Y9 D13

Yesterday was a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Some cool stuff happened, some shitty things happened. It was all over the map emotionally and mentally.

The day started with a nice surprise. My state refund finally came through. It's always nice to check your bank balance and discover extra money. Not a huge amount of course, but enough to go hey that's nice. Enough that if you wanted to pay some extra towards bills, you could. Which is what I plan on doing. I was originally going to use part of the money for a new toy, but the more I thought it through, the more I realized I would rather pay down some bills. Look at me being all responsible. I have a plan which should allow me to pay off in full one more credit card by August at the latest. I have been chipping away slowly and it is showing finally in my credit score. I have added some good points to it this year and want to keep that momentum going.

Went off to the client where I spent the majority of the day sitting in the back of the room answering the occasional random question. In total, I would say I spent maybe 3 hours helping and 5 hours sitting doing nothing. I even fell asleep at one point. I couldn't help it. It was around my typical daytime nap time and just closed my eyes. Oops.

I was looking at the news yesterday while doing nothing and saw they announced the line-up for Aftershock 2017. That's the same concert the kid and I went to in 2015. Here's the line-up of the bands I care about that will be there:

- NIN
- Manson
- Ozzy
- Perfect Circle
- Suicidal Tendencies
- Five Finger Death Punch
- Eagles of Death Metal

What a set of bands, right? Well I decided, fuck it, let's look up tickets. After talking with B and the kid, I am going. I have to buy tickets on Friday, but if I get them, I will be going VIP both days. The kid has a $300 Alaska credit she gave me which I should be able to use for my flight, I can use points for the hotel, and I have enough PTO saved up. I then looked up Eagles of Death Metal and found they will be playing a local club in July. I am hoping my buddy will go with me to that. Tickets are $25. I haven't heard confirmation from him yet but hope to hear that today. So all good stuff.

Then while talking with B, she got some info from her mom. It's not looking good for her great-grandmother. The doctors don't want to release her from the hospital. In addition to the possible cancer on the spine, her kidneys are starting to malfunction. Here I was excited about concerts forgetting about the immediate pain B was going through. Stupid idiot I am. We will see if she needs to go back to MI earlier. She is worried it will interfere with my birthday trip and it's like no, this is more important. I will figure a way to get back what we are spending on Canada. Do not worry about it.

Get back to the hotel, which is packed, and I changed my clothes. I then went to Texas Roadhouse for a steak and shrimp. That was okay. It was too noisy and crowded for me, but the food was decent and not ridiculously priced. Got back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night fighting the internet. It would only connect if I was in the hall. I then did a speed test walking up and down the hallway. Outside my door it was 250-300kb getting up to a whopping 500k by the elevators. Come on people, that's dial up speed. It finally connected in my room with a great speed of 440k. I bitched and moaned and managed to get them to add some points to my account because there was basically nothing else they could do. Now this morning? 4mb connection in my room. It's just a poor infrastructure. Hotels need to remember that the average guest is going to require two - three connections these days. Phones, computers, tablets, it adds up. And it sucks down the bandwidth. Around 8:30 it wouldn't let me connect at all. I gave up and watched some local files and went to bed at 9:30. I was just done. Mediocre sleep for the most part but not horrible.

I can't wait to see what grand adventures today brings. Supposed to do 1/2 day at the client but we will see how many questions they ask today.