Best thing I've read this month.
A Newspaper Can’t Love You Back, by David Simon.
So much of my life seems to be spent this way.
Today's totals so far:
Kitchen counters cleaned - 3
Bathroom counters wiped - 1
Garments hand-washed - 1
Loads of laundry done - 2
Bathroom "fixtures" cleaned - 2
Showers taken - 1
Interviews attended - 1
Jobs obtained - 1
Hee.
The phone interview went exceptionally well. Which it should have done, since it was with Gidget.
Tomorrow morning, 10:00 a.m., that's the big one. That's the face-to-face with Gidget's boss.
Right now, they're looking at next week for a start date. Maybe mid-week. Me, I'm hoping for sooner. :) I don't have the spare cash for a week's worth of, "relax and enjoy your last few days off." I'd rather get started working.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:01 PM | Comments (5)I had my doubts, as I said before, about the casting of Billie Piper as Mansfield Park's doormat-in-residence, Fanny Price, but this adaptation, at 90 minutes, had no time for that kind of subtlety of characterization. No, this Fanny was an energetic, romping, good-natured young girl, unafraid to let her face show everything she was feeling. Piper did very well in the part.
Blake Ritson was adequate to his role as Edmund, although he suffered from not being given enough screen time to adequately develop his character.
Hayley Atwell did better with Mary Crawford, doing a decent job, in the time she had available, of showing the sophisticated young woman falling into unwilling love with an unsuitable man. If the reasons why the lively Miss Crawford fell for the staid young Mr. Bertram were left unexplained, well, that's not the actress's fault.
Joseph Beattie's Henry Crawford had, comparatively, quite a lot of screen time. He was given ample time to make love to the unwilling Fanny. So much so that an uninformed viewer might have been left wondering how the heroine could have failed to succumb. If we were robbed of any scene that might have explained why a worldy almost-libertine might be so violently attracted to a shy young girl, well, that's not the actor's fault.
And there were clunkers in plenty. The memory of Mary Crawford pulling up her skirt to entice Edmund with the sight of her stocking-clad leg springs to mind--what were they thinking--but for the most part, the changes to the plot necessary to cram at least part of the 'action' into a 90-minute period were not offensive.
Except that....
The 90-minute format is kind of offensive in and of itself. It's bad enough trying to cram such subtle plots into two hours, but you simply can't strip Austen down to a 90-minute set of bones and expect much, if anything, of her original intent to remain intact.
I unwillingly accept that not all of her books can be turned into 4-hour or 6-hour miniseries (why not?) but so much distortion is involved in scraping down the plots enough to fit into a 90-minute period that a viewer unfamiliar with the books will likely be left wondering precisely why these characters act the way they do.
With another 30 minutes, maybe we would have been gifted with a scene or two showing why Edmund, worthy though we know he was, had the power to captivate Mary Crawford. And vice-versa--we could have been shown why and how the lively Mary had such an impact on Edmund.
With another 30 minutes, the almost-invisible Julia might have had the time to illustrate the complicated love triangle (quadrangle?) that led the characters into disaster.
With another 30 minutes, we might have seen that the cynical Henry Crawford was being unexpectedly caught by Fanny Price's understated charms.
With another 30 minutes, Fanny's temptation to give in to pressure, and gratitude, and accept Henry Crawford's proposal could have been included. But that would have required a different Fanny....
Granted, Austen's Price was not a heroine for our times (she wasn't even particularly a good heroine for Austen's times) but I'd love to see a decent adaptation of this book with an actress in the part capable of showing both Fanny's modest obedience and the backbone of steel underneath. Piper's Fanny was immature and willful. She fit well in this production because the pace of events left no room for anything else.
I expected little from this adaptation. Mansfield Park is my least-favorite of Austen's books, largely because I always want to slap Fanny Price and tell her to grow a spine, but Piper's energetic portrayal of Fanny eliminated that problem. Most of the rest of the casting was quite serviceable. If the actors were capable of more than they delivered, we'll just assume that we would have been able to appreciate that, had the production given us any time to know them. (The Crawfords did, in fact, have a charm and vivacity that brought the Bertram family to life, just as in the book. So much so that I find myself wondering if it was a fortuitous accident of casting.)
Against all expectation, I liked it.
