Thank God I Didn't Throw Out The Pulp

It's Monday night; this computer room is closing in about 5 minutes, unless the guard on duty let's it stay open a little longer.

I took Harold the cat in here with me; weathering his shock over being brought through the door that he has seen me disappear through almost every night; but has rarely gone beyond. I have a few claw marks on my arm for my effort.
I'm trying to get more pictures of Harold so I can use them to Photoshop something funny.
 
There are myself in the computer room, and one other resident; a black guy, and that fact would make her decision easier with regard to letting another hour go by before rapping on the window and pointing to her watch.

If there were only white guys in here, or only black; she (who is a black lady) would probably just close the room at exactly 8 PM, rather than hear one of the older cantankerous white residents say something like: "Oh, you notice when there're all black guys in there, she lets them stay in there as long as they want!," or hear one of the older cantankerous black residents say something like: "Why they get to stay in there all night, they don't own them computers?!?"

So, it is 8:10 right now and myself and my African American buddy are still pecking away...

Myself; and my human shields

I have 6 dollars and 87 cents.

I left at 2 AM last night on my bike, to where, I had no idea.

I was craving a bit of nicotine, but I knew that I really wanted to hang on to the 5 dollars and 87 cents that I had on me. I would thank myself the next (to)day.

I went up to the Walgreen's where there was nothing that would make an excellent meal that was drastically reduced: "CLEARANCE: 75% OFF!" but I did make note of what was on sale and was happy to note that the sale ended the day after my food stamps come in, rather than the day before, as has been the case so many times.

So, I left there, after having not spent anything, and having explained the above to the cashier, whose once over of me seemed to satisfy her that I couldn't have been concealing anything under tight jeans and tank top.

Then I slowly rode the mile back to the apartment in the warm air, kind of looking for tobacco on the ground and finding a dollar bill laying at the edge of a driveway, giving me the 6 dollar and 87 cent total; and then rounded the corner by the apartment building to discover an almost full pack of Newport "red" cigarettes laying on the ground, as if someone had tried one and then tossed the rest. It was 2 hours after midnight on the first day of August, and recipients of monthly "disability" checks were already 2 hours into their "devil may care," "there's no tomorrow," "I'm loaded with endless money," "let's go crazy" sprees; and it was very likely that some one of them had tossed the butts and then went back and bought another brand, or menthol instead of regular.

I went back to the apartment with an extra dollar and 18 cigarettes and decided to sleep, as I had been up 48 hours at that point.

I woke up the final time at about 7 PM (an hour and 45 minutes ago -the racially diverse human shields are working).

Thank God He Didn't Throw Out The Pulp!

And, I suppose, on this Monday night, that I have to go out and play. 6 dollars and 87 cents isn't going to last forever, and will buy me a little bud to make playing fun, if not profitable.
My food stamps come in about 76 hours from right now. The last few days of the food stamp month usually seem to fly by; which is good. It always seems like I am wondering how I'm going to go 10 or 12 days "without" food, and then, before I know it, I only have to go 76 hours without.
I have been living off of bags upon bags of vegetable pulp that I have in my freezer, making a meatless meatloaf by stirring up the pulp with oatmeal, olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard and other experimental ingredients and then baking it at 375 degrees for an hour. Thus, half a month of delicious and healthy, yet kind of expensive, juiced meals have become more cost effective. Thank God I didn't throw out the pulp.