The Misanthrope

"Triumphant," indeed.

2008-03-15T19:29:00.003-04:00

So, it's been two weeks since I last posted. Oh well, baby-steps, right? A large part of the problem these days is that I find myself with very little to say. Either I am less irritated by life in general than I used to be, or I just have less time and energy to complain about things that I hate. A few items:

1) I keep having wedding nightmares. Every time I have a dream about my wedding, they become anxiety-ridden, sweat-inducing visions of my personal wedding-planning incompetence, usually because I'm late or have forgotten to do something important, like book an officiant or tell people where the wedding is. The other night I had a horrible dream that I went to get my hair done before the wedding and they did hideous things to it--dyed it an ugly orange-blonde, chopped it off, then permed it. Christ, it was ugly. The BF, by the way, is largely absent from these dreams. In fact, the actual ceremony does not usual figure into them in any way.

2) Um. Obama for President!

I got nothin'.

The triumphant return of The Misanthrope

2008-03-02T14:13:00.002-05:00

Did you miss me?

Eh, don't answer that. So anyways, the last time I posted was in October, so here's what happened in the intervening months.

1) BF and I moved to Olympia at the end of December. We found a house here that's in a good neighborhood and is pretty OK for the two of us. It's old and not big, but much better than the one bedroom apartments that have been our homes for the past four years or so. On not-cloudy days it gets a lot of sunshine (or as we call it in cat-speak "sunny sunshine"), which the cat enjoys and which greatly contributes towards my mental health.

2) BF got a temporary job working with the state senate for the legislative session. It was not exactly his dream job and kinda sucks that it's only temporary, but it gave him a nice taste of the politico life here in Washington state.

3) Umm, that's pretty much it so far. We have a wedding photographer, so that's one more thing to cross off the list in the wedding planning. Now I just need a cake, some flowers, a candle or two, a sound system, and I'll be set.

So with the dreariness of winter being almost over and the dreariness of spring about to begin, I am embarking on a self-improvement plan which has three-fourths to do with the upcoming nuptials and a need to not look bloated in my wedding dress, and one-fourth to do with turning 31 and having yet another cycle of existential angst.

Here's what I'm going to do: lose ten pounds by my wedding, and commit to writing for one hour per week, not including blog posts, which I will also commit to writing at least once a week. The blogging is not so important to life but I miss it and it does help my writing in some small way, so I might as well keep doing it even though I'm well aware I no longer have any readers. Plus I miss my memes!

So, we'll see how it goes.

So where was I before I was abducted by aliens?

2007-10-14T20:21:00.000-04:00

Yeah. It has occurred to me that I can only apologize so many times about not updating the blog before I start to sound disingenuous. So let me just say: it looks like the blogging is not really happening right now. I really wish I had the energy and the time to pay more attention to it, but for the time being I just don't. I'll continue to post things here and there as I feel the urge, but it won't be anything regular. Hopefully when we move to Olympia and my commuting-hell days are over with I'll get back to posting on a more reasonable schedule once again.

For now, know this:
-The wedding date is set for August 2, 2008. The ceremony will be in the Sunken Gardens on the Capitol Campus in Olympia, and the reception will be by Capitol Lake at the Heritage Room.

Bridezilla lives!

2007-09-08T18:11:00.000-04:00

I have achieved Dress. A dress, she has been bought. The dress which will be worn to the ceremony we call "Wedding" - that dress, the Ultimate Dress, is now hanging in my closet. WHOOPEE! It was slightly more expensive than I had been hoping for, but I (or rather my mom) had to buy it, because I'm sorry, it was The Dress. The One. The dress that every woman dreams about, the dress that is half-reality, half-myth - the dress that flatters my figure, makes my ass look small and my boobs look...OK, not big, but a good size anyway--and that actually makes my back, normally a no-man's land of flab and poor posture, appear svelte and toned. Sadly, I had to let another dress go that I was for the most part in love with except for the bodice, which was strapless and therefore unflattering - I need boobage enhancement, not boobage smooshment, which is what most strapless dresses seem to tend towards, plus I have this weird issue with armpit rolls of craptacular fatness. But other than that, the whole thing was lovely lovely lovely. *Sigh* But I'm still happy with the one I have, which really was much more flattering, and now I get to gaze at it with affection for another year.

So maybe the date still hasn't been set nor the venue booked, but the dress is good to go.

I am a monster

2007-09-02T14:04:00.001-04:00

This is according to Easy's new vet. To hear her tell it, I am a negligent asshole who shouldn't be left in charge of life forms any more complex than a begonia, much less sentient beings. Apparently I have single-handedly ripped Easy's kidneys to shreds by not getting her teeth cleaned regularly (which by the way, costs more than getting my own damn teeth cleaned, something I've only managed to do about twice in the past five years due to my crippling poverty problem), and by just in general being a lousy excuse for a human being. I have also damaged her 14-year-old joints by not feeding her special glucosomine supplements, and have made her a dumpy, bedraggled shell of a feline by not taking her to the groomers to get her matts shaved off.

Well, sorry.

And then we find out that Easy's kidney disease has progressed (no doubt because I am a terrible person), and that she will likely need to be given fluids through an IV a few times a week for the rest of her life. We've not been told yet how much this treatment is going to cost, but I can't wait to see the look on the vet's face when I tell her we can't afford it.

In other news, I am thoroughly enjoying Behind the Scenes in the Museum, and I feel bad about what I said in my last post. It is utterly charming and witty and is no less of a piece of literature just because it happens to be entertaining rather than depressing.

The post that almost didn't have a title, because I forgot to write one in

2007-08-19T11:42:00.000-04:00

So.....here I am again. I'm finding myself with very little to say these days, partially because I don't have the chance to read a lot of other blogs anymore, which I used to do in the the past, and which used to give me ideas for my own blog. Also I don't have as much free time both at work and in life in general, so I don't sit around and compose blog posts in my head the way I used to do. And with that build-up, let's go!

Here are some things:

-I used to lament our crappy cable package in Arlington, and was elated when were able to get an expanded set-up when we moved to Tacoma. We now get several HBO channels, BBC America, IFC, blah blah blah. However, I now spend more time flipping through channels than I do watching TV, because even when I find something I want to watch, I am always convinced that there might be something even better if I just keep flipping. By the time I cycle through all the channels, I've forgotten where the shows were that I would have considered watching, and I turn off the TV in defeat.
Message: Be happy with the cable channels you currently have.

-I am becoming retardeder and retardeder by the minute. Yesterday I stopped in at a nice little used bookstore on my way back home from a walk, but promised myself, since I am currently ass-poor what with all the moving expenses, that I was just going to buy one book. I found two books I wanted: Saturday by Ian McEwan in hardback for only $5 (apparently some of the end pages were torn out), or Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson in paperback for $6.50. And do you know which one I chose? Yes, the latter. Now, I guess I should mention that Behind the Scenes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year, so it's not like I was buying a Harlequin romance novel or something. But I think most people would agree that McEwan is the heavier literary hitter of the two. And not to mention, Saturday was a hardback and yet somehow cheaper than the paperback I chose. Oh well. My brain is dying, whoopety doo.

-I finished reading the seventh Harry Potter book a week or so ago, but I cannot record any reactions or criticism here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone else. All I will say is, now it's over. And what will I do without Harry Potter? Oh Ms. Rowling, how could you forsake us like this? Fine, just walk away with your billions and leave us. Cold-hearted bitch. *Sigh* I guess we still have two more movies to look forward to.

-I saw the movie Superbad last night. It was awesome. The language, it was so foul. The lines, they were so funny. And I hear tell that the movie is spot-on as far as the experience of a teenage boy goes. McLovin. Genius.

OK, I guess that pretty much wraps up the flotsam and jetsam of my mind for the past week. I will try my hardest to update more frequently, but once-a-week is sorta just where my life is at right now.

Um, so...I didn't die or anything

2007-08-12T11:31:00.000-04:00

Things have just been a little crazy, what with the moving into a shitty basement apartment and the living in Tacoma while working in Olympia and the going to a friend's wedding the first weekend after moving. I've had about five minutes of down time since July 30th, not that that excuses me, I'm just saying. Also, the new job--I think I'll like it, it seems pretty good so far, and I'm slowly getting the hang of things. But, for various reasons, I can't write blog posts while I'm at work. As for commuting - if you look it up in the OED, I believe you'll find it under the definition for "BITCH." As much as I love Tacoma--and I do love Tacoma--this was quite possibly the stupidest idea I've ever had. I get up at 5:30 a.m., get home between 6-6:30 p.m., work out for an hour, take a shower, and have approximately one hour of my very own to eat dinner and flip through channels before going to bed at 9:00. This is not a life, people. On top of it all, I gained five pounds during the last month and I'm supposed to be going wedding-dress shopping in September.

So much for life getting better back on the west coast. We're already thinking that we're just going to have to bite the bullet and move to Olympia once our lease is up, which is only in six more months, thank god. However, I will sorely miss my neighborhood in Tacoma. I live in the Stadium District, which is a really odd mix of old stately homes, quaint brick apartment buildings, condos, and crazy people. And for some reason we can't quite figure out, tattoo parlors. But nice ones, with very tasteful flames painted on the sides of the buildings. From my neighborhood I also get a nice view of the Sound and Commencement Bay, which seems miraculous after the monotonous urbanity of DC. Don't get me wrong, Olympia has water views, too--they're just not quite as awe-inspiring as those of Tacoma. Our apartment is in this incredibly lucky spot where we get the comforts of a wealthy residential neighborhood--trees, sidewalks, peace and quiet, beautifully landscaped yards--and yet are near the hustle and bustle of downtown (which is mostly hustle, what with the drug dealers and prostitutes, but still), AND have water views within blocks of our apartment. These types of neighborhoods don't really seem to exist in Olympia, at least not for renters.

But, on the other hand, I really can't see living the commuter life for much longer than I absolutely have to. Oh Metro, I loved you so...

...and I'm back.

2007-07-08T22:01:00.000-04:00

OK, here's the deal: I accepted the position in Olympia. After contacting HR at my alma mater, it became painfully clear that they were not going to interview me, so I really had no choice. Which is all well and good (and in fact it is neither well nor good, and I want to rip all of their fucking eyeballs out, but whatever). What really sucks is that THERE IS NO PLACE TO LIVE IN OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON. Let me qualify that: there is no GOOD place to live. After four solid days of searching and searching and driving around in circles through the city, we have come to the conclusion that law-abiding professional people who earn incomes and who do not beat either their wives or their children apparently do not rent properties in this fair city, because there are simply no decent places to rent. Every single apartment complex we saw was old and on the verge of collapsing, and the people going into or out of said complexes appeared to be sex offenders. And there are no houses for rent, at least not at this time, and most of the neighborhoods we looked at appeared to be the birth places of above-mentioned sex offenders.

In short, we have decided not to live in Olympia, though it will require me to commute an hour each way from North Tacoma (most of the rest of Tacoma also being replete with sex offenders). This saddens me, people. This saddens me a great deal. I do not enjoy the thought nor the act of commuting, and have sworn to myself on many an occasion that I would never be the single-car-driver-commuting-sap you see sitting miserably on the freeway at rush hour. But on the other hand, I cannot see myself living a mere paper-thin wall away from Cletus and Brandine as they whup some sense into their blended family. No thank you.

Viva la I-5!

So I guess this is goodbye

2007-06-23T20:51:00.000-04:00

For a bit anyway. Actually, probably no longer than I would usually make you wait between posts, oh my adoring public. But anyway, just wanted to let the peeps know that I'm smack in the middle of ALA and the painful moving process (well, BF assures me it's painful. I've been standing on the sidelines working and going to conferences and getting offered jobs while he's been doing the packing and running errands. Hey, it takes a village.) Where was I? Oh yeah, going to a conference. So I won't have much free time to post for awhile. The official move takes place on Wednesday, and then the following Thursday I go up to Olympia to check out that job - if all goes as planned, we'll probably be on our way up there for good in a few weeks.

Stay tuned.

My life, and the suckage it contains

2007-06-16T11:15:00.000-04:00

It's true, I really do never stop complaining. Wait till you hear what I'm complaining about now: I got a job offer from the place in Olympia (that's good). But the offer is for the same salary I currently make as a paraprofessional (that's bad). True, the cost of living in Olympia is cheaper than here by about a bajillion percent (that's the official number, look it up); however, as it stands now I am somewhat of a kept woman, with the BF largely taking the hit as far as rent and other "shared" bills are concerned. Which means, other than the fact that I now have to give up my feminist credentials, that my personal bills will not substantially diminish once I move, which means that I will continue to be on the verge of homelessness. Yes, I exaggerate, but it does mean that I won't be able to start saving for a house or for Canadian permanent-resident status or for retirement, all things that I had wanted to start doing sooner rather than later. As it stands now, I might be able to afford the down-payment on a house by 2040. But my children, should I have any, will just have to settle for working at the local Arco station, since I won't be able to send them to college. Especially since college tuition will be up to about $500,000 a semester, and that's just the state schools.

But seriously, think about this: I recently went to a budgeting-your-money type seminar, in which I was told that--prepare yourself, now--people our age (20-30) will need to have THREE MILLION DOLLARS saved in order to retire comfortably at the age of 65. That number is of course taking inflation into account, but still. That number scared the shit out of me. THREE MILLION DOLLARS. Just repeat that to yourself a few times and let the terror wash over you.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah, the job offer. So now I'm all conflicted - do I accept the job knowing that I will be poor for a few more years at least, but at least secure in the knowledge that a job is waiting for me, and it's a job that sounds to be interesting and secure (and btw, does not include evening or weekend hours)? Or do I refuse it, on the risky hope that I will receive a larger offer somewhere down the line? And even if I do receive a larger offer, will it come soon enough to offset the broke-ness of being unemployed for however long? It's a gamble, and I'm not a gambling woman.

Meh.

2007-06-11T11:58:00.000-04:00

I've just been looking around BookSwim (see below) and that is my official assessment: meh. First of all, their cheapest plan is $23.99 a month, which is 3 books at a time. You know what? I'm willing to take the extra 30 minutes out of my day to drive/walk/metro to the public library to avoid having to pay $24 bucks a month for my books. And the sad thing is, I very rarely read more than 3 books in one month anyway--in fact, I'd go out on a limb and say I NEVER read more than that. I'm too busy watching my Netflix DVDs.

Also, their searching mechanism sucks. I did a search for Pride and Prejudice and the actual book, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, did not show up anywhere within the first two pages of results. And when I browsed through their "British" books, the first two results were by American authors, A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Dude, hire new indexers. Books by Hemingway and Augusten Burroughs also show up in the top ten "British" books.

So browse their web site and decide for yourself, but unless you're stuck somewhere without a public library, I would say skip it for now. To be fair, BookSwim is still in beta, but I say it's probably not worth trying till the kinks get worked out.

Update on brainwave

2007-06-11T11:16:00.000-04:00

Well, the BF (aka KILLJOY) has informed me that he read somewhere last week that someone is going to start doing just the thing I had the brilliant idea for yesterday (you know, the Cybrary). Fine. I accept the fact that I have no new ideas, and will never get rich. That's just fine.*

*OK, I just did a quick Google search and the new service, called BookSwim, is already up and running. I'm going to poke around and see how much it costs, but I think we should all take a moment and note that "Cybrary" is a much more clever name, if not terribly original.

**I guess we should also take a moment and note that a librarian, who gets paid to work in a place that lends out books for free, is now pimping what is essentially a fee-based library. Although libraries generally will not mail books directly to your lazy ass, and therein lies the genius of this service.

Forgot to mention...

2007-06-10T21:59:00.000-04:00

I had a phone interview for a position in Olympia, WA, on Friday. While it didn't go too grotesquely awry, my hatred for phone interviews continues unabated. Nothing says "I'm your top candidate!" like awkward, blaring silences. And apparently my interview skills have improved zero percent in the past two years, since I still seem unable to BS my way through questions that throw me off balance. "Ummm..." just doesn't wow people the way I think it should.

Also, we tried unsuccessfully to rid ourselves of the automobile this weekend. We took it to Carmax and I told myself I was being reasonable to expect around $800, and really tried hard not to hope for more, even though I continued to have fantasies about getting an offer of $900, or even $1000. Because let's face it, this is no luxury vehicle we're talking about. It's about one step above a rickshaw, actually. But I have to say I died a little inside when the offer came back at--wait for it--$250. Uh. What? As BF pointed out, we could probably sell it for scrap metal and get more than that. So Carmax can kiss my ass. On to Plan B--pawning it off on an unwary stranger sometime in the next two weeks.

Brainwave!

2007-06-10T18:03:00.000-04:00

I think someone, possibly me, should put into effect a service similar to Netflix, only with books. Because I'm always thinking to myself, "That's a book I'd like to read," and then I always forget to write down the title and the next time I'm surfing the library catalog my mind goes blank and I can barely think of a single book I want. So wouldn't it be cool if you could just keep a running queue of books in your "Cybrary" (I'm quite sure I'm the first person to ever think up that word), and so when you finish one and send it back to the library, they automatically send you the next book on your list? No? Because keeping a running list of your own would just be too much trouble.

