So, I've been mostly spending time in the meat world, not the electronic world, for the last week. (I don't update that often, so I forgive anyone who really didn't notice.)
I'm happy to say that my mashed foot is mostly all healed. I barely limp at all these days and think nothing of putting on a pair of shoes and going out and driving myself somewhere. Quite the independent grown-up I am!
Remember last time I posted, when I said my October Resolution was to clean out my half of the storage unit? I am proud to announce that, unlike most of my resolutions, I've been hard at work keeping this one!
Thanks to the R.C.'s months of patient hard work cleaning a path in the mountain of boxes, I was able to start in the back of my stack, at the bottom. I figured the most interesting stuff would be there, since it would be the oldest. (These days, all I put into storage is a box of "legal papers" once a year.)
And boy did I find "stuff". First off, I found armloads of unorganized photos and additional armloads of half-filled albums. My first task was to spend two full days organizing, sorting, and labeling (where I could) all of those. We had a cold, snowy Sunday this week, so it was a good week to have an indoor project to work on, but I promise you I really was sick of the sight of my own face by the end of the weekend.
Other than that, I cannot believe some of the things I've put into storage over the years. (Any more than I can quite believe the things I'm learning about myself.)
I mean, I clearly remember selling off my Elvis albums at a friend's yard sale sometime in the 80s. I'm not sure, though, why I still have a box full o'memorabilia? Why didn't I sell it at the same time? Can I bring myself to throw it out now? (I found two stacks of photos from a trip two friends and I made to Memphis in the 70s. I've already organized millions of photos--can I just throw those away?)
Ditto for Doctor Who (but sans albums). Who knew I had an entire box full of old Doctor Who magazines and books, all from the 80s or before? What am I supposed to do with them? I can't quite bring myself to throw out actual books but I'm not sure there's anyone anywhere I can "give" them and the magazines to for resale or whatever.
And I am learning many things about me.
Did I ever tell you I worked on my school newspaper when I was in Junior High? Probably not, since I have zero memory of it, but I found a couple of certificates lauding my contribution to said publication, so I have to believe I did.
What do you do with old school yearbooks? I don't care about them, don't feel any urge to look at them, but am not entirely comfortable with the idea of tossing them into the trash. Dtto diplomas. I can almost see why you'd keep a High School or university diploma, but do I really need to keep one advertising the fact that I completed Junior High?
Yikes, what bad grades I got in school! Looking at my old Junior and Senior High School grade reports, I see a near-endless parade of Ds. Mostly for math, science, and PE classes, none of which I've ever cared about excelling in, but still. Those give your GPA a real hit when you only have six or seven classes a semester. (Okay, not all Ds, but it still looks bad.)
I found my ACT results. Reviewing those numbers, I can't believe the school counselor didn't sit me down and advise me to consider a career in the fast food industry. (Maybe because there wasn't a fast-food industry when I graduated high school?)
I have to admit that I didn't take standardized tests very seriously when I was young. No one ever explained why we had to take them, so I spent, as was my habit during tests, 80% of the time daydreaming and the other 20% of the time filling in whichever categories seemed most interesting.
I have a tendency to glaze over the bad spots in my past. My brain is not built to retain sad or depressing information. For that reason, I was quite surprised to find performance reviews and "official" memos from one of my favorite employers, pointing out a stream of ways in which I was entirely inadeqate to my position. (I'm sure I received other reviews that were less negative but after a certain point, I quit reading those papers.
And today I found yet another photo album full of miscellaneous pictures, all of which would fit neatly into one of the other seven albums I've already organized. At the moment, I'm trying to decide whether I have the strength to go back in and fight the album battle again, or if I'm just going to not care.
Anyhow. So far I've shredded seven boxes full of old papers, gone through seven other boxes of miscellaneous "stuff", carried out 15 bags of trash, accumulated one box full of "perfectly good but I don't want it any more" stuff for Goodwill, and identified three (small) boxes of things that can go back in storage.
I have approximately 15 boxes to go, 10 of which I'm reasonably sure contain all of the books I don't have room for in my bedroom.
One thing I can say for this most recent stint of unemployment--I certainly won't have to think I "wasted" most of my idle time. I've done enough cleaning out and clearing up to hold me for the next year.
Aside from that, I went to Meg's birthday party Saturday evening (she turned 32, I believe) where I got to chat with her and Ruth, another friend I don't get to see as much as I would like.
I had lunch with Meg today as well, which was fun since today is her actual birthday. She treated! I mean, today is her birthday. I should have treated! She said that she makes it a point every year on her birthday to do one act of charity. Taking her unemployed friend to lunch :) was this year's gesture. In any case it was much appreciated. We had coffee at her favorite coffee house, then lunch at a nice, little French café sort of place.
And, finally, yes, I'm still job-hunting. (Or, I should say, hunting again, since I had to hold off for two or three weeks.) I'd like a job. One with a generous, regular paycheck. I find it hard to deal with the idea that books have been published that I have not been able to purchase.
Whenever Buehler decides to pay me for that freelance work I did (which, by the way, I finished in much less time than I anticipated), the $600 is going to come in handy.
I am missing Doctor Who. I must check and see when the new season starts airing.
Torchwood and the new Kelsey Grammer show were the only two new shows I tried this year.
The Kelsey Grammer show was inexcusably bad.
I've also given up on Torchwood. I wanted to like it. Really, I did. I've heard a lot of good buzz about it and I was excited and entirely ready to love it. But I just didn't.
And that's about it.
_______________________
P.S. Maybe I should make a new resolution--to stop abusing italics?
Posted by AnneZook at 03:41 PM | Comments (1)Shoes! I have graduated to wearing two shoes! And driving myself places! I feel like such a grown-up.
I had my hair done. It's a good thing I earned some free-lance $$ this week. Hair is expensive.
After weeks of balmy temperatures and glowing sunshine gilding the changing trees into summer gardens, autumn has arrived. We woke up today to gray, clouded skies and that flat, cool light that turns even the cheeriest leaf display into a limp, dispirited mess.
I blame that bird. Last night I dreamed first that a man came in off the balcony to try and sell me something and then, after I'd run him off and gone back to bed, a cat got in through the ceiling and jumped on my bed. Clearly some part of my brain no longer trusts that the place is secure, even when I think the doors are all closed. (Also? The ceiling? Really is solid.) Stupid bird.
People always aske me, "what are your plans for the weekend, Anne?" I have no "weekend" plans, people. (A) I'm unemployed and all "weekend" means to me is that there are more people out and about, getting in my way in stores I might want to visit; and (B) I'm unemployed and can't be roaming around spending random money anyhow.
My plans for next week? I plan to visit the storage unit each day. The R.C. has been hard at work on her half of it for most of the summer, cleaning out things no longer needed, loved, or useful. I've been focusing on doing things in my room (or, you know, playing games or reading books) but I know my half of the unit also needs cleaned, so now (quick, quick, quick, before winter comes!) I'm going to see how much of it I can get through in the next couple of weeks. Surely there are boxes full of useless junk I can rid my life of. (A month spent watching Clean House reruns creates a whole, new attitude about holding onto things you just don't care about.)
