The red is compliments of my Xanga blog. I worked out the overall costs of the next four years while I was on there, and it is a bit staggering I have to admit. But it's nothing I cannot do. 

There is nothing that I cannot do. Though instead of doing THIS I should be working on getting my apartment squared away. Oh what joy is this? To have to pack up and throw away pretty much everything I have ever known and cared for out here in Phoenix.

This was like a new life. Now it is over with, and I am scrambling. But I function well enough in a scramble. There are days when I wish it could have worked out differently. I was so close!

But really quite far. Really much farther than I care to admit. But that is the way of the story.

Just barely finished high school.

Attempted college time after time.

Moved to Youngstown twice to work as a prep chef.

Moved to Vermont to go into Culinary school.

Back to Worcester State

To Quinsig Community College.

To here.

Now back to QCC for a year, then onto WSC.

WoW. What a world, what a life I have lived. Really sounds very simple and very boring if you avoid the details. Oh such details. Horrible details.

I don't have baggage. I have skeletons, and lots of them. My friend Sam would have turned 20 today. Should have turned 20 today. Oh the Ides of March! To be born on the day JC was killed by his closest. Rome wept. Sam died on Feb 3 2006 at the age of 17 and I wept. 

So it goes. How many dead?

Sam

Tim

Mark

Nick

Frankie

Adam

Kevin

How many more? Those are just from my past. That list doesn't include Mike who shot himself last month, nor does it include Dad, who died 2 years ago, or Nick who got killed in an auto accident, or that dude I knew who was killed in Iraq who's name escapes me. Too much death to remember the names. You have to laugh. If you don't laugh, well then you cry.

Would I rather laugh or Cry?

You Got to Cry without Weeping

Talk Without Speaking

Scream without raising your voice!

That's U2 for you. The Joshua Tree if I remember right. 

Ok, back to the apartment.

Going to be hard living with someone again. I have to build myself back up. Once I do that I can get a job at a grocer or something. I'll have to register the T100 when I get home if I can afford it, and I'll have to investigate colleges and the cost of colleges. 

Min Wage in MA is $8 per hour. So before taxes if I'm working an 8 hour shift that's $64 a day, $512 a week, about $2000 a month, and $24,000 a year. 

Fine. You can live on that. That is the goal. To get employed and start making money. 

A full time student is 12 credit hours. 

So at QCC first $132 per credit hour, which is about $1600 a semester not including books, so lets make that $2000 even if we include books. So 2 semesters per year, and lets throw in one summer semester for good measure, which lets assume is what I'll need to get back to Worcester State College. That's $6000. 

Let's assume worst case scenario and say I have to do 3 years at Worcester State, because honestly I have no idea what class's I have done, but I do know that I don't remember shit from any of them, so the best course of action money or no might be to just start fresh and do it right. 

WSC is about $250 per credit hour. 

SO that's $3000 per semester plus $400 for books, add another $100 for random fees. That's $3500 per semester. 3 years is 6 semesters. That's about $18,000. 

So we are looking at about $24,000 over the next 4 years, that's $6000 per year. This is night school on top of working 8 hours a day. 

So if I'm making about $24000 a year, let's say $20,000 because I have no idea what taxes are. That's $14,000 a year to live on. Which is about $1160 per month, which is about $300 a week. 

Some amount of that $300 a week has to go to mom, and some of it has to go into savings, or I chip in for groceries and be self sufficient with transportation, and bank the rest?

Going through all that math, motorcycles are going to have to wait, the Triton, Norton, and what ever else is going to have to wait. 

I can keep the T100 going for that.