(I go up, I go down. Today, I'm up. )
I woke up to find a note in my inbox from Gidget, including a copy of the job description, the news that while the salary range for the position is a bit less than she'd been hoping for, it's right in my "starting range," and a demand that I call her later today to confirm an interview she's set up for me for tomorrow!
Woo! And hoo!
Posted by AnneZook at 07:27 AM | Comments (4)Sometime this week, I will hear from Gidget about an interview with her boss. I'm on tenterhooks....
And a touch cranky.
Heard from the L-i-K-S today. No one in Missouri's tax dept is willing to talk to her on the phone, so that last tax bill, including all of the penalties and whatnot, is going to have to be paid. She's going to try including a letter of explanation but I figure the chances of them rebating any of it, including the "late" fees and whatnot, are slim to none. Missouri can't afford to give back any money it gets its hands on.
I'm also biting my nails about my annual get-together with friends in CA. I've booked it, but the bills keep rolling in and jobs do not (a tentative offer is not a job), nor does money.
And there's wind. I don't know why, but the trees are whipping, all the glass in our windows is trembling, and the birds are cowering in the trees. We're having amazing winds today.
Ho-hum. Not much new, at least so far today. I dropped a couple of thousand grains in the bowl at Free Rice.com.
I tossed a sneer and a wave of bad vibes at the latest right-wing, hysterically anti-Clinton, mob o'loonies. Check out TPM Muckracker, who has the facts behind the idiocy--insofar as there are facts.
He's right, anyhow. There's no real info at the site. Just a bigger graphic of the LOOK OUT! CAN'T YOU SEE SHE'S A *GIRL*? tee-shirt.
Part of me, I must admit, is ROFL at the idea of the rightwing bigots watching the Democratic primaries and biting their nails. I mean, they're gonna get someone with icky girl parts or a guy who, no matter how you look at it, is really just not white.
In other wingnut news, I see they've given the guy who turned in the so-called "20th hijacker" has gotten a $5M reward. Seems a bit high, but I assume that the Bush Administration is pretty desperate to get us all watching each other and turning each other in if we suspect naughtiness. (Not that I disapprove of active citizenship but turning one another in for the head money is just so Iraq, isn't it?)
Okay, enough politics. I can feel my blood pressure rising and my IQ dropping.
Things not on today's schedule: Surf the job sites.
I'm hoping for the best, chancing my luck, and relying on positive vibes from the universe. Gidget's job will materialize! (Just in time, too. My finances reached the critical stage this week.)
Things on today's schedule: Do two loads of laundry, clean the kitchen, try for the fourth time to schedule lunch with DiamondGirl. (She's been rescheduling since last week.)
And maybe dust. Sheesh. When you're home everyday, with everything all opened up to the bright sunlight, you certainly can watch the dust accumulate from one day to the next.
Employment beckons coyly, from the distant future of next week, making half-promises it actually seems inclined to fulfill.
Yes, it's a JOB!!!
And, no, not the firm I've been interviewing at. I didn't like to say much, but after lunching with Opiette last week, I was much less excited about that company. Granted that "Dysfunctional Employers Welcome" has been my business mantra for the last twenty years but it's been feeling like time for a new philosophy. Working for crazymen gets old. Especially as I get older.
In this new (still potential) job, I'd be working for Gidget. We've worked together three times before, thanks in no small part to her habit of bringing me on board wherever she's working. As she so kindly said today, "I've stolen you away from other jobs to work for me and I'd have done it again this time." Poaching will not be required this time--I'm footloose, fancy-free, and ready for a paycheck new challenge.
It
Internet marketing, too, making this a position with a skill that will actually be useful on my resume. This business, whose name I still do not know (Gidget calls, I answer without asking questions) is a huge internet marketer, so not only experience, but significant experience.
Coming, as we switch to the more selfish side of things, with a significant salary, significant benefits, and pre-approval for my annual California Trek early in March!
dances in mad little circles
The R.C. got a full-time job last week.
Meghan got the job she badly wanted just a day or so ago.
I might get a job next week.
Go, Jonathan! The planets are aligned for employment!
_______________
* In this production, the role of The Universe is played by Ms. (Hire My Friend!) Gidget.
Okay, I just sent Bernie and Her an email, saying I don't want to do any more freelance stuff for them, that's so diplomatically worded that I doubt they actually get it.