All of which is just my way of avoiding the packing process. Damn the boxes!

New York, NY - it's my kinda town

2007-06-02T14:41:00.000-04:00

I've been back from NYC for five days now, but I've been too busy doing things like sitting on my ass to update the blog. Actually, it's all part of my grand plan - I've been slowing down on the updates lately so as to wean you all for the time after I move, when my updates may become even more sporadic (as if). I say may because it occurs to me that after I move I will be unemployed once again, and will have plentiful time on my hands for writing all kinds of blogs. (Access to the Internet is another matter entirely, however.)

Anyway, this is all to say that I'm sorry, I know I suck for not updating more often. On to New York.

For someone who hates DC for its unrelenting urbanity, I actually really enjoyed New York, although I must qualify that by saying that I only experienced it on a holiday weekend when most of the locals were out of town, and I never had to deal with rush hour anything. The weather was stultifyingly hot and humid, which normally I find repugnant but under the circumstances I wasn't too perturbed by it. I finally see why all the tourists around here can walk around smiling inthe middle of our August heat waves, when all I feel like doing is punching someone in the face and making them drink my sweat. (Ew. That was a little over the line, eh?) I guess marinating in your own perspiration is a lot more tolerable when you're not trying to get to/from work without your melting the make-up off your face or sweating through your shirt.

We saw all the typical New York stuff, walked around a bunch, ate bagels for breakfast and pizza every other meal, saw Rent on Broadway, did the shopping on Fifth Avenue (I bought shoes at a Payless Shoe Source - yes, there's one on Fifth Ave.!). We also went to the top, actually the 86th floor, of the Empire State Building. This was the only sour note of the trip, as it became foot-achingly clear that trying to see the view from the Empire State Building at night on a holiday weekend was perhaps the stupidest plan we could have concocted. We also had the asinine-ness to try to do this immediately after seeing Rent, when I was still wearing heels and we hadn't had anything to eat or drink in several hours. Let's just say, after the first 45 minutes of waiting in an interminable line, I demonstrated some disgruntlement. The next 30 minutes became an exercise in pissed-offedness-to-the-extreme-degree, as the whole experience started to look like a facade to trap unwary tourists in a time-warp vortex where we continued to stand in line like idiots, hoping against hope that the elevators will appear just beyond the horizon, while eons pass in the outer world. Eventually, we did finally make it up, the view was very nice, and now I hope I never have to do that again.

All in all, though, I felt like I could actually fit in there - there's such an ecclectic mix of people, no one ever has to feel out of place. Plus everyone is always pushy and extremely irritable - finally, I've found a land where I could be my true self!

Anyway, so we had our nice little gut-twistingly expensive vacation, and now the real stress begins. We are now fully-offically moving at the end of June, with our plane tickets purchased and space on a moving truck reserved, so all that's left to do is sell the car, comb through all our belongings deciding what to pack, what to ship separately, and what to throw away, and combine that with applying for jobs and finishing up my last month of work on this coast. Piece of cake.

Oh the pain, the hideous pain

2007-05-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

Where to begin my tale of woe?

It would seem that I am doomed to live a life mired in physical agony. Obviously I am exaggerating and I realize that many people live with chronic pain much worse than mine, but just indulge me for the sake of this post.

So most of you, sadly, know about all the problems with my legs, because I've chronicled them exhaustively here. Well, the problem in my hip/pelvis (in medical speak, my right sacroiliac region) has only gotten worse as the months have passed, to the point where it was almost too painful to do anything more active than sitting on my ass. So I went back to my doctor, even though I said I wasn't going to, because he's on the metro line and it's too hard to get into doctors around here if you're a new patient, so I went ahead and went back to the same guy. Anyway, he wanted me to get a steroid injection into my sacroiliac joint, and I thought this was a good idea, too, since I was tired of the pain and just wanted to get it over with.

So after a week and a half of back-and-forth with my doctor's office trying to figure out a stupid insurance detail, I finally got an appointment for yesterday morning to have the damn injection. First, the morning started off with me taking a metro train and two busses to get out to the hospital where fancy radiologist doctor gives out said injections. Then I wandered around the hospital complex for about 20 minutes trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. I finally get there, have to do a bunch more waiting, and then I get to take off all my clothes, don a hospital gown, lie face down on the MRI table, and bare my naked ass to a roomful of male doctors and technicians for about 40 minutes while they figure out where to stick me. So it was a morning full of fun.

And here's how they figure out where to cause the maximum amount of pain--they take a 6-inch long needle, poke it into my bare ass, which is by the way hanging out for every male in the vicinity (about 5 or 6 of them) to see, and move me, verrrrry slowly, into and out of the MRI machine. Then they come back, move the needle approximately .2 mm to the left, and do the whole thing over again. They repeat this procedure two or three more times, then finally give me the injection. And have I mentioned that my ass, which is bare, is still naked and hanging out? To be perfectly honest, what hurt the most was the injection of anesthetic, so the pain from the actual injection of steroids and antibiotic were not as excruciating as I had feared--it was nothing compared to my latest root canal--but still, no walk in the park, either.

After the stabbing, I try to untangle myself from the sheets and hospital gown, which they have hiked up practically over my head, and they keep trying to barge in on me to see if I can walk OK, since apparently there was a chance that the local anesthetic would make my leg and foot numb, thus making me fall flat on my face. Meanwhile, my bare naked ass is still all over the place. (It turned out I could walk just fine, and in fact walked the mile from the hospital to the second bus, thus bypassing having to wait for the first bus.)

*Sigh*

The worst part is, I don't yet feel a huge relief from the pain, but it sure as hell better kick in, because I am not going through that shit again. Unless I can be guaranteed a roomful of female technicians and a female doctor this time.

[I guess I should note that, other than stabbing my ass repeatedly with a six-inch needle, the technicians and doctor were very nice, and were very concerned that I was there by myself and would have to *gasp* take public transportation "home," i.e. work.]

In other, more uplifting news, BF and I went to see Pretty Girls Make Graves on Sunday night, which was hugely enjoyable, except for the fact that it was Sunday and thus we both had to work the next day. Unfortunately it's their last tour, but they're playing their final show in Seattle on June 9th, so catch them if you can. I had never seen the band before, and interestingly, only the lead singer and keyboardist were girls. Who knew.

Anyway, the BF and I are headed to NYC tomorrow for the long Memorial Day weekend, so stay tuned for forthcoming NYC blog fodder. Hopefully fodder of the non-mugging variety. Please, let there be no mugging fodder.

Things I will miss about DC

2007-05-17T17:43:00.000-04:00

Number one. Nuuuuumberrr one..........*chirping of crickets*

Kidding. Of course there are things I will miss, even though today I am particularly grumpy at the metro (subway system) for making me a half-hour late to work, a half-hour which I will have to take out of my VERY OWN personal sick leave, which is by the way unacceptable, but since I'm pretty sure no one who reads this blog works for metro, nevermind.

Things I Will (Mostly) Miss About DC When I Am Gone, Which Will Be Soon

1. The subway (most of the time - the rest of the time metro can eat shit and die)

2. Only having to drive a car once a week, to get groceries at Safeway

3. Having the option, not that I ever exercise it, to hear any type of live music or go to any club I get a hankering for any night of the week (and as a corollary: to have said venue be lively and full of people on any night)

4. Being in walking-distance to a number of decent bars

5. The plethora of cabs, and the ability to hail cabs on the street from most places I would ever venture, and that the cabs are mostly reasonably-priced

6. Any type of museum I could imagine within a short subway ride, totally free of charge and open every day but Christmas

7. Cool fireworks

8. Pretty much any major thing that happens in the country, I hear it first (OK, not me specifically, but the news media out here)

9. Intellectual vibrancy, and the vast amount of people who are interested in and pay attention to current events (usually because it's their job to do that, but whatever)

10. Access to nationally-renowned cultural stuff, like Broadway plays, major musical acts, author talks, etc.

11. The E-Street Cinema, purveyor of indie movies, beer, wine, espresso, brownies--things you can't get at a regular old AMC theatre--in a comfortable, well-run establishment. The Grand Theatre in Tacoma (which is neither grand nor a theatre, discuss) is not even comparable.

So now, to be fair, I must also list out the things I will NOT miss.

Things I Will Not Miss About DC When I Am Gone, Which Will Be Soon

1. The assholes. Oh my god, the huge number of assholes I encounter on a daily basis (I am probably one of them, but I don't care.)

2. Have I ever mentioned how much the humidity sucks here? I'm not sure that I have. Well, the humidity, it is SO BAD and it SUCKS.

3. The cost of living. If I told you how much money I pay to rent a smallish one-bedroom apartment (which by the way does not include utilities of any sort), you would cry. You would probably also slap me for being such a sucker.

4. Almost getting run over by ASSHOLES every single time I venture across the street. In crosswalks. With the walk-light clearly in my favor. Every. Single. Time.

5. The lack of fruit-and-vegetable markets and bakeries, which I'm sorry to say are also lacking in the Tacoma/Seattle area. Let's all take a cue from Vancouver shall we? And also, the mere fact that all berries in this city are sold in tiny little packages in grocery stores for $5.00 a half-pint. RIDICULOUS.

6. The very tiny percentage of restaurants that offer tasty food at reasonable prices.

7. The pretentiousness. Guess what? Not every one here gets paid a lot of money, so why pretend like you do? Why is shopping at Marshall's made to seem so shameful? I like Marshall's. I proudly shop at Marshall's. (Marshall's is the same as Ross).

8. There is no natural beauty. I mean, there are green pockets here and there, but you have to drive over an hour to see any sort of view, and same goes for mountains or water--they require hours of driving to get to. Meh. I'd rather step out my front door and see those things, thanks.

9. There are many, many Republicans. And they pop up where you least expect them. Think your co-worker is a reasonable person with a progressive outlook on global warming and gay marriage? Think again.

10. The great yawning chasm between rich and poor, white-collar upper class-mummy-and-daddy-sent-me-to-an-elite-prep-school-and-pulled-
strings-to-get-me-into-Harvard-and-then-they-supported-me-while-I
-took-an-unpaid-internship-and-now-I-have-a-high-paying-job-at-the-
age-of-24 types versus people who work one or sometimes two or three mediocre jobs just to pay the bills and who struggle every month just to make ends meet types. Seriously, the disparity seems so much larger here between those who've never lived a day in their life where they actually worried about making it to the next paycheck and those who either fail to make ends meet or are very close to failing. It's shocking to me. I've never encountered so many extremely wealthy people or extremely impoverished people in one vicinity before in my life.

The dizzying highs! The terrifying lows! I've got to live, Marge, won't you let me LIVE?

2007-05-10T19:16:00.000-04:00

Hey kids. Not much new here. Except, did I remember to tell you, we're MOVING?! Yeah, but other than that, everything is just kinda boring.

I've been feeling very incompetent at work lately, I think partly due to the fact that I'm doing a brainless job anyone who breathes could perform with minimal training, so anytime I slip up I get mad at myself for screwing up something my cat could do in her sleep. I feel like yelling to myself, "COME ON, lady! You only have five tasks to do throughout the day, and you screw up ONE of them? What good are you?"

So you can see, I'm not going into the new job-hunt cycle with a lot of confidence. But on the bright side, my utter lack of skills, experience, articulation, and self-esteem should provide for some hilarious blog fodder.

Oy vey. Why am I putting myself through this again? Oh yes, because I hate it here.

In other news, did I mention I went to a black-tie event at the Ritz-Carlton last weekend? It was fun, and not as scary as you would think for a girl who grew up in Boise, Idaho, one generation removed from farmers and loggers. I was a little nervous at the beginning, though, and not because I'm from Boise, but because I was wearing a rather, ahem, low-cut dress and I was afraid that one wrong move would give away all my secrets, if you know what I mean. The dress was cut in a way that made wearing a bra basically impossible, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money buying those boob-cup things, and frankly I don't even know how they're supposed to work anyway. So I thought I would just stick on some double-sided tape J.Lo style and be done with it. But the only problem was that I forgot to buy the double-sided tape. So, in my urgency to find something to prevent slippage in the five seconds I had until the cab came to pick us up, instead I opted for doubling over some regular pieces of Scotch tape. Long story short: not the best idea.

In the end, after much frantic tugging and surreptitious boob-tape checking and hiding under my (transparent) wrap-ing, decided the hell with the tape and just took it off. Which actually worked out okay as long I kept an eye on the girls and made sure to keep my shoulders back and my posture ram-rod straight.

My hair was another story, but then my hair is terminally ill to begin with, so we can't really blaming it for looking like death. I would post a photo of the soiree, but I don't own the photos that were taken at the event, so sadly, you'll just have to leave my low-cut dress and ugly hair to your imaginations.

But yeah, other than the boob-tape debacle, I think the evening went pretty well, except for the fact that none of the BF's coworkers talked to me. I guess I probably forgot to mention that the event was sponsored by BF's work, and I don't know why no one talked to me--they weren't mean, they just weren't very talkative. But I got to dance with the BF and get slightly jiggy with it, so you know. Oh, and also there was free food and a dessert buffet and an open bar, and did I mention it was the Ritz-Carlton? Good times.

And that, my friends, was my week in a nutshell.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I will give a blow-by-blow account of vacuuming the apartment.

DC, I hardly knew ye

2007-05-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

I guess it's now semi-official--the BF and I are moving back to the Northwest at the end of June.

Let's all breathe a sigh of relief.

I'm not quite sure what will happen with this blog after that point since I won't have DC to rail against anymore, but I'm pretty much a born complainer (no! you say), so I'll probably be whining and moaning about my life in this space for a long time to come. There might be a bit of a hiatus for a while after we move, though, since for at least a month or so we'll be living along the fringes of Middle of Nowhere. We're not exactly sure where we'll be after that, although we are thinking of going back to Tacoma for a bit. We still have friends in the area, we know it well, and it's cheaper than Seattle. And I might have a job prospect there, but it's too soon to know for sure and I don't want to jinx it by saying anything else.

This weekend has erased any doubts, if ever doubts existed, about my determination to get the hell out of here. For two consecutive nights the BF and I hung out with people from various internships he's held while living here, and since his degree involves public policy, all the people were very bureaucratic, entrenched DC-types. Not a single one of them could understand why we would want to move to, of all places, the Pacific Northwest. They know we're from there, all of our family and friends live back there, but still, they couldn't see the logic.

And this is why I want to move.

One person in particular kept asking us, "Isn't it going to be hard to find a job out there? What are you going to do for work?" (As though there are no cities or government institutions or industries in the Northwest, just vast open wasteland. And lumber.)

This is why I want to move.

When BF told him we don't like it here because everyone out here is so career-driven, he laughed skeptically, then proceeded to talk about his job for three more hours. Three loooooong hours.

This is why I want to move.

I need to be able to talk to people about more than my job, because my job a) isn't that interesting to talk about, and b) sucks. And I need to know that I am more than just my stupid boring job. I need everyone else to know this, too.

Here is my bulletin to the the little buzzing worker bees of DC:

PEOPLE. THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING, OR HOW MUCH MONEY YOU EARN.

So yay! I get to move!

P.S. I guess I should also mention that the BF successfully completed his master's degree, which is why we finally get to move.

Preaching to the choir (sorry)

2007-04-28T12:32:00.000-04:00

Since the seventh Harry Potter book is due to come out in July, and since I have nothing else of consequence to write about, let us enter into a conversation regarding the so-called evilness that is Harry Potter.

Point 1: People, please. Do you really, and I mean honestly, have nothing better to do with your time than to protest the school and/or library board of your local municipality over their selection of these books? Wouldn't it be easier for all of us if you went ahead and took your medication and got some sort of useful hobby, like knitting?

Point 2: Do you want to suck all the fun out of childhood? I guess you don't remember daydreaming during social studies or long-division, wishing you could fly or magically disappear or eat really cool candy or turn someone into a toad. Honey, we have a word for these kinds of fantasies and daydreams. It's called FICTION. If you want to protest something, protest the non-fiction books about the occult, of which I'm sure your local library is filled (actually, I'm kidding here - don't protest them. We also have words for things like that: "democracy" and "open society" come to mind.)

Point 3: Here's what I don't get: no one ever protests the Wizard of Oz anymore. Is it because we've come to accept it as part of our whimsical childhood canon? Is it because EVERYONE and I mean everyone in the western hemisphere has seen the movie about a scillion times, and has come to regard the witches and wizards and other magical creatures in the book and movie exactly as they were intended to be regarded; i.e. as figments of a writer's imagination?

Point 4: I guess what I'm saying is: CHILLAX. Unless your children are developmentally disabled, and even if they are, come to think of it, they will get that this stuff is meant to be a fun little release from reality, and not meant to be practiced at midnight with the local witches' coven.

