In my hometown weekly paper last night, I read with sadness of my neighbor-across-the-street's wife's death. I did not even know she was ill.

In fact, I never spoke to her in 19 years, but he, my neighbor, always had a friendly word for me when I saw him out mowing or walking his dog down our street.

He lost his twenty-something daughter to a car accident just a few years ago. So sad. He has a son left. His own parents also died together in a car accident many years ago.

I don't know why these things affect me so. I am not close to him. And now the 2-year anniversary of the school shootings is coming up and so there is a somber mood in town.

I had to pay $100 for really nothing this morning when i had an overhead garage door company come out to repair my door. It hadn't been opening and closing properly, but he saw something that slid out of something and fixed it in 30 seconds. He said he could "service" the door to make sure it was balanced and so on. It took him 10 minutes. Oh well. He pointed out a grinding noise inside the motor, which he explained was plastic shredding and eventually, it would go. Maybe next week, maybe in 2 years. I declined to have him replace that.

I am annoyed at my stupid handyman guy, who really isn't a good handyman; he's more of a carpenter who has trouble finding steady work. But the price is right. He taped a taped seam that was coming up in my office ceiling, I believe 2 coats, and is to come over Tuesday, a day off for me, to finally paint the ceiling, but the taped section looks terrible. The compound he used cracked, and you can still see the netting that holds the compound in place. I haven't been able to put my office back together because i knew the ceiling needed painting.

On top of that, he had said he could do the whole job in 1 full day. That was to include the painting. The only reason why he didn't is because he took a very long break about mid-day, over an hour, outside, in my garage. When i went down to investigate, he was talking on the phone. I don't think I should be paying for that.

He's cheap enough that it won't kill me to pay him another $50 for 2 hours of ceiling painting, but I'm just annoyed. I'm so tired of contractors who try to suck whatever they can out of you.

I'm in a bad mood, can you tell? I did a bit of shopping at Kohl's with a coupon and filled up the gas tank at a remarkable $2.99 a gallon. Then I mowed lots of leaves on the lawn. I am quite aware of my using shopping and spending as a salve for my depressed mood. It's a bad habit. In fact, I was wanting to go shopping, although I need nothing, and only didn't do more damage because I couldn't think of any stores nearby where I wanted to go.

For the last 2 months of this year, I'll be contributing 30% to my 401k. Without the mortgage and with much cheaper health insurance, my minimum monthly expenses are now down to $1500, from $2,000 when I was unemployed. I am grateful that at least I don't have financial pressures now.

I stopped at Boston Marked for lunch today but have no idea what I should do for dinner. It will be a Netflix movie night. A guy I dated a while ago had recommended I watch "Californication" on Netflix, and so I watched a few episodes but it's already getting old. A directionless loser/writer with talent but no focus sleeps around with a bunch of women while he wishes he could get his ex back. I can tell why the guy I dated liked the show; the women just flocked to this guy and since this isn't on network TV, there are some pretty suggestive sexual scenes. But in truth, this guy would not be so desirable in real life. He's kind of a jerk, actually.