Bye-Bye, Baby.

[imood at time of entry:down]
[Personal Mood at time of entry: tired]

Note: Originally written Thursday, July 10, 2008.

So the laptop’s gone bye-bye. I sold it on Monday to a jerk that I wanted to slap every time he asked me a nitpicky question about superficial scratches or tried to knockdown the price some more. I wanted $550 for the thing, but only got $525. *shrugs* What can you do, right?

When he called, he hesitantly said that he could only do $500 and I told him ‘no’ flat out. I then offered to meet him halfway, because he sounded rather pathetic. He told me he’d think about it and call me back. He eventually called me back not long after that and I tried to get him to meet me Downtown in a public place, like the library. But the son of a bitch insisted! that we meet at my house. I had plans to come back out after he left, because I wasn’t expecting the sale to take very long. Not only did I go out of my way to go back home and nicely pack everything up, he kept me waiting over 30 minutes for him to arrive.

When he got there, he was all attitude and disappointment; like I would be this hot little wisp of a thing that he could hit on and knock the price down some more. I’m not, so I guess that crimped part of his negotiation style.

Good.

Even so, he still tried to haggle, when we’d already agreed on a price. I then explained that I had already knocked more than $200 dollars off of the price I paid for the damned thing, but this guy was all about him. He went on a long spiel about technology changing every day and that my computer wasn’t worth what it was when I bought it and that a similar computer was on sell at Best Buy, where I bought my computer. The long and short of it was that he hoped to convince me that my computer was basically worthless and that I should just give him the deal that he wanted. He then went on about cars losing half of their value once they’re off the lot. That had nothing to do with us, so I wasn’t trying to hear that.

He even stated that he could pay what I wanted for the computer, but that he didn’t want to. I asked him why would he answer an ad asking for more than he wanted to pay. He snipped and decided to be evasive.

We did a back and forth where he made out like he wasn’t going to buy my computer from me and I was fed up and wasn’t going to sell it to him. I probably should have waited a little bit longer on people to respond back to my ad. I turned down about five other people because I took the first person who responded back to me.

This experience has helped to continue to sour me on dealing with foreign men. It might sound racist to say so, but dealing with money with foreign men always spells trouble. They’re so used to the rules from back home. The rules that say things like women are property and men are king. To that, I say go back home for that kind of treatment. I worked hard and saved up for months to pay for my computer and it was uncomfortable as it was to sell it.

A tiny part of me was glad that it was gone, but most of me was sad that my still unnamed baby was gone. I couldn’t help but sulk that night. I felt sick, because I knew sooner or later the jerk would start calling to get his money back, even though we both signed a written agreement that included the words “sold as is.” He had already laughingly griped that he should have made me fix the computer’s software before he consented to buy it. I just gave him a general ‘ah, well’ and moved on.

And he did indeed call repeatedly the very next day (Tuesday, July 8, 2008). I missed his earlier calls because I was at work, but the later ones came while I was on my little break between my scheduled shift and the one I worked as a favor to my ungrateful managers. I really should have gone, “You’re screwed, so fuck you.” But then, that wouldn’t help me accomplish my goal to go into overtime this week. I’m already at 18 hours and I have four more days to work. Way to stick it to the man, Danielle.

I checked out a couple of books a few days ago and I’m completely wrapped up in “The End of Manners: A Novel” by Francesca Marciano. I also got “Passion at Work: How to Find Work You Love and Live the Time of Your Life” by Lawler Kang and Mark Albion, which I have started reading, too. I am always drawn in to articles and books written about and/or by people living in the Middle East or India or Asia. It’s just something about the insiders’ peek at a different culture that I have always loved and longed for.

True, on the surface, I never share my desire to get to know different kinds of people from all corners anymore, because said people tend to shun black women, but it’s still there. It’s like this thing that’s never completely gone away. It was must certainly be the force behind my love of learning about different kinds of religions from around the world and throughout different time periods. It is endlessly fascinating to me.

There is still the issue of my Inbox, which I’m not tackling very well. This is still mostly due to the limited amount of time I have online these days. I either don’t get online or only have just enough time to write here. Seeing as I am ruthlessly — sadistically! — depriving myself of the chance to just write, I like funneling myself back into my journal and into reading actual books. I’ve been spoiled on saving fan fiction into word processing files and reading them at my leisure for hours on end. I thought about this on and off and pondered the fact that I never read actual books anymore. I missed it to some extent, but I loved my fan fic.

Now, it’s easier to go back to books once I know what to read. I’ve been out of the loop so long, that I didn’t know a good book to search for. The not-having-a-library-card for at least three years or more didn’t help matters either. The having-to-wait-in-a-long-line-besides-book-displays helped to move matters along.

I am also pleased that The Pierces’ Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge finally showed up from the hold I placed on the CD ages ago. It got here before Nelly Furtado’s Folklore, which was very surprising. I wasn’t expecting TToLaR for weeks yet, while I had been expect FL almost immediately because this disk was in stock and there wasn’t a hold in front of mine like with TToLaR. *shrugs*

Either way, my plan to use my computer to transfer the songs over to my PSP is bust, since I no longer own a computer. I actually had to purchase batteries for my/my mom’s old CD player. Oy.

Time’s almost up here, so I’ll need to be headed out soon.

Danielle