I think the real problem here is not that people are afraid their kids will somehow get sucked into the occult by reading these books, but that those very same people seem to believe the occult is REALLY weaving an evil, book-purchasing spell around our children as we sit idly by. I'm not saying the occult isn't real--or more to the point, that people don't believe the occult to be real; what I'm saying is that people do not have the power to cast spells on other people. Get a grip. MAGIC DOESN'T REALLY EXIST. And you call yourselves Christian?

Oh, and here's a Point 5 for you: You cannot argue that Harry Potter embodies sin and bad value systems and whatever else you want to say. He embodies standing up for oneself, practicing what one believes in, and fighting the herd-mentality of society that causes people to support things they know to be bad and wrong. (I'm sure there was a more eloquent way of saying that but I'm a little sleep-deprived right now.) These are values every good Christian should stand up and applaud!

I don't get people.

What a week

2007-04-22T10:14:00.000-04:00

We live in a sick, sad world. And that's really about all the energy I have right now to comment on Monday's horrific events. Every day at work this week has been like attending an eight-hour funeral and I'm just drained.

What makes me particularly angry about this whole thing is that it showcases to the world the most violent aspect of our supposedly civilized society. And we ARE a violent society--this country was founded by guerrilla fighters who started a war with the British because they had the audacity to tax our TEA, for crying out loud. And I won't even go into a tirade over gun control laws because I think this incident speaks loud enough for everyone to hear. (And by the way, I don't think the usual argument--"criminals can get their hands on guns if they want them badly enough, whether or not they're legal"--applies in this case, since this was a middle-class kid from suburbia with a clean criminal background. I don't for a minute believe he would have known where to get an illegal handgun.)

Violence runs through our veins, and each school shooting and Waco and Oklahoma bombing and invasion of Iraq--which I'm sorry, these things DO NOT happen on a regular basis in most other western countries--highlights to the world what we so like to keep hidden under our SUV-driving, Starbucks-drinking facades.

OK, I guess I had a little more energy than I thought.

Anyway, now I'm rambling and I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than that I really, really want to go back to Canada.

And now I'm tired of talking about death and tragedy. During my weekly Thursday afternoon perusal of the Internets, I came across this really stupid thing on the Best of Craigslist, entitled "143 Reasons I Will be the Best Girlfriend You've Ever Had". So to lighten the mood, I've made up my own, opposing list. Enjoy.

Reasons why I will NOT be the best girlfriend you ever had (and I don’t give a shit if I am or not)

I don’t give a shit if I am or not. Being in love with someone is not a competition.
I don’t like the color purple. Ok, that’s a lie, but the point is, wtf does color preference have to do with it?
I go to the gym, but I still have some cellulite and I don’t look like a supermodel. Sorry.
I like to eat. A lot.
I don’t keep up my nails.
I rarely get my toes done.
I drive an automatic, when I drive, and I will never learn how to drive a manual.
I don’t want to watch you work on your car. It will not get me hot. What I WOULD like to see is you volunteering to take the car into the shop to get worked on without me having to constantly nag.
I don’t care what kind of car you drive.
I drive a 1996 Ford Contour, baby! Does that get your motor running?
I’m short but not little, and it makes me mad that I always have to look up to you. (And why would you find it a turn-on for a woman to always have to crane her neck to see you?)
I wear granny panties.
My hair isn’t long.
I can’t guarantee you I won’t steal food off your plate. I’m fat, remember?
I won’t always let you be the “man” in the relationship. Whatever that means. I will assert my opinions in ways that I see fit, and I might be aggressive about it if I feel I need to be.
I don’t always smell good, particularly early in the morning or after I work out. There’s a little thing humans do, called sweating. I sweat.
I don’t even know what “ghost ride” means.
I’m 30 with the mind of a 30-year-old and the heart of a 30-year-old. If I act like I’m 10, please slap me.
I might “burden you” with my PMS problems. I can’t help it – it’s PMS. And if you get on my case about it, I might start yelling or crying hysterically. Or I might just shove a piece of cake in my mouth and ignore you.
I don’t have any of my childhood belongings with me because I’m an adult.
You + Me + Dancing + Outdoors + Rain = Afternoon spent being miserable because I hate being cold and wet, and you WILL hear about it.
If I “accidentally” leave my underwear in your bed, you have my permission to be grossed out.

There are no words.

2007-04-18T20:29:00.000-04:00

Reasons #1 - 1,097 not to live here

2007-04-10T19:36:00.000-04:00

This article by Gene Weingarten pretty much sums up why Washington, D.C. is the worst place on the planet. You might be surprised!

Since I am not naive enough to believe that anyone will actually click on the link and read the article, here it is in a nutshell. The Washington Post hired Joshua Bell, a world-renowned violinist, to play at a metro station, disguised him as a street performer, and watched what happened. Would people be amazed by the beauty of this man's performance, stop to listen, create a crowd of onlookers? Would the man be recognized as the musical virtuoso he is, would he make a load of cash? The answer to all these questions: no. Only a handful of people even looked at the guy, much less stopped to listen to his masterful playing, much less gave him any money. Would I have stopped? Probably not, because, as I have made abundantly clear, this city has eaten my soul alive.

This is what why.i.hate.dc had to say about it:

The other reason I'd walk right on by is that Washington gives its citizens cancer of the soul where the daily grind and death by paper cut slights and inconveniences make it impossible to appreciate anything. I thought that was just me. But this Post article seems to imply otherwise. It's everyone. I mean, check out those videos. The commuters look like cows going to the slaughter. Not even a virtuoso can brighten their day. Yeah, D.C. is awesome like that.

I tend to agree.

P.S. I've added something new to my blog, which I realize no one cares about but which I am going to tell you about anyway. It's a link to my new reading log (see sidebar), in which I will critique and/or discuss books I'm reading. It's mostly for my own amusement but feel free to read if you like.

Here's the part where I quote Wayne's World

2007-04-07T22:53:00.000-04:00

Hey, where you going? OK, OK, I'm sorry! Come on back, come on back. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Sorry to be such a downer all the time. But hey, this won't last forever - spring is just around the corner, or so I hear. I wouldn't know, since it snowed again last night. Last night being a night in APRIL. But, you know what they say, April snowstorms bring May NOTHING. I mean, I can accept snow in April if, say, I was in the mountains. However, not only am I not in any mountains, I am no where near a mountain, or even a small hill. Or I could accept snow in April if I lived above the Arctic Circle. Then snow would not only be OK, it would probably be expected. Snow in April is not acceptable, however, if one lives in the midst of a swampy plain, where half the year it is so hot I cannot walk out my front door without breaking into a sweat.

But I digress. Despite the weather sucking my ass, two very good things happened today.

1) We bought a ring. What I remember of it is very pretty, although the details are kind of fuzzy in my mind. We have to have it sized and the stone set, so it'll be about a month before I see it again. But still, ring bought=yay.

2) We just got home from seeing Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriquez double feature. While it is incredibly gory, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, when I wasn't trying not to wretch. I will probably never watch it again, as it is an incredible investment of time, particularly time during which one cannot snack, since one would run the risk of puking all over strangers if one were to see it on a full stomach. Still, the ending of the second film will have you screaming "BOOYAH, MOTHERFUCKER!" and you will feel like kicking the shit out of someone, but in a good way.

Realizations

2007-04-03T17:38:00.000-04:00

It has become increasingly evident to me that I am in the wrong field. By “field” I refer to librarianship, in particular, reference service. I do not like working with people (hence the title of this blog); I do not enjoy helping people figure things out, nor do I enjoy answering their questions, helping them find information, or explaining things in a thorough and patient manner. My ideal job would be to sit in a dusty back room somewhere and never talk to anyone. I sort of knew this was my predilection while I was in library school (ok, honestly, I knew it outright from the beginning), but I thought that I would be able to find jobs in librarianship that would enable me to work more with books than with people. I was wrong. I mean, those kinds of jobs exist, they just don’t exist for me. Most of my background, unfortunately, has been in reference services, and I have no experience doing things that would get me away from people--like say, collection management or cataloging. (And I’m not detail-oriented enough to be a cataloger anyway). I had hoped to work in an environment that would allow me to do a variety of tasks and thus take the focus off all-people all-the-time--and I believe it is probably true that in a decently staffed, normal-sized library, I would only have to work 2-3 hours per day on the reference desk, thus enabling me to keep a modicum of my sanity--but this is not the job I currently have. In the job I have now, I sit on the reference-information-circulation-help-me-I-don’t-know-how-to-use-a-computer desk 6-8 hours a day (the six-hour days are the days when I’m scheduled to be in 2 hours before the library opens). I have no private work space at all, nor any space I can escape to during the day. I don’t drive, so I don’t even have a car I can go sit in if I need to. Most of the time I’m so bored I could cry, which is no fun, but it’s even less fun to be constantly in the public eye, where I can’t even listen to music or have private phone conversations (which makes it a real blast when I have to make an appointment with the lady-parts doctor).

In a nutshell, all-people-every-day DRIVE ME CRAZY. I cannot take this anymore. The combination of the constant boredom plus the mainly customer-service aspects of this job are making me really unhappy. I never thought I would be this age, still struggling at a menial position for peanuts, and doing it in front of the whole world. I feel like my brain is dying.

Help me, Internet!

And while you're at it, check out my new and improved Shameless Self Promotion on the sidebar. OK, it's not really improved, but it is new. OK, it's not really new, but at least it's been updated.

My apologies to the Ducks

2007-03-27T20:01:00.000-04:00

It's my fault Oregon lost on Sunday (or whenever the hell it was), because I had to go and root for them, and I know damn well that any team I ever want to win anything never ever wins. So I should have just kept my mouth shut and tried to forget that I knew of a team called the Ducks. Ducks? Ducks who? So, I'm sorry, everyone. I've let you down once again.

The only even half-way vaguely interesting thing going on in my life right now is that I've started watching Extras, the British Ricky Gervais show that's basically just Ricky Gervais being himself, only there are celebrities involved. It is of course a slice of Ricky Gervais heaven, a slice that makes you cringe and wince and bury your head in the couch cushions to get away from all the awkwardness and unbearable social faux pas. So pretty damn funny.

In wedding news, I'm trying to get all geared up for bridezilla-ness and have been reading bridal forums and glancing at Modern Bride magazine, but alas, everything is still too up-in-the-air to begin planning anything. We don't know where we're going to be living this summer, or next summer, or the fall and winter and spring preceding next summer, and we have yet to even narrow down which state--nay, which country-- we'd like to have the wedding in. So I'm in bridezilla limbo. Here's a question, though, for any of you who may be a former bride or know former brides: do you think a simple yet elegant wedding can be orchestrated from the opposite coast of which said wedding will be taking place with only minor nervous breakdowns, and with the couple getting married still speaking to one another by the day of the wedding? Or is that so far away from the realm of possibility as make getting anywhere near Possibility completely fruitless even with a map and typed-out directions?

Go Ducks!

2007-03-24T09:07:00.000-04:00

So I see that Oregon made it to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament (notice how I sound all like I know what I'm talking about). Not that I have been able to watch any of the games, because (a) me and sports on TV don't mix, but more importantly (b) the network affiliates out here are not aware that there is a whole nuther part of the country beyond the Mississippi River, so they never broadcast any of those games. They probably think that Oregon is one of them Canadian thingamajigs, or maybe just one of those U.S. protectorates, like Guam. So anyway, even though I am not normally much a sports fan, being forced to put up with a bunch of east coast sports snobs makes me happy that our Northwest boys are representing.

In cat news today, the BF is taking Easy to the vet because of her chronic constipation. Oh, the lovely, lovely charms of elderly cats. I, of course, am working, much as I work just about EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE, so will not be in attendance. He's no doubt looking forward to the visit with as much anticipation as one looks forward to one's own visit to the butt doctor, but what can you do. My "job" (which consists mainly of babysitting the printer and copy machine and listlessly surfing the web) sucks all of my time and my life and my will to create anything meaningful. I had a moment of clarity on the subway this morning, wherein I suddenly realized that I only have a finite amount of time on this planet, and yet every moment I spend in this city in this hateful job is completely wasted.

Yeah, so I'm pretty cheerful today. Although still glad that Oregon won last night.

Senile dysfunction

2007-03-22T19:22:00.000-04:00

A few things.

1) It seems that my 14-year-old cat is going senile in her golden years. Is this even possible? There doesn't seem to be any other explanation for her behavior, though--I mean, she's not banging into walls or anything, but what used to be her funny little foibles and quirks have lately turned into full-blown neuroses. For example, she's always been picky about her water dish - she does NOT like stray objects in her water while she's drinking, and this includes cat hairs, dust mites, and itty bitty bits of food (I guess I can't blame her there; it is kind of disgusting to have floaties in your water) - and will splash the water repeatedly with her paw in order to expel the offending debris. She has done this since I adopted her as a kitten, and it's just been one of her odd little things. However, since her kidney disease diagnosis she's gone off the deep end with the splashing splashing splashing SPLASHING. It's gotten to the point where we'll set a completely cleansed and newly filled bowl of water in front of her and she won't even so much as sniff it before the splashing commences. We wake up in the middle of the night to her splashing. We can't walk into the kitchen without wading through a pond of her splashed water, and we've had to change socks more than once because we forgot that, oh yes, our cat has gone insane and splashes water water EVERYWHERE! Of course, her brain is too small to realize that sticking her grubby, furry, dirt-and-litter-covered paw into the water only makes things worse for herself, and I often find a disgusting cement-like substance churning in the bottom of her dish from the various sand and dirt grains she's transported into her Sea of Tranquility.

Another example of her sudden-senility onset: ever since I lived in an apartment in Vancouver that housed a particularly large, cavernous, dusty-and-dark-corned closet where incidentally her cat food was kept, she has chosen one closet in my apartment with which to become obsessed, I guess in the hope that suddenly one day that same closet with the shadowy expanses of investigatory bliss will suddenly open unto her. In my current apartment, her closet of choice is the laundry closet in the bathroom where the washer and dryer are. There is nothing else in this closet except a broom, because there is no room in there for anything else. She knows this, and she has been shown the washer and the dryer many times and found them lacking in interesting features. Yet her obsession with getting a peek inside that closet continues unabated. That sort of behavior I have taken for granted as semi-normal, because she is silly and old and apparently her memory is hazy. But what used to be occasional begging for the magical closet door to be opened whenever BF or I were in the bathroom has turned into a sudden lunge for the bathroom anytime one of us stands up or moves in any direction that MIGHT indicate a visit to that hallowed ground, and she now spends much of her free time sitting in the bathroom staring at the closed closet door.

Should I start calling nursing homes?

2) Anyway. I have decided that Girl Scout cookies should be declared illegal, because 1) they are fattening and are contributing to the obesity epidemic of the nation, and 2) they are laced with crack or a crack-like substance. How else to explain how a calm, rational person can sit down with a box of Girl Scout cookies and think to oneself, "OK, I am going to have two reasonably-sized cookies and then close up the box and put them in the cupboard and not even contemplate eating any more until tomorrow," and then suddenly find oneself thirty minutes later in a fat-induced stupor at the kitchen table staring at an empty box of cookies, with smears of chocolate in one's hair and on one's clothing.

I'm not saying this happened to me, I'm just saying - those cookies ain't right.

My home and native land

2007-03-18T22:03:00.000-04:00

I want to marry British Columbia.

California's OK, too. (But only in a strictly platonic sense.)

Sorry, haters

2007-03-17T16:07:00.000-04:00

I apologize for my lackadaisical updating as of late, but don't worry, you haven't missed much. I had planned to go into a diatribe about the weather here, but I can't muster the strength anymore. I have surrendered to the will of the mid-atlantic climate. Which sucks. [In case you're wondering though - after the last snowfall we had about five days of warmer, mild weather; on Thursday the high was in the mid-70s, then the temp plummeted by 40 degrees Thursday evening, and it snowed/sleeted again much of the day yesterday.]

What else? I've started watching the Up series - 7 Up, 7 plus 7, 21 Up, etc. - a British documentary series that follows the lives of kids in different socioeconomic classes and catches up with them every seven years. The most recent installment, which I haven't gotten to yet, is 49 Up. I highly recommend watching the films, not so much because any of them are great documentaries in and of themselves, but because it's fascinating to see how the individuals mature and change over time. But then I'm an inveterate eavesdropper, nosey-rosey, and voyeur, so there you go. One of the more interesting facets of the series I've noticed is that as seven-year-olds, there is an obvious distinction between the upper and lower class kids, as far as vocabulary, articulateness (is that a word? whatever it is, it's obviously something I lack), and comfort in front of the camera. However, by the time the kids are 14 those distinctions have for the most part been obliterated and by 21, many of the lower class kids have become in some ways if not more articulate, then at least more self-aware than the upper class ones. And they definitely seem happier. Also, the kids from the lower classes become insulted whenever it's hinted that the upper class kids in the documentary may have had more opportunities - they are very proud of their lives and seem quite content with the way they've turned out so far. I'm really looking forward to seeing how their lives progress and am secretly rooting for certain ones to succeed and others to be taken down a peg or two.

