Alright, let's have an update after 2 weeks since the last one. Since then, another 5 people have helped raise an additional ~$400, which is really amazing and has helped an incredible amount, and I am eternally grateful for you guys, seriously. It's helped me to stay out of the danger zone these past few weeks and I'm very thankful.

So, firstly, the hard drive scare seems to have been resolved for the moment. I was done backing things up and was ready to give in and buy a new hard drive... but someone on Twitter graciously reminded me that Chkdsk and other hard drive diagnostic tools exist, which I forgot about. :B So I ran Chkdsk a few times as thoroughly as possible, and since then, hard drive issues seem to have vanished for the most part. It still seems to lag every so often when saving things sometimes, and I'm fairly sure bad sectors still exist on the HD itself, but for the moment, I believe it's alright to leave it for now and buy a replacement in the future when I can actually comfortably afford it.

The transmission on my mom's car has yet to be fixed still and we're still unsure as to how we're going to pay to fix it. My mom can't get loans due to bad credit, and I'm fairly sure I would be unable to as well due to being unemployed. I may look into credit cards (I'm 25 and somehow avoided needing them until this moment I guess), but likely what will happen will be a loan from my father, if he can even afford that. We're not even sure of the cost yet, though it will probably be around $500 since that's what it would've cost to fix my old car.

Speaking of which, I am finally getting rid of the old car I've had sitting in front of my house for a year that had its transmission near-death last year. I've been putting it off for a long time but, well, I guess it's become necessary. I've just decided to scrap it for the moment and I'll be getting maybe $300 for it. Far cry from what I paid for it, but I guess that's what happens to cars. I'll miss it, considering it took me to my apartment at my school for half a year, it took me to one or two Anthrocons, a Youmacon, and my first (and only, now) FCN. It was a really good car and it's a shame it died so early (else I really wouldn't have been having any of these issues, really).

Finally, most of your donations and such have actually been going into overdue bills such as electricity and phone and such. My mom's actually pretty badly in debt to the point that she has to get her credit cards all consolidated, so I've been trying to pick up the slack so we don't get our power or phone or whatever turned off. Your donations have been helping with those huge debts, so I'm very thankful that I have friends and fans out there who can help.

I guess I'll close by saying that I encourage you to continue helping out, whether that's by donation, big or small, or by spreading the word. I hesitate to advertise commissions at the moment, simply from the fact that I have about 15 waiting to be made, but if you don't mind a wait and want to be put in the queue, I encourage you to head to my FA or some other art site and check out my commission price guide to contact me about it (make sure you read it thoroughly! I only accept payments from you once your sketch is done!). If you'd like to help immediately and that's all you wanna do, though, by all means donate instead!

Thanks again to those who have helped out already, it means a lot to me, and I'm extremely lucky that there's people out there willing to help a guy like me.