Home, home on the range.

One thing they don't tell you about when it comes to exploring the Galaxy, is how much it's going to cost. Don't get me wrong - I'm not daft enough to think it would be free. I may be hairy, but I'm not an Ewok. But everything just costs so much! Let me run down my regular outgoings at the moment so you can understand.

First, there's my Speederbike. As benign as Corellia is, it still takes damage every now and then, so I need to get it repaired - 4000 credits or so a time.

Then there's my training. Whilst I was a pretty decent engineer at home, they require a much higher standard of training in the rest of the Galaxy. I'm having to train up in my Master Artisan skills at the moment, and that costs at least 2000 credits per exam (4 more to go and I'll be fully certified!)

And in order to prove myself worthy of the grades, I have to produce loads of different samples of my work as a kind of practical exam. Loads. And for that, I need resources, which I can either buy or mine. So, being the traditional bottom-up guy that I am, I've decided to mine them. Which means I need to pay a maintenance fee to the bank for each installation. With 5 mining installations on Corellia at the moment, that's about 30000 credits every week.

But I can't for the life of me find any Steel to mine here at the moment, so I have to pay 1500 for a round trip to Naboo where I have another installation (6000 credits a week) mining the silver stuff.

All I can say, is thank the Trees for my mysterious benfactor who has seen fit to provide me with a millions credits so far to help me on my way. I've had to earn some of it by collecting wild berries, and I'm sure more will be required of me later, but at the moment I have to have the money!

So I' m sitting on a lawn chair at the moment, just south of Coronet. Howling Plumed Rasps are flying above. A strange creature seems to be constantly howling somewhere fairly close. The fire is crackling. And I'm crafting Natural Gas Processors as fast as my hairy hands will let me.

The sooner I can get back to droids, the better. Then I'll be back in the money.