Lastly, BF and I went to Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend just for the hell of it. It was fun if uneventful. We walked around the University of Virginia campus, which was beautiful and made me wonder why I didn't go to school there, and also visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. Oh, and we drank a lot and ate a bunch of food. Good times.

Then today I bought two boxes of Girl Scout cookies even though I knew I shouldn't. But I did anyway. And they were good.

Um, didn't we just talk about this?

2007-03-08T10:53:00.000-05:00

I give up. Winter and I are no longer on speaking terms. But you can tell Winter for me that he can shove his snow right up his icy cold butt.

P.S.S. to Winter

2007-03-06T14:19:00.000-05:00

OK, now you're just being creepy. I thought I made myself clear last week when I said I didn't want to see you anymore. But today I get up, and whose ugly face do I spot out the window? YOURS. I see you hanging around everywhere I go, and it's just really starting to bug me. Am I gonna have to file a restraining order? Geez, JUST LEAVE ME ALONE ALREADY.

And don't even think about snowing tomorrow. I am so totally serious. Because that would just be crazy insane. Do you hear what I'm saying? Insane.

Not much going on, really

2007-03-03T20:10:00.000-05:00

Some detritus:

1) Lately I've been feeling like starting public brawls. Mostly I get this feeling in situations dealing with the subway. For instance, when someone cuts in front of me at the turnstile, my first instinct is to punch them in the throat.* Is that wrong?

2) I've been so bored during work this past week that I've started reading all of Dooce's archives, beginning with the first post. I'll probably finish them tomorrow at work. Tomorrow being Sunday. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

3) Aforementioned boredom has gotten me depressed about my life again. For awhile I was feeling OK, since I was just happy to be away from the Job From Hell, but now I'm itching to do something with my life once again. Of course, we've already established that there are no libraries in this city that will hire me as a librarian, and if they will hire me, there is something very very wrong with them.

4) My legs have started hurting in all the same old places again, and my shin splints are worse than ever. I need a leg transplant. And today I just received a $74.50 bill from my doctor. Yeah, I got your money right here, buddy.

5) The weather warmed up this week, and all the snow from last Sunday has melted. I remain prayerful, in my atheistic way, that winter does not rear its ugly head once again. Living in the South-that-doesn't-know-it's-the-South has made me even more of a wimp than I had previously been.

*So far I've been successfully stifling this instinct. Who knows how long it will take me to snap, though.

Snow: that is so, like, two weeks ago

2007-02-25T14:16:00.000-05:00

Views from my window, Sunday, Feb. 25

Note to Winter:

OK, I know we had a thing there for a while, and it was all hot and heavy and I really thought I was in love for a second. But, you know, that was a few weeks ago, and now it's just like you're here all the time, and you're just getting way too intense for me. I need my space. So basically what I'm saying is that I think we need to start seeing other seasons. I'm just not that into you anymore.

So, like, bye, m-kay?

P.S. And you can stop with the snow. That is so not impressing anyone.

My week in a nutshell: Sudafed and unemployment

2007-02-22T19:49:00.000-05:00

You know what is excellent? Only having to work 3 days in one week, especially if you only had to work 4 days the week before. Last week of course was the snowy icy week, and this week I had a cold, so I took a day off, even though I felt immensely guilty about it and yet joyous at the same time. What finally persuaded me to stay home was the fact that I rarely have the opportunity to take a sick day when I'm actually not feeling well, either because I'm trying to save my sick leave for something else (like a vacation--shhhh!), or because with our vast staff of four, there's usually not enough desk coverage for another person to be gone. So I decided that since I actually had the leave to spare and enough people were around that day for me not to be missed, I may as well go ahead and live it up at home.

And what did I do with all my free yet sinus-congested time? Well, I made a semi-weekly trip to CVS, I browsed somewhat foggily through a bookstore (it's hard to focus when the right side of your head feels as though it may pop like a tick at any moment), and I made my famous cold-curing (not really) chocolate-oatmeal cookies.

Yes, I've had an exciting week!

So I finished reading Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich. Reading it made me feel both vindicated in my own anger and depression in the face of my one-year plus job search which, while currently in hibernation, has never really ceased, and also it made me feel like going on a shooting spree. What Ehrenreich really struck to the heart of was this mantra in the white-collar work force that every individual is responsible for their own bad luck and misfortune. They are told constantly by everyone in power that if they aren't finding jobs it's not because the economy is bad or that companies are consistently outsourcing their jobs; it's because there's something wrong with them. Something about them makes them inferior human beings. And you know what? I totally bought into that mindset. I thought, and still a little bit do think, that some intangible thing about me makes me unemployable, even though I have a decent education, a decent employment history, and good recommendations.

Ehrenreich also dismissed as ludicrous pretty much everything my library management professor held dear, and which I secretly mocked even as I was held in thrall by his tyranny: Myers-Briggs personality tests, "elevator" speeches, faceless and humorless managers who have no soul. I wish I could be her friend.

In summary--good book, but not especially uplifting. About the only thing you can take from it is that if you have the misfortune to be unemployed in this economy, you're fucked.

Also, I see from the lack of response to last week's challenge that either no one read the blog, which is entirely possible, or you all hate me. Fine. Whatever.

Reverse psychology never works

2007-02-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

At some point in my online ramblings yesterday I ran across this Valentine's Day list challenge on the Washington Post's Celebritology blog. Basically it asks readers to list their perfect Valentine's Day dates, but the dates have to be fictional characters. Somehow this inspired me to think of a list of whom I would consider a perfect Valentine if I were a member of the opposite sex or the opposite sexual orientation. I think maybe what got me on this line of thinking was the fact that almost everyone who submitted a list to the blog was a straight female.

*I should just add that I am once again at work on a Saturday morning. I really need to find another job.*

List of (Real) People I Think I Would Find Attractive if I Were a Straight Male or Gay Female, All Other Things Being Equal

1. Tina Fey. She's cute, funny, and acerbic, plus she always wears those naughty so- geeky-they're-cool glasses, which I hear men find really hot.

2. Cate Blanchett. Effortlessly beautiful, but with talent and personality. She's the Colin Firth of women - hot but completely unattainable. [Aside: Have you heard about the Ralph Fiennes scandal? So tragic. I liked him so much. Too bad he turned out to be scum.]

3. Kate Winslet. So British and pretty and charming but normal-seeming. My own BF does not see her appeal, which I simply do not understand.

4. Salma Hayek. I threw her in there just because pretty much all men seem to want her in a purely sexual way.

5. Audrey Tautou. A) She's French. B) She's cute, petite, perky, quirky in a Winona-Ryder kinda way, and C) She's French.

I defy you all to make a similar list and post it in the comments. Post at your own peril! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Now I don't have a good post title

2007-02-16T16:46:00.000-05:00

The original title of this post was going to be either "Bridge to Terabithia...NOT!" or "Bridge to TeraBITCHia," and was going to involve my vociferous objections to the movie adaptation of the beloved children's novel by Katherine Patterson. I was going to go into this rage-a-thon because from what I can tell from the trailers, it looks like the movie-makers completely ruined what is supposed to be a wrenching emotional story of friendship and loss, instead turning it into a CGI fantasy wonderland of kittens and elves, completely bypassing the nuance of Patterson's gentle yet sorrowful tale. I was going to say how this is such a moving piece of literature, how even when re-reading the book as an adult I cried like a baby at the tragic ending, and how objectionable it is that Hollywood would take such a work of art, turn it into bubblegum and lollipops, and throw it at children as rollicking family fun.

Anyway, that theme has been abandoned, since I just scanned an article on EW.com in which David Patterson, one of the writers and producers of the movie and also Katherine Patterson's son, upon whose experiences the book is based, talks about how closely the movie follows the book and how they ramped up the fantasy stuff because it was mostly left to the imagination in the novel, but that just won't really work with a movie. So I guess I don't need to go into a rant. However, I do object to Disney heavily promoting the movie as carefree fantasy romp. How are kids and parents who haven't read the book going to feel when suddenly bludgeoned with the tragic ending in a darkened theatre full of strangers? Shouldn't parents be forewarned this is a sad movie where, sorry for the spoiler, bad things happen to innocent people?

Oh well, I'm not a parent so whatever. I think this is one I'll skip, though.

Suh-weet!

2007-02-14T13:03:00.000-05:00

The DC area has been covered in snow and ice for the past two days, which means that I have not had to work for two days in a row. Yes! Have I told you lately how much I love winter? This comes at a particularly good time for me, since I was scheduled to work six days this week, and only three of those days will be left when I return to work tomorrow (it looks doubtful the weather will hold, or not hold, as the case may be, until then). But I'm just grateful for the bounty I have thus far received. The only bad thing about all this snow and ice is that it is cold and I have no boots. I come from a land where snow and ice are minimal, and where everyone drives anyway so it's not an issue. Thus, I own no boots. I have many times contemplated buying boots during winter weather periods such as the one I'm currently experiencing, but the snow and ice make it difficult to go shopping, and by the time the snow and ice have cleared I no longer care about buying boots. But really, the boots must be purchased at some point. I realize this now.

Anyway, that's about the only thing going on in my life: snow, ice, and contemplation of boot-shopping.

Cat update: She seems fine. I guess I got all maudlin and drippy for no reason. She stills pees an awful lot and is a bit skinnier than I would prefer, but she's energetic and has a healthy appetite.

Leg update: My knees seem better for the most part, but my hip/pelvis thingy still aches, and curiously, I still have shin splints, which I had assumed would be the easiest pain to cure and the quickest to go away. Bah! Stupid elderly body. Oh, and I seemed to have inexplicably developed tennis elbow, which is odd, since I have never played tennis in my life. I don't even own a racket.

Well, since I can think of nothing else to say, Happy Valentine's Day!

Notes on a birthday

2007-02-10T12:07:00.000-05:00

1. You know you're getting old when three drinks spaced evenly throughout the night and accompanied by copious amounts of food put you down for the count for the entire next day. The BF took me to a swanky restaurant in DC Thursday evening, where we rubbed elbows with a lot of old white men in business suits, some of whom may or may not have been congressmen. I'm pretty sure the couple at the table next to us were having an adulterous affair, as I kept hearing the woman refer to "your wife"--example:"Your wife doesn't pay attention to you." Not that it's any of my business, I'm just saying.

2. Apparently at swanky restaurants, an air of bewilderment can be mistinterpreted as an air of snooty disdain, for future reference. The BF and I went to have drinks in the bar while we waited for a table, and the BF felt it was incumbant upon him to order a whiskey so as to appear manly. When the bartender set the cocktail glass filled almost to the top on the bar, BF hesistated, eyeing the glass and thinking to himself, "Holy shit, that's a lotta whiskey." The bartender, however, interpreted this look to mean, "You call that a fucking whiskey, man!" and hastily filled the glass completely to the brim.

3. I only tripped over, and thus unplugged, one lamp during the course of the evening, thus appearing only minorly foolish.

4. I am now Queen of the Land of Hypocrisy. You know how a couple posts back I said I would never own an iPod? Yeah, well, I lied. The BF's parents generously bought me an iPod Nano for my birthday, in hot pink no less. I plan to fully enjoy the fruits of The Man, once I figure out how to put music on it.

5. My dentist is one month older than me. This alarms me a little. I would like my dentist to have some years of experience and malpractice insurance under his belt, not say things to me like, "Don't worry, 30 is the new 20!" By the way, it turns out that I didn't really break my tooth off, it was just my crown that fell off. It only seemed as though my tooth had broken because there is only a tiny shell of a tooth left after the root canal. Still, I feel like I need more calcium in my diet.

Thanks to everyone for sending along birthday wishes - my friends rock!

Tomorrow I'm 30. hurray.

2007-02-07T22:17:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling like a ginormous tard (turd?), for the above-stated reason, among others. For one, it appears that my hastily dashed-off and really quite stupid post on Mr. Rochester, which of course I didn't expect anyone to read because I wasn't aware anyone actually read my blog, has been linked to and read by people unbeknownst to myself. Yikes. Why must I always make a giant ass of myself in a public forum? On the other hand, at least people are finally leaving comments.

In other news, to celebrate my third decade of being I am going to: go to my cycling class, meet my co-workers for lunch, go to work, come home, and go out to dinner with the BF. The other option was to lie in bed all day eating chocolates, which is suddenly seeming like the better choice. Then again, nothing says I'M THIRTY like doing the same damn thing you do every day of your life. Ah, routine.

Me and my dental adventures (aka my dentures)

2007-02-03T11:01:00.000-05:00

Well. Get this. You know that tooth in which I had that hideously painful root canal? I broke it last night eating a cookie. Not only did I just break it, I broke it clean off at the gumline, meaning there is now very little tooth left in its place. Naturally this happened Friday evening, so I won't know what this means regarding the large hole in my mouth until Monday morning at the very earliest, and I have to say that I'm a little perturbed. I broke another tooth back in September, so this is becoming an alarming pattern for me. I'm afraid that soon I will have no more teeth left, and at the grisly old age of 30 will have to go get fitted for dentures. Pass me the polygrip.

Now, I know you all hate memes and lists and wish I would die, but I'm depressed about my dental situation today (Aside: apparently the dentist and I are now on a first-name basis, because whenever he calls me, which he has done twice, he introduces himself by his first name, like I'm supposed to know who "Pasquale" is off the top of my head). And since I'm depressed, I thought I might do a teeny-weeny little meme to make myself feel better. Also, I'm at work today, a Saturday, and I have nothing better to do. Read or not, as you wish.

My All Time Favorite Things (from TheOhReally.com)

1. Song: The Queen of Night Aria from the Magic Flute. I'm not trying to be all uppity here, it's just the prettiest song I can think of, and whenever I hear it I want to start singing, too (but I don't since I cannot sing at all, even songs that are within my range, which is about two notes.)

2. TV Show: The Simpsons.

3. Donut flavor: Maple bars.

4. Poem: That one about the rose and the limousine that everyone has to read in high school. Obviously I wouldn't know a good poem if it hit me in the face.

5. Unsubstantiated rumor that is so totally made up: Apparently I suck at gossip, because I can think of nothing.

6. Day of the week: Friday. I wish I could be all indie and say something like Tuesday, but really, the obvious choice here is Friday. Friday is all about anticipation for the weekend; Saturday and Sunday are all about spending 75% of your time doing housework and going grocery shopping, and all those other things you didn't have time to do during the week, and not doing any of the things you looked forward to on Friday night.

7. Place to vomit: Inside the toilet, naturally. I've tried the sink and it didn't work out so well.

8. Movie: This is well-covered territory and I will probably contradict myself here, but: Pride and Prejudice, 1996 version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

9. Writing Instrument: A purple-colored Pilot fine-tip roller ball pen.

10. Beatles album: Having never heard an entire Beatles album, nor having any special affinity towards the Beatles, I will skip this one.

11. Lunch: Ledo's pizza. It works for dinner too. Ledo's is a chain out here that sells extremely greasy yet exquisite pizza with a divine marina sauce, and it is cut into little squares. (The pizza, not the sauce.)

12. Pastry: I enjoy creamcheese Danishes.

13. Smiths Album: I like Morrissey, he's an OK guy, but I don't know that I've ever listened to an entire Smiths Album. Pass.

14. Nonalcoholic beverages: OK, Coke is my go-to beverage. However, sometimes I just really appreciate a good Dr. Pepper. You know what I mean?

15. Alcoholic beverage: I know I've answered this one before, and my answer has probably changed. Right now it's White Russians. There's this Irish pub right by my apartment that makes them with what I assume is either cream or half-n-half. In other words, they are delicious.

16. Magazine: Long-time subscriber of Entertainment Weekly. I've tried going without it, and I just can't. It's like crack to me.

17. Concert: I have not gone to very many concerts. I'm not a musical person. However, I do occasionally listen to and enjoy the odd ditty. So far my favorite concerts have been the Sarah McLachlan concert I went to in Vancouver, and the Decemberists one here in DC. Yes, I actually had occasion to enjoy myself in DC! Who knew.

18. Blog: Right now it would The Oh Really and Anything Said, probably because the banter is witty and the people who write them are women around my age in the same profession. Diversity and new points of view are dumb.

OK, I'm gonna stop here. This thing goes on forever.

Mr. Rochester: A Treatise

2007-02-01T20:44:00.000-05:00

So I guess there are some disparaging remarks going around regarding the casting of Masterpiece Theatre's production of Jane Eyre (OK, one blog that I read contained some remarks). They generally stem from the fact that the actor who was cast in the role of Mr. Rochester happens to be both somewhat young and somewhat sexy. I happened to watch this production on PBS, and let me just say this: I LIKE SEXY. So you can all go soak your heads. And I say that with some amount of knowledge of other casting decisions regarding Mr. Rochester, having seen at least three different interpretations of Jane Eyre on film.