Sigh.
I didn't want to come out and say, "I don't want to work with you because you're driving me batshitcrazy" but there are few diplomatic ways to decline free-lance work for someone who knows you're currently unemployed.
"Never burn bridges," that's my motto, but I think I singed this one a bit.
Oh, well.
I forgot to chronicle my Adventures In Cooking this past week! I tried two new recipes--Thai Chicken Sir-Fry with Spicy Peanut Sauce and Stir-Fry Chicken with Garlic Sauce. I had, yes, quite a lot of chicken I needed to use up.
The peanut sauce was not a huge success, failing entirely on the advertisement of "spicy" and being sweetly bland, just what you'd expect from a recipe that calls for both peanut butter and brown sugar. The dash of crushed red pepper and the bit of garlic the recipe called for were unable to hold their own.
On the other hand, yesterday's chicken with garlic sauce amply fulfilled its promise, due in no small part to my failure to remember that when you cut a recipe in half, you need to cut all of the ingredient quantities. As it turned out, I wound up with a ratio of something like 1 clove of garlic to each serving. Fortunately I like garlic and have no interviews scheduled for today....
Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is possibly the least-read of her books, with the exception of the works left unfinished at the time of her death. As a first attempt, it's certainly the least-accomplished work we see from her. (Even unfinished drafts of later novels like Sanditon show more polish.)
It's a complicated novel--sometimes juvenile with much of the emotional content being purely in the heroine's imagination and a sinister "bad guy" designed for a gothic atmosphere who translates into the more mundane world only awkwardly. The more traditional Austen romantic complications are sketched in with less care than we find in her later works.
And yet, I've always thought the novel had merit. As an occasional fan of "gothick" novels of the era, I've always been charmed by Austen's gentle mockery of a genre she actually enjoyed reading. As always, the moral lesson ("beware of the gap between fiction and reality") is well-illustrated. The romantic complications are woven into--or grow out of--the moral lesson in the same way we expect from Austen although the balance is not quite what she achieves in her later works.
For these and other reasons not wholly unconnected with last week's disastrous Persuasion adaptation, I approached Masterpiece Theater's Sunday night presentation of Northanger Abbey with caution.
I need not have worried. All that last week's offering failed to give us--good casting with actors able to deliver period dialogue as dialogue, convincing sets, and a smooth for-screen interpretation of Austen's romantic prose--was present.
In fact, I wouldn't have thought it was possible to turn this atmospheric novel into a screen presentation so successfully, paying tribute to the gothic atmosphere of Catherine's youthful imaginings while keeping the movie itself grounded in the real world. (The balance wasn't perfect but, as I've already mentioned, neither was the novel.)
Felicity Jones was a charming Catherine Moreland, bringing a convincing energy naiveté to the role of a girl poised between improbable romanticism and adult romance. She gave me everything I'd hoped for but failed to find in Persuasion's Anne Elliott. JJ Field was serviceable as Henry Tilney, but that's about all the role requires--this romance more than any other lives purely in the heroine's heart. I applaud Andrew Davies for the screenplay (no one else should ever be allowed to adapt Austen) and Jon Jones for the directing.
If you taped this one and have been waiting to watch it? Move ahead with confidence.
_________________
As always, I did a quick search to see what other adaptations are out there that might be worth considering. I was thinking of putting this Giles Foster version on my "to be rented" list until I read the reviews.
I like the scene where they are in the Hot Baths, but did the men and women really bathe together like that? You could see all the men perched around the outside leering at the women.
Whether or not mixed baths were common in Austen's time isn't really the point. From my perspective, it's inconsistent with the youthful innocence of Austen's story to include gratuitous nudity.
_________________
(Also? I'm just a bit concerned about Billie Piper's casting as Fanny Price in next week's Mansfield Park. Much as I liked her in Doctor Who, I have trouble seeing that willful, intelligent face in the role of shy, retiring, modest, dishmop Fanny Price.)
Today I am searching the job sites (and finding several possibilities, hooray!), chatting with the R.C. as she reports in from her first day of Full Employment, drinking coffee, and not doing any work for Bernie.
