Dragged my sorry butt out of bed (actually up from the couch) to write this my first (and only) entry in Dec. 2001... also my last entry in 2001. Yes, that's right December has been hell for me. Pure, evil, awful, woeful, hell...

For the last two weeks or so I have been mostly bed-ridden. Somehow (I am assuming it was stress, because I can't explain it any other way) I hurt my back a couple of weeks back. It got progressively worse until Sunday, Dec. 23rd(?), when my wife took me to the emergency room because I could hardly move. Since then I have been mostly lying around the house, doped up on pain-pills and muscle relaxants. This, of course, meant that my break from work was wasted, and I didn't get anything done that I wanted to (such as finish up noRel [part of Noink2]) as I spent every frickin' waking moment lying in pain, or hobbling around the house like I was a 90 year old man with arthritis and rickets. Hell, I didn't even get to play much of the video games I got for Christmas (my wife even got impatient and beat Silent Hill 1 [one of her gifts to me] because she didn't want to wait for me to feel better and play it myself ;-) Add to all this the fact that my medication made me nausiated and you can imagine how horrible my vacation has been.

Right now I feel quite a bit better, I can sit up for a 30 minutes or so before I have to go back and lie down, but my vacation is already gone, since I will be returning to work on the 2nd of Jan. :-/

But wait, that's not all that made this December so very unpleasant!

Resident Evil
I have been trying to return to the U of A for Spring 2002. Since I am now a staff employee, I get pretty nice discounts for my classes and tuition. I had submitted my re-admittance forms back in Sept., and had thought that everything was kosher. But, when I finally went to register (I'll admit it was a last-minute thing, but it was still before the deadline, and the classes I was planning on taking weren't full) I found that I was still listed as a Non-Resident of Arizona!

I have lived in Arizona for 8 years now. Last year (2000) I left the state for 6 months while I worked at Intel. During that time, I remained a resident of Arizona: I paid Arizona state taxes, my wife lived and worked in Arizona, my house (which I was making payments on) was in Arizona, my car was in Arizona. After my contract at Intel was up, I returned home to Arizona.

But, apparently, that made my residency status questionable in the ever scrutinizing eyes of the U of A Residency & Classification Office. They blocked my re-admittance back in Sept.

Now, I knew about this blocking, and I took in copies of my 2000 income tax filings to them back in October. Then I assumed it had been resolved (I was a resident according to the State of Arizona, what's left to debate?) and went merrily about my life thinking everything was zen.

Well, it wasn't... And they never told me it still wasn't...

So, I had to go back in, bring new copies of my income tax info (because they claimed never to have recieved it in the first place)... plus they wanted copies of my wife's teaching contracts with TUSD for the last few years... and a bunch of other stuff. And, on top of all that, I still had to verbally argue my case with them! YEARGH!

But it's all fixed now, and I am waiting for my admittance so I can register for my classes (they still aren't full, not many people want to take upper division Physics courses, but I will have late fees now :-P )

Projects Delayed--- AGAIN
All this basically means that I still haven't finished noRel, or started the new noNews... and that continued work on my other projects will happen as soon as I catch up.

Anyway..... Bullocks....

2001 Dec 31 (Mon), 21:09 oops

I guess I didn't have the "year in review" in my last post as promised.... so here it goes....

2001 : Unemployed during most of it; Continued problems with our lawyers with what should have been an open and shut case of negligence; Financially strapped during all of it; Awful tragedy in the nation during the close of it, followed by awful tragedies around the world as a result; A/C broken in the summer, heater broken in the winter; Cat still peeing on the carpet under my computer desk; Informed I was no longer a resident of Arizona (or any state, since I had only left Arizona for 6 months); Spent the last few weeks of 2001 needing to use a cane to get on/off the crapper.....

Hmmm.....

Though, to be fair.... Tux4Kids saw a lot of success... So the year couldn't have been a total loss :-)