Pop calls me at home to say he wants to leave the quarterly equivalency payment somewhere hidden in my desk at work so I can pick it up tomorrow. He tells me what it is. About eleven hundred more dollars than normal. To quote dad, "Yeah, it's down. Waaaaaaaay down. Just like they promised."

"What the hell happened?"

"They're making progress." I could practically hear his eyes rolling.

At least Mrs. NFB is happy about it. I keep getting that minor nagging guilt when getting these checks. I've told dad about it and he says to knock it off and enjoy it because the other side obviously feels no guilt at all.

*SHRUG* Two hundred for spending, well over ten times as much towards our debt load. Closer to zero all the time.

YAY!

BREAK

So, I go to pick up a burger from the crapateria yesterday. The girl in front of me in line gets to the counter and says, "I'd like a grilled cheese."

The man behind the counter, a good-natured sort that really comes across like the type of dude who'd just as soon be serving beer as serving burgers, says, "Well, we're not really serving grilled cheese today. We've got cheese burgers though."

She responds, angrily, "I'M PREGNANT!"

Doing what any sane man would do at that point, he looked away from her and said, "I'll get the grilled cheese cooking."

Once he gets hers cooking he asks what I'd like, and I tell him a cheeseburger sounds good.

"See," he says, obviously having no real experience with the pregnant in his past, "he's not afraid of the cheese burgers."

I could see the warning flash in her eyes as she looked back up at him, away from her cooking grilled cheese. I backed up a step. Somehow, she managed to keep it somewhat restrained. Only yelling, "I'M PREGNANT!" slightly louder than she had before.

"Right," he said nervously, "sorry."

Her husband's life must be a joy right now.

I didn't piece it together until later, but this was one of the ring leaders in the duster huffers club upstairs. Wonder what that does for pregnancy?

Talking with AFKS last night he says about half the women in his night class are pregnant. His brother's cat is pregnant. His other buddy's wife just got pregnant. Smart guy that other buddy. He comes to AFKS at six in the morning at work and says, "she's pregnant."

AFKS says, "congrats," while thinking, WTF? Aren't you broke already?

His buddy responds, "that means we've been fuckin'!"

"Thanks Einstein. I couldn't have pieced that together for myself."

My two step sisters (though I refuse to claim them) are both pregnant. As AFKS said, "it's an epidemic. A female steps outside in this spring air and *BAM* she's pregnant."

What we can't figure out is, none of the human pregnancies we're aware of are people who are really financially prepared for it. Every last one of them is someone who is financially on their last leg, or even more broke than that.

AFKS is awaiting word that his sister-in-law is pregnant, the one that's on the verge of being kicked out of her house. Or worse, his brother's wife - a family that makes his other sister-in-law look like a monetary genius.

Only a matter of time for those two, I'm sure.

BREAK

Our local news programs get all hot and bothered over weather. No, I'm not talking minor hot. I'm talking full-fledged masturbatory celebration.

We had a minor snow in the night. It had mostly stopped by morning. And the ground is warm enough all of it melted anywhere there's a roadway. But what does the local news program do? Stay on the air usurping the national feeds of the morning programs to constantly pump themselves up. The guys in the studio are trying to sell it as the worst springtime storm of all time and people are dying and the weather is killing us all and. . .

They go to their "man in the street" who's standing by the busiest road in town. His demeanor is one of complete indifference. They ask him how it's looking out there and he comes on and says, "It's fine. The snow's all melted and the traffic is flowing like it would in a typical mild rain. There's no sign of a winter storm out here." He was one second away from saying, "and fuck you stupid bastards for sending me out here to get wet when you know damn well there's nothing really happening."

They quickly cut him off and went back to the studio so they could go back to saying how horrible the storm is and that people need to give themselves extra time to get to work and be careful out there because the roads are horrible and blah, blah, blah.

What's even worse than this though? For the next three weeks they'll be advertising how "we were there with 24/7 coverage of the biggest winter storm of '08." It's not a winter storm dumbasses. It was some minor sleet in the night that melted by morning.

There weren't even any idiots in the ditch this morning.

Gah. I hate local news. The only news they report are the national stories and try to tie it into the local scene somehow. But when weather happens it's like they just turn into idiots. No matter how minor that weather is.

BREAK

It's Friday. Almost the weekend. YAY!

No big plans that I'm aware of. May go out with AFKS for a bit Sunday, but aside from that, nothing but house cleaning and standard crap.

Weekend, yippie!

Laterz.