Yes, I'm still firmly convinced that much of last week's meltdown was the consequence of Bernieism or "free-lance creep." I have finally convinced myself that I'm not doing me any favors by free-lancing for him at a miniscule hourly rate as he gives me all of the work he considers needs more brains/skill than his full-time employee can handle. From now on, if he needs a certain skill-set, he can pay for it. (But pay someone else, I'm not available.)
So. What else?
Girls' Night In on Sunday was a huge success. Megan made chili, Ruthless brought yummy bread, I provided cheesecake, and we watched one of the world's strangest movies.
I'd never heard of The Boondock Saints before Meghan mentioned it. It was an--odd--experience, watching it. I'm not a fan of the large body of contemporary movies where the violence (especially sexualized violence) is the plot and this one certainly has more than enough to go around. At the same time, there's something hypnotic about the escalating violence and a darkly morbid vein of humor underlying the story. It's almost a spoof, but it's not self-conscious enough (although William Devane's performance would have worked in a spoof), it's not quite a caper-flick (with plot holes large enough to drive a production truck through) and, after the credits roll you slowly become away of the essential lack of coherent content, and yet....
Maybe it's because I tend to avoid movies with excessive violence that this one had such a dizzying impact on me?
We also watched Burning Down the House, the first episode of Due South's third season. An interesting contrast.
Other than that, this weekend's goal was to see if I could get through 2-3 days without spending any money. What with one thing and another, I wound up spending most of the money I made from Bernie last week on impulse purchases designed to make me feel better about working for the crazyman again. I needed to balance that.
I was successful, but it means I have little or nothing to report in the way of Outside Entertainment Experienced for the weekend.
I'm pretty sure that's the name of an old disco tune, isn't it?
Anyhow. Money or no money, I'm about done working for Bernie. I had a minor melt-down this morning as She was after me to do a lot more projects (today!) than Bernie has agreed to pay me for and he was after me because I've been reluctant to commit to solving a tech problem a long-time client has with a program that was antique long before he hired me and that I've never worked with. (He mortally offended the programmer who created the program for him and wants me to get up to speed and then call the guy for him.)
Anyhow. The R.C. talked me down off the ledge and pointed out that temp work through an agency pays less, but also doesn't drive you to searching for a tall building with windows that open, so after I finish this current project for Bernie next week, I think I'll just have to be unavailable from now on.
"He's a crazy man" is the #1 reason I quit that place, after all.
The #2 reason was, "he doesn't want to pay for the work he needs to have done" and he's currently paying me, for free-lance work, less an hour than he did when I worked for him, it's also beginning to occur to me that I set myself up for this entire ridiculous situation, so it's up to me to get myself out of it. And I'm going to.
Lunch today with DiamondGirl is rescheduled until Monday because she has a girlfriend having a crisis. That's okay, I'll probably be saner by Monday anyhow.
Om….
I'm having a Girl's Night In with Meghan and Ruthless on Sunday, which should be fun. Mocking bad television, eating good food (That Meghan, she can cook! And I'm bringing cheesecake for dessert.), knitting, and chatting.
And, of course, I have this week's Disasterpiece Theater production to tape Sunday night. This week we're seeing Mansfield Park, arguably my least-favorite of Austen's books anyhow (I always want to slap Fanny Price and tell her to grow a spine), so I'd imagine that whatever grotesquery I'm going to see will consequently be funnier to me than last week's Persuasion proved to be.
You can tell I had a meltdown today, can't you? My syntax is still sort of insane.
The R.C. is taking me out to lunch and then we're going to a bookstore and I have given myself permission to spend a fiver if I find something that will enrich, enliven, or lighten up my life.
And, speaking of working (which I was doing originally), yesterday's interview went….
Well, I don't know. You can't really tell, can you?
I mean, they chatted with me for the full hour scheduled for the interview, so I'm assuming I didn't say anything disastrous in the first ten minutes, but the Big Boss also made a point of saying they were seeing "several more people" (when I was told they were meeting with only 3-4 "final" candidates) before they were making a decision next week, so….
Sigh. Seriously? I think it was a little too apparent that I was winging it when I answered a couple of their questions. Being able to do the work and being able to describe the process you use aren't the same thing, especially when you're talking about creative work.
I mean, how do you write an ad? What kind of question is that? You find out what the client wants to communicate, find an eye-catching graphic that describes it and that will intrigue people to read the 25-word ad text, and you bang them with the client's three most important keywords.
