It’s my birthday(.com)! To cel­e­brate one year of MilesRausch.com, I’ve decided to share some of the major changes in my life so far.

“MilesRausch.com” Has Been Rebooted

The redesign (and rede­vel­op­ment) boasts some new fea­tures. Along with an entirely redone design, you might spot:

• New fav­i­con
• Four col­ored ver­sions (which change on spe­cial days)
• Asides, Quotes, and Lyrics in the sidebar
• Improved “Archives” page
• Bet­ter sup­port for Inter­net Explorer and Safari (but IE doesn’t work fan­tas­tic yet)
• Fluid-width lay­out

“The Car” Has Been Rebooted.

I traded in my POS (pre­vi­ously owned stu­pid­car) for $995 and got a brand-new (used) 2001 Chevy Impala LS for a decent sum. This was a huge step for me, and a huge amount of stress.

• Heated, leather seats
• OnStar (maybe)
• Trunk big enough to fit four dead hootchies in it
• Remote con­trol
• Power sun­roof
• tape and cd player

This is quite the story, so grab a snack. Actu­ally, that’s what we were doing. It was Sat­ur­day, noon­ish, and Holli and I were going to get some bev­er­ages for our frozen pizza. If you haven’t had it, Coke with Lime is one of the great­est bev­er­ages out there. It’s got the hard, chrome-flavored kick of Coke with a hint of refresh­ing lime (note: you won’t get the same taste by mix­ing Coke with Sierra Mist).

Any­way, it’s hard to come by in Madi­son, so we decided to try every gas sta­tion in town. When we got up to Clas­sic Cor­ner, Holli noticed the mar­quee in front of Prostrollo’s read “Used Car Sale until 5:00 Today” or some­thing. We went in to get our bev­er­age (which they didn’t have!), so I totally trashed the place and left in an anger. I sud­denly wanted to buy some­thing expen­sive, and I wanted it to take a very very long time.

We drove around the lot, and I looked for any cars I thought I’d like. I didn’t see any­thing with “007 Stunt Vehi­cle” on it, but I did see some inter­est­ing cars, and we got out to look at them. With­out warn­ing or prompt­ing, a sales­man was upon us. I gave him my range, and the first car he showed us was a 2001 Chevy Impala. He said his cousin, Adam Pauli, owned it before and had traded it in for a pickup. He said he was orig­i­nally from Sum­mit. Then he said I could drive it.

This con­cept sorta blows my mind. They give you keys to a car and just let you leave. He didn’t sit with us. In fact, he used to time to find out how much my car was worth. Holli said that they use your cur­rent car as col­lat­eral (and as a rea­son to make you come back) but I had noth­ing attached to that car. We could have dri­ven to Canada and found a bet­ter life amongst the ice-frosted stars.

Any­way, I even­tu­ally decided to get the Impala. We walked in and began the process. There were some awk­ward ques­tions, mostly about work, like what does my employer do and what is my job title. Because I don’t have a job title, I just kinda explained what I do and we made some­thing up with the word “man­ager” in it. Then he passed the paper­work off to the busi­ness man­ager guy, and we sat in the cus­tomer lounge.

We sat there a long time. We watched, like, 10 “Trip My Truck” episodes, and I got increas­ingly pan­icked about my pur­chase. It’s a lot of money for a long time and my old car was still run­ning. Oh, man. Why did I agree to this? It got worse and worse, and then we talked to the busi­ness manager.

So, for a car they don’t take credit card. They take cash or check, which means you have to have that money, which means if you don’t, then you have to get a loan, which I hadn’t yet, which they were going to find for me, and with­out this loan, you can’t get a car. So, the long wait was because “It’s not that you have bad credit; it’s just that you don’t have enough of it.” Right. So, the only loan he could find me was 16.99% inter­est. I didn’t know what else I could do, so I accepted it, but I didn’t have insur­ance yet, and I said I was going to research that over the week­end, so the loan was put on hold because they need that info.

Even­tu­ally we were allowed to leave with the car, unin­sured and unpaid­for, and I drove it to my apart­ment. I was in a daze the rest of the day, plac­ing calls to dad, Bryce, and send­ing pix, plus get­ting calls from mom and Tony, and Holli call­ing her par­ents, I was just kinda numb to all of it, and still am a bit. Dad keeps say­ing, “You just have to do it” and “Are you smil­ing yet?“
There are pic­tures of the car and the free swag I got from the deal­er­ship in my My New Car — 2006 photo set.

P.S. It appears that Coke with Lime isn’t sold in Madi­son; we ended up get­ting Pepsi with Lime, which isn’t even the same thing, don’t get me started.

“The Job” Has Been Rebooted.

I’m full-time at Cer­tus Man­aged Host­ing Solu­tions of which, CRESH is now CRESH.NET, a divi­sion of said com­pany. Some of the high points of that are:

• Decent salary
• Decent Ben­e­fits
• Com­mute to Sioux Falls 3 days a week
• Head or man­ager or what­ever of some­thing or other

I’ve also decided to pur­sue writ­ing as a career. I’m not quit­ting my day job, yet, but I am work­ing on get­ting into fes­ti­vals and con­tests and stuff. This means that:

• Writ­ing “table”
• Joined The Drama­tists Guild of Amer­ica (and got a card)
• Cur­rently work­ing on: 3 nov­els, 12 short sto­ries, 1 poems, 1 screen­plays, 0 short films, 0 music videos, 3 one-acts, 3 three-acts, 5 sketches, 1 musi­cal, 1 tele­vi­sion show, 1 mini-series
• Cur­rently com­pleted are: 0 nov­els, 1 short sto­ries, 20+ poems, 1 screen­plays, 3 short films, 2 music videos, 11 one-acts, 1 three-acts, 2 sketches
• Cur­rently pub­lished: 1 short story, 2 poems
• Cur­rently performed/recorded: 3 News­bleeps, 2 Off the Records, 4 one-acts, 3 songs, 1 poem, 2 prize-winning speeches, 1 short film, 1 sketch
• (num­bers may be adjusted for infla­tion of ego)

It seems fairly over­whelm­ing when you list it out like that, but I try to work on one thing at a time. Holli’s been very sup­port­ive, help­ing to keep me on track when I start things, and help­ing me to not get all crazy even after fin­ish­ing things. An inter­est­ing devel­op­ment has been that the new Tech Direc­tor at DSU has a master’s degree in play­wright­ing, and I hope to talk to him soon (as soon as I have time).

So, romp! I hope you guys enjoy the new theme. I really like it.