Well, here I am in Tonopah, Nevada, which is pretty much as apathy42 described it, but there have been a few changes in the seventeen years since he did his wu. I think I'll do a wu of my own for that node...
...anyhow, to quote the famous Captain Mal Reynolds from Firefly,"You're probably wondering how I got here." (No, I am not sitting naked on a rock in the middle of the desert. Thank God.) After all, as of my last log, everything was hunky-dory because I was finally where I was supposed to be. Obviously, it didn't work out that way.
The short version is that I was doing all right, shaking Form 1040s until the money fell out in the first quarter of the year, driving Uber for the other three quarters, and despite an accident in April 2017 that destroyed my Hyundai and forced me to replace it with a Kia, (a Forte not a Toaster), I just kept chugging along. The rent on my apartment in Somerset Gardens a few blocks off the Las Vegas Strip was pleasantly low, the rest of my bills likewise, and Life Was Good.
Then Mr. Irwin Kishner, who had owned the land and properties (including Somerset Gardens) on Kishner Avenue died, and his kids were disinclined to play landlord, so they sold the Avenue and all the apartment buildings to the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, whose convention center was already the largest in North America, but like the Borg, they were all about expanding. I had thirty days to clear out, and like an idiot, didn't call my local friends to ask for help. I worked myself into the ground packing and cleaning during the day, and driving Uber at night, and a couple of weeks after I finally cleared the apartment in October 2018 I fell severely ill while staying at the Stratosphere, and Security called 911 for me. I spent the next four days in Sunrise Hospital with intravenous antibiotics in both arms and did not die, after which I went via ambulance to a nursing home in southwest Las Vegas for another ten days while taking oral antibiotics and not dying.
Eventually they released me, I picked up my bags from the Stratosphere, and went to the El Cortez for a few days where I discovered I was too weak to do the Uber thing any more. Fortunately, I still had some cash coming from the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority's generous relocation offer, so I was able to hole up in a reasonably nice extended-stay motel south of town for a few weeks and apply to get back on Social Security Disability, which I'd been kicked off of because the Social Security Administration overestimated the amount I earned from H&R Block in the summer of 2015 when I was moving to Nevada. It seemed I qualified for "expedited case review" and six months of payments, so I signed up for that, finally found an apartment I could move into in time for tax season, and everything was cool again, right?
Guess again. The six months came and went, nobody at Social Security seemed to know what was going on, my unemployment ran out after tax season, I applied for a bunch of jobs but never passed the interviews, and the kindness of friends helped for a few months, but eventually I couldn't pay the rent any more and got evicted. Fortunately, my prima Angeles from H&R Block hooked me up with her parents, who had a spare bedroom, and I stayed there for a week while the VA hooked me up with USVets, a nonprofit that specialized in helping homeless veterans. I moved into their barracks north of Las Vegas and stayed there until May 2020 when they moved me into the Candlewood Suites; not long after that, I gave up on finding a decent apartment in Las Vegas and sent an application to the Desert Apartments in Tonopah. After a few months of paperwork, I was approved for a one-bedroom apartment and USVets paid for my move up there, as well as helping with the first couple of months' rent since the state Rural Housing Authority waived the deposit.
While I was living in the USVets barracks, my application for VA disability was approved (10% for stress-induced asthma) and Social Security finally reinstated me. This is enough to keep me in reasonable comfort here in Tonopah, where food and gas are a tad more expensive than in Las Vegas, but everything else is less so. I am working for the Reno district of H&R Block after the Las Vegas district insisted that I had to come into the office once a week but wouldn't reimburse me for travel expenses on the grounds that I was commuting, and in any case I'd volunteered for it. The Reno district manager is much more reasonable: on the two occasions this past season that she called me to saddle up and help out in one of the offices there, she paid for my hotel, and when I came up in April to finish the season, she also reimbursed me for meals. Heck of a deal. I am also making some money off the sale of my three books on Amazon and blogging, not so much so that anyone will confuse me with the International Lord of Hate, but enough to categorize me as an N-List writer. And that's okay.