Things I would like to do next week? Spend part of my free-lance money on new books. Except that none of the series I'm reading have any new volumes due before November. And this is no time to get hooked on anything new. (I already had a $50 blow-out of new books the week I started the free-lance work.)
Some days you don't even have to leave the house to have major excitement. Some days, all you have to do is take a shower. Like today, when I returned to the living room after my morning shower, to find everythin--serene and still. I puttered around for a few minutes, then headed back to the bathroom.
As I passed my room, there was a rustle of unfamiliar noise. Almost like there was something (cue suspense music) alive in there. (I don't have any pets. I have a couple of plants in my room but they've shown no previous inclination to move about unassisted and if they're going to take to doing so, they're going to have to go.)
Bravely, I peeked into the room (the first person to investigate the strange noise from the ostensibly empty room always bites the dust ten seconds later in any decent horror flick), only to spy a bird sitting on my desk chair.
How, you might ask, did a bird get into my bedroom? I have no idea. The window was closed and in any case there's a sturdy screen on it. The sliding glass door in the living room was open, but the screen door was closed. I'd been in the shower and the R.C. was off in her room. Short of the idea that the bird opened the door for itself, it's a mystery.
And yet, there it was. Unmistakeably, a bird. A pigeon, in fact. A fairly young one, too. Sitting on the desk chair in my room, probably the farthest spot from the living room door in the entire apartment.
I recruited the R.C.'s assistance and began shooing the bird toward the (now open) screen door in the living room.
This took some doing. The animal wasn't as skittish as one might expect a wild bird, finding itself trapped inside a small apartment with two hostile inhabitants, to be. I shooed. It left the chair to batter itself against the closed window. I shooed. It fluttered to the floor near the corner. I shooed. It ran away on little pigeon feet. I shooed. It finally found the hallway. I shooed. It ran to the corner. I shooed. It flapped heavily to the top of a decorative screen. I shooed. It found the living room and the door and sailed out to rest on the balcony railing.
And then it stayed there. Sitting on the balcony railing. Watching me. It looked at me out of one beady, little eye. It turned its head and ogled me out of the other beady, little eye. It hunkered down and peered fixedly. It sidled up and down the railing, watching me from different angles.
Persecution, that's what I call it.
I made abusive remarks. I objected strenously to the attention. I went onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, and explained to it the difference between my living space and the great outdoors. It listened with a certain amount of attention but seemed unconvinced. It showed no concern, even when I stood a foot away and took a picture of it.
For the next 40 minutes, it divided its attention between me and the sporadic activity in the parking lot. It just kept looking at me, as if wondering why I didn't open the door up and let it back in. Yes, eventually it took itself elsewhere, but I still maintain it was persecuting me, by sitting there, staring at me that way.
Also, it occurred to me that if this was a horror flick, when I went outside to reason with it, those little pigeon eyes would have started to glow red, that sharp beak would have burst into a four-foot spear, and it would have eaten me up.
Aside from that, not much new today.
Not doing much, yet.
Working on Buehler's free-lance job. I had to email him and tell him it was going to cost almost double what he had budgeted and he, that lovely man, wrote back to say okay. So, it's mind-numbingly boring work, but should net me $1k when it's all done. Nothing wrong with having a little money coming in!
On the other hand, it does mean sitting here at the computer for several hours a day, doing very repetitive work. Which leaves me little inclination to sit here at other times and do anything else. By the time I finish my daily stint, I'm usually sick to death of the computer.
The foot is still being cranky. I've tried a shoe on it a few times, when I was going out for a short trip. Invariably this has turned out to be a mistake and at least once it set the whole recovery process back a few days.
I did actually drive myself to the bank ATM to get some cash yesterday. I was getting a bit worried about leaving my car sitting there for so long. I was worried about the battery. Turns out it was fine, the car started right up. (Naturally my foot, even in comfy leather sandals, reacted badly to driving the six-block round-trip, and why I didn't replace this standard with a car with automatic transmission years ago is a mystery to me.)
Had an invitation to have lunch with Meg Friday but had to decline on account of, you know, not being able to get there. I hope to be back in shoes by next week.
I'm puttering around the house, cleaning out drawers and cabinets. Sitting in a chair with my foot elevated for several hours a day.
And, speaking of foot care, I've become a convert to the daily footbath! I've taken the little buckets I bought to do handwashing (back when I still deluded myself into believing that I'd actually handwash anything marked "delicate") and converted them to spa equipment.
A couple of trips to a couple of different stores and voila! I have a selection of different "foot soak" gels and liquids and powders to try out. I'm experimenting with a different one daily. (Have you noticed that in my life, even being confined to a chair is an excuse for shopping?) I fill my little buckets and tote them into the shower, then put my little stool at the edge of the shower stall and stick my feet in.
Then I yank them out and swear for a while, dip them back in, yank them out, and gradually I'm able to leave them in the water that I always make at least 10 degrees too hot for comfort.
Not only am I doing some much-needed "grooming" but I swear the daily soaking is doing wonders for the sore muscles in that foot. My mobility has improved 75% in the last four or five days.
Yep. That's my life these days. Foot baths. For my daily thrill.
I feel so geezery.
It occurs to me that, should the urge to politiblog come back upon me, it would be simpler to just post my muttering and random abuse on my own blog. It's possible I was carried away by the urge to be of use to Buehler. (Not that I expect my minor contribution would have propelled his project to superstar status or anything, but every little bit helps, right?)
Besides, I'd have to learn about a lot of new stuff. Without censoring content at all, he does actually want people to talk about Denver/Colorado matters at least part of the time. I'm a lot better on the vague (inter)national stuff--the kinds of issues I can bitch about without anyone expecting me to specifically find solutions for them. The thing about working locally is that there's almost always something you could do, if you got off your butt and out from in front of the keyboard.
Other than that, it's loud around here. The thing I notice about being home all day, every day, is that it's not very peaceful. Traffic, sirens, trash trucks, people's car horns beeping as they shut off their alarms. The sound of the building cleaners vacuuming in the hallway or the carpet-cleaning company's bone-rattline machine pumping chemicals to a third-floor apartment.
That moron with the leaf-blower in the parking lot, pretending he's "cleaning" as he waves it aimlessly at the asphalt. (Seriously. There are no leaves, nothing more substantial than a bit of natural dirt, in the middle of the parking lot. Why does he spend 20 minutes blowing the dust around?)
I've finished the first half of Buehler's project and emailed it off to him. The second half is still to be started. It should be about the same amount of work. (Between the two of them? Easiest $500 I ever made.)
