Yawn. I've just finished getting dressed and am sucking down a last cup of coffee before heading out into this week's second major snowstorm. We got about 8" on Christmas Day and we're scheduled for another four, or maybe six, or maybe eight, today. The traffic and weather shows are threatening black ice and packed roadways. Right now we only have about an inch of new stuff but it's falling steadily. The morning commute will not be, I suspect, nearly as grotesque as this evening's drive home.
Me, I'm actually ready to leave for work, but there won't be anyone at the office to greet me before 8:30, so I'm killing fifteen minutes or so before I leave. (I'm allowing 45 minutes for the trip that usually takes me 15.)
I don't really have anything to say, though.
Oh! I can talk about Christmas! I had a much nicer Christmas than I anticipated, due in no small part to the Great Loot that the day produced. Kormantic, a dear friend in Washington, gifted me with Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers, which is a big smile. She's so fabbo--I don't deserve her! I got S3 of Doctor Who, which is a big hooray! I got a hand-held sewing machine, a gadget I've wanted just forever. (No, I'm not the domestic type and I don't do that much sewing, but I have a few projects I've been putting off that I can now tackle.) (Also? New gadget!) I got chocolates galore, by the box, the bag, and the bar! Gift cards to not one, but two of my favorite bookstores! A magazine subscription I wanted, very exciting since subscriptions and just magazines in general are on the list of things I've been learning to do without.
Christmas dinner was a success, but then even I would have trouble messing up the process of warming up a pre-cooked ham, you know? I sprinkled it with brown sugar and dumped some pineapple on it and it was delicious. Not being among the school that believes that pigging out on a holiday is required, I accompanied it only with some baked yams and rolls and butter. (Sounds more virtuous if you don't consider that I ate about 1,000 calories worth of chocolate during the day.)
And now, I've killed all the time I have to spare. I have to go scrape off my car and start the slow, cautious drive to work.
Have a good day!
Posted by AnneZook at 07:39 AM | Comments (0)First, happy holidays!
For the Wage Slaves among you, Happy Day Of Getting Off Early! Me, I'm off today. My temp job supervisor wanted a four-day weekend or something. The R.C. is working, but getting off at noon.
My Holiday Preparations are done (she said smugly). I have ham-and-yam supplies for dinner tomorrow, and half a teeny-tiny pumpkin pie (courtesy of Whole Foods) for dessert. I have a pile o'presents for the R.C. to unwrap, and a pile o'presents for me to unwrap.
Other than that? My life has not been eventful recently.
I shipped a small number of gifts this year, and at least half of them probably won't arrive by Christmas. (I'm so lame. I mean--I'm unemployed. How could I not have found time to go to the Post Office in time? I have no excuse. All I can say is that somehow I lost the week of December 10. I blinked one day and it was the 17th.)
Much chit-chat back and forth with the L-i-K-S about the dreaded tax bill. She's going to contact The Authorities after Christmas and see how much of it we actually have to pay.
In the recent clean-up, some of what I found were old copies of my resume. I spent some time this morning reworking my current resume to include new information.
On the knitting/crochet front, I'm branching out into hats. I made five yesterday. Or, rather, I made part of five yesterday. I wound up tearing four of them out before they were finished. Either I'd selected the wrong size crochet hook or I ran out of a yarn I can't get more of and so have to use what I do have for a smaller project or the instructions made my head spin. Sigh. Learning new things can be a pain. (But it's also interesting.) Today I'm working on a combo hatscarf. I found a pattern but since patterns weren't successful for me yesterday, I'm actually staring at a hatscarf I already own and just planning to duplicate that as much as I can.
In that same arena, I'm starting to accumulate a number of unfinished projects here and there. I need to get a job so I can buy yarn to complete those. I have enough to finish one (or maybe two) hatscarves. After that, I'll have to find some other no-cost way to spend my leisure time.
Yesterday I cooked. Plum Chicken Thighs (a recipe the R.C. first made a week ago but that I wanted to try myself) (and use up the extra ingredients for) and Accordion Potatoes. I wasn't thrilled with the potatoes, but I think that was more User Error than any problem with the recipe. I'll have to try those again. The chicken thighs were tossed with Chinese 5-Spice and some salt, then lightly browned before being coated in a Plum Jam/Balsamic vinegar/chicken broth sauce. Pretty tasty.