How do you write it? How should I know? It happens in a part of my brain that works better if I don't try to micromanage it.
Also? While I have faith that I could learn to write in 25 words or less :) ads are not actually something I've done.
Take your pick. Either I'm not that sanguine about my performance yesterday or this morning's meltdown has sapped my already shaky confidence.
But! Now I remember what I was going to complain about!
I tuned into Masterpiece Theater's much-advertised "complete" run of Jane Austen adaptations this past Sunday. Part of me was exited (Persuasion! Possibly my favorite of her novels!) and part of me was wary (I once walked out of a theater showing an adaptation of this same novel wherein our heroine was shipped off to her sister's house on the back of a farm cart) but all of me was happy at the idea of successive Sundays of Austen in front of me. (And! Persuasion! I've never send a really good adaptation of it, but hope springs eternal.)
At one point in the production, the heroine took a header while fording a fence. That was the movie's second biggest pratfall, because by that time the entire production had already gone head-over-heels into a steaming pile of miserable failure. The adaptation was short, 90 minutes, but that was a clear 89-1/2 minutes too long.
Anthony Stewart Head turned the petulant, spoiled, irresponsible father into a passionate tower of anger, entirely ruining the contrast between that character and Hero Wentworth.
Sally Hawkins turned Anne Elliott from a modest, but principled young lady into a schizophrenic--half doormat, half ill-bred hoyden (I mean, who's idea was it to have her chasing Wentworth through the rooms and streets of Bath?) with the worst dress sense I've seen in a character since Tara on BtVS.
Rupert Penry-Jones tried, with commendable energy, to bring passion to the mix with an admirable portrayal of Wentworth but with Hawkins all-but diving behind doors to prove how shy and unworthy she was, he was unable to force the production to life.
In fact, all that was really proved was that Anne had been right to break up with him and that he was a fool for continuing to pine after such a wimpy dishrag.
Mrs Clay was a nonentity, Louisa and Henrietta were indistinguishable for 90% of their screen time, at least one major speech was included but moved to a time and place in the plot that robbed it of 98% of its purpose, and, all-in-all, the main thought in my head today is, "that was 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back again."
In retrospect, I blame the director. (Surely whoever wrote the adaptation didn't take such liberties with the mores and morals of the times?) I don't know who it was, possibly someone more comfortable with cops-and-robbers scenarios than the subtle prose of Austen. Someone for whom a movie is not complete without a big chase scene--which would explain Anne's final, frantic foot-dash through the streets of Bath, fortuitously meeting up with various characters offering valuable (if late) exposition along the way.
We will pass, with averted eyes, past the grotesque memory of that painfully forced and highly inappropriate public kiss and the gratuitous new ending scene with the happy couple waltzing on the front lawn of their new home.
In closing, we will say that I've seen a lot of bad adaptations of Persuasion and I'm happy to say today that last place now has an entirely new occupant.
I did a quick Google and find myself wishing we'd been giving the opportunity to see this adaptation instead of the drab travesty that was aired.
For the record, the promised 59 degrees did not appear, thanks to a big ol' cloud bank that came and sat over Denver all day. It didn't rain or snow or anything. It just sat there, soaking up the winter sunshine and any bits of heat that might have been destined for us. Hmph.
Today dawned with the promised arctic air (I think it's about 10 out here) and a solid blanket of clouds.
I did hear from DiamondGirl's company again, we'll call them WebWaders for ease of reference, telling me they were delighted to have me back for a second interview. (Not half as delighted as I am....) Think of me at 2:00 on Thursday, okay?
I'm already panicking (in a casual, mental sort of way) over the all-important 2nd Interview Outfit. It's shaming to say that I've been job-hunting for 10 months and have only faced this problem 2-3 times before, but there you go. Denver's a casual dress kind of town, where "black tie" only means that men have to wear dinner jackets over their jeans, so outfits with jackets or matched suits aren't something I've had in my wardrobe for the last 15 years.
Since the threatened 1"-4" of snow turned into a skiff barely enough to whiten the roads before blowing away, I may swing through a couple of stores on my way to lunch today in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to find something.
Hmmm.... What else that might be of (one hopes) rather more interest?