Today's job-site report: 1. One possible job. There's also an offer of temporary work, helping move a university library. The ad promises no heavy lifting, just moving books from shelves to boxes. I could do that. (I'm at the point where I don't scorn the offer of temporary work, even for $10/hour. It's not so much that my finances are running out as that I'm seeing a day when they will.) And when interviewers ask, "so, what have you been doing since March," I'd like to be able to say, truthfully, that I've been doing some free-lance stuff, you know? (Yeah, I'm having trouble with my foot still, but this doesn't start for another week. Surely I'll be okay by then?)
The R.C. read an article about job-hunting and career-changing in today's market and it said that people who have jobs hate nothing in the world more than the fact that someone else might be living a life of ease and escaping the 9-5 daily grind. (Also, I feel that being able to say I've been doing free-lance work as I hunt for a permanent position shows that I really am interested in working.)
Last Saturday's excitement (Lunch! Out!), was capped by an even more thrilling adventure. I put a shoe on my healing-but-still-wrecked foot for 45 minutes to go look at a yarn sale. I didn't buy any yarn and my foot did not appreciate the shoe. I've been out a couple of times since then (grocery store, lunch once again) but haven't tried the shoe experiment again. (Also? Now that the foot is healing and less painful, I'm much more aware of the muscles I pulled under my right arm.)
The yarn sale did inspire me to get to work and try finishing some of the projects I have waiting. (Why didn't I think of that a week earlier?) I've almost finished an afghan and two more scarves. You can get a lot done if you don't have other options for how to spend your time. The people who take the stuff to give it away are headed out for their fall trip in a week or two, so I have just a little time to finish up the last of what I want to give them.
That's about it for excitement in my life at the moment. I'm at the point where I don't need to sit with my foot elevated all the time, but not yet healed enough to go out and frolic madly in the last of the summer sunshine. The R.C. has been great--rearranging her own life to be available to help me in whatever way I need. She drives me to the grocery store when I need food (and am too stubborn to just give her a list) and has offered to go get anything else I should require.
But it's boring.
P.S. So what if I had a mad Amazon.com shopping spree late last night? I'm doing a bit of free-lance work, right? Even if I fritter away $30, that still leaves most of the money for bills.
So, I've got a free-lance gig, working with Buehler doing some data entry and stuff for his '08 convention-related website.
Also, I'm gonna politiblog for him, at least for a while (not sure how that's gonna work out). So, I need a name to blog under. He's giving me space on his site, so I'm not limited to the original blog. (Not sure if I'm going to want to go back to blogging under my real name anyhow.)
Any suggestions?
Posted by AnneZook at 09:24 AM | Comments (2)Before and after pictures of the alien spores.
When we began our journey, all seemed well:
Those are the untouched rocks, in the same metal saucer (I gave in and cleaned it).
The addition of a bit of water (or maybe it was the metal saucer, or the bracing Colorado air, or the slightly more humid atmosphere in the bathroom, we'll never know):
Notice the growth on the container. Notice the mysterious color change.
Very disturbing, don't you agree?
Remember that rock potpourri I discussed in that last, ridiculously long entry?
I'm a bit worried about it. I dropped a few rocks into a metal, saucer-shaped candle holder in my bathroom then, copying the guy at the RenFair, dribbled a bit of water over the rocks.
Checking back on it a day later, I see the water has (naturally) dried up. What I was not expecting is that the little smelly rocks are--blooming.
They look like coral. Or sashimi. (Octopus.)
Or, you know, some kind of alien creature, about to go into hyper-production.
I fear I might have inadvertently loosed some intergalactic plague upon the world.
Said alien growth, we'll call it Ferd, for easy reference, not content with blooming on the rocks, has crawled along the bottom of the saucer and, in places, is now creeping over the edge and beginning to cover the bottom of the dish. I'm a bit torn, trying to decide what to do, you know? Part of me wants to wait and see what happens. The other part of me (the part that watches Alien, even though I know it will scare me pantsless) thinks I should rush out and buy a flame gun or something. Ferd could turn nasty or something. I'd hate to wake up tomorrow with knobby growths and an alien consciousness forcing me to drive to the nearest grocery store and touch all the fresh food or something.
If you read in the headlines next week that Denver has been eaten by some extraterrestrial mold, the world can go to its end knowing that I'm really sorry. 'Satiable curiosity, you know.
I was assuming it was water the RenFair's guys rocks were sitting in. Maybe it was some complex chemical concoction designed to keep the spores dormant? If so, I'm pretty sure that's something I was entitled to be told up front.
Marginally decent song with lyrics that describe what I've not been doing for the last week.
"Hey, Anne," you're saying right about now. "We thought you were supposed to be back in town Tuesday evening. This is the first time we're hearing from you. What's up with that?"
Well, it was an--eventful--trip.
Actually, the L-i-K-S called me the night before my flight and said they all had summer colds and if I was worried, maybe I should reschedule my trip. Not normally being vulnerable to these random illnesses that pass through society, I assured her I had no fear of being struck low.
I may have spoken a bit too soon.
No, I didn't catch anyone's cold. I can do better than that when it comes to making a trip eventful.
It started well. I landed in K.C. without the benefit of torrential rainstorms (sometimes I think just booking a trip to KCI is a signal to the weather gods to move in and start strutting their thunder), to be met by the L-i-K-S and Rapunzel.
Pippi was otherwise engaged that night, but the rest of us took off to the theater, where we saw Moonlight and Magnolias. The play was an interesting balance of humor and social messages--three men, two of them Jewish and the objects of discrimination, writing a movie script to make heroes of Civil War-era slave-owning Southerners? And yet, it was funny, since the nominal "script writer" in the group hadn't actually read the book, a fact that forced the three of them to act out scenes from the book as they wrote. A very enjoyable evening and a really charming little theater.
The next day, Rapunzel wanted to go to the local Renaissance Festival. Since it was a nicely cloudy day (no possibility of a return of the near-sunstroke I suffered at the Taste of Colorado Labor Day weekend), it sounded like a good idea and it was.
Naturally, we ate things. I was mocked for ordering a "foot-long sausage on a stick" but I didn't realize it was "foot-long" and thought it was, you know, just the normal "sausage onna stick" that you get at the RenFair. When I was served--well, let's just say it was all incredibly more phallic than I was really prepared to deal with. Also, I got mustard all over myself and then when I opened my bottle of lemonade, I got that all over me and what with one thing and another, we hadn't been there fifteen minutes before I desperately needed a shower.
But whatever. We were having fun. We wandered around and shopped. We (Rapunzel, Pippi, and I) rode an elephant! I've seen the elephant and camel rides at the local RenFair here in Denver, but this was my first time taking the plunge. (Elephants walk funny--all the parts move strangely under you and it turns out that a 30-second ride is enough to make an old person stiffen up and need assistance dismounting.)
