagle, with reddish-brown coat and white underbelly, and a long, bushy, tubular-shaped tail. It was sitting on an embankment beside some railroad tracks; when I approached closer it loped into the nearby woods. I wished I had a digital camera or binoculars. My distance vision isn't all that great.

As I was over eating lunch just now, one of the employees of the pet store near the restaurant was sitting outside on a grassy parking lot median, with a 3-and-1/2-week orange kitten, named Tiger. Cutest little thing you ever saw. There was also a customer who had his pet white rat on his shoulder—a rat about three times the size of the kitten. He set it down and rat and kitten met each other amicably. It kind of reminded me of that Roadrunner cartoon where the coyote "catches" a giant Roadrunner and looks at the camera and asks, "OK, I caught him, now what?"

Movie Meme

Zounds, I hath been tagged by a gwox. I guess I have no choice but to take the survey.

01. TOTAL NUMBER OF FILMS I OWN ON DVD/VHS...

I'm not even sure how to count this here. I think I have 150-200ish on DVD alone, guesstimating from the size of my shelves, but I'm not home right now so I can't really count that well. Then I have maybe another 50-60 on VHS in my apartment. And I think I have another hundred or so packed away in my room at home. (And that's counting EP-speed tapes full of fansubs as "single" films.)

02. THE LAST FILM I BOUGHT...

Just today I placed an order via Deep Discount DVD for the Image Films restored/rescored version of Buster Keaton's The General/Steamboat Bill Jr. double-feature, and Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. Yesterday I received a prior film I'd ordered, the third volume of the Giant Robo anime series (see my review of the first volume here), and prior to that I received the Daft Punk/Leiji Matsumoto collab Insterstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem.

As for the last movie I rented (yeah, it didn't ask but I thought I'd mention it anyway) I've been working my way through the Pink Panther series, and currently have out from Greencine The Pink Panther Strikes Again and the first two discs of Joss Whedon's Firefly series (have to get ready for Serenity, don'cha know).

03. THE LAST FILM I WATCHED...

Over the weekend, I watched quite a few films on DVD/bigscreen set in the medical study facility. The last three, which I watched with my brother who hadn't seen them before, were the Stephen (Kung Fu Hustle) Chow films From Beijing With Love and God of Cookery (both in the original Cantonese with semi-literate English subtitles), then the John Woo/Tom Cruise vehicle Mission: Impossible 2—all of which I had previously seen before. The last new (to me) films I watched would probably be Speed II, which was playing on TV Sunday noonish, and the 12-part anime series DearS, which I watched on my computer as digital fansubs on Saturday night.

Last film I watched in a theater was, I think, The Incredibles, which I saw three times.

04. FIVE FILMS THAT I WATCH OFTEN...

The Eagles, Hell Freezes Over (concert video) and Yes, Fragile (DVD-Audio) are ones I "watch" quite a lot, given that they're just music so I can watch/listen to them over and over again without getting tired of them. Their DTS audio sounds great on my 5.1 speaker sound system, too. Beyond that, I don't know that I could say I really watch any movies "often," as they tend to have limited replay value for me; usually I won't watch them again after the first time (save to view commentary and the like) unless I'm with a friend to whom I want to show them and can take enjoyment out of them. (And what with my recent addiction to City of Heroes, I haven't even been watching movies themselves "often" at all.) I've watched The Incredibles a few times since getting the DVD; Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, and Castle of Cagliostro have some good replay value for me (as do most of Miyazaki's films, actually). I've probably watched the Giant Robo episodes at least 8 or 9 times each in various incarnations (fansubs, poorly-subtitled HK knockoff DVDs, licensed DVDs in both dubs and sub) over the years too.

05. TAG FIVE PEOPLE AND HAVE THEM PUT THIS IN THEIR JOURNAL..

artmomz, strix_an_stones, zonereyrie, tbutler, kelloggs2066.

(If you've done this already and I missed it, let me know and I'll pick someone else. And if you're not on the list and feel like doing it too, don't let me stop you.)