This marks the second week of working 14-hour days here at Idiot Central. Actually, it could be the third, as I was working double-time up until I left for SF, but I don’t remember that far back.

I did decide, however, that my previous conclusion about a new Mac was faulty—after spending time traveling with a balky ThinkPad and an anemic iBook, I’m going to save my shekels for a MacBook (and maybe a MacBook Pro, if I can swing it) for several reasons: Being able to run a separate monitor for presentations, portability, and power. I just wish the RAM wasn’t so damned expensive.

When I went off to college in the fall of 1989, one of the many things I packed for the trip took up little space, but was one of the biggest lifesavers of all. It wasn’t the cofffee machine I never mastered, or the heavy dishes I never washed, or the metric tons of cassette tapes I lugged up and down flight after flight of stairs. No, the lifesaver was a little plastic card issued by Citibank for shlubs like me, entering into the prime target demographic the hallowed halls of higher education like an innocent lamb. Many life lessons were learned there, from banal (don’t mix lights and darks, no matter how desperate the need for clean underwear) to life-threatening (don’t climb the Howard Street Bridge after three 40’s of Crazy Horse) to common-sense (art chicks are crazy) to survival (First Thursdays=free dinner and cheap wine) to painful truth (I can draw really well, but I can’t paint worth a damn). One of the best lessons I learned was how to be smart with money, and how not to abuse a credit card. I would—and still do—scoop up change off the sidewalk to afford a beer at the Tavern, dive through dumpsters for furniture, and buy all my best leisure wear at the Goodwill.

For awhile, during the heady days of the Internet Boom, and when I was loosely affiliated with the prosperity that wheezed through Maryland, I lived pretty large. I had a nice little house in the city, a toy truck to play with, and spending cash to have fun with. Somewhere along the way, I started using my credit card for stuff, and got pretty cavalier about it. To the point where I realized one day that I was carrying a balance that was alarmingly large. And this coincided with one of those periods where I wasn’t getting paid on time. (You may already know where this is going.) After doing what I could to save money, and missing one payment along the way, I was able to pay the card off—but not before my interest rate was hiked to prime plus 20%.

I vowed never to have this happen again, and went back to my skinflint ways—only buying what I could afford with my debit card from my checking account, and retiring my credit card to the back of my wallet, behind my library and Sam’s Club cards. The last time I carried any balance at all on my card was April of ’05.

This afternoon, in preparation for booking a flight to California, I pulled it out to see if I could have the APR reduced. The nice lady on the phone cheerfully told me that my account was closed.

Closed? I asked. For what reason?

Because the account has been inactive for a year, she replied. Can I help you with any other services today?

…

So let me get this straight. If I carry a balance of $.01 on my card, Citibank charges me a “handling fee” each month, plus interest. If I don’t have any activity on my card at all, for a year, my APR still stays at Prime-plus-anal-rape, and Citibank closes the account without notifying me after I’ve been a customer of 13 years? Fuck you, Citibank.

Don’t tell my Dad, but I’m not at school today. BG&E cut the power to our block to work on the treeline that runs parallel to our poles, so I’m at the local Panera taking advantage of free wireless and warm coffee. It’s not the same thing as sitting at my own desk and an orange cat curled up in the corner, but it’s not bad either. Unfortunately, I can’t send out e-mail from my main account (something to do with the DNS lookups here, grumble grumble) but otherwise I’m online.

If I ever get paid, and actually have money in the bank (gasp), this is a partial list of Stuff I’d Like To Buy:

• The birthday present I have picked out for my wife
• Life insurance
• A pair of dress chinos so that I don’t look like a bumbling hick on our client meeting next week
• A new pair of dress shoes to replace the 5-year-old Steve Madden knockoffs I currently own
• A pair of prescription sunglasses to replace the ones I lost in the taxi on the way to our hotel in Rome two years ago
• A set of iPod headphones to replace the ones I’ve got, which are fraying, cracked, and dynamically mismatched
• The ability to finally subscribe to satellite radio, putting the unit we’ve had since December to use
• Extra RAM, a new battery, and a CD-burner for the Thinkpad, which needs to be backed up

Supposedly, there’s a FedEx package on its way with my name on it. If it ever does arrive, I’ll be able to pay 1/2 my upcoming tax bill, the August mortgage, and at least some of my outstanding bills.