We shopped. Rapunzel bought a print. Pippi bought a ring. I bought a strange kind of rock potpourri, warranted to last six months or more in a medium-sized room. Subsequently, the double plastic bag it was in had to be locked in the trunk of the car for the trip home, then triple-bagged in plastic and stuffed in the bottom of my suitcase to control the overwhelming odor for the rest of my trip. (By the time I unpacked, both inner bags were covered in an aromatic oil that somehow worked its way through the packaging. My hands smelled for two days but the rock potpourri ceased to have any aroma 24 hours after I put it out in a dish.) (The plastic bags are still fragrant, though.)
That evening, we ordered pizza for dinner (I can't remember how many years it's been since I ate pizza) and sat around reading and watching DVDs for a while. (I love my family--I love anyone whose idea of "entertaining a guest" means making sure they have an interesting book to read.)
Anyhow, and to get to the disaster portion of the trip, at one point I naturally needed to step outside to smoke a cigarette. Since I was going out anyhow, I offered to walk their dog.
Big mistake. Those who know me know I'm not really a dog person. Those who know me well know that dogs can sense this about me and consequently tend to ignore my firmly stated orders (not to mention begging requests...).
They leash up the dog (Which is, don't mistake me, really a very sweet animal. We met him on my previous trip to K.C, remember? Buster, the dog-inna-box.) and I putter outside. I smoke. I decide that "walking the dog" should be more than just letting it have a pee against the nearest tree. The poor thing is cooped up all day, after all. It should be allowed to romp a bit when it goes out, right?
You see what's coming, right? We're walking along, Buster freezes into place when he fixates on the sight of another dog on the other side of a fence. I turn my head to try a "commanding voice" to make him keep walking. I step forward as I do this.
My foot meets--nothingness.
Yes! There is a curb! I'm halfway to the sidewalk as I realize this. This is my last coherent thought for three or four seconds, a time-frame that seems to last an hour.
The rest is a blur of pain and panic as the hard plastic handle of the leash, after gouging me quite painfully in a sensitive part of my body just to the left of my right armpit, slips out of my hand. My left foot mushrooms into mass of agony.
Buster, a thing I was afraid to tell the L-i-K-S before now, romps off happily, thinking this is some new kind of game. Fortunately, he is a well-trained, sweet-tempered animal. When I gasp out his name, he returns to me, letting me grab the leash again (in, I need hardly add, my bloody hand).
Oh now, oh no, oh no.
I spend some time thinking that, before I decide to stand up and see if my foot will hold me. It does, just barely. Buster, somehow sensing I'm now wounded and vulnerable, pads slowly next to me as I stagger back to the building, up two flights of stairs, and back indoors.
Anyhow, all that melodrama aside, I scraped the back of my right hand, my right elbow, and my right shoulder. I scraped my left palm. There's the aforementioned damage to the (ahem soft tissue on the right side of my chest. And who knows what I did to the foot?
The L-i-K-S and the girls took good care of me for the rest of my trip. They went out the next morning to get me bandages and a cane. (It's a tricky proposition to use a cane when the hand you should hold it in is too damaged to use but using it in the other hand aggravates the muscles under the arm on that side.)
We sat around their house all day. I took Advil and napped. (The L-i-K-S naps, to get rid of the rest of her cold. Rapunzel naps, because she was awakened long before her normal time that morning. Pippi goes to school.) They waited on my hand and foot. Buster, still understanding I was hurt, but not sure what the problem was, persistently tried to lick my foot better. (I am very ticklish on the bottoms of my feet, so we discouraged this.)
The next day, they all returned to their normal pursuits. I spent two hours showering (sort of) and packing. I sat around a lot.
Airport (where a torrential rainstorm moves in just as they're about to load us), the flight (where I was, naturally, in the very back row of the, thankfully small, airplane). wheelchair ride to baggage claim where the R.C. reclaimed responsibility for me.
Then, home.
And that's pretty much it for excitement this week. I've spent the week sitting in a chair with my foot propped up, trying to get it to look less like a turnip (it took the trip badly) and more like a human appendage. With quite a lot of success, I should add. It's definitely foot-like today. Most of the swelling is gone. The bruising (base of all five toes, outside of foot, instep, bottom of foot) is starting to fade from red-and-purple to a healing sort of green.
How was your week?
Okay, so I'm out of town until Tuesday evening. Take care!
Posted by AnneZook at 09:40 PM | Comments (0)So, if you go here and click the "Career Matchmaker" link at the left (Username: nycareers Password: landmark), you get to take an inclination/aptitude test that tells you what you're interested in doing for a living.
I think I answered some questions wrong. How else can you explain my results?
So, here's my, personal Top 40 list of things the test thought would suit me, based on my interests:
1. Lobbyist - Seriously. The #1 job for me is lobbyist? Kill me now.
2. Computer Network Specialist - Ummm. It would be interesting to know these things. But I do not.
3. Criminologist - I don't think so.
4. Professor - Okay. Yeah. I can see this.
5. Political Aide - Not even.
6. Communications Specialist - Does having an inclination to tell people to slap themselves and get over it count as a good communications skill? Cause, if not....
7. Public Policy Analyst - Don't we all agree that the country is in enough trouble already without putting me in charge of anything?
8. Activist - I'm pretty sure you have to be 'active' to be an 'activist' and I'm more of a couch-potato.
9. Market Research Analyst - Yeah, I could have done this.
10. Writer - At least it made the top ten!
11. Telephone Operator
12. Print Journalist
13. Translator - What? English to English? (Seriously. I had an aptitude for languages when I was young, but I never did anything with it.)
14. Public Relations Specialist
15. Critic - I could do this.
16. Administrative Assistant - Oh! One I've done. (But does it count, when this is such a generic item?)
17. Anthropologist
18. Corporate / Commercial Lawyer - The only time I ever wanted to study law, it was the history of Constitutional law. I never wanted to be a practicing lawyer.
19. Curator
20. Historian - Hee! If only I'd figured out my love for history earlier in life....
21. Archivist
22. ESL Teacher
23. Foreign Language Instructor - Je me parle français comme une vache espagnol
24. Editor
25. Judge
26. Lawyer
27. Civil Litigator - Spend my life with people who are fighting about stuff? No way.
28. Criminal Lawyer - No. No, no, no, no, no.
29. Computer Trainer
30. Computer Programmer - Not in this lifetime. Hardware, maybe. Software is beyond me. I barely remember the rudiments of my "programming in Basic" course. (I'm so old....)
31. Planner - In general, I plan well. It's follow-through that bores me.
32. Gunsmith - Are you kidding me?
33. Economic Development Officer
34. Dental Lab Tech - Ick
35. Association Manager
36. Legal Secretary
37. GIS Specialist - I don't even know what that is.
38. Health Records Professional
39. Paralegal
40. Corporate Trainer
The important and interesting thing, I think, is that there is not one, single job on this list that comes close to matching up to anything I've actually done in life. (Except the Admin Assistant thing. I've done work like that, even though I've never had that exact title. Back in my day, they called it "secretary" and it's how most women started in the workplace.)