In any case, I'm mostly here today to wish you all the happiest of holiday seasons (a bit lat for those of you who celebrated earlier this month), the best of New Years, and all the finest life has to offer, now and into the future.
If you listen closely, you can hear the "hold" music playing.
I'm off to marginally gainful employment of the temporary kind this week and next. Nice people, generously paying me over their average (which is still significantly less than I normally make), they know I know how to do the job so they just leave me alone to do it. And yet, by 4:00 yesterday, I was climbing the walls. It's hard to readjust to sitting at a desk all day, you know?
Still, I appreciate the money. We got Mom's final tax bill and each of us girls is going to have to pony up a third of it (I do have a fourth sibling, my brother, but the odds of him begin able to produce hundreds of dollars on a few days' notice are slim to none.) It's good timing that I have a little money coming in right now.
And working is a boost to my ego. Look! I'm not completely unemployable!
More later.
P.S. I'm a bit bitter that they're into their "casual, end-of-year" dress code period at this office. I'm sure it's very nice for those of them who find putting on a pair of slacks rather than a pair of jeans to be traumatic in the mornings, but HotFlashGirl would really rather wear lighter fabrics, you know?
There's no explaining moods. Mine, I'm happy to say, is better today.
I did work on my holiday cards yesterday. 2-1/2 hours it took to finish a project I'd thought was almost done! Now I've done everything but sign them.
I always intend to write little notes on all of my cards but it always seems like I wind up rushing to finish them and don't have time. (Also? I'm good at spontaneously rambling on about nothing for thirty paragraphs, but not so good at writing four informational, interesting lines about my life.)
It didn't noticeably add to my holiday spirit, but at least I got something checked off the list, right?
The sun is still shining. We're having Weather tomorrow, so I'm going to run out and do my errands this morning. I have many chores in front of me today along with 2-3 hours of work for Bernie (which can wait for this afternoon).
I need to do laundry and I didn't get the cleaning done yesterday. I'd like to get the cleaning done today. The R.C. is free from temporary wage-slavery tomorrow and our grand plans include a trip to the grocery store, after which I intend to do some baking.* Also, it's easier to clean when there's no one around to be inconvenienced.
But, first! A quick blog!
Wow. Mel Tormé. Great voice. Great talent. Great little anecdote. Now that added to my holiday spirit.
Mom would have enjoyed that story.
On other topics, it looks like media fandom's long-discussed project is finally getting off the ground. The Organization for Transformative Works site is finally under development and while there's not much to show yet, behind the scenes a lot of talented people are working hard.
I wait, with interest, to see how large the umbrella for the group is going to be. I know there are those of you among my readers :) who consider media fandom as the "lunatic fringe" but let me assure you that even the lunatic fringe has its own lunatic fringe. It will be interesting (for me) to see just how inclusive this site winds up being.
On the other hand, there have been some great essays and rants writing about fandom, by fandom, in addition to the more formal "scholarly works" that often get referenced. I'd love to see those things gathered together in one place.
More generally, I am ignoring the "real" news headlines these days, aside from feeling sympathy for those across the Midwest who are without power.
This holiday season is difficult enough without adding to my stress by knowing too much about stories of parents killing their children, athletes taking drugs, more civilians dying in Iraq, and the Dow periodically tanking. I just don't have the energy to know.
I'm going to bake cookies, wrap gifts (should any of the things I've ordered surprise me by actually arriving, and head off next week for my temp job, and I'm going to hang onto what little scraps of holiday spirit I've been able to muster this year.
But first, I'm going to suck down the last of this pot of coffee and go take a shower.
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* It does occur to me, in reference to the baking, that it's probably rude of me to plan to spend the afternoon filling the house with baking smells when I'm not cooking anything the R.C. likes to eat. There's nothing I can do about it, though. I'm craving molasses crinkles and molasses crinkles I must have!
I'm also making up a big pot of vegetable-beef soup for lunches next week. The R.C. doesn't like vegetable-beef soup, either.
It's going to be sad to be her tomorrow.