OK. Let me first lay out the problem for those of you who may not understand. The character of Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre is dark, brooding, dangerous, kinda weird and wild-looking, and extremely passionate. I always got the impression that he was very masculine and muscular and rugged, in a time period when perhaps slightly more effeminate men were in fashion. At certain points, Bronte describes him as being ugly, and I guess some casting directors take this as an imperative to cast unattractive people in the role, but I have to disagree. The actor in that role has to make himself as attractive to the audience as he is to Jane. This is hard to do if you're not somewhat handsome. People can do it, don't get me wrong, it's just difficult. So let's compare the most recent Mr. Rochester to others before him, and see how he stacks up in the gosh-i'd-like-to-mack-on-him department.

I'll start off with Ciaran Hinds. Let me tell you, Ciaran Hinds, while making an intriguing Julius Caesar in Rome, is no Mr. Rochester. He's OLD. You cannot imagine yourself kissing him unless you are over fifty (for the men in the audience, if there are any: imagining yourself kissing Mr. Rochester is very important to the believability of the character). Mr. Rochester is supposed to be older than Jane by maybe 20 years or so, which means he should be around 40. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, Ciaran Hinds is somewhat older than that in his particular production of Jane Eyre, and it is palpably uncomfortable to watch him kiss a dewey 20-year-old. I think the feeling I'm looking for here is: YUCK.

Another option is William Hurt. Now, while he seems to be more in the age range for the character, I'm sorry, but he's William Hurt. He is not Mr. Rochester. For one thing, Mr. Rochester is supposed to be dark-haired, and William Hurt is not. Also, he's just not passionate enough. He's mopey and subdued. Away with you, William Hurt (but I still like you, because you were the perfect Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist; in fact, maybe you were a little too perfect, because now I can't picture you as anyone else).

This brings us to our third Mr. Rochester--Orson Welles, pre-grotesque obesity. He is the only other acceptable Mr. Rochester, all dark and dangerous, and might I add, very very sexy. The only bad part of this film is Joan Fontaine, who is quite obviously too pretty and Hollywood to play plain Jane, but other than that major flaw, it's a good flick. I might say that Welles is a little too polished for the role of Mr. Rochester, but then it's been awhile since I've seen it. I do remember that every time they panned in on him he was swathed in mysterious shadow.

Toby Stephens, in the most recent production of which I now speak, is younger than all of the above actors and, with the possible exception of Orson Welles, is also hotter. I think this is fine. I don't see the problem here. Anything that makes me think, "Man, that Jane Eyre sure is lucky!" is perfectly acceptable to me, and in fact is to be striven for. I mean, yes, I agree that you don't want some Brad Pitt (who by the way is kind of a girly man, if you know what I'm saying) playing the role of Mr. Rochester. You want someone with a little grit to him, someone who could take another guy in a fight. I think Toby Stephens (pictured here) is bang-on for the role. He's somewhat wrinkled and world-weary; he's obviously seen his share of troubles, and really, he's not all that young. And yet you can also look at him, and say, "Damn! Give me some of THAT!"

Is all I'm saying.

Um, almost free?

2007-01-30T19:53:00.000-05:00

The title of this post was going to be "Free at last, free at last!" In reference to my having finished, after two whole months of slogging through it, Bleak House. Alas, I still have about 30 pages left to go as of today. I'm happy that I reread it, though - the movie was excellent, but you miss out on all the little Dickensian details. So anyway, I'm almost finished with it, and I'm eager to get on to my next book which I already started reading on the plane back from Seattle. It's The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro. I wish I could be friends with Alice Munro, although apparently she's in her seventies. Seems like a cool lady, though.

The BF and I (I could start calling him the fie-ancy, but why ruin a good thing?) saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. The allegory is not exactly hard to figure out (have you noticed how many movies/TV shows these days have torture scenes?) but that's OK. It was one of the first movies I've seen in a while where I came out of the theatre genuinely happy about my movie-going experience; i.e. good overall film that absorbed me; characters that I cared about; an interesting story that was sad and scary but not overwhelmingly so; poignant but believable ending. In short: it was good.

We also saw Notes on a Scandal last week, which, while also very entertaining, was kind of like The Queen: good in a "so what?" kinda way. Basically if you see it, you see it to watch Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench act really well, and that's about it.

So about the Oscars, am I the only one who is a) almost so bored with the nominations as to not even want to watch the damn thing, and b) completely mystified about the presence of Little Miss Sunshine on the Best Pictures list and about Abigail Breslin's nomination for Best Supporting Actress? For one thing, LMS was not that good a movie. I would rate it slightly above the Chevy Chase/National Lampoon pictures in the "road trip"/"wacky family" genre of films. I think the voters must be getting tired and lazy--it's like they're squinting their eyes and mumbling as they fill out their ballots, "OK, now what movies did I see this year? Oh yeah, there was that Little Miss Sunshine thing...yeah, that was OK. I'll just put down everyone's name who was in that, rather than spend time watching quality films."

I'm not even going to list out my Oscar predictions since the winners are pretty much completely obvious and, like the hypocrite that I am, I haven't seen most of them anyway.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...a big pile of crap

2007-01-25T19:46:00.000-05:00

First, the good news, which 99.9% of you already know about because I emailed you about it yesterday: the BF and I are engaged. It happened in Seattle, it was a complete surprise (to me), yadda yadda yadda. No ring, no dates set, no locations picked out. If we don't get married in someone's back yard with a potluck reception, as is my hick family's tradition, it will be a miracle. My mother, you will all be heartened to know, screamed for a full ten minutes with relief and joy when I told her the news. Which makes sense, since you would probably have the same reaction if you truly believed this turn of events would deliver your wayward child from frying in an eternity of hellfire. I'm-a comin', Jesus!

Anyhoo. The bad news. Well, it looks like my dear little fuzzyhead is in the early stages of kidney disease. But all is not bleak--apparently if we change her food and give her special (read: expensive) new food if could keep her going for awhile longer. It's been a wake-up call for me, though, because I've never really experienced the decline/death of a loved one. The only people I've ever really known who have died during my life are my paternal grandparents, though I never knew them well, and was relatively young when they passed away. I've even escaped the up-close deaths of my childhood pets - we had to give away my dog when we moved to Oregon, and my parents gave away my first cat, an outdoorsy fellow, when they sold their house and moved to Arizona. Both of those pets have since expired, but I haven't had to see them suffer or find them dead, and in both cases I only heard about it later, and years after I'd had them as my own pets. The only remaining friend from my youth is Easy, and I will be a broken hollow shell of a human when she finally does go, at least for a while. But she's still hearty, and here's hoping she's got some life in her yet.

Oh yeah. The conference. Eh. It was kinda dull - ALA Midwinter is mainly for committee meetings, and when you're not on a committee the whole thing is kinda pointless. I went to some discussion groups which were mostly not interesting, but I did give out a few business cards and engage in copious small talk, so I guess maybe I got a little of my network on. But now I'm stoked--OK, maybe that's too strong of a word--interested in going to ALA Annual, which wouldn't you know it, takes place right here in good ol' DC this summer. Anyone who wants to attend is invited to stay with me, provided I still have an apartment. Unless you get paid by your work to stay someplace nice, in which case I will be staying with you.

Swing low, sweet chariot

2007-01-16T19:57:00.000-05:00

So I took my cat in to the vet today, and had about $640 of lab work done on her. She's been losing weight lately, not eating as much, and seems to pee a lot more than she used to. Also, she's 14 now, and I knew that this moment would be coming soon. I had just hoped she'd have at least two or three more healthy years in her. And she may yet - the lab tests don't come back until Thursday at the earliest, and the vet couldn't even say what he suspected at this point since she's old and the list of possible maladies is long.

All of which has me pondering mortality and the value of life. As I have perhaps foolishly made public on this blog from day one, I am poor. The $640 for the lab tests made me freak out a little, though I know my cat is worth every penny, and now I'm wondering how much more I am willing to shell out to keep the little fuzzhead going for what could be a only very short time in any case. I mean, 14 for a cat is, according to all the charts I saw at the vet's today, about 75 in human years. She might have a little bit left in the gas tank, but the red needle is on it's way to empty, no doubt about it.

So a part of me says: you can't afford any major procedures. She's a cat. A much beloved, cared-for and undoubtedly overly spoiled cat, but a cat just the same, and it would be silly to spend thousands of dollars keeping her alive, if indeed she is ill and needs treatment. On the other hand. I adore her about as much as most people adore members of their own family, possibly more. She is my family. And I would spend whatever it took to keep a family member alive, even if I knew it would only be for a short while, right?

And yet. There are government programs set up, Medicaid and Medicare and whatever, especially for people who can't afford medical treatment. There is medical insurance, and tax deductions and various other means of obtaining funds and reimbursements for people who are sick. But nothing exists to help out those who need to pay for treatment of a sick animal. And by the way, how telling is it that the doctor who told me all of these tests would be needed never bothered to mention how much it would cost? It doesn't help matters that the median income where I live is about $90k. I feel ashamed every time I have to ask a doctor or dentist how much a procedure will cost, because health consequences be damned, the price will determine whether or not I can have it done.

So am I going to look like an asshole if I ask how much it will cost to fix my sick kitty? Probably. God, I hate living here. And I hate having to make this choice, even if it is a bit premature. Should I be allowed to even own a pet, if I can't afford any and all expenses it may incur throughout the course of its life? I don't know. I do know that I love my kitty so much that writing this post has caused me to cry at work, and I don't think I should have to miss out on that kind of love and that kind of companionship just because I'm poor.

Westward-ho!

2007-01-13T15:45:00.000-05:00

In case I missed letting some of you Seattle/Northwest peeps know that I'm gonna be in town next weekend, consider yourself warned. I'll be going to the ALA Mid-Winter Meeting, which is sure to be entertaining and informative, or at least better than staying here and doing nothing. I'm supposed to be networking and stuff while I'm out there so that maybe I have half a chance of getting a job when I move back, but I can never really seem to muster the energy for the schmoozing. Nevertheless, I just spent $18 getting ugly and non-official-looking business cards printed, so maybe I should at least pretend to wheel-and-deal.

Anyway. The other night I was at work and bored, a rare occurence, and so I took the opportunity to read my blog archives. Some things I've noticed: I used to write a lot more about books I was reading and movies I had seen, but maybe that was because I used to post a lot more often and needed something to write about. Also, (I)(use)(way)(too)(many)(parentheses). (I guess I'm fond of the parenthetical statement.) And wow, have I really gone off the deapend since about August or September with the memes. Sorry about that - they are the lazy man's method of blogging and I realize this. Plus, they're really ultra-fucking-boring.

I didn't really have a point to make there, I was just saying. Here's something you will all enjoy: LEG UPDATE! Well, not much is new, unfortunately. It still hurts. But I feel that perhaps my knees are slightly better, although my hip/pelvis (I have an inflamed joint where my hip and pelvis meet) is still sore and it looks like it will be sore for the rest of my life, since I don't like either of the two options I have been presented with: 1) taking steroid medication - oh good, I get to gain weight and have worse acne than I am already blessed with! or 2) get a cortizone shot. No thanks, I'll just live with the pain. As my good friend and supermodel roommate once said, "Sometimes you have to suffer for fashion." Indeed.

Also, I don't like my doctor so I don't think I'm gonna go there anymore, and besides, it's too expensive and I can't afford it. So, bring the pain!

I'm lame

2007-01-09T16:05:00.000-05:00

NEWSFLASH! I had a bunch of things I was going to blog about and then I never did and now I've forgotten them. Anyway, I ran across a short little meme and I knew you'd all be so happy about it, so here it is.

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

1. I have an addiction to at-home workout DVD/videos. They are practically the only media I will actually buy with my own money anymore. I buy one, use it a few times, then have to have another before too long. I've probably collected more than 20 of them now, although the VHS ones get little to no use these days (the Jane Fonda step aerobics tapes just don't it for me anymore, nor does Cher). I've even gone so far as to buy a yoga DVD, featuring Denise Austen no less--I now have two Denise Austen DVDs, and I admit I feel a little stupid about it.

2. I do not now, nor probably will I ever, own an iPod. Gadgets of the devil, I tell you. I mean, I'm sure they're great, but really, must they cost so much? And, costing so much, must they be so ubiquitous? "Hi, I have an iPod. I make $80k a year and you don't." Blow me.

This meme is more difficult than it would appear. I'm having trouble thinking of three more things that no one knows about me, since I pretty much spill the entire contents of my life on this blog. I'll keep trying, though.

3. Oh, here we go. This one is really embarrassing--I used to have a crush on Pauly Shore. Yes, you read that correctly. I don't know what I was thinking, but it goes without saying that I was a confused teenager at the time. I even bought one of his stand-up "comedy" CDs (the term "comedy" being broadly defined here).

4. Well, this is dumb and I may have said this in some previous post, but I don't actually enjoy the taste of alcohol. In fact I find it repulsive, yet I do drink from time to time in order to get a buzz, and occasionally, in order to get utterly stumbling-home slurring-speech blurry-vision, beer-goggly trashed (not very often, though, and I don't actually drink beer, as it is disgusting).

5. Shamefully, I have tried to take up eating disorders at various low points in my life. However, my attempts at anorexia have never lasted more than about two hours, four if I ate a really big meal beforehand. Attempts at bulimia have failed as well, as it seems I am incapable of making myself vomit on command. So I've had to settle for either being fat, which is no fun at all, or exercising and watching what I eat, which is laborious and time consuming, and also no fun at all. But which I do anyway, because see first clause in above sentence.

Lusting in Seattle

2007-01-03T20:51:00.000-05:00

I want to be Nancy Pearl when I grow up. Seriously, how cool is her job? By the way, the link goes to her Book Lust Wiki, so you should click on it and not be afraid.

It's the moment you've all been waiting for

2006-12-31T18:57:00.000-05:00

My yearly top ten picks for books and movies! Since I've already bored you with it once, I think it's time this yearly custom became an annual tradition.

Again, a disclaimer: my picks for books will necessarily be out of the books I've read this year, not just books published this year, since it's not very often that I read brand new books. I finally kept a log of everything I've read in the year, and it turns out that I've only completed a disappointing 30 books, so that's not including 4 books that I started but didn't finish (Bleak House being one of them, which I have spent the whole of December reading and which I'm not even half-way through yet. Damn Dickens.). Out of those 30, 4.5 were re-reads, which I find as I revise this post has gone up from what I had originally counted as 2.5. Darn. I thought I was doing better this year, but apparently I'm not.

As for movies, I didn't get to see a lot of the smaller films that are making the critics' top ten lists, so you'll just have to bear with me. Overall, I felt like this year really blew for movies - only one or two really stand out in my mind as being worthy of watching again or even remembering in any fashion.

So the lists.

Best Books I Read in 2006

1. The Runaway by Alice Munro. This is only the second book I've read by Munro, but I think she may be one of my new favorite writers. As with pretty much all her books, this is a collection of short stories, some of which are related and some of which are not, but they are all excellent.

2. White Teeth by Zadie Smith. To be honest, the thing about this novel that really makes it outstanding in my mind was that fact that Smith was only 21 when she wrote it. This simultaneously awes me and fills me with self-hatred and gut-twisting envy. But I gotta give props where props are due.

3. Gilgamesh by Joan London. For a first novel, the writing was so tight and clean you could eat dinner off it. Also, good pacing and plot - I think I finished the book in a couple of days.

4. Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood. Everything Atwood writes is compulsively readable, including this little novella which is not large on plot but is very wonderful just the same. Finished it in about a day and a half.

5. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Here's the thing: after I read this book I was like, "Eh. OK, it's good, but I don't see what the big deal is." Then I keep remembering all the little stories and details and thinking to myself, "What book was that from? ... Ah yes." And that's basically how I know for myself if a book or movie is good - if I keep thinking about it long after the moment is over.

6. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.

I think I'll stop here, actually. It seems kind of absurd to rate one third of the books you've read as the best of the year, especially when one-sixth of those are re-reads from previous years.

Best Movies I've Seen in 2006

1. The Departed. This is the Martin Scorsese film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, involving Boston criminals and lots and lots of violence. It's sort of a tie between this and The Queen, but there is a part of me that feels The Queen was too light to be number 1.

2. The Queen. It's about the queen, and Tony Blair and the death of Princess Diana. What more is there to say? Oh yeah. Helen Mirren is pretty good.

3. The Devil Wears Prada. One of the best movies of the year? Probably not to most people. Not even to me, really, but thing about this movie is that it was exactly the movie I wanted to see at exactly that moment in time, so I have very warm feelings for it, much the same way I feel about Love, Actually which, truth be told, is not a great film. But Meryl Streep is so excellent in it - if you block out all the pap about Anne Hathaway's character, you can have a really enjoyable experience.

4. Inside Man. Just a plain good movie to see in a theatre - intense, fast-paced, truly suspenseful until the very end. Clive Owen rocks. [P.S. After having seen Children of Men, I can safely say that Clive Owen double rocks. And in fact Children of Men probably belongs on this list.]