Everyone else's lists (many of my friends have tried this already) seem to suit them--they're all pleased. I'm shocked at how far from anything I should be doing for a living, I've actually done in my life, if you see what I mean.
This is worrying. Not, like, a lot worrying, because the past can't be changed and I don't intend to think about it that much. But, a little worrying.
In other news, I've been emailing with Buehler and he has a piece of contract work I can do for him next week. A little income is a little income, right? Plus which, I like Buehler and look forward to seeing him again.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, I had a catalogue of all my books.
It was a pretty cool catalogue, if I do say so myself. Books sorted into genre, publication date noted for older volumes, hardback or paperback, overall condition.
Cross-referencing for when I wanted to see what I had in the way of books in a particular series but was momentarily drawing a blank on the author's name. A list in the back of volumes I was in search off. All in a handy-dandy, purse-sized notebook that I could tote into a bookstore with me.
I put a lot of work into that catalogue.
That was also back in the days of Win 3.1, when password-protecting a file was a pretty cool thing to be able to do. For some unknown reason, I password-protected that file. I discovered this three years ago when I decided that it was 'way past time to update said catalogue.
You know what? A file password protected in the days of 3.1 isn't convertible. Not even if you still know the password.
I fought that battle for a month and then told myself that it was pointless to sweat it since only about 10% of the catalogue would still be accurate. Three months later I was sufficiently convinced to delete the old file, so it would stop taunting me.
For three years I thought about creating a new catalogue. A few days ago, spurred by shame because the R.C. has already almost completed her updated catalogue, I began.
Sixteen (handwritten) pages into it so far and I've only covered three bookshelves. I'm not even writing down all of the book titles. For an author where I know I have everything published to date, I'm just writing "all" and assuming I'll be able to find and cut-and-paste a complete title list from somewhere online.
I'm looking at the remaining four bookshelves, the ten foot shelf in the closet (stacked two deep), and thinking about the umpteen boxes in storage. I'm remembering that once I have this all written out, it's going to need to be transcribed. And you know how I feel about transcribing, right? And I'm thinking--how much does one really need a catalogue, anyhow?
I mean, seriously?
Because this is tedious, painful (whose bright idea was it to store Trudeau's Doonesbury books on the shelf near the floor blocked by the easy chair?), and boring.
Other than that, the R.C. and I have tentatively come to conclusions about what to do with mom's stuff. The Hummels and stained glass are going to a local charity shop that benefits Children's Hospital. (They sell on consignment and keep 30% of the proceeds.) It could take two years to sell it all, but a "fee" of 30% that goes to a charity we both support, as opposed to 50% that goes to an auction company? Works for us. (Let's all keep our fingers crossed that they're interesting in these items and agree to accept them.)
That leaves the Box O'Coins and the Box O'Miscellaneous. I'm taking the box BO'C to Rocky Mountain Coin to see if they know of anyone with any interest in any of them. I'm sorting out a handful of the potentially valuable stuff from the box BO'M to take by the local Antique Mall, to see if anyone there is buying inventory. That should pretty much clear the debris from the living room floor and, we've decided, bring the best results.
After that, we can return (well, the R.C. can "return" and I can begin) to the task of cleaning out the storage unit. (We should have something to show for all of this spare time, right?) Right now, I'm reluctant to haul any boxes over here until we get rid of the six boxes of stuff already in the floor.
I'm taking a quick trip at the end of this week. Out Saturday, back next Tuesday. Visiting the L-i-K-S and the girls. I'd been saying I was going back out there for the last four months and hadn't gotten the trip booked. A few days ago, I finally found a decently priced ticket.
I continue to be astonished by the ways in which unemployment (or, to be more accurate, the lack of a stable income) affects my life. And the ways in which it does not.
I spend most of my free time reading. That hasn't changed. But I take care when I'm too near a bookstore, knowing, as I do, that the special magnetic force such places exert on my brain can be dangerous to my bank balance.
Yesterday the R.C. and I walked over and had Mexican for lunch. Since we have the "frequent diner" card for that restaurant, they knew it was the R.C.'s birthday month and we got a free entrée. We gloated over the clear savings of $8.00. In the past, we would have thought, "a free meal, how cool" and forgotten to redeem it.
Don't run away with the idea that we're flat broke. That's not at all true. It's just that the first time I experienced a lengthy stint of unemployment, I paid no attention to how much money I was spending and wound up broke in three months. (And then I wound up taking contract work from the employer I'd ditched so I could pay a few of my bills.) (The second time I was unemployed, I was eligible for unemployment. That's a beauteous thing. I've never collected unemployment before and boy did it make a difference!)
Anyhow, I'm being careful this time, that's all.
I know I go on and on about this, but it's just so weird to have to think twice before buying something. It's probably good for me, though.
We all have needs. What I need at the moment is a garage sale.
Rather, I need a garage (or at least a lawn), so I can have a garage sale.
I've been tidying again. I have Stuff. Stuff that other people would, I'm sure, love to have. I have unused scrapbooks, unused photo albums, and books (not that many that I'm willing to part with*). I have excitingly shaped wooden gadgets for walls and closets. I have pillows, bedding, picture frames, DVDs, cooking pans, and the myriad of other types of debris consequent of the Consumerism Lifestyle.
How can I have so much Stuff when I cleaned out in April and have been under a shopping moratorium ever since?
I have a friend. This friend has a lawn. This lawn has been offered to me for garage sale purposes. If I were the type to take advantage of a friend's over-generosity, I'd even now be phoning my ad into the newspaper and making up signs and price tags.
I have Mom's Stuff as well, of course. Most of it's not really garage sale fodder, but some of it is. About 20 pieces of stained glass. Some 70s and 80s era, mass-produced jewelry. Old (1900's - 1970's) postcards (not the ones that were written on and posted--those were passed to a family member who might be expected to care), old (Timex) watches, etc., etc., etc.
Actually, it's possible that most of this stuff is garage-saleable. With what I've heard about Hummels being hard to sell these days, the possibility of being able to sell even a dozen or two of them at $30 or $40 doesn't sound that bad. (It's all very well to say that "book" value is $225, but things are only really worth what someone will pay for them.)
The only things I'd reserve (from a garage sale) would be the antique pocket watches, some older jewelry that might be of actual value, the coins (that I'm still wanting to take to an expert for valuing because they're so interesting), and a handful of other oddball items.
The most annoying magazine in the world? The prize goes to National Geographic. I've bought three in the last year. Two still infest my apartment.
There's something just wrong about a magazine too beautiful and interesting to be tossed out, but not re-readable enough to be worth giving shelf space. I mean, it's targeted to the masses, what with the retouched photos and simple descriptive text. And yet, the presentation is just gorgeous. I see why every garage sale in the USofA has a stack of past NG issues for sale.**
Mostly I don't buy magazines because there's not enough real content to be worth the cover price. Any magazine that takes less than an hour to read is a waste of time. Few magazines, other than NG, pass that test. (And most of them I'm not interested in.)