Bernie called last night and we "consulted" for fifteen minutes before I promised to do 5-6 more hours of work for him this week. He also has another new client who's supposed to sign a contract next week and wants to offer me hours on that project if I'm still available. So--enough work coming in to pay most of the bills and buy food for another month, which is definitely a plus.
I made chili. I always make chili when it snows or snow is threatened. Later this morning I'm going to make some cornbread to go with it.
The truth is, I'm just not that interesting these days.
I'm in the middle of the winter blahs, the dispirited gray days that fall upon us after the holidays and generally linger until late March. I don't have enough disposable income to go anywhere new or interesting, and even I'm tired of hearing me talk about sending out resumes.
Today's high is supposed to be 59 degrees. Tomorrow's high will be 19. With snow. After checking the job sites, I really should get out into the beautiful weather today and enjoy it while it lasts.
I did a small amount of enjoying yesterday's high of 49. After three early-morning hours of working for Bernie, I went to the doctor's office for my annual physical, went to the bank to deposit the paycheck from the temp work I did over the holidays, and gassed up my car. The first and last of those were painful (to the bank balance) but it was a nice day.
Today I may and/or may not make it to Target to return an unused closet organizer. (We bought two for the hall closet but turned out to need only one. Frugally, and contrary to life-long habit, we are returning the second one to get our money back.)
Lunch! I am lunching with Opiette and Gidget tomorrow and with DiamondGirl on Thursday. I feel so popular!
I got an email from Opiette 's & DiamondGirl's HR guy, saying they were deciding who to call back for second interviews and that I (really "we" since it was a bulk email) should hear from him this afternoon. And, stupid me, I replied with the wrong alias, so let's all hope he doesn't go Google that email identity. (There are so many drawbacks to being a careless closet pornographer.)
Other than that, yesterday's schedule (which was busier than it sounds) didn't leave me time for the job sites, so I have a two-hour stint in front of me today.
Will finish later....
Posted by AnneZook at 08:05 AM | Comments (0)I arose yesterday to discover that our access to the Magical Electronic World was dead. No internet access! How traumatic! After two hours of vain fiddling with connections and diagnostic programs, I gave up and called for help, then waited all day for the repair tech to appear. I mention this just so you know how nice it was to wake up today, toddle out to the computer, and get instant access to all things webby!
All of that fiddling wasn't a total loss, though. While poking around the PC, I discovered that our free memory was down to 11%. A search revealed a massive heap o'tmp files that had been accumulating for quite a time, including a few Gb worth that accumulated over a two-day period in late November (I don't know why), at least 2,000 of which (files, I mean) had no earthly reason to continue existing. Free and unrestrained use of the delete key for about twenty minutes resulted in a PC with 44% of the available memory free. That's more like it.
Late yesterday afternoon I had a job interview!
Interestingly, I was less excited about this job description than about most that I wind up interviewing for, but the job lead was passed along to me by DiamondGirl and I appreciated it, so I followed up. Turns out that DiamondGirl isn't the only old acquaintance of mine now working at this company. In a blast from the past, it turns out that their sales dept is headed by Opiette, a woman I spent five years working with (in the 90s).
This job is having two rounds of interviews. Round #1 is about finding someone who will "fit the team." I suspect that I passed that part of the test with flying colors. I mean, if two former coworkers fall upon one with cries of delight, this indicates you're a good person to work with, right?
Opiette appeared during my interview (adding to the good impression I was making on the interviewer by her evident joy) and we had a few minutes to chat afterwards as well. I'm now under orders to dig Gidget, another former co-worker, out of the woodwork and schedule a time for us all to get together.
Also I need to contact DiamondGirl so we can have lunch.
(Also? Almost incidentally it occurs to me to mention that after seeing the organization and hearing a bit more about the position, I could do most of the work while taking a nap.)
So, score one for the plus side for yesterday.
I did the job sites and sent in for 4 ads.
I did a few rows on each of my current knitting/crochet projects, and then got down to today's real work.
I swept and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors, cleaned the kitchen counters and sink and wiped down the stove and hood.
I have also shaken out the kitchen and bathroom rugs, cleaned my bathroom counters, toilet, and medicine cabinet (inside and out), cleaned the bathroom mirrors and the mirror in the hallway, cleaned some woodwork, done a bit of dusting, and cleaned one of the sliding glass doors (the sun was still on the other one).