5. An Inconvient Truth. Never have slideshows and animated polar bears been so powerful or rage-inducing.

6. Marie Antoinette. Frothy, light-hearted, good clean fun, if a tad overlong. Perhaps the soundtrack may have biased me a little.

Doesn't really fit since it was a made-for-TV movie, but deserves an honorable mention: Bleak House, whose virtues I expounded upon previously.

OK, I think that's all I have the energy for today, what with the obligatory January 1st hang-over and all. Welcome to 2007!

Highlights of my Christmas vacation

2006-12-28T15:15:00.000-05:00

In no particular order:

1) Getting screamed at for being a "FUCKING BITCH!" because I could not correctly navigate my two large rolling bags in a crowd full of angry travellers and accidentally bumped my bags (which I was pulling behind me, therefore out of my line of vision) into someone else's empty luggage cart. God, why can't I just watch where I'm going, huh? Because, people, I'm just a stupid fucking bitch. (BTW, it will come as no surprise that this occured at the monstrously managed Ronald Reagan National Airport in DC, at 11:00 at night, after having spent all day on planes and in airports. Fun!).

2) Listening to BF's underweight sisters compair thigh circumference and trade remarks such as "You're so much thinner than me!" and "No, you're thinner! God, I want to kill myself, you're so much thinner than me!" Luckily, no one ever suggested I might be thin.

3) Getting screamed at by BF's little sister because we suggested going out to eat, and then, when no one could agree on just who was going to go or where we would be going, decided against the idea. This made us stupid, indecisive, and selfish, and the target of the family's hatred. In the end, we suffered through an awkward meal at a local restaurant in order for BF not to be disowned.

4) Listening to BF's alcoholic sister rage drunkenly about those goddamn gays who are always rubbing their disgusting gayness in other people's faces. If we let them get married, before you know it everyone will be gay! Do you want that, huh? Is that what you people want?

5) Being asked point blank by BF's dad, in thinly disguised language, just when the hell we were going to get married already.

6) The aforementioned quiz administered by my mother.

But really, it is so nice to be with family during the holidays, don't you think?

2006-12-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

Hey kids, just a quick word from Tucson while my parents are at church (yes, on a Tuesday - apparently they go every day now). BF and I got in at about midnight last night, which would be 2 a.m. Eastern Time, for anyone who is keeping track. So we stumble off the plane, tired as shit and wanting nothing more than to fall into bed, when my mom greets me with the surprise that she has gone even crazier than I had previously suspected: she announces that she is giving me a test. She has made up two beds, one for me and one for BF, and it will be up to me to do the right thing and choose the appropriate place to sleep. So of course I chose to sleep in the same bed as BF. I mean, come on. We've been dating for seven years, having shared the same bed under my parents' roof many, many times in the past. What, pray tell, has changed? Nothing, only that my mother HAS GONE INSANE. *Sigh* Merry freakin' Christmas.

All I Want for Christmas

16. A sane, stable and if not completely atheist, at least tolerant family.

17. A giant piece of chocolate cake. I'm hungry, OK?

Since I may not be able to post again before Christmas, Happy Times, everyone!

Points to ponder

2006-12-14T19:07:00.000-05:00

1. Why is the busiest night of the week at the library always a) the night before vacation starts, and b) always the night I'm working by myself?

2. Why must I be in exruciating pain in every part of my body? As I told you, I had a root canal on Monday. Root canals, by their very nature, are not the most relaxing of experiences. They involve the sucking out of the marrow, if you will, of the bone that is your tooth. They invariably involve much drilling and digging and poking with sharp, pointy objects that look as though they were invented to inflict as much pain as possible. They involve needles and metal clamps and blood and suctioning and much drooling. And, if you are me, they involve a dentist who does not know how to properly administer novocane, because let me tell you, I felt EVERY poke, and EVERY prod during my recent root canal, and at the point in the process where he sealed off the tooth with some sort of pink plastic-y, gummy stuff? I almost screamed, or started sobbing, or passed out, the pain she was so intense.

I know, why didn't I just stop him and tell him I was in pain? Because friends, I am what one calls a--how do you say?--ah yes, RETARD. At first the pain wasn't really that bad, just a little poking. I thought, "Well, OK, ouch, but whatever. I just want this bullshit over with as quickly as possible." Then it was, "OK, now that is a bit more painful, that scraping scraping SCRAPING DEAR GOD THE SCRAPING WITH THE POINTY METAL OBJECT WILL KILL ME!" But still, I told myself, being a good little stoic, that this too shall pass, and then the procedure will be over, and I can go home and cry. But oh, I was so very wrong my friends. The procedure was not over. Then came the sealing pink plastic-y stuff. It looks very innocuous, innocent almost, in its gooey bubblegum pinkness. But believe me, it is the devil. A look of sheer abject horror/misery/torture must have shone in my eyes after the dentist jabbed it into my already-screaming tooth, because he suddenly got very concerned, telling me to relax and breathe. But oh, the pain, and oh, the agony, they would not let me relax. At some point adrenaline must have kicked in, though, because gradually the pain subsided and I was able to gather the strength not to kick the dentist in the balls.

Finally, with my poor sucked-out tooth throbbing despite the rest of my mouth being numb, the root canal came to an end and I was able to limp over to the metro station to go to work. (Yes, the majority of the pain was in my tooth, but I'm sure my knees hurt, too, because they will always and forever hurt until the end of time, and thus the limping. Besides, it is a well-established fact that pain in any part of your body will manifest itself in a limp, because otherwise how will people know to feel sorry for you?)

All I Want for Christmas

12. If I can't have a house, a decent-sized two-bedroom apartment would also do nicely.

13. Oh, I don't know, I'd like some new clothes I guess.

14. For my hair to look good for just one freaking day. Just one.

15. Bigger boobs.

Maybe I should start pricing wheelchairs

2006-12-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

So now my left knee has started hurting.

Seriously, does anyone have a rifle I can borrow? I can't guarantee its condition upon return, though.

And to think, all this nonsense started when I began running on a regular basis. Damn the running! Damn the running straight to HELL!

All I Want for Christmas

10. To miraculously be handed a job on a silver platter, wherein I will be able to work from home when it suits me, work from my very own office and/or cubicle (I'm not picky) when I need to get out of the house, and wherein I will not have to deal with human beings, I will not have to work on weekends, and where I will be able to mostly make my own hours. This job will also pay enough for me to live comfortably and take a nice vacation once a year; will have good medical benefits; and will give me ample personal leave days. I am aware this job does not exist.

11. For serious, for all this bullshit in Iraq to stop. Enough with the killing and the dying already.

Fair warning: this post is just a meme

2006-12-07T19:08:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know. Sorry. But hey, good news! I'm feeling slightly less like I'm drowning in my own mucus. I bravely soldier on.

Anyway.

Meme of Firsts

1. Who was your first Love?
Unfortunately, sad to say many of these will feature the answer of "BF," since as I embarrassingly reported in an earlier post, I have only ever dated one person. The same holds true for this one. If we'd like to include first crushes, on the other hand, the first crush would probably be a kid named Darren I really had a thing for in the sixth grade. I can only vaguely remember what he looked like. Either Darren or Corey Haim. I was 12--shut up.

2. Who was your first kiss and when?
Again, BF. I am such a dork. It was our first date, which would have been September 17, 1999. I think the first kiss was actually at Owen Beach in Point Defiance, which is in Tacoma. Ahhhh, Tacoma. Can you smell the romance?

3. Who was your first date?
The aforementioned BF. Before Owen Beach, we had dinner at Grazzi, an Italian restaurant in Old Town. I had a delicious salmon dish. Sadly, the restaurant is now closed...I guess we'll always have the memories.

Wait!

I lied! My first date was actually a few weeks before I went out with BF--a friend of his asked me out and we went to The Keg (mmm...Keg.....*drool* *drool*). Nothing happened with that one, obviously, especially since the guy lived in Vancouver, WA--about a 2 hour drive to the south--and he was coming down with strep throat at the time. Also, we didn't have very much to say to each other.

4. Who was your first prom date?
I never went to a prom. I never went to a single dance in high school. Do you think I missed out on anything? Other than getting to wear a pretty dress, me neither.

5. Who was your first roommate?
My cousin Missy. I attended Southern Oregon University for one mostly-regrettable year, mainly because I was too afraid to branch out on my own. After one semester, however, my life came into focus and I hastily got the hell out. The lesson was well-learned, though--never room with a friend or relative, particularly as a freshman. The whole point of going away to college is to find your own identity, not be trapped into the one that everybody else wants you to have.

6. What was your first job?
I worked at a winery in Salem, OR, during my sophomore year in high school doing data entry (no, sadly, it was not a wine-tasting gig). My cousin's then-wife (this is a different, male cousin) worked there and got me the job, but they didn't have enough computers available for me to work during the week, so I had to go up there on weekends, usually by myself, and it was always so fricking cold in there, I guess because they had to keep the wine cold (duh). On one hand I enjoyed working by myself, but on the other I got so bored (much like my job today!) that I began to loathe it with every fiber of my being. After that one year I quit, using the excuse that I needed more time to concentrate on school work, which to be honest, I did.

7. What was your first car?
The first car I drove was a 1990 white Dodge Spirit. It was neither fancy nor hoopty, just a plain vanilla car that got me from point A to point B, with very economical gas mileage. The first car I actually owned, though not purchased by me, is the same car I drive today--a 1996 dark purple Ford Contour, which has now become a death trap and is pretty much gasping its last wheezing, grinding death rattle. If the car doesn't figure into my own demise somehow, I will be very surprised, since it seems unlikely that I will ever be able to afford another one, and will have to drive this one until either it or I expire on the freeway.

8. When did you go to your first funeral?
The one and only funeral I have ever gone to was my paternal grandfather's when I was six years old. I barely remember it. My attitude at the time seemed to be, "So he's dead. When do we eat?"

9. How old were you when you first moved away from your hometown?
I was 15 when we moved from Boise, where I had been born, to Salem. That sucked some serious testacles for someone who was as socially retarded as I was (am). I'm secretly convinced that that move precipitated my inability as an adult to settle in any one place for longer than one year at a time. Whenever I dream about being at "home," that home is usually the house I grew up in.

10. Who was your first-grade teacher?
Mrs. Spets. She hated me, because I was an ugly emotionally distraught anxiety-ridden little puke-face who would burst into tears at the first sign of trouble. I don't blame her for disliking me.

11. When you snuck out of the house for the first time, who was it with?
My friend Michelle and I were encouraged to sneak out by two popular girls in our neighborhood, Jennifer and Misha, when we were in sixth grade. We used to go to people's houses and ring the doorbell, then run away and hide, thinking we were fantastically funny. My mom caught on to us one night and deliberately freaked the bejesus out of us by following us in the car verrrrry slowly. The headlights were blaring in our eyes so we couldn't see who it was, and we were of course convinced that we were going to be kidnapped or raped. After we increased our speed from a quick, nervous trot to an all-out, hell-bent-for-leather sprint, she finally had mercy on us. I never once snuck out again, though that was mostly because I had no reason to.

12. Who was the first person to send you flowers?
Other than my mother? Why, BF, of course.

13. When was the first time you got drunk?
The summer after my senior year in college. Yes, you read that right--my SENIOR year. What the hell was wrong with me? I was such an uptight little bastard for such a long time. *Sigh* All those good party years, wasted. Anyway, my friends Jess and Jeni came over to my sublet one night and thought it would be a good idea to get me drunk and I acquiesced. So we drank wine coolers (remember wine coolers?), and I eventually got drunk, and then Jeni started putting the moves on my roommate Jason, who at the time I liked. They ended up dating for awhile and even got engaged. Don't know if they ever actually tied the knot, though. But don't feel too sorry for me--I got her back by going out with her ex-boyfriend for, oh, more than seven years now. Needless to say, Jeni and I no longer keep in touch.

14. What was the first thing you did this morning?
The very first thing? Probably cough. Then sniffle a little, then go to the bathroom.

All I want for Christmas

9. To magically be transported back to my early college years, and to tell myself a thing or two about the world. First of all, I would tell myself that it's OK to get a little drunk once in awhile and kiss a boy or two. Then I would tell myself not to be a English major, because, honey, there ain't nothin' you can do with that. Would my college self listen to me? Probably not, because she was such an anal-retentive douchebag.

Somebody please shoot me

2006-12-06T11:22:00.000-05:00

I have to get a root canal on Monday.

All I Want for Christmas

8. A completely new set of teeth. From genetically regenerated tissue or something.

I hate the world.

2006-12-05T09:23:00.000-05:00

I suck. You suck. The entire world sucks, because this week I am dealing with a head cold that won't go away, a bum leg, and today I have a dentist appointment. I have another physical therapy appointment on Wednesday, and next week I have yet another PT appointment, as well as another appointment with the illustrious doctor. Bah! Humbug. And undoubtedly the dentist will find many things that need to be fixed, and so the fun little appointments will continue on into infinity, sucking my money, my time, and my will to live.

Here's the thing: nothing is getting any better. I have felt like poop with my cold since last Thursday, and every day I wake up feeling exactly the same, like I'm drowning in my own mucus. My leg still hurts, which no amount of stretching or exercises seems likely to fix, since my PTs are convinced that the problem stems with the way I walk. Let me tell you, trying to fix the way you have walked for 29 years without some sort of external device to help you is basically impossible. The thing is, my right leg naturally wings out to the side when I walk, instead of straight ahead like most people's, giving me a natural turn-out like a ballet dancer's (I wish). I don't know why I do this, but it's just the way I've always walked. However, the PTs want me to correct the problem from the hip down, by rotating my hip ever so slightly forward, not just by pointing my toes straight ahead. Let me ask you, have you ever tried to tell your hips muscles to rotate forward seven degrees, and have they actually obeyed you? It doesn't work. Those muscles are not really voluntary muscles, at least not as far as walking goes.

And I've been gaining weight since I haven't been able to work out as much, due to both poopy-head-cold-drowning-in-mucus feeling and bum-leg-won't-work-right syndrome. It's just all so damn frustrating. Anyway, sorry to dump on you. On to the list.

All I Want for Christmas (or whatever I was calling it)

3. To wake up one morning in Eva Green's body (new Bond girl). She's pretty, she's thin, and she's French. She also seems tall, though I have no hard data to back this up. What more could I ask for?

4. Failing no. 3, to grow five more inches in the middle of the night.

5. The ability to excell at a sport of some kind, preferably marathon-running, tennis, swimming, cycling, or ice skating. I would also accept dancing.

6. Marriage or at least a relationship with Colin Firth, but not Colin Firth the real-live person, it would have to be Colin Firth acting in the character of Mr. Darcy; either the Pride and Prejudice Mr. Darcy or the Bridget Jones' Diary Mr. Darcy would be OK. (The BJD Mr. Darcy would probably be preferable, because then I wouldn't have to explain the 21st century to him and pesky things like that.)

7. A house. Not a big house, just a modest dwelling that is more or less in good shape and has all the modern conveniences. This house should be located in the Pacific Northwest, and as long as I'm dreaming, it may as well be in Vancouver. And I may as well go for the gold and say it should be located in Kitsilano.

OK, I think I'm caught up on the list for now.

Done and done

2006-11-30T12:37:00.000-05:00

And I mean DONE.

Also, the Hilarity Patrol strikes again. Andrew Sullivan has a gift for finding these things. If you're a Mormon or an otherwise proseltyzing Christian and don't have a sense of humor, sorry, but you kinda have it coming.

And oh yes, let's not forget the list!

What I Want for Christmas

2. To live in a climate where the high will almost surely never be 68 degrees on Nov. 30. I mean, come on. I may as well be living in Florida. (And I HATE Florida.)

All I want for Christmas: the list

2006-11-29T21:39:00.000-05:00

OK, I've decided to be a copycat and make a long list for this month: 25 things I want for Christmas. Not that anybody cares what I want for Christmas, but I can't think of any other list to do so you'll just have to put up with it. And unfortunately Blogger isn't savvy enough to let me create multiple pages, so I'm just gonna have to add another item to the list day by day, without making a separate page for it. Sorry.

What I Want For Christmas

1. For my leg not to melt into a puddle of pain every time I attempt exercise. As a corollary to this wish, I also want to be able to run three miles by Dec. 25. Will it happen? I don't know.

Elementary, my dear Watson

2006-11-29T12:17:00.000-05:00

So I went to the doctor on Monday. His genius diagnosis:--wait for it--my right leg is weak. BRILLIANT DEDUCTION, HOLMES! Thank God I went to a trained physician, I never would have been able to come up with that on my own! I can see those four years in medical school really paid off.

However, the physical therapist I went to see this morning was much more enlightening (the same physical therapist, who, by the way, does not have an M.D.). He explained what he thinks the problem is, which made a lot of sense to me, and showed me a bunch of things I can do help strengthen the muscles and tendons and shiznit in my leg. So yay for physical therapists--I may just start going to physical therapists for all my medical needs.