Now I remember why being unemployed is so boring. The R.C. is, once again, off to her temp job and out of contact for the day. With no one around and no reason to do any particular thing at any particular moment, I'm having some trouble getting started on anything at all.
There are a few prospects on the job sites today, but I'm just not in the mood. Maybe in an hour or two.
I also have a little work (not much--an hour or two) I could do for Bernie but, again, not in the mood at the moment. I did exactly what he asked on that free-lance project and it's not my fault if what he asked me to do is not, in fact, what the clients wanted done.
I could finish up my holiday shopping for stocking stuffers but I can't get my car out of the parking lot at the moment. Also, I want molasses crinkles, but in order to have them I have to go to the store and buy molasses and ginger and I can't right now.
Both of those are because of the flying wheelbarrows.
As we all know, the Crazy Property Management Company has gotten all ambitious this year and decided to do a ton of work on the building.* Today there's a lifter-truck thingy--a cherry-picker or something--hauling roofing supplies down from the top of the building. One would have expected them to do that before it snowed, but whatever. A minute ago I looked out the door in time to see a wheelbarrow sailing past.
I do have plans to accomplish things today, even aside from the aforementioned shopping. For instance, I have to finish my holiday cards. The bathroom and the kitchen both need cleaned. I have a knitted scarf that's done except for being fringed, so I could finish it, although I'm not sure why.**
I could work on any of these things, if only I could drag myself out from in front of the computer keyboard. But here I sit, surfing the 'net aimlessly instead of doing something productive and useful with my time.
Sigh.
The phone rings a lot during the day, too. At this time of the year, it's mostly charities looking for donations and some of the callers are pretty obnoxious when you say, "no." The one from some version of the "make a wish" people got pretty snippy with me when I told her I didn't have any money to spare. While I regret having been unemployed for the last nine months, I have to say that I'm making notes and will not, once re-employed, be making donations to charities whose call tactics include attempted bullying.
I don't know why today's blog entry is such a downer. I'm sorry. It's a lovely, sunny day outside and supposed to hit 35 sometime this afternoon. I should be amazingly cheerful.
Maybe I should eat something?
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* At no time, during the past decade when the R.C. and I were both employed and gone all day, every day, did they choose to enlist hordes of worker-bees with trucks full of loud machinery to swarm all over the building at all hours. No--they waited until we could both be subjected to the maximum amount of inconvenience.
** Very sadly, the gentleman who has been so generous in taking my hand-made items and distributing them for me, a former co-worker and dear friend of the R.C.'s, has been diagnosed with brain cancer. He and his wife are lovely people who donate a lot of time and effort to helping others, so this is one of those tragedies that just seem unfair.
Nothing to put you in the holiday spirit like a little snow!
We're having a little snow. Nothing major, less than 6" of accumulation, but it does look all pretty and Christmassy, especially to those of us who do not (heh) have to go out and drive to work in it. (Hey, there has to be an occasional upside to months of unemployment!) Sadly, the R.C. did have to go out and drive in it, to her temp job. We all hope she made the perilous three-mile journey without incident.
I do have bits and pieces of holiday shopping to complete, and a package or two to ship. For those reasons, I hope the weather is better tomorrow. (After all, I have a temp gig of my own that begins on the 17th and runs through the end of the year. Gotta be done by next Monday!)
To do me credit, I'm almost done with the shopping portion of my preparations. I haven't started the shipping portion yet, though, and the pile of cards sitting across the room reminds me that I haven't finished those yet, either.
How can someone unemployed be so busy they haven't had a chance to get these things done? It's hard to say, but between the hour or so a day I spend on the job sites, the hour or so I spend emailing/phoning with Bernie & Her (I swear I'm going to start charging them for the time one of these days....), spending at least an hour getting ready for each interview plus an hour in the interviews and the hour or so of drive time for each of them--well, the days are just packed. Being unemployed is, some days, almost a full-time job in itself.
I'm going to do better today, though. I'm going to sit right down and finish up my cards this morning. (Unless Bernie emails to confirm that he wants me to finish up that website project after all....)