And magazines aren't usually re-readable. I can spend $10 on a paperback book and read it fifteen times. I've run across very few magazines in my life that I cared to look at more than once.
The R.C. had to make a trip to Goodwill this morning. She's done a bit of clearing out of her own. Also, yesterday, I tackled the Cookbook Shelf. It's a mystery to me why two women whose interest in cooking stops at the microwave door (and rare forays into the excitement of tossing four ingredients into a pan on the stovetop) should own 20 cookbooks. (Hey! Those could have gone into a garage sale!) I managed to weed us down to five or six (most of which have "sentimental" value). Astoundingly, that took about four hours.
I've closed up the last three boxes of Stuff to be sent to family members and addressed them. They're waiting to be taken to the post office. I closed up the smaller box of things we're going to put into storage here, because we're not quite sure what else to do with them.
I desperately need a garage sale.
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* Okay. So not true. I have books on my shelves that I've been holding onto tenderly, in memory of the enjoyment I had in reading them Once Upon A Time. It's time to get rid of those.
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** Since I've bought three in the last year, it did occur to me that I could subscribe for a year (for $15) and be 'way ahead of the game for the next 12 months (since the price is $6.95/issue on the newsstand), but then I'd have twelve issues I was reluctant to toss out.
Okay, having gotten the papers and information and rate structure from the Valuator Guy, we can now say authoritatively that it's going to cost us as much or more to have Mom's stuff valued as it's actually worth.*
This is a problem.
I mean, it's not like we want to just throw the stuff away, okay? But the VG's list of charges made it pretty clear that we're going to wind up paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $800-$1000. Leaving aside the fact that neither of us really has $1000 to spare at the moment, this strikes me as quite a racket.
He charges you $100/hour for research to figure out if what you have is worth anything? Excuse me? Am I not hiring him as an expert and do I not expect him to know about things? I can look stuff up online or get library books and do research, without his assistance.
I'm not sure what we're going to wind up doing. I still think taking the coins in to RMC is a good idea and plan to do that next week. I'm betting we can take some of the other stuff in to one of the local "antique malls" and get someone there to take them on consignment or something.
I'm going to think about that for a while.
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* Leaving aside the highly unlikely possibility that there's some kind of buried treasure in it all.
Boom!
That's a weird way to wake up in the morning. I know it's weird, because it's how I woke up yesterday morning. Our nearest transformer blew a fuse.
No power. No internets.
No coffee. I tried making it in the French press with hot water from the faucet. Ugh. Eventually the R.C. came back from her morning walk and said the power across the street was on, so I walked over to Starbucks. On the way back, I had to fight off a caffeine-deprived couple in our parking lot. They were disappointed I hadn't brought enough for everyone.
This experience taught me things. Things of little moment, but things.
#1 - The alarm clock in my bedroom needs a new battery if I really want to be able to rely on the "battery back-up" feature.
#2 - A bathroom without a window is dark, even at 8:00 in the morning. My habit of keeping a candle in there for those once-in-three-years blackouts is a good one.
#3 - Given coffee, I'm perfectly happy to survive without power for a few hours in the morning. I'd have been a bit happier if the living room fan had been working (lovely, cool morning outside but no way to draw the air inside) but I curled up in the bright morning light and read a book and life was fine.
Don't let me mislead you. The power outage only lasted for about an hour, so my willingness to live without Mod Cons wasn't severely tested.
After that, I accomplished significant things yesterday. I finished the inventory of the coin collection, pulled out and sorted the postcards with old stamps on them, and started the inventory of the "miscellaneous" box o'stuff. I got the notes written for all of the things I'm planning to ship to people. I got a couple of the boxes out of the floor and actually shipped. I gassed up my car, did three loads of laundry, and carried out a huge box o'trash.
Then, having tripped over the amazon.com website late last week and accidentally ordered five new books, I settled in to read for a while.
This morning? No boom! So far.
All I've done is drink coffee and surf the net.
Babble about the sorting of Mom's boxes and whatnot behind the cut, since I doubt any of you are that interested.
That's the fashion in which I continue to live.
I start the day with roaming through the job sites and sending in resumes for those jobs (three today) that sound marginally interesting. I check my email, scan the headlines, swallow several mean remarks about the ghastly mess Bush&Co; are making of our country (I am not going to get sucked back into politiblogging*), read my email, surf through the blogs and journals of a few friends, and then I'm usually offline for most of the rest of the day.
I go to the grocery store a couple of times a week (if you're practically living on fresh fruit, you need to make at least two trips a week to keep stocked up) and hit the Farmers' Market on Saturdays (Rocky Ford cantaloupes! The world's most fabulous peaches!).
Other than that, I hoard money. Knowing I have expensive dental work in my immediate future helps me control my urge to cheer myself up with new books and toys (although it didn't stop me from having a little amazon.com "accident" the other day).
I clean sporadically (kitchen and bathroom yesterday), tidy occasionally (that drafting table in the bedroom is out of control again), and do a load or two of laundry once or twice a week.
I watch some DVDs occasionally (just finished S1 and S2 of the new Doctor Who series again and while David Tennant is good, I really loved Christopher Eccleston and I wish he'd been with us longer) and a little television (okay, mostly just Doctor Who and the show I mentioned before, Clean House.) (And sometimes Jeopardy. I love Jeopardy. I mage $30k the other day!)
I watched that show Dail mentioned, the one on BBCAmerica. "How Clean Is your House?" I was expecting a British version of Clean House. I was not expecting to be treated to the sight of a family living in a place they said had not been cleaned in 16 years--or close-up views of a bathroom that proved it. It was the most sincerely disgusting thing I've seen in years (and the primary reason I tore apart my kitchen and bathroom and cleaned them yesterday).
Sporadically, I tidy. On today's schedule is the final sorting of All Those Boxes in the living room. I need to sort out the Things To Be Shipped** (so I know what boxes I need) from the Things To Be Appraised And Sold. The R.C. is pretty firm about all of those coins needing to go into the To Be Sold category, even though I still think they're cool to look at.
I guess she's right. It's not like I'm going to burst forth as a major coin collector or anything, so there's no point in keeping even just a handful of them for that once every year or two moment when I might want to look at them. Technically they were left to her, so if she wants to get rid of them, that's her choice.
Anyhow. We got the name of an appraiser a week or so ago, from a woman working in an antique place. For some reason the R.C. is convinced that we need to be careful not to be robbed by this person. While I agree that having an inventory of the stuff we turn over to them is just sensible, I can't understand why she thinks a bonded and insured firm is going to risk their business and reputation snagging any of our not-very-valuable junk?