Anyhoo. That's basically all the news I have to report. I'm hoping to have my filthy crapfest of a novel "finished" by tonight, which means I should have a very neat little icon to put on my blog soon that says I'm a proud winner of NaNoWriMo. Be on the look-out.

Happy American Thanksgiving, and stuff(ing)

2006-11-21T19:31:00.000-05:00

So my leg hasn't fallen off yet but I am continuing my hiatus of exercise, wallowing in every ounce of fat I consume, just to insure that gangrene doesn't set in. That's totally a joke, since my pain originates neither from a gunshot wound nor from a stabbing, but from some wacky joint thing. Anyway.

You know how I'm doing the NaNoWriMo thing? It's going both well and poorly; well because I'm at 35,000 words plus some (the goal is 50,000 by Nov. 30), poorly because I've realized that my so-called novel is a) just insanely boring, and b) not the work of staggering genius I had envisioned. These sorts of realizations tend to depress me, I don't know why. I've tried to give myself the it-doesn't-matter-that-you-write-like-crap-and-will-never-be-published-and-
your-goals-in-life-are-LAUGHABLE pep talk, but I still get a little down when I have one of those flashes of insight where I suddenly see that I will never be rich and famous and no one will ever give me a Pulitzer Prize and I will never marry Colin Firth and live in a mansion in a sunny climate. Because I don't know about you, but when I was younger (like, say, 22) I used to have these fantasies that one day very soon my sparkling talent was going to be discovered, and I was going to be the toast of the talk show circuit, a media darling, a millionaire, a great and respected intellectual, and also somehow a ballerina and one of the 50 Sexiest People Alive.

And then real life kept squashing my dreams. To date, I've never had anything published, nor have I ever really finished a single story, let alone written the Great American Novel. Until last year I've been living under the poverty line and could still probably qualify for food stamps if I really put my back into it, which pretty much nullifies the mansion and the millionaire dream. And I don't know if you've noticed, but that Sexiest People thing? Ain't gonna happen. I guess it's one of those growing-up moments, where you suddenly see that yes, you are going to be just as boring as your parents and sadly, no, you aren't going to have oddles and oodles of money and a career you totally love; you will do the same things everyone else does and live a quiet life filled with vast stretches of doing nothing but getting up and going to work and in the meantime be saddled with crushing debt from those bygone years when you thought, "Hey, it's OK, I'll be rich someday."

And you just have to realize that accomplishing little goals, like writing a 50,000 word novel (which, who are we kidding, is really just a novella), is OK and is good enough and better than sitting on your ass watching Lost because Lost is just not as interesting as it used to be. And that being creative even in very tiny small ways is more than most people can do, when you get right down to it, so you shouldn't fling your hands in the air, even though it feels like poo to know that the part of yourself you always hoped would make you special turns out to be only marginally more talented than the average Joe who voted for Bush and watches Fox News and Nancy Grace on a daily basis.

(And by 'you' I mean me.)

But lest this become a downer post, I want to point everyone's attention to someone who actually can write: The Oh Really. The coolest thing about this blog? Every month she puts out a new list, one item for every day of the month. It's ingenius. Why didn't I think of this? Oh yeah, because I'm an idiot. Anyway, enjoy.

This Very Special Blog Post has been brought to you by The Misanthrope.

Further proof that life is unfair

2006-11-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

First of all, was I right or was I right? Jim Webb, welcome to the United States Senate. Unfortunately, his victory was sullied by an outrageous act of unfairness perpetrated right here in Arlington by my very own BF. Turns out Mr. Namby-Pamby Non-Voter (according to his story, his Oregon ballot got lost in the mail--very believable), just happened to wander into Senator Webb's victory rally, which took place about four blocks from our apartment. I was at work at the time, and temporarily revived myself from a swoon of boredom to see an IM message from BF that read something along the lines of "oh yeah, went to webb's victory rally at courthouse plaza today." Not only that, he even got to shake the hand of the soon-to-be-senator, a man he DIDN'T EVEN VOTE FOR.

Grptharghaskldjfioaewh;fot;lohngklasdjhf!!!

That's the sound of me dying from apoplectic fit of rage.

Anyway. In other news, my right leg has finally had enough of my shenanigans and has gone on strike for an unspecified length of time. I'm thinking I should see a doctor about this. Unfortunately, the terms of my health care plan are blurry and I keep going around in circles when I try to find a sports doctor on my plan's web site. I'm pretty sure the fact that my right leg crumples like a piece of paper whenever I try to run or do any sort of cardio activity has to do with overuse and/or repetitive stress injuries, and that's probably exactly what Highly Paid Doctor Who Will Make Me Wait Two Months to See Him will say, but I'm hoping maybe he or she will be able to give me some sort of miracle orthotic that will suddenly cure all my ails, or maybe even just a nice Ace bandage.

Meanwhile, I have decided it would be wise not to aggravate my injuries any further, so have discontinued workouts for the time being, which couldn't have come at a worse time since Thanksgiving is next week and therefore I will be gorging myself silly. The logical thing would be to just not eat as much during this time I'm trying to heal, but logic is for sissies. The gorging cannot be stopped. What's a girl to do? Looks like bulimia is the only answer.

I lost my scarf to democracy

2006-11-08T21:02:00.000-05:00

I lost it yesterday morning on my way out of the polling center, after standing in line for one hour and fifteen minutes in order to vote for Jim Webb, Senator elect of the Commonwealth of Virginia, for which action of devotion I will be accepting flowers, cards, cash gifts, and replacement scarves (I like shades of blue) as tokens of your gratitude. Yes, I know he hasn't been declared the official winner yet, but he's ahead by 7200 votes, people. I don't see Allen regaining many of those in the inevitable and lengthy recount brouhaha ahead, so I'm going out on a limb and calling it: Jim Webb, Senator (D).

And as for the other election results, can I just get an AMEN!!!

Thank you, oh people of America, for finally pulling your heads out of your gigantic obese American asses. (Wait, was that too accurate...I mean, derogatory?)

Belated Halloween present from me to you

2006-11-04T21:07:00.000-05:00

BF found this one on Andrew Sullivan's blog. Beware: Not appropriate for work. Do not eat or drink anything while watching this. Do not watch in the presence of small children. View at your own risk.

Scary Halloween Video

One more, but not exactly scary, just poignant and sad. This is more of an election day present.

Forgot to mention...

2006-10-31T20:32:00.000-05:00

We went to see The Decemberists here in DC on Sunday night. It was fantastic. Interestingly, I had always imagined the lead singer to be very thin and wispy, and maybe somewhat sickly looking, I guess because of his high reedy voice. In actuality he's not wispy at all and is quite down-to-earth. I had no expectations of the other band members, so can't say how they compared to my imagination. All in all, I had a great time, especially now that I'm off the blasted 8:45-5:30 schedule, which meant I could sleep in after my late night and still make it to work on time.

If you don't know who The Decemberists are, you should go to the web site linked above and then download their music from whatever entirely legal venue you prefer. They are from Oregon, which automatically makes them slightly cooler than they might otherwise have been.

Happy Halloween and shiznit like that

2006-10-31T19:40:00.000-05:00

I'm a lamer. I can't think of much to say on this, the most hallowed of eves, because unfortunately I'm at work. Although to be fair, I probably wouldn't be able to think of anything even if I weren't. So the orginal plan for this evening, and believe me there was a plan, was to do something really wild and unusual tonight, such as watch The Shining on the DVD. But alas, my boss got sick and I graciously volunteered to swap evening shifts with her (read: saw which way the wind was blowing yesterday afternoon, and decided that if I didn't want to end up having to work an 11-hour day today I'd better offer to switch).

So pretty much all I have to offer are links tonight. But if you're reading this you probably don't have a lot else going on anyway, so I don't feel too bad for you.

This one has been making the rounds. The yoda costume in particular makes me want to simultaneously laugh and give the poor dog a new home.

My brother had the same clown costume made by my mother in the 70s. I guess it was the must-have clown pattern of the era.

I wish I had thought to scan some of my Halloween pictures from childhood, but who really cares anyway? It's an awful lot of work for a crappy blog no one reads (there I go, feeling sorry for myself again). However, the last link has given me an idea (you see how stream-of-consciousness this blog is? I don't even know what I'm going to say until I sit here and type it. Polished, professional writing is for pantywaists!) (And also, do you see how uncreative and unoriginal I am? All I do is steal ideas from other people.)

Oh, anyway, the idea is to make a list of all the Halloween costumes I've worn. I don't even know how many of them I'll remember but here we go.

Age 5ish?: Clown, I think. I'm pretty sure there was a clown in there somewhere. It would have been my brother's old costume that I wore.

Age 6: Cheerleader. I made my mother special order me a cheerleader costume from Sears (or possibly it was JC Penney). My early obsession with cheerleaders and cheerleading in general remains an embarrassing blight on my otherwise pro-feminist record.

Age 7: ?

Age 8: Was a freaky sort of Buckwheat-esque vampire. I really need to find the pictures for these. Wore an old wig my brother had.

Age 9: Flapper. Wore an old dress with flapper fringe my mom let me use for playing dress-up.

Age 10: Punk rocker. This was the Madonna era, in which dressing as a "punk" meant buying a can of pink glittery hair spray and wearing jelly bracelets and fishnet tights.

Age 11: ?

Age 12: I believe this was the year of Beetlejuice.

Age 13: Last year trick-or-treating; dressed as a jester, and made my mother sew the costume from scratch (with a pattern, of course).

I didn't really dress up for Halloween for the rest of teenager-dom. I resumed sporadically in the college and post-college years.

Age 19: Wednesday Adams.

Age 20: Dead prom queen. I don't know.

Age 21: Swing dancer.

Age 25: Butterfly.

Age 27: Pirate.

Last year I was going to dress up as a Canadian, but as it was 70-some-odd degrees outside I threw a mental temper tantrum and refused to celebrate such a clearly Autumnal tradition in such a clearly back-asswards non-Autumnal climate. This year I just couldn't be bothered with the whole thing in the end. Being an adult is so mind-numbingly dull. (And by the way, the high today was 75, in case you were wondering.)

Here I am

2006-10-26T19:39:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the absence, oh loyal 2.5 readers. Unfortunately, I still don't have much to say...I'm back at the old job, which is still boring but soothingly so - at least so far. I don't have the urge to beat myself senseless with any computer machinery yet, which I think is a good sign, but I am currently in the midst of my second back-to-back six day work week, so maybe things will have changed by Saturday.

I'm trying to think of something cool and Halloween-esque to blog about, but alas, nothing is coming to mind. You know, Halloween has slowly evolved into perhaps my favorite holiday, probably because it's so refreshingly juvenile, has no current religious affiliations, has no real family aspect (I don't feel pressured to spend a month's salary to fly home and see my parents on Halloween), and is a holiday built around these three things: a) dressing up in costume, b) scaring oneself (or others) silly for no apparent reason other than that it's fun, and c) giving and receiving vast quantities of candy, again for no apparent reason. Yay! It's better than St. Patrick's Day, another basically frivolous holiday, because while yes, drinking vast amounts of green beer can be enjoyable, where's the creativity? Like it's really that difficult to find a piece of green clothing to wear. And there is no candy involved, so end of story. New Years' Eve, which is the only other real non-religious holiday celebrated in North America that has no solemn aspect to it, also comes in behind Halloween for the lack of candy.

OMG, get this. I just found a Halloween meme, yo!

Halloween Meme

1. What is your favorite work of horror fiction?
I'm trying to think of something more original than Dracula. How about Turn of the Screw, by Henry James? Freaked the shit out of me. I'm on the waiting list for Scott Smith's The Ruins, which I hear is poop-your-pants scary.

2. What is your favorite work of science fiction/fantasy?
Hmm, it's been awhile since I've read anything in either genre. I guess I would go with 1984, although I think it fits better into dystopia fiction, but whatever.

3. What is your favorite monster?
Well, if we're talking generically, I would have to say vampires. They are the shit. (I seem to be scatalogically-focused this evening. Sorry.) They sleep in coffins, they suck blood, and they can turn into bats, wolves, and mist. I'm sorry, what else can do that? Plus they're sexy.

4. What horror movie gives you the most chills?
Well, for sheer post-traumatic stress syndrome terror, I would have go with The Ring, which haunted me for weeks. I think it was because of the disconcerting images, which have a tendency to stay with me, particularly in the middle of the night when I have to pee. They have since been milked to the point of ridiculousness in all the Japanese horror remake movies, but I still avoid them for the sake of unterrified sleep.

5. Freddy versus Jason?
Whatever.

6. What is your favorite Halloween treat?
As far as things you can only get at Halloween? Candy corn.

7. Ghosts or goblins?
Ghosts, I guess. Goblins are basically little people with a bad attitude. How can they be scary?

8. What is your scariest encounter with the paranormal?
Do not have one.

9. Do you believe in ghosts?
No, although I still get creeped out thinking about them when I'm alone at night. I think basically I'm just a wuss.

10. Favorite Halloween costume?
One year I dressed up as the character Beetlejuice, from the eponymous movie. I bought a black-and-white striped prisoner outfit from a costume store, and had my mom cut up the shirt and sew it into a suit jacket. It was great, although I doubt very many people understood what I was supposed to be. I think I was in sixth grade at the time - one of my last years trick-or-treating.

A pointless post in which I really don't say much of anything

2006-10-15T09:21:00.000-04:00

So now that my life is on a relatively even keel, I find I have very little to blog about. That's why I should probably buy No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for a Blog, but it cost $20 at Barnes and Noble, so I just flipped through it at the store instead. And of course now I can't really remember any of the ideas that were in it, so I'll just rip one off from Dooce.

This idea is to talk about your dealbreakers in regards to dating. Well, guess what. Apparently I have no deal breakers, because I'm still dating my first boyfriend. Before you start thinking I'm some creepy person who is still dating their high school sweetheart at the age of 29, let me assure you that I didn't meet the BF until I was 22 and in my last semester of college. How did it come to pass that someone as cool as me didn't have a boyfriend until the ripe old age of 22, you ask? Well, it is tragic, but I chalk it up to a unique combination of painful shyness as a teenager+basic Catholic fear of the opposite sex, based mainly on the larger Catholic fear of getting pregnant out of wedlock+a bad case of acne+a crushing inferiority complex. All of those have pretty much cleared up now, except for the acne.

Anyway. If I was single and back in the dating world, I think these might be my dealbreakers (patrons and staff at the library where I work, please take note):

1. Drunkenness.
2. Calling me honey, baby, sweetie, or gorgeous before we've even been so much as properly introduced.
3. Leering at me in a disgusting manner while drunk, high, or stinky, and muttering obscene remarks under your breath as I walk by.
4. Body odor.

But maybe I'm just picky.

Well, to change the subject completely, I saw The Queen last night and really enjoyed it. It's one of those movies that won't really change the world, but the great acting and interesting point of view made it quite enjoyable just the same. Also, I just finished a really intriguing book called Gilgamesh by Joan London (not the Joan Lundon of Good Morning America fame). The writing was excellent - tight, sparse, clean prose. I expect she will win the Booker or Orange prize one of these days (I say, acting all like I know what I'm talking about). But really, an excellent book - check it out. Now I'm on to The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, which was short-listed for the Booker, but I haven't gotten far enough to know how it'll be. Maybe after that I'll start on Bleak House.

Speaking of writing, I'm gearing up to participate in NaNoWriMo once again this November (National Novel Writing Month). I did it last year (don't remember if I publicized that fact) and churned out what can only be described as a piece of shit. However, try, try again, right? I really do want to get back into writing again, which I know is what I always say, but maybe I'll actually do it this time. I just need some discipline.

Anyway, I'll post again when either a) something noteworthy happens, which, it being my last week at the job from hell, is entirely likely given my patrons' penchants for having psychotic episodes and/or exposing themselves OR b) I start my new job, which begins Saturday, the day following my last day in Hell.

And so it is done.

2006-10-10T20:10:00.000-04:00

I gave my two weeks' notice today - next Friday will be my last day at the Job From Hell. I still haven't gotten an official offer from my previous employers, but have been assured it will be forthcoming. I gave my notice now because last Friday was a hideous day - crazies yelling at me, stupid people trying to use the Internets (one woman asked me, when the computers automatically logged off at the end of the day, if she could use my computer to close out of her email account), and homeless galore, who stayed right until the dot of closing, then left all their newspapers, books, magazines, and various shit on the tables for me to pick up. So I decided enough was enough. I still don't know if this is a good move or a bad move; I'm happy to be going back to someplace where people care about me, but on the other hand I feel like a big loser - who goes through the pointless tediousness of getting an MLS just to work as a paraprofessional?

Fuck.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

2006-10-08T17:13:00.000-04:00

BWA-HAHAHAHAHA!

2006-09-29T12:44:00.000-04:00

Guess what? I found a new meme, courtesy of the BF! I knew you'd be thrilled. But it's a book-themed meme, so it should be relevant in some way to the topics here. Or not.

Book Meme

1) One book that changed your life.

