You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find, you get what you need

I ran for 30 minutes again yesterday. I am going a little faster, 5.3 mph, though still a longer warm up and cool down period, still doing 22 minutes running at 5.3 mph, 4 minutes warm up, 4 minutes cool down. It was a bit harder than Monday, but I didn’t have to stop halfway through due to cramps, so that is positive.

Food doing quite well, chicken & veggies in Caribbean jerk sauce for lunch, chicken & veggies in mango curry sauce. Yummy. But, for what has to be the first day in a long time, NO CHEESE! None. Not on my eggs (with bacon) for breakfast, and none in any of the chicken meals. I don’t feel any different, but I have to be different. I wonder if I can limit cheese if I have it in the house.

I did get the insurance check from my father’s life insurance. I will stock up on food again this weekend. I am going to buy cheese as well, but I will try to be good. No more eating a pound at one sitting just cause it is there. I can be strong, I can be good.

I have been thinking on getting myself something nice, a little present, with the money. I have already paid big chunks on the credit card, paid off some small single shop credit cards (tires on the Goodyear card, oil changes on the Firestone card, some Fiestaware I’d charged on the Kauffman’s charge) and so I was thinking I need to buy myself something nice. But then…I realized that when I bought my child…errr…my iPod in January, it was because I was getting the money from the life insurance. That is when I treated myself. And then, last week when I actually got the check, I ran out and charged a little speaker/docking station for the iPod on the credit card…as a treat to myself. So I treated myself again. And now I’m thinking of treated myself a third time? I think not.

I want to be a little smarter on how I use this money. I am going to pay off m trip to Rome for this summer, so that is a few G’s already. I am paying off bills, so there is a few more G’s gone. I am breaking off cheddar left & right for bills (and, oddly enough, this isn’t about cheese, as I’d been led to believe in the past.)

There is one thing I am thinking of doing with some this less than heard earned cash I’ve received (I don’t think that years of mental anguish over being abandoned by and then ignored by a biological father then to be named as a beneficiary on his life insurance is actually hard earned. My sister might disagree, but it is like found money to me.) In my last year at college, my roommate moved out on me during the first semester. There are some questions as to why he did that, and to this day he sticks to one story, but I’ve heard other stories that it was another story. But either way, he moved out.

At Thiel College, it was customary that if a roommate moved out, a student has to go to the Dean of Students and ask for a new roommate to be given, and you wouldn’t be charged for a private room if one wasn’t assigned. I did this. No roommate was ever assigned me, so I ended up having the dorm room for ½ the first semester senior year and the entire final semester senior year.

At the end of the school year, they came to me and said that I owed them $574.00 for a private room for a semester. I pleaded my case to them, and the accounting department laughed and laughed and laughed at me.

I was staying for the summer to finish work on the year book, as I was the editor. Well, I had also ran the video lab for a professor for my final 2 ½ years of college. Some Lutheran group had made some documentary on life at Thiel College (it was a Lutheran college) and the president asked me to make like 500 copies of this documentary. When you are a small school that can’t afford multiple copy machines, you have to do them one at a time. He offered to pay me minimum wage to do this task. I originally told him that I would do it for free if they would get rid of the $574.00 bill for a private room. He agreed, I agreed, I did the work. At the end of the work, he told me I’d get my diploma. At the end of each week I’d get my pay.

Sometime in 1995, I received a bill from a collection agency for $574.00. It took me some time to figure out what the bill was. When I did, I wrote a letter to the collection agency and copied in Thiel accounting dept. Thiel appealed, and I decided to drive to the college and spoke directly with the president (though it was informal, not a formal appointment - it is that small of a college) and he remembered and agreed and said he’d take care of it.

Flip to 1999. Again, I get a bill for $574.00. This time I am ready. I rewrite my letter appealing it. I hear back that Thiel disagrees and demands payment. I call, and find out that the President that I had made the agreement with had retired. No one wants to back me up anymore.

As it stands now, it isn’t on my credit report. No collection agency is pursuing me for this money. However, until I actually pay it, I will never technically have my diploma. They aren’t allowed to deny that I graduated. They can’t deny sending out transcripts to another college for graduate school (as evidenced by the fact that I have started two separate graduate programs since leaving Thiel, not finishing either one.) but I don’t have my diploma.

So, after much thought, I am going to drive to Greenville, PA, slap down my $574.00 in case, get a receipt, and demand my fucking diploma! That is how I am going to treat myself.