If the entire pile o'stuff, aside from the Hummels, is worth $500, I'll be very surprised. (The Hummels are worth about $5k at retail, but we won't be selling them at retail and I figure we'll be lucky beyond lucky to find someone willing to take all of them off our hands for $1-2k).
Still. I made the commitment that I'd handle sorting and disposing of the stuff so, while she's more than willing to help, I think it's time and past time I dealt with these last few boxes.
And then I read and read and read.
Having finished all of the available Tolkien, I picked up Spacehounds of IPC at the used bookstore the other day and that got me started re-reading all of my E. E. "Doc" Smith books again.
Long-time readers know that I have a fondness for Golden Age SF (and detective) stories. I'm regretting that most of my SF&Fantasy; is in boxes in storage but I know that in order to bring them out, I'm going to have to choose some hundreds of other volumes to pack away.
I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet.
And yet--I know that storage unit is in my immediate future. I have boxes full o'stuff (of the nonbook variety) that need to be sorted and disposed of. Old financial papers to be shredded, old school yearsbooks & debris to be tossed out, that kind of thing.
As soon as I have the living room floor cleaned of the current load of boxes, I'll get started.
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* I actually started politiblogging during a previous stint of unemployment when I had lots of time, not a lot of money, and a lot of energy to burn off. But that was PM (pre-meds) and now that I have my thyroid balanced and no longer suffer (enjoy?) those manic bouts of frenetic mental energy, it all seems so futile....)
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** I've decided to ship the detritus of Dad's army career to my brother. Of the four of us, I think he's the only one that might be interested in having that kind of thing.
And, Jonathan, a closer examination of the pictures revealed that most of them were taken in the camp "near Kimpo" and "Yong Dung Poe" although his spelling isn't reliable. There are a few from Seoul and a couple vaguely labeled "in Japan" but I think that's about as much 'location' information as we're likely to get.
He drove a truck at a quarry for the 811th Engineer Aviation Battalion, which was apparently a "SCARWAF" (Special Category Army with Air Force) unit that helped build and maintain runways. I found some information -- here (scroll down to "Background on SCARWAF") and there -- online.
So, stuff has been happening.
Not a lot of stuff, but stuff. Sending in resumes, taking calls, even scheduling interviews.
I have two on Friday and (go, me!) one is a second-round interview for a place I think I'd really like to work. The money isn't fabulous (about $7k less than I wanted to start) but it's not in Boulder and seems like a nice group of folks. Eleven employees which counts, in my recent professional life, as a huge number of coworkers. The work sounds reasonably interesting--it's a nonprofit association, not an environment I'm familiar with but not a problem.
I'm less excited about Friday's other interview and if they hadn't emailed me three times and called me once I wouldn't have remembered sending them a resume at all or bothered to respond when they sent me an email inviting me to schedule an interview. The money's closer to what I wanted, the location is equally as attractive, but the company's business is a yawner.
The recruiter from last week? I did a phone interview with her, a follow-up interview with one of her coworkers, and eventually we all decided I wasn't suited for that position. (I was so not excited about the location.)
Hmmm, what else? I think I killed one of my marigold plants, my last remaining sunflower is spouting a third blossom, I've failed to quit smoking twice this summer, and I've developed an absolute mania for a show called Clean House on the Style Channel and have been watching a fair amount of (gasp!) daytime tv in the last week.
What is it? People send in a video proving that they live in absolute chaos, anything approaching a pigsty, and this group goes in, makes them throw stuff away, makes them sort out 'treasured' possessions for a garage sale, then takes the proceeds and uses the money to redecorate the house, organizing what's left of the 'stuff' and usually putting in new furniture.
I'm not sure why I've become so fascinated by the show, but I have. It's like Changing Rooms except that the drama comes when the crew make these hoarders and packrats and compulsive shoppers turn loose of their debris. People fight tooth and nail to keep the dumbest shit. Four year-old calendars, five broken vacuum cleaners, 22 beanie babies, dozens of pairs of shoes or housecoats, ratty old posters, fifteen ugly lamps, gifts they received five years ago that were never taken out of the boxes, etc. They curse and cry and carry on ridiculously. Over broken things, as often as not.
And they fight the crew.
Even though they had to submit a video and agree to the whole process, they fight like mad.
One family was so acquisitive that even after five commercial-sized dumpster loads of trash and a massive garage sale where everything that didn't sell was hauled away on a charity truck, their entire basement was still full of bins and bins and bins of stuff they refused to turn loose of. (At an estimate, I'm guessing 50 big bins.)
It's--perilously close to "reality television," a genre I abhor, but Niecy and the rest of the crew just fascinate me. How they can go into such pigsties week after week.... (Also, I'm in decorator-love with the designer, Mark, who turns out some fabulous rooms.
So, yeah, I guess that means I've been watching a lot of television.
The Fabulous New Hairdo (picture somewhere in an entry below) continues to please. I'm not sure it's the most attractive hairstyle I've ever had but it sure is nice and cool and easy to take care of!
And, if anyone's wondering, the Dental Man appointment went--fine. They took the series of x-rays and want me to make an appointment with the hugely expensive "specialist" to discuss my options. And another tooth is giving the occasional twinge, so I need a new filling, I can just tell.
Teeth. Ugh.
Other than that--the usual. Reading.
This past week? The Hobbit. That was fun, so I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then I reread the Silmarillion and now I'm about halfway through Unfinished Tales. I've been feeling very Tolkien this week.
I sure am boring when I write blog entries at 11:00 at night.
As I was driving myself off to visit the Dental Man this morning, I got yet another call from yet another recruiter, urgently wanting to talk to me.
I left her a voicemail after I got home. We'll see what kind of job opportunity she has in mind after she calls me back.
I am so popular this week!
Posted by AnneZook at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)Aren't we Little Miss Popularity today?
After yesterday's preliminary phone interview (from a recruiter) for one job, I spent an hour this morning doing an online "assessment" (and if anyone can tell me how algebra and word problems are relevant to my job, I would appreciate it) as a prelude to another phone interview this afternoon.
The testing process was interrupted by a phone call from yet another prospective employer, wanting to schedule me for an interview next Tuesday.
Still! The calls are coming in! People want me! Or, at least, they want to check me out and think about wanting me, which is a start.
I think it's probably The Hair. Psychically, the world can just feel that I got a new haircut and don't look like the same shaggy dog I did when the week started and consequently the world is more interested in knowing me.
I wasn't terribly coherent in this morning's phone call--I'm afraid my brain was too busy wrestling with whether Jack or Jill or Mary made the most money if Jack makes double what Mary makes and Jill makes Mary's salary plus $8/hour. I suspect that Jack, being the only man in the bunch, made the most, but the answer sent didn't offer that option. (Word problems? At my age?)
There were at least four math questions that didn't seem to offer any sensible answers, but I'm not good at math, so the problem was undoubtedly my imperfect remembrance of my misunderstood math classes 30 years ago. (One of them I finally left blank in complete frustration.) Many of them seemed irrelevant to real life.