Then I took a shower, and boy did I need it.
Can I have a job? Please? Because all of this domesticity is giving me dishpan hands.
I think I feel guilty when the R.C. is off working at a temp job and I'm not working--I seem to get these fits of energy. Also, I know she hates the job they sent her to this time, so I feel doubly guilty. (Let's hope Buehler produces a major project next week.)
Now I am going to eat something. It amazes me, considering how often I forget to eat when I'm home alone, why I don't lose any weight. (Yes, I know all about what forgetting to eat does to your metabolism. I'm just saying.)
After that, I will either clean the second sliding glass door and get out the stepstool so I can clean the ceiling fan blades, or I will go to the grocery store. I will let the Winds of Fate decide.
This update, empty of actual content, brought to you by the letter L (for lethargic) and the number 0 (whose magic we all understand).
I want to write you a chatty blog post. Really I do, but when I look back at the last 24 hours for something to chat about, all I can remember is an hour of surfing job sites and finding nothing and four hours of wrestling with sheets
Yes, sheets. No, I was not trapped in my bed. Nor am I having an Exciting Sleepover Guest of some kind.
No, I unboxed my new Christmas gadget, that hand-held sewing machine I mentioned before, and got down to one of the projects I've been putting off for the last year--cutting down a pair of king-sized sheets to fit my double bed.
(Yes, I know. I've frequently grumbled to myself about the kind of insanity that drives a person sleeping in a double bed to buy king-sized sheets, and never more than when I'm trying to tuck the excess two feet or so of material under the mattress. But I had to buy them. I'd been looking for months for sheets in the right red to go with the hand-made quilt my mother & her sisters made for me and this pair, two flats found on the sell-out rack, were the closest I'd found.)
Anyhow. The plan was to cut off the excess width and use the remnants to make a pair of pillowcases to match the sheets. It was a good plan and it worked well except that king-sized sheets have a lot of material in them, meaning I wound up with sheets stretched across the living room floor so that I could eyeball the straightness of my work. Possibly someone with actual sewing experience would not have made such a Herculean task of it.
And then the pillowcases. The width I trimmed was just short of enough to actually make pillowcases, forcing me to piece in a strip. What with measuring, pinning, re-measuring, repining on the other side once I realized I was sewing back-to-front, re-measuring, and then finally sewing, one pillowcase wound up taking an hour. The first pillowcase remains unfinished (a bit of hand-work needed) and the second pillowcase unstarted. At one point, I just wore out on domesticity.
But my gadget worked just wonderfully! After the hours spent prepping, it was such fun to run the actual hem in three minutes.
After that, I was tired.
I ripped out a scarf I'd made for the R.C. (she's decided she wants a hat-scarf combo job instead) and started reworking that yarn. I subsequently ripped it out four more times over the course of the evening, before I achieved a width that I think will work. I'd forgotten how aggravating this yarn is to work with.
My own hat-scarf is coming along nicely, if slowly (not much time to work on it recently) and my remaining project (a normal scarf--light ice-blue with gray-white-gray bands at the end) is half-done.
I have been boring recently.
I sometimes suspect that y'all miss the days when I worked for Bernie--even with all of the bitching and moaning, I bet that those were more interesting posts for you to read.
I heard back from Buehler. He and his family were off on an extended holiday trip, but he has some work for me next week, hooray! Haven't heard from Bernie about any work yet, although She continues to call from time to time for free tech support. I'm biting my tongue and providing it--Bernie doesn't pay as well as Beuhler, but he does pay better than any other temp work I'm finding. I billed him for my December hours.
No news on the tax bill for Mom, but I have the money squirreled away. The money I've been earning recently is this month's credit card bill, car insurance bill, and food. (Rent & utilities are already paid.)
I remain astonished by the connection between money and expenses. I'm starting to think that this extended interval of comparative poverty is valuable to me in some ways. For many years I've handled my finances on the foundation of "Do I want it? Yes. Buy it!" Nowadays I make myself think twice before buying an extra skein of yarn for $4.
The last few months have been educational. When I compare how much I actually need to live on--that is, to pay bills, buy food, and keep a roof over my head, with the amount of money I used to make in a month, I'm at a loss to figure out where most of my money went.