Lots of news happening these days. Americans split on mortgage bailout says one headline. Big surprise there. People who knew they couldn't pay for a house were enticed into taking on mortgages that virtually guaranteed they'd be in trouble in five years and now everyone's acting all surprised that the housing industry is headed toward disaster and hundreds of thousands of people are headed toward financial ruin. Even someone as financially stupid as me saw this one coming, so why are the national press and our so-called leaders acting shocked and surprised?
I'm pro-bailout, myself, not because I think the people or the lending institutions deserve to be bailed out of a problem they knowingly contributed to, but because I don't want a recession.
And Ask.com is adding a feature that lets people delete their search results from the search engine servers? I like the move toward insuring privacy.
The writer's strike continues apace in the world of television. I'm rooting for the writers, of course. They produce the material and are entitled to fair compensations for it. Having been chiseled out of payments for video and dvd sales, I think it's fair that they now be paid for the new internet streaming-produced revenue.
Unbelievably, some people are still debating whether or not water-boarding is torture. Me? I say you grab someone off the street, smuggle them to a foreign country, and lock them up secretly for years? That's a crime even before you start terrorizing and torturing them.
In 2006, Vice-President Cheney defended water-boarding.Asked on a radio programme whether "a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" he replied: "Well, it's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticised as being the vice-president for torture. We don't torture."
On the other hand, Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who was tortured by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war, has said that water-boarding is torture: "It no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank."
Yes. It's torture and everyone knows it, including Cheney.
Bush & Buddies certainly are leaving a nasty, nasty situation for whoever next occupies the White House, aren't they? They've wrecked us both domestically and internationally now. I wonder if they have any other big plans for their last year in power?
Excuse me now. I have to go try and recapture my holiday spirit so I can finish my cards.
(A) Those People
I toddled off to Boulder today, among a few scattered flakes of snow and an abundant accumulation of flaky drivers.
I'm not one of the world's hotrods. I mean, I couldn't be, not in a 16 year-old Toyota. At no time am I the fastest thing on four wheels. Still. I do expect, when driving down a highway posted for 65 MPH, I do expect that every now and then I will get out of second gear.
Hmph.
Fortunately I'd given myself ample time (and then some) for this morning's drive, so I arrived at the Unspecified Client Location 30 minutes before I was to meet Bernie & The Gang. I read reception room magazines for a while (the New Yorker has some good content, but it's so hard to find among the ads) and was about to be reduced to pacing the halls when Bernie finally appeared, 20 minutes late.
Still, we had more than enough time to "go over our plans for the training" in the 20 minutes we had before the session was due to start, since our plans consisted of the 15-item agenda we'd all received via email earlier in the week. (It consisted of such complex items as: Show them: (1) creating files; (2) deleting files; (3) copying files.)
One of our three trainees was subsequently 15 minutes late. The day was not starting with a professional snap but in spite of that (and because of the gods of open-source software who design really usable programs), we were out of there 20 minutes early.
So, that's over with.
(B) Bits of Work!
I have a few more hours of work I can do for Bernie and Buehler sent me a humongous file that he wants me to mine for him (I haven't opened it yet and have no idea how much work it will be), so I'm set for free-lance projects for the next week.
And they both paid me! Hoorah! (Note to self: Take checks to bank!)
(C) Employment Potential
I have an interview on Monday for that job the R.C. suggested me for. (To be more specific, I have an interview with the service that's screening applicants for that job.)
Nothing else to report at this time.
(D) Miscellaneous Other Stuff
Today the R.C. is off working at her own temp job.
I'm baking cornbread.
The mountains are supposed to get another foot or two of snow overnight, but Denver is going to top out at 3" sometime overnight. I spent a fair amount of time driving through fog/low-lying clouds on this morning's commute, but to be honest it's not really all that cold out there. Just--gray.
I'm glad it's Friday afternoon. What with one thing and another, it feels like it's been a long, hard week.
Today's interview was a complete waste of time. It took me longer to put my makeup on than I spent in the "interview."
I mean, I ask you. If you hired a recruiter and she sent you a handful of resumes and you picked the people you wanted to interview, then when one of them arrived for their interview, wouldn't you actually, you know, interview them?
