Saturday, January 31, 2004 - 1:11 p.m.

In case y'all have been wondering where I've been for the past few weeks, I've been in limbo. I've finally got all my W-2 forms and am hoping to get my taxes done sometime this coming week. (So at long last, I will finally know how much of my money I can keep and how much I'll have to pay in so my government can give it to rich corporations who ship all their jobs to Mexico, third-world dictators who'll betray us and blow up our precious historical landmarks in a few years time, and to the space aliens they put in charge of redesigning our local roads system which, as of this moment, resembles a deep-frozen, dirt-encrusted, Midwestern version of the Blade Runner movie set.)

Okay... I'll admit the government doesn't spend ALL our money on frivolous things. I'm certainly glad to see at least some of it going to the soldiers who defend our freedom, the tireless civil servants who keep our country running smoothly, and to the dedicated postal workers who lose my mail on a regular basis. Still, I do wish the gub'ment could be a little more careful with the money I send them, particularly NOW that I have so little of it to spare. I confess, my taxes are going to be a real mess this year, and the fault lies mainly with me. The first thing I did was lose my job. The next thing I did was sign up for unemployment and opt NOT to have the government deduct any taxes from my payments. (In the long run, this was probably a wise move, seeing as how, once the government gets it's bureaucratic little paws on my money, it becomes extremely reluctant to let it go.) I was hoping that I could e-file this year and have the whole mess over and done with. Unfortunately, part of my money went towards a 401k fund this year, and the steely-hearted, omnipotent monkeys in charge of the tax code have decreed that one cannot e-file if one has put money towards a retirement fund, no matter how paltry and insignificant that sum might be.

Feh. I'll be glad when this part of the year is over. Taxes, bitter cold and the grim, hovering spectre of Valentine's Day. Thank you, February. Thank you so bloody much.

Monday, January 5, 2004 - 5:45 pm

Now that stinky ol' 2003 is over and done with, I finally have the opportunity to post new content. Content in the form of the new and fabulously funny Xenogears Thumbnail Theater, a Special Guest Webfeature by Kevin Hanson. I also went through the trouble of re-editing and condensing my Final Fantasy X Thumbnail Theater into a format which contains fewer pages (meaning there'll be less of a chance that it will scare off potential readers. I hope.) Enjoy.

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 9:45 p.m.

The mystery of what happened to my webpages has been solved. I have exceeded my bandwidth for the month (A problem which should find its own solution when the clock hits one minute past midnight tonight.) I should've known this would happen. (The fault, of course, lies with my Bored of the Rings fansite. I remember the same bandwidth curse struck me round about this time last year, when the second movie of the trilogy came out. Give it about a month or so and things should be back to normal around here. Or at least, back to whatever passes for normal around here.)

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 - 6:46 p.m.

In case you're one of the three people on Planet Earth who've noticed that all the websites in my amethyst-angel.com domain are down and were wondering why, here's the answer: I don't fuggin' know. I've written to the server gods asking them why they have forsaken me so, seeing as how I'm a nice girl who has thus far, paid all my bills to them in a timely manner, but as yet, I have gotten no response. I did however, get something called a "ticket" (which is basically a corporation's way of saying "sit tight and wait until our employees get tired enough of boozing and whoring it up to the point where they actually feel like bothering to work on your pathetic little problem.")

Seems like everybody's partying tonight. Everyone except me. I dunno. I just don't think the passing of a year is all that big a deal. It's certainly nothing worth celebrating (unless it happened to be a year as full of bitterness, frustration and misfortune as this past year was for me. Goodbye 2003. And good fucking riddance.)

Hm. I probably shouldn't leave on a note as negative as that. Um, I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year.

Emphasis on the Happy.