Even though I'm accumulating a list of things I want (my "When I Get A Job" list), I don't actually need them, so I doubt I buy most of them.
(Well, I can't buy some of them. Just because I saw someone in a cheesy science fiction movie wearing a cool jet-pack does not mean I can boogie down to Sharper Image and get one like it for myself.) (My wish lists tend toward the fantastic.)
But I'm turning over a new leaf, and it will remain turned, even after I'm back to gainful employment. From now on (When I Get A Job), saving will be a bigger priority for me. My retirement fund is not what it should be and I should really have more than 2-3 months of expenses on hand at any one time.
As soon as I get a job.
And now, back to today's crop of help-wanted ads.
Whew. I sure am glad that temp job has ended. What a lot of fuss and stress just because some people are constitutionally incapable of getting their work done before the last second!
Between the supervisor whose idea of training is vague at best and the same person's habit of not getting her assigned tasks done until the last second, Monday ("drop-dead" day) was fairly frantic. Said supervisor showed an inclination to blame me for them being against the wall on deadlines but, as the R.C. and the rest of that department well know, I never walked out of there in the evening leaving more than about 30 minutes of work undone--in fact, just enough to keep me busy the next morning until the supervisor wended her leisurely way into the office.
You gotta admire her nerve, though. 30 minutes after she produced the last part of her share of the project on Monday, she was in my cubicle passing remarks about how I'd done quite a bit. She didn't say "for a change" but it was in her voice. Considering that she chose not to show up on that cold, snowy Thursday when the rest of us foraged through the snowdrifts to get to the office? Gotta admire that kind of nerve.
Still, as the R.C. has kept pointing out--the paychecks don't bounce!
The poor R.C., though. She's having her first day of a 4-week temp job today and the work they want her to do doesn't seem to be (so far) as advertised. What she's doing is not making her happy and I'm not sure if she's even going to finish out the week, much less the month.
I'm redoubling my efforts to find a job now that the holidays have passed. The job sites were loaded with potential positions this morning and a former co-worker also mentioned that there's a position open at her new company, so possibilities abound.
Lest I forget--Happy New Year, all!
How's it going? I hope all of you had safe, warm celebrations.
Me, as is my habit, I was snuggled up in bed long before the midnight bell tolled. Even when I was a Young Party Animal, we considered New Year's Eve to be amateur hour--all of those once-a-year drunks on the road. Now that I no longer drink and find that staying up until midnight to be a pointless waste of sleep unless I'm reading a really good book, I'm doubly unwilling to don festive attire and go hang out with a lot of hooligans once a year.
Yesterday I did very little, very slowly.
Today? Not so much. Today's schedule has been like this: Get up, suck down one cup of coffee to prepare me for the day ahead. Pour a second cup and get to work.
-- Try to access the file Buehler sent me for the next project (cannot access on PC or on laptop--search online for converter, find, download, reboot computer, file still will not open, email Buehler for different file format if available) (But, of course, hooray! for more free-lance work for Buehler! He pays better than anyone else.)
-- Search all job sites (find several possibilities!)
-- Read return email from DiamondGirl (there may be a job at her new place of employment--continue emailing with her for an hour while I rework cover letter and send in via her and the Craigslist ad both),
-- Drive to aforementioned recent temp job site to get job ads I left there (chat with a couple of people briefly)
-- Come home, put in two loads of laundry, strip bed, prepare third load of laundry
-- Return to job sites and start customizing cover letter for the nine ads I have bookmarked. (Still in progress--this is a two-hour task for this many jobs of such various requirements.)
And it's only 1:00! Being unemployed is many things, but frequently it is not *restful.*
I have a New Knitting Project underway--a hat/scarf combination in cobalt blue. I have hopes that it won't turn out too badly. After I finish it, I'm out of yarn, though, so there will be no more yarn project updates until the Fates produce full-time employment with a generous paycheck.
I still have two holiday gift cards to spend. With some luck the weather and roads will be nice enough this weekend for me to make it to Borders. I'm getting Making Money. I've been wanting that for months and I'm very excited about getting it.
In the meantime, I still have seven ads to respond to, so I'd better get back at it.
Here's wishing all of you the best life has to offer in 2008 and beyond!