I estimate I spent between 4 and 5 minutes with the woman who "interviewed" me today. She asked me no questions about my skills, provided no additional information about the job, and would not have been more obviously bored if she'd actually just gone ahead and fallen asleep at the table.
I told the recruiter so, when she called me just a few minutes ago.
Fortunately, the R.C. had an interview with a different recruiter this morning --a woman who offered her an interview for a job I'd be very good at. And the R.C. told the recruiter so, and promised to have me call her! I did--leaving her a voicemail message, and now I'm waiting to hear back from her.
In the meantime, Buehler has resurfaced, very briefly, to send me a check for hours worked and to say we need to talk about a new database he's found that he might want to mine for his own mailing list.
And Bernie's still hovering over me, like a little raincloud, of course. His latest is to suggest that we all meet at 9:15 before tomorrow's 11 a.m. training so we can spend 30 minutes going over our training plan. My email to him pointing out that this plan will leave us with 1 hour and 15 minutes of spare time before the training is scheduled to begin has so far gone unanswered.
Oh, and She called today, to say She's got "a tickle" and She's just sure She will be out sick tomorrow and unable to attend the meeting but that's okay because She has been so busy with reports for these two clients (one of which I did for Her when She was off Thanksgiving week) that She hasn't had a second to work with the software anyhow.
That wasn't Her main reason for calling, though. Her main reason for calling was because She couldn't get a Table of Contents to generate correctly in Word and She wanted to know how to fix whatever it was that had gone wrong.
Do I look like a Microsoft technical support person?
Anyhow.
Now I'm sitting in the living room, eating junk food, and just generally sulking.
The R.C. has scored a temp job and will be out periodically between now and the end of the year.
How's your day?
What a week I'm having/will continue to be having.
Between Bernie, Her, interviews and appointments for both the R.C. and myself, and making plans for the training session I'm supposed to help with on Friday, and getting a few household chores done (cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping--the usual), I'm bustling around madly.
It isn't bad to be busy. Having interviews is a good thing. As is doing more work for Bernie. Stuff that gets you paid--or leads to paying work--it a very good thing indeed.
There was no reason at all for that woman passing by underneath our balcony yesterday to shout up at me, "Don't! Don't jump! You don't want to do it!"
Heh. Sometime random passers-by are sort of amusing.
Much less amusing were the godpeople who knocked on the door in an attempt to foist pamphlets and religion off on me, but I got rid of them pretty quickly.
Today is my only "free" day this week--my only day without appointments.
I'm going to fill the day by searching the job sites and (with no small amount of bitterness) probably making some revisions on Bernie's manual that he will not be paying me for, just because I can't stand the thought of taking such a sloppy mess into a client's with us on Friday.
I do have a revised copy, already. My sanity quakes as I admit that Bernie himself did some revisions (based on the outline I sent him for what I thought needed to be done--a project upon which I spent hours he has not paid me for) but I've been afraid to look at it so far. I'll be doing that today.
So far, I'm under the impression that this blog entry is a tangled mess. Topic-wise I'm all over the place, aren't I? Also, I'm having to fix a record number of typos as I go.
That's probably what I get for blogging before coffee. Let me go get caffeinated and I'll be back with you later....
Weekend!
As a friend, I suck. Ruth was arranging a get-together in Boulder with another friend for the weekend and I spent all weekend waiting for a call or email saying a date and time had been arranged--only remembering at 11:00 last night that Ruth doesn't have email access over the weekend and that she might not have my phone number. I'm such a moron.
But! I grocery shopped and cooked. I decorated for the holidays.
The R.C. and I went to storage and got out the holiday decorations. I sorted through them, getting rid of a box or two full that we didn't really use or need, and put the rest of them up. So, I get Cleaning Out points as well as Decorating Points!
Making money!
I finished Bernie's project this weekend and emailed him to that effect, giving him an idea of how many hours it took. I haven't heard back, which could be good or bad.
Based on how long he told me it took him to do the fraction of the project he tried doing for himself, I saved him a ton of time, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be reasonable about the amount of time it took me, you know.
I may/may not need to drive back to Boulder on Friday to help the programmer out with the client introduction to the new system. Bernie asked me to keep the date free but hasn’t yet decided who should attend.
