You know what drives me bonkers? Callers who are too good to use voicemail. I try to make allowances for the fact that they don't know I'm not a receptionist, but when I offer to put you through to someone's voicemail, do not say, "no, I'll leave a message with you." (And you need to know that not even the good manners that eventually force me to agree to this absurd suggestion are enough to prompt me to actually write down your information and your ridiculously wordy message. If you want to leave someone a 2,000-word message, leave it on their voicemail. I wasn't hired to write your book.)

Little cranky moment there, sorry.

Anyhow. Now that the Job Weirdness Post is out of the way, what else has been going on in Anne's life in the long, almost 24-hour interval since her last uninteresting post?

Not much.

I'm happy to report that skies continue blue, sunshine continues to pour down on Denver, temperatures continue to be temperate, and the storm that was supposed to move in on us yesterday seems to have bypassed us altogether.

The next storm forecast is for Friday night, when they're predicting a "significant" storm. Ugh.

The resume, as previously mentioned, it into almost-final draft status. I had an offer (in comments) to help with the rewrite if I wanted to post what I could remember of my employment history on the blog, but I opted against it. As much as I enjoy walking down memory lane, back to the days of Alvin & the Chipmunk, Tuffy the Tank, and other previous employers, I think it's best that the complete incoherence of my first draft remain relatively private.

Last night I did major laundry. Four loads. Laundry is an endless task. By the time I went to bed last night, I realized that I still need to do the bathroom rugs, I have more towels that need to be done, the quilt on the bed is overdue for cleaning, and all of yesterday's clothes were being tossed into my empty-for-one-hour laundry basket.

We don't cook much, so at least when I clean the kitchen, a little counter-wiping keeps it pretty clean for the next week. We're not dirty people, so vacuuming and dusting once a week is about all that's needed. Only laundry (okay, and keeping the bathroom clean) is never-ending.

Remember those science fiction stories where we'd all wear paper clothes once and then toss them into the recycler to be remade into new clothes? I mean, what happened to the No Laundry Future? I was really looking forward to that.

Last night I also watched DVDs. I'm re-watching Kyo Kara Maoh!, an absurdly adorable anime series recommended to me by Rapunzel. I had my doubts at first. (The premise of the first episode? A boy is flushed down a toilet into another dimension, inhabited by demons. That's an ick factor right up front.) Because I trust her recommendations, I bought the first DVD and was absolutely charmed. Now I have eleven or twelve volumes (all that's been released so far) and the other day I found myself in the mood to re-watch the series from the beginning. I'm enjoying myself enormously.

The only other anime series I've watched (again, at her recommendation) is Yami No Matseui. I didn't expect to enjoy that one as much because I'd read the books and expected the anime ("Cartoons," as I thought contemptuously, before I'd ever seen any. Cartoons are to anime as Family Circus is to Doonesbury.) to be repetitive but again I was enthralled.

Also, Regenesis, Season two. I'm eking it out at (a randomly selected) four episodes a week, but it's not going to last me until Season three starts. I'm still feeling the BobLove, too. And still enthralled by the premise and the cases. I don't often find new television shows that I really enjoy.

I probably didn't mention it before today, but I'll be off-line at the end of this week until Monday morning. Visiting with rarely seen friends takes precedence over doing internet stuff. I'm even taking time off work. (Well, at the time I scheduled this, I was under the impression I might be unemployed already. Since I'm not, I'm taking a day.)

Sorting through my recent book purchases, I find I have a wealth of new reading available to me. At least seven new books. I still need new books, in all of the series I'm reading, but maybe not until I get caught up.

The R.C. was reading some lunatic's solution to "organizing your home" the other day and the half-witted, probably illiterate and television-addicted author of the piece said that if you have more books than shelves, the answer is not to get more shelves, it's to get rid of the books.

There's a huge gulf in the world between those really "get" reading and those who read the online blurbs for the NYTimes bestseller list and fake it from there.

Inevitable I Hate Yarn Digression

I finished the ghastly cream-and-pastel-mess scarf last night, right down to the fringe. Shudder. Soon, it will be Goodwill's problem. I will say that, if you're standing 10 or 20 feet away, it doesn't look that bad.

I'm not impressed with how the funky gray-and-black yarn is working when knitted. I might give it up.

I need more metal knitting needles. The metal ones are easier to use. I think the yarn moves on them better. (Okay, I just like them better.) (This is the sort of irrational preference I tend to develop. At one time, back when I was still writing, I was completely unable to write unless I had a blue or purple Espresso Gel pen. The tactile feel of that particular gel point against a specific brand of paper was--inspiring.) (Considering how much I loathe transcribing, I used to hate it when I got into moods when I couldn't compose on the keyboard, but that's a different topic, isn't it?)

During my get-together coming up this weekend, I'm going to need plenty of projects to work on, to keep me from snacking while I chat. I have the fabuloso variegated (dark blue through light purple) yarn that I'm knitting into a scarf, but I don't think it's going to take me all weekend to finish it, so I need a second project. Preferably something in a lighter color, which rules out the black crochet I'm working on. The latest afghan is too bulky to carry around.

I do have a skein of cherry red left. And some white. I'm thinking--those could be fabulous together. 20 rows of cherry, then three of white, so the white is just an accent, and then fringe it in cherry and white. Or maybe three rows of white at irregular intervals (because I hate counting rows). Whaddya think?

The expensive cobalt blue, vivid purple, and matching black skeins I bought a couple of weeks ago are still begin reserved for a Special Project. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but such great colors really deserve special treatment.

At one point, the R.C. wanted me to make her a scarf of the cobalt, but I think she's gone off that idea. She owns a lot of scarves already. I'd like a cobalt scarf, though. How come everyone gets a scarf but me," she wondered one day.)

That leaves only the purple and black, and I could combine those and inflict the result on the L-i-K-S. I really do think they'd be fabulous together. I need to choose colors for Pippi and Rapunzel but I remain under a yarn-buying moratorium until my pile of finished projects is larger than my pile of unused yarns. It may be next winter before that happens....

/end I Hate Yarn