Most microbusiness owners lack health insurance at some point. No shit, Sherlock. You had to do a study to find that out?

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association has endorsed a proposal requiring individuals who make at least $49,000 a year to purchase a minimum level of health insurance.

Which only goes to show just how far up their ass the AMA has their heads. We have a “minimum” of health insurance, which translates to a sky-high deductible and no prescription coverage, in case we get hit by a bus or actually are crazy enough to try and procreate. I’d guess somebody at the AMA is being lobbied heavily by the insurance industry, who seem to think that the lower middle class/small business owners of American don’t have enough bullshit to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully, whatever stupid small business association lobbying group is supposedly representing my interests in Washington gets this particular “proposal” shot down, and quick.

How about the AMA decides to bite the hand who’s obviously handing them Milk-Bones and start going after the insurance industry for jacking up malpractice insurance rates? (That’s right, I live in one of the more doctor-unfriendly states, which is why our G.P. recently decamped to Delaware for “Family Reasons”.)

nearly a third of those who responded to the poll said they couldn’t find simple, easy-to-read information about their health care options.

Amen, brother. Doing the preliminary research for our little family unit was like reading a Yugoslavian owner’s manual at the bottom of a dark well. And I’d have to add that the “options” are pretty spare. There was one plan that looked fantastic until we got to the part about pregnancy, and realized it was written for sterile people.

I’ll be thinking about that particular article the next time we fork out $120 on three months’ worth of birth control pills.

This morning, laying in bed clearing the sleep from my eyes, I decided to begin a daily bike ride I’ve been planning since August of 2004. Last weekend, I pulled both my bikes out of the basement and inflated the tires, checked the chains, and tested the brakes. They’re now hanging out in the garage on hooks, where they should get more use and will be easier to access.

This morning’s ride took me southward to the edge of the Patapsco Valley State park, which is walking distance from the house here. The weather has been unseasonably cool and dry for June in Maryland, cool enough that I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of it two weeks ago. Come August, I’m going to be getting up at 5:30 to get in a half-hour’s ride before I melt into a puddle of slag in the bike lane.

I used to be a pretty avid rider when I lived in the city and worked for Johns Hopkins—not a spandex peacock riding a $3,000 carbon-fiber spaceship, but an avid rider who biked to work every day and got in at least two mountain-bike rides a week at my peak. I haunted the local bike shops for used parts to upgrade my rides. I had a set of city wheels for my beater bike, and got to where I was pulling as much crap off the frame to lighten the bike as I could. I used to have rider’s legs and a decent cardiovascular system, which meant I could climb the hill from the Harbor to Eutaw Place without feeling winded, and I could hold my own on the hilly singletrack of Avalon. When I quit Hopkins and started working outside the city, my riding dropped off dramatically, and in the last two years I’ve been on my bikes a total of five times.

Today it felt like coming home, even though I was on my mountain bike for what is really a road bike’s ride. The air was crisp and fresh, the birds were out, and I explored a section of the park I’ve not seen yet. Along the way, I stopped to read a park map and spied a whitetailed deer and her foal creeping through the woods not 50 feet away. We stopped and looked at each other, and in the blink of an eye both were gone as quietly as they’d come. The ride back home is just right for someone as out-of-shape as me; lots of climbing with landings in between to catch one’s breath.

Along the way, I happened upon the only other running Scout I’ve seen in the area, a tan ’78 not unlike ours, parked in a driveway nearer the park, chocked with a 2×4′. If the time comes when I’m ready to give up Chewbacca, I know who to approach for a good home.

* * *

In other news, I got an email from a fellow who publishes an online magazine, asking if he could use some of my Bimini photos to accompany a story he wrote about the island. He also mentioned that the Compleat Angler, a bar/hotel we drank at while we were there, and a historic landmark of the island (Hemmingway preferred to stay there when he was on the island), burned down in January. I can’t tell you how sad this news is, and how devastating this must be for the local economy—there aren’t more than five bars we saw for tourists to visit on the south end of the island, and the Angler was hands-down the one with the most style and panache. On the heels of the plane crash last December, this is just awful news.