Well Shit.

I was all ready for this intense month of school. A whole term in four weeks! Yesterday went as well as could be expected. I woke up on time, showered and caught the bus. After two and a half hours of French I filled out my VA (Veteran's Affairs. They run the GI Bill - college money for former servicemembers - among other things) certification, picked up my transit pass, bought my books and still had enough time before my afternoon history class to surf the web a bit in the computer lab.

But then this morning, I got an email from the VA office at my university. Typically, the GI Bill gives me money so long as I'm taking 12 credits. It turns out though that there's a limit to bullshit classes that you can take and I've exceeded that limit. As there are no classes offered this summer that are required for my graduation, I can't get certified for any credits, which means no money, which means I had to withdraw from all of my classes. It also means that the next pay check I was expecting isn't going to happen until maybe October. That's an awful long time to be living nearly entirely on credit. Crap crap crap.

There are a couple things I can do right away to help out financially: return the stereo receiver that finally shipped, of course, ten minutes after I gave up waiting for the backordered item and walked down to another electronics store and bought a different one; return the textbooks I just bought, though I cracked up the plastic on my $220-non-returnable-after-opening French book last night, so that's a loss; sell some older textbooks on ebay or something (though honestly that sounds like a pain in the ass). Other than that, it's eating cheap canned food and rice from the grocery store.

Any ideas for entertaining myself on the cheap/free? I do have some new gadgets related to music that I bought before I found out I wouldn't be getting paid, but I don't know if I could just do that all day.