a good man is hard to fine

hey everyone! long time no see.

school is winding up quickly. i essentially have to write 5 10-15 page papers in the next two weeks10 days (holy crap).

meanwhile it's time to move again soon. moving again. sigh. once in 1996. three times in 1997. twice in 1998. twice in 1999. twice in 2000. twice in 2001. twice in 2002. once in 2003. twice in 2005. once in 2006. hopefully i can stay in one place for a long while this time ... maybe even more than 18 months!

along with trying to finish up classes with sufficient credits to graduate, i have to make sure that all of my things are in order with school. my bursar bill is paid off ... but as of today i owed overdue fines at the law library. i kept a few books a couple days late earlier in the semester and when i returned them the librarian told me the fine was $375. three hundred seventy five dollars. US dollars. i was like "are you serious? okay i can't pay that right now." it must have been like $50 per book per day, or maybe they were charging by the hour because one of the books was especially rare or something? ugh. sadly, this school has taken so much money from me already, i figured that fine was probably standard.

so i saved up some money to pay the overdue fine. and then i procrastinated a bit on paying it, til the school e-mailed saying that all monies owed to the school had to be paid by may 1 in order to get state bar association applications approved. finally, today ... in the pouring rain, mflsitwww and i went out to run errands and stopped by the law library to pay my fines. the librarian swiped my school id and reminded me "three seventy five" so i handed him my credit card.

"oh no. checks or cash only."

what the heck? argh. fortunately, i happened to be rolling a few benjamins deep (don't ask) that mflsitwww was holding for me (besides being my bodyguard, she's also my accountant) and i handed the guy four hundred dollar bills.

"what? no."

he looked at me dismayed. or maybe it was confused. whatever it was -- let's call it the "skunk eye" -- but it all came to light as he explained ...

"it's three dollars and seventy five cents."