She is in a huff because She believes She should be the one to meet with clients but I can understand Bernie's hesitation. When duties were assigned, She proved capable of doing nothing more complex than proofreading type.
They've also had to stop using, the last time I checked, at least three software programs that used to be central to the business, because She couldn't learn how to use them. All of which doesn't suggest She's the ideal candidate to train new users, you know? Still, it's wiser to have an actual on-staff employee as your primary contact for clients, not a temporary free-lancer, so from that perspective, She could be right.
Me, I don't have a lot of opinion about it. I'm willing to work with Bernie and this client until I find a real job, and I'm willing to do whatever he needs to have done during that time.
Sale!
Eventful days, no? Consider this LJ announcement of the sale to Russia's SUP and this and this article.
Fandom is already contemplating a move to another provider. They've contemplated such things before without taking any actual mass action (Six-Apart wasn't universally beloved, largely in consequence of their frenzied but short-lived tendency to delete journals permanently and without warning, based on anonymous complaints about content), but it might happen this time.
No one is saying right out (such bigotry would not be PC, would it?) that they don't trust the new owners because they're Russian but there's a certain amount of hysteria around a Russian blogger's comment that the new owners are "about as friendly as the KGB." Some LJ users, in typical over-reaction, are posting that the company is "KGB-friendly" in consequence.
I'll bet that at least half of LJ's users don't even know why the initials "KGB" create such a panic in some people, but they're willing to pile on the bandwagon anyhow.
It's very interesting to read.
Interview!
At 8:25 this morning, my phone rang.
Last week's recruiter call in response to a resume I submitted actually resulted in an interview on Thursday afternoon. I don't know what the company is yet, but I'm keeping an eye on my email for the promised information. The clues I gathered from the ad and from the recruiter suggest it's not anything I can be passionate about, but I'm months past the point where I can be that picky. (Although I still refuse to even answer certain ads.)
Two potential ads today, one for an "author's assistant." It actually involves calling businesses to convince them to let the author come in and do a talk and pitch the book (as near as I can tell from the ad), which isn't all that fascinating, but is well within my capabilities.
The other I'm still brooding over. A standard sort of office manager thing in a one-person office. If I want to apply, I'll have to find a fax machine, which is annoying but probably wise for an employer advertising online. I'd imagine it cuts down on the spam and unqualified applicants by about 70%. But it's real estate development, which is an enormous yawner.
This weeks' schedule also includes a haircut tomorrow, after which, when my stylist can't see me, I'll substitute a box of $15 "color touch-up" product from the drugstore for the $70 color job I would normally have him do. Very sad.
Opinions!
I finished Slings and Arrows and wow what an amazing show. If any of you get the chance to see it, I can recommend it highly.
Although, as the R.C. and I were discussing just yesterday, the experience of watching a show changes considerably depending on where and how you watch it. A movie watched in the theater feels different from the same moved watched at home on your television screen.
And a show watched on your television screen feels very different than a show watched on your laptop/portable DVD player, when you're wearing headphones. Headphones make it a much more personal, more intimate experience. I think that the weirdly quirky little shows that I like and can't understand the cancellation of are probably very much enhanced by my habit of watching them via headphones/small screen. It's a much more immediate, more personal experience. If everyone could experience them the way I do, more people would love them, you know?
That's probably not saying much about various producers' success in developing shows for the television/shared viewing experience, but it makes me feel less like a lover of loser shows and more like an exceptionally discriminating consumer.
Or maybe it's just me and my invariable habit of reading, knitting, eating, and/or playing computer games while "watching television" interferes with actually seeing and hearing the shows I choose to watch? Because, to be honest, and as I've said many times before, it's a very rare thing for me to sit in a chair and look constantly at a television screen, focusing on what is happening and being said. I always multi-task when watching television.
Maybe it's because the headphones force my brain to stay with the show at each moment that I find using them such a superior experience? I can still knit, since that doesn't require me to watch my hands, but there's no denying that headphones do keep most of my attention on the show and not contemplating my next snack or what that noise in the parking lot is or whether or not some potential employer is going to call me or the laundry that needs to be done of any of the other thousand and one things that constantly run through my mind.
I think it's interesting to contemplate these things.