4(-2)2+8(-2)(2(-2)+6=
-11(3/2)(.12)(-12))=
What the assessment program really needed was an answer option for, "who cares."
And what's up with this one:
FROG is to DINOSAUR as WHALE is to [BIRD, FISH, FOX]
I mean, what is that all about? Whales are mammals, so "fish" isn't really the right option except it's better than the alternatives because a whale really isn't like a fox unless they were thinking about the mammal thing, in which case fox was the correct answer, but dinosaurs were, I think both mammalian and reptilian (although maybe not because I'm no dinosaur expert and maybe dinosaurs were before mammals and I really do need to do something about my grossly inadequate knowledge of--stuff), so the frog-dinosaur thing wasn't necessarily about that kind of thing and in the end I just chose "fish" because I didn't have enough information to make a more informed selection. Also, some people don't know whales are mammals. (Are all whales mammals? I'm pretty sure they are. When I get a job again, I really should buy a book.)
Anyhow.
Mostly they were selecting for "sales personality" and although the temptation to cheat was fairly strong (it's so easy to select the correct answers if you know what someone is searching for), in the end I answered all of the questions pretty honestly so I don't expect today's interview will lead to anything. I don't have a sales personality and I'm proud of that fact.
With all of the excitement, I've barely had a chance skim today's job offerings, much less send out any resumes. Today's listings, as you might expect, look tantalizingly full of possibilities. I managed to bookmark eight or nine on my first, hasty sweep through a couple of sites. I hope I'll find time to go through them more carefully later.
I have a dental appointment at 11:00 today (Just a series of x-rays, so no drilling.) before my 3:00 interview, so I don't really have an unlimited amount of free time.
What I do have, I'm giving to you. (Aren't you feeling special?)
Yesterday's used bookstore run netted me three new books for under $10. Not bad. I think I showed remarkable self-restraint.
I have friends (Yes! I do!) who are interested in the store, so I may get to go back soon.
This is one of the good kind of used bookstores. The kind full of little nooks and crannies and hidden corridors and rooms that you have to know about in order to visit. The kind where someday they'll move that stack of half-full cartons of books from in front of that old crooked door and you'll be able to open it and find a whole new series of rooms full of books to buy--or maybe an alternate world where you'll wind up going on a quest to conquer an evil dragon-killing prince and freeing the dragon population from fear and servitude.
That kind of place.
I'm not going mad, though. Just because I have two interviews scheduled doesn't mean I have a job or an income and I'm keeping that firmly in mind. The 15 books I put back yesterday will not be coming home with me any time soon.
I'm actually pretty excited about next Tuesday's interview, though. I like the sound of the organization, I like the location, and I like the sound of the job.
And now, the dentist awaits and I suspect he'd prefer it if I brushed my teeth before showing up.
Life, I mean. It's trundling along as usual around here.
The bathroom needs cleaned, the laundry needs done, I still have a few ads collected in this morning's search of the job sites* that I haven't responded to, I have a stack o'stuff to take to the post office (letters, parcels, etc.), most of which are "late" and yet here I sit, writing boring blog entries.
That's so me these days. (Well, all days.)
So, what's new? Well, after last week's orgy of Going Out To Lunch, I've been very restrained this week. Not a single lunch out! I hit the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning and I've been gorging on Rocky Ford cantaloupes (3 for $6!) and watermelon all this week.
Still, it hasn't been an inexpensive week.
I spent $135 yesterday on my hair. I was sick to death of it, so I went in, had six inches or more chopped off, got it colored, and added (subtle) highlights). I'm not really sure yet if I like it. It's a pretty extreme change.
I've generally avoided having really short hair since that one disastrous cut that revealed that, sans long hair, I look very butch. (Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw my father looking back at me. How is it possible for someone to look exactly like their mother and their father?) This cut isn't quite that extreme and so far I'm loving the idea that I can dry-and-style in five minutes instead of 40.
If I had a job, that would be a massive saving of time in the morning.
(If you care? The Hair.) (Excuse the lack of make-up. I hadn't actually intended to share my face online today.)
The R.C. isn't mad about it. Her only criteria for "good" or "bad" in a haircut is whether or not any hair shows any potential for getting close to covering all or part of one of your eyes. She has a phobia about it or something. Since this cut features a swath of bangs that I need to practice styling to sweep across my forehead, but stay out of my eyes, she's not loving it. I can live with her displeasure, though, since I blew my new 'do dry in 3-1/2 minutes this morning. She knows what I look like, so she doesn't need to look at me.
Tomorrow I'm back to the dentist. To pick up the (grossly expensive) temporary "appliance" I have to wear until the tooth extraction site heals up fully (6 weeks or so) and to have a full set of x-rays so that Dental Man can figure out what else he might want to yank out.
Price tag for this visit: Unknown.
It's been an expensive week and I've barely left the house!
Sigh. I know at least two more have to go. It's very sad to contemplate the impending whack to my credit card.
Dental Man is also very, very anxious to finally undertake capping my front four (top) teeth. He's wanted to do that for years and to be honest, they need it. They're grossly crooked. But caps! So pricey. I'm not sure how to break to him that I really don't feel it would be wise for me to undertake $5k or more of dental work (some of which is cosmetic) before I'm employed. (And yet, looking better might help me get a job, age discrimination or not, no?)
I sure wish I'd gotten over my Dental Phobia at any point in the last ten years when I was employed and had the caps done.
The R.C. wants to go to Halfprice Books today. Part of me is salivating, it's my favorite used bookstore in Denver, and part of me is cowering in fear at the damage I could do myself even at half-price. I've been resisting a growing urge to hit the manga store for the last week. I've only had two new manga books since the Great Unemployment of '07 hit. And only two new "other" books--the coin one and the Hummel one, in the last six weeks. (Oh, yeah, and the Potter book.) I'm having some serious withdrawal pains. Five books in five months! That's a starvation allowance.
For me to avoid general shopping is easy. To try and avoid buying books is so difficult. Mostly I accomplish it by avoiding bookstores altogether. And amazon.com.
And, okay, I still have two or three books I bought before the GU of '07, but one of those I'm still afraid to read (Bradbury's sequel to Dandelion Wine), once I'm almost done with (LeCarré's Absolute Friends), and the other (Secret Societies) was just a "research" book for the novel I'm pretending to write and a waste of money, even at the sellout price of $2.99.
It's probably not a coincidence that most of my "hobbies" and leisure pastimes involve things I have to buy books for.
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* Did I mention that I had an interview scheduled for yesterday? I did.
But I didn't go. Monday evening I emailed and cancelled, a thing I almost never do. After researching the company's website and such, I had a bad feeling about it being a churn-and-burn sort of sales organization. I mistrust a company whose website focuses on hiring instead of the service/product they have to offer their client(s). No reputable company that could be considered a "good place to work" should need to do that much hiring.