I did it. I actually went ahead and did it.

I sold the Camaro today. I cleared $2,800 in cash for it, which was $500 under what I was asking -- but by going down that amount it helped coax the deal go to through and I still made a bit of money on the side. I was really only hoping to get back $1,800 so that I could offset the cost buying out the title early. With this amount I'm doing better than I expected, and then some.

So I now have almost $3,000 in cash stuffed in the fireproof safe in my bedroom. Tomorrow I will visit my credit union on the drive to the office and deposit it all into my account. Once it's cleared the bank's system I will then divide the funds out so that I can do some debt repayment and store away the rest of the money like the financially responsible little boy I'm trying to teach myself to be. My plan for the moment is to send $1,800 of my deposit to Novus with the goal of paying back the Camaro's portion of the consolidation loan I took out. The remaining $1,000 will go into my savings account, which will put me over the $12,000 mark. I think about that number -- twelve THOUSAND dollars -- and I grin a little, because it says that I'm doing all right for myself even though I am behind the goal I had set over a year ago. Back in January of 2002 I had laid a plan for myself that called for setting aside $1,000 every month in the hopes of getting a down payment for a mortgage. I'd wanted a sufficient amount of cash saved up so that I could get a home loan before these excellent interest rates passed us by -- but that just wasn't to be, and fortunately for me the interest rates haven't fled quite yet.

That's the thing about plans: despite our best intentions and efforts they're always changing. With my life the way it's been over the past 16 months I've been left with little choice but to rework those plans a few times, and I'll probably have to do it again before the entire thing is said and done. To borrow a phrase from my father, sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. That's sound advice in my book, although it would probably have a bit more relevance if I was a heavyweight boxer.

For those of you playing along at home, that Novus loan represents all of my remaining debt because I used it to pay off everything with an outstanding balance, no matter how small. This single payment of $1,800 accounts for approximately 1/3 of that loan. I can keep throwing large sums of money at it until it's entirely gone without too significantly impacting my life. With luck I will have it completely obliterated within the next 3 months -- which means at that point I'll be perfectly in the black, with zero revolving debt load and no outstanding loans period.

I'm looking forward to having the ink go black once more.

No regrets

So ConFurence melted down....

... or at least that's what I'm lead to believe by reading things like this and the announcement here. But it's not the spectacular way that ConFurence melted down that's catching my attention. No, I'm finding things like this, this and this far more interesting to watch. These people are turning themselves inside out over events that happened at a con they did not attend, that is known not to be returning next year and was so sparsely attended it barely even registered on the face of the fandom at all. And let's face it kids, it's not like this is the first time this sort of bad luck has befallen the fandom! Granted, the method of delivery was a rude shock, but give me a break.. the wailing and gnashing of teeth that this is generating is completely out of proportion. Keep in mind I'm only thus far talking about the stuff I'm finding on LiveJournal... I can only imagine the furious bout of angst that must be flying about completely unchecked on alt.fan.furry. These people are absolutely astounding... they'll rest about on their laurels, watching any and everything go on around them. They never have any advice to give, they never contribute, they only sit around and stare at their own navel lint because they "don't want to get involved." Yet the second the press gets involved they're whipped into a foaming, rabid core of action-oriented fans who have all the answers to the world's woes. Usually their list of so-called "Solutions" calls for barbequing whomever it is they think is most directly responsible for their current media disaster, and it usually ends with some particularly insightful chap trumpeting that the fandom will never escape persecution and the real solution is to just "kill the mundanes for daring to make fun of us!" Seriously, step back and look at this for a minute, people. This is quality entertainment on par with throwing a piece of squid between two hungry seagulls so that they start scrapping over who gets to eat the prize. I don't have to watch the segment on the Man Show to get an idea of how screwed up things are in this fandom. Hell, I can skip all their fake lines and scripted "incidents," because the real show is right in front of me: I just have to watch the fandom's participants as they tear themselves apart at the seams with rage. It's the same thing every time this happens -- outrage, outcry, frothing undirected anger... but never a lick of intelligent action.

Do you want to know why I'm finding this so amusing? Well, to borrow from Road to Perdition: It's all so fucking hysterical.

Come on, people. This isn't the first time, it isn't the last time, and it sure as hell isn't the end of the world. Furry Is Just A Goddamn Hobby. Now get ahold of yourselves, stop weeping in the corner and move on with your life. Or end it. I really don't care anymore, so long as you take some sort of responsibility for your own actions and then ACT.