I've thought long and hard about this answer. And I don't know that I can point to just one book. But for the sake of time, I'll just say something lame, which is a book called The Introvert Advantage. It's not a well-known book or even necessarily a good book, and it didn't exactly change my life, but I felt like it explained a lot of things about my personality and made me feel so much better about myself. I finally felt like it was OK, and not somehow socially deviant, to be a quiet, contemplative, and somewhat cautious person. And I realized that people who make fun of me? Are just extroverted retards who can't wrap their mind around the fact that someone who is quiet is not somehow wrong or bad or plotting the death of the world (though in my case that may be true); they are simply just made differently.

2) One book you've read more than once.

Well, if you know anything about me at all, you know that there are tons of books I've read more than once. These are the books I read on an annual/bi-annual basis: Jane Eyre (although it's sort of fallen out of the rotation, since I've read it so many times and gotten a little sick of it); The Accidental Tourist; Bridget Jones' Diary; To Kill a Mockingbird. I never claimed to be deep or anything.

3) One book you'd want with you on a desert island.

I've actually given this one some serious thought unrelated to the meme, and I think I'd have to go with the Bible. Not for religious reasons, obviously, but because a) the Bible is long and b) it has tons of different stories. You could open it anywhere and start reading, or go from start to finish - either way, hours of entertainment. On the other hand, it might be better just to go with one of the Norton anthologies of English literature.

4) One book that made you cry.

Hmm. I was never one of those horsey-girls growing up, so I can't give the pat Black Beauty answer. (Or whatever one it is that always makes twelve-year-old girls cry.) And in fact I have cried while reading many books, and probably recently too, but I just can't think of what they are right now. So I'll go with a book that I know made me cry when I first read it (yes, I was twelve): Anne of Green Gables. And I don't remember what it was exactly that made me cry, but I think it had something to do with Gilbert.

5) One book that made you laugh.

Any book by Anne Lamott, particularly Bird by Bird and Operating Instructions. That girl is funny.

6) One book that you wish had been written.

There's really no better answer than Ezra Klein's (from whose blog I got this meme in the first place).

"...I'd go with What I Think About Things, In Simple, Declarative Sentences and Dark Ink by Jesus."

And I'll add one of my own: How I Learned to Walk, Talk, and Obtain Self-Awareness by The First Man.

7) One book you wish had never been written.

I'm one of those lefty types who believes in a little thing called "intellectual freedom", and therefore it's hard for me not to think there is at least some merit to every idea out there, if only to show us how absurd and fucking crazy some rightwing nutjobs are. However, since I must give an answer, I'll say something all politically correct like Mein Kampf. The world would probably have turned out just fine had that book never been written.

8) One book you are reading currently.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. I bought it at the library's fall book sale. At least it's readable, unlike the last book I checked out, which shall remain nameless. (*cough* Poe's Shadow by Matthew Pearl *cough*)

9) One book you've been meaning to read.

The list could on forever. Basically I've been meaning to read every book that's been published, I just haven't found the time. But here's my answer: A Short History of Canada. If I'm going to be a citizen someday, it's something I should know about.

10) What book do you routinely recommend but haven't actually read?

Um. I don't know that I've ever recommended a book that I haven't read. Unless it's to say, "I hear such and such is a good book, but I haven't read it yet." I don't routinely recommend them, but I've been saying that a lot lately about Edward P. Jones' books (All Aunt Hagar's Children, The Known World), since he's a DC native and just published a new book that has been getting good reviews.

P.S. Still no news about the old job. Still toiling away at the horrible one.

My melancholy whores...i mean, woes.

2006-09-23T15:39:00.000-04:00

Judging from my lack of email these days, I'm beginning to think that my depression and bleakness of spirit is driving everyone away. Therefore, this post will be devoted to counting my blessings, so as to show that I too can see the glass as half full. Or at least not as pointlessly empty as I had feared.

So. Ahem.

My "Blessings" (by which term I do not intend to mean "gifts bestowed by a higher power", but rather "ways in which I, for whatever reason, happen to perhaps be more fortunate than others.")

1. With the exception of a vast array of dental problems, various infections, a cold, and several moles that may or may not be cancerous, I am healthy.

2. All of my limbs are present and functioning.

3. I am employed, with a steady paycheck and medical benefits (notice I didn't say a high paycheck, nor great benefits, but that is a discussion for another post).

4. I am no longer overweight.

5. I can run three miles in 30 minutes, which I've never been able to do before, having hated running like it was the spawn of satan since childhood. Although even now my right hip aches for the rest of the day.

6. I have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in at night, and plenty of food on the table (nothing funny about that, sorry).

7. I am not insane, or at least not so much so that I walk around yelling at the voices in my head, or at the librarians in my local public library.

8. I am in a steady, long-term relationship with someone who presumably loves me despite my often irritating habit of hating the entire world and everyone in it.

9. I have an adorable cat who, while maybe not quite understanding the concept of love, at least accepts with good humor all the pets, kisses, hugs, cuddles, and cat food I lavish upon her. (Except when she's in a bad mood, and then she cannot abide the sight of my fat ugly face.)

10. Umm, ten. Teeeeennnnn.....OK. I have fairly reliable Internet access, without whose fruits of popular culture and online bill-paying/shopping convenience I would not be able to live.

11. All of my immediate family members are still alive and are more or less on speaking terms with one another.

12. While violence is not exactly unheard of in this area of the world, I don't generally have to fear for my life walking down the street and going about my normal everyday activities. Americans only start wars; we don't live with the consequences of them.

Alrighty, then. I think that's enough blessings for one post. Don't expect me to keep up this Miss Mary Sunshine act, though.

P.S. No word yet on whether I will be able to go back to my old job. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that bureaucracies move at the pace of geologic time. It could be weeks before I know anything for sure.

First things first

2006-09-20T14:23:00.000-04:00

My pirate name:

My pirate name is:

Dirty Ethel Vane

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You tend to blend into the background occaisionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Second, things at work have gone from really, really bad to OH MY GOD THAT SUCKS. Just playing a waiting game now, which actually I've been doing since I took this new job and frankly I'm getting pretty tired of it. I find it interesting that the library management seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to keep dicking us around, promising us that new and exciting jobs are just around the corner, then yanking the rug out from under us repeatedly. We've now been given "temporary" assignments, since they decided on Friday to officially cancel my department, starting now. Um, thanks. They seem to forget that each of us applied for this job specifically,not just for any old reference desk job in the library. So now I'm just trying to decide when to hand in my notice; I was going to wait until I had an offer in writing from my old job, but now I honestly don't know if I can stay at the other place that long.

Anyway, may this be a lesson to all of you: beware a change of library management. Actually, beware of jobs that don't deliver what they promise within 30 days of starting. The really sad part of this whole story is that I felt in my gut all along that this was going to be a huge mistake for me, and lo and behold, it was. But no, being the good little soldier I am always trying to be, I kept going, hoping that things would change when all the signs were pointing to a dead end road. So. The moral here: it's OK to change your mind if that's what your instincts are telling you. I didn't have a crystal ball; I couldn't know before accepting this position that it was going to suck ass through a straw. But after a couple of weeks I could see that very clearly, and I should have gotten out right then.

Bah. Humbug.

Chronicles of the ghetto librarian

2006-09-17T18:25:00.000-04:00

A few points of order:

1. A man was kicked out of the area where I was working on the reference desk for masturbating at a public access computer. Prior to his being escorted out by a security officer, he called me over to help him watch a porn movie. I refused. A short while later the other librarian working at the desk said another patron tipped him off that the man was masturbating, and the librarian went and got security.

2. My division has officially been dissolved. I haven't been laid off, thanks in large part to the librarian's union, but I have no idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be going next week. Of course, no one has had the courtesy to tell me this to my face; instead it's all been meted out through rumor and innuendo. However, one of my coworkers did get official confirmation from someone present at the fateful meeting where this was all decided. The staff in my division were not invited to said meeting, by the way.

3. Points one and two have cemented my determination to leave this job and go back to the old one. Career-wise I am probably making a huge mistake, but I don't think I can live like this for much longer.

4. Despite points one, two, and three above, the BF and I spent a lovely weekend in Williamsburg, Virginia. On Saturday we went to Busch Gardens, where we rode every rollercoaster the park had to offer; some of them we rode twice. It was excellent, and went a little something like this. (Amateur video taken by BF while waiting in line.)

5. On the drive home, we saw cops pulled over on the side of the freeway with their guns drawn. Both the BF and I, driving in the right lane next to the cop cars, were ready to duck for cover lest we be caught in the line of fire. Luckily as we eased by, it appeared as though the person in their sites was surrendering, and thus we were not in danger of being hit by stray bullets, but it was tense there for a second.

Never a dull moment.

...And the suckage just keeps on coming

2006-09-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

So more changes are in the works for me. I don't want to jinx it, so I'm not going to say what it is, but I bet you can probably guess from whence the changes spring. I am entering dark times. Or I guess I should say, the times are getting even darker than they were before. I am experiencing career/existential angst to an enormous degree; as in, if I have no career, do I exist? Or something like that. Or perhaps I'm merely pondering the lack of existence of a career. This is in addition to my turning-30 existential angst, which will happen sooner than I care to think about.

Oh, friends. At the risk of sounding like a downer ("You, a downer?" you say. "I am all astonishment!") I feel like not one good thing has come from this move to DC. Unless you count the gathering of self-knowledge that I can live on a pittance amidst people I hate, which I had already figured out from past experience, thank you very much.

I'm sorry, I hate to be so depressing. Here's one goo0d thing: I've just finished watching the Bleak House mini-series, which was excellent and I highly recommend it if you are into such things. You know what I love about the British? They aren't afraid to hire average-looking actors for roles that quite obviously require an average-looking person. I'm just saying. It's also great that they aren't afraid to hire hideously ugly people if the role requires it, which apparently several roles in Bleak House did. Anyway, the series has inspired me to reread Dicken's Bleak House book, but maybe I'll wait a little while so I can get a some distance from the show and really immerse myself in the novel. There, aren't you glad I told you that? I'm also thinking about lying in bed all day long for the rest of my life, subsisting on nothing but Godiva chocolates. But perhaps that's a less positive goal.

OK, I can't keep it a secret any longer since I want to solicit my dear readers' advice: I'm probably going back to my old job. Here's the deal: last week my co-workers and I had meetings with some of the management-types at the library. The outcomes of these meetings were not very encouraging, as it has become apparent that no one in management really full-on supports the mission and vision of our department. So here we've been doing nothing for two months, waiting on promises that soon we would be able to start doing the work we were hired to do. Now it looks as if that's not really going to happen, and while we won't be fired, we will probably be reassigned to different roles. Which means reassigned to different reference desks throughout the library. Which means working face-to-face with the crazy-ass patrons on a daily basis, something I never wanted to do in the first place (my originial job title would not have included desk reference), and for which I would have not taken the job in the first place had I known I would be required to do it. So I think I want to go back to a place where, if quiet and boring, at least sanity reigns supreme.

But the decision has not completely been made yet, and I am in a bit of a muddle. For one thing, I would be going back to mere subsistence pay (less, really). I would be going from a professional position back to a paraprofessional position. I would, in short, be setting my career back to square one. Can I afford to do this, either from a career-building standpoint or a personal-finance standpoint? No, I cannot. And yet going to work at the loony bin every day has me tied up in knots; I'm nervous and depressed all the time, and I dread going to work every morning. Not to mention that getting up at 5 a.m. so that I can go to the gym before work definitely has its downsides. So what do you think? Am I being completely moronic? Should I just suck it up and take it for nine more months until I can move? Or should I go back to my old job where I can be sane but bored and broke?

Somebody here is smoking crack, and it isn't you

2006-09-02T11:49:00.000-04:00

OK, I'm back from whatever little self-delusion inspired me to think I could actually run a half-marathon. For one thing, I started looking at running blogs after writing that last post, and kept coming across a bunch of scary, baffling terminology that I'd never heard before, such as "training" and "long run." So then I saw the light and realized that maybe I should start off with something a bit smaller, like maybe a 5K. For now I'll leave the marathons and half-marathons to the people who actually know what they're doing (or like to pretend they do, for the sake of bragging about their finishing times to other runners).

In other news, my job just keeps getting suckier and suckier. Some new things have come about, some new, bad things. And I found out that one of my co-workers, the one I really enjoy working with and feel a solidarity with, is looking for other jobs. Oy vey. My entire being has been screaming OH SHIT!! for the past month or so, which is beginning to take a toll on me. Luckily my appetite remains undiminished. However, the rest of me has become one large knotted ball of stress. I'm just trying to figure out a way to hang on until next summer, at which point I am going to spin a globe and move to the exact spot which is farthest away from here. Well, that's a lie--actually I'll move back to the Northwest, which is as far away from here as you can get in the Continental United States.

In more other news, Tropical Storm Ernesto has my undying gratitude, for it is through him that we received lots of wind, rain, and temperatures in the --wait for it-- 60s yesterday. The entire day was gray and stormy, and while today isn't as cool or as tempestuous, it is also blissfully gray and unhot and unhumid and un-DC-like. Of course by Monday temperatures will be back in the stifling 80s with enough humidity to drown a small child, but what can you do.

Nothing new here

2006-08-30T17:39:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in so long, I was just waiting for something exciting to happen that I could write about, but I keep coming up empty so I'll just have to write about how boring my life is. My job is still the status quo. My stalker is still stalking; the sexual harassers are still harassing; the crazies are still crazying. I found myself pondering today whether sustained abject boredom could in fact drive someone insane. I think the answer is yes. But I also know that dwelling on the boredom and the listlessness and the OH MY GOD THE BOREDOM also courts madness. But I don't know what the solution is. I tried the getting-a-new-job route, to no avail. Should I just resign myself to my fate, which is that I will forever do nothing for a living and be doomed to live eight hours a day for the rest of my life in a lethargic stupor? Perhaps.

In other news, I'm playing with the idea of running a half-marathon. No doubt this is merely a giddy fantasy brought on by enduring hour upon hour of soul-sucking lassitude, but nevertheless, the idea is sitting there in my brain like a big giant lump of are-you-kidding-me? I don't know...I've been running about twice a week lately...which apparently in my mind qualifies me to run a half-marathon. But seriously, even though I've only been running on a treadmill, I've been enjoying the experience much more than I ever would have thought likely, and I've been wondering (fantasizing) about taking it to the next level. So maybe. We'll see. And I guess I should also admit here that a part of the fantasy involves me becoming very thin and toned in a long-distance-runner sort of way, meanwhile burning so many calories that I can eat burger after burger with nary a fat cell to show for it. Dream on, sleepy dreamer.

The only other thing that has been happening in my life is that I have been tearing through books like the library's on fire. That's the good and bad part of working mere feet from the popular fiction section of a large library. Bad because my reading has been very disorganized of late. Not that it ever is very organized, but as some of you may have noticed, I have a long list of books on my sidebar that have been there for quite some time now, that I can't ever seem to get around to reading. And every day I find more stuff that I want to read, and I start checking out books willy-nilly. There just isn't enough time in the day, dammit! Oh well, I guess there are worse habits to have.

Anyway, that concludes today's rambling thoughts. Carry on.

Like banging my head against a brick wall

2006-08-16T18:27:00.000-04:00

So I'm sitting here at work thinking, "OK. Today's not so bad. My stalker has only been in once today (for a duration of three hours, but still) and he didn't even talk to me. Yesterday he didn't talk to me AND he didn't sit near me at all. Things are looking up. I am winning this war."

Then a perfectly benign looking guy comes up and asks me where the construction books are. I tell him where I think they might be and am just about to go back to the very important blog I was reading when he says, "You sure are purty." *SIGH*

I mean, OK, on one very small hand it's flattering and nice. He wasn't too gross about it or anything, and I think he genuinely meant it as a compliment and not necessarily as a stalker-esque come-on. But still. People. I am a LIBRARIAN. I am not some girl standing on a street corner handing out free information. WHY OH WHY do men think it's OK to say this to professional women (or any women really, but particularly women who are AT WORK AND CURRENTLY WORKING)? Would they say it to a woman lawyer or a woman doctor? Really, the sexism in this world continues to amaze me. Would I go up to a man sitting at a desk and say, "Wow, you sure are a hottie! And incidentally, can you tell me where the books on Hitler are?"*

All of which makes me come to the conclusion that some men seem to see any woman, anywhere, whether she is at work or no, as a potential screw. And I'm sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but there it is.

Here is the thing: a little flirting, if the woman seems OK with it, is fine. We all know this. But there are unacceptable forms of flirting WITH SOMEONE WHO IS AT WORK and not falling over drunk at a bar or advertising herself on a street corner (although in that case I guess she'd still be at work) which includes: telling them they are pretty, cute, adorable, gorgeous, or mentioning anything that refers to their physical being; calling them honey, baby, sweetie, or any term of endearment one generally saves for one's closest relatives (unless the man is old enough to be your grandfather and says it in a non-gross way, in which case it's OK); leering at the person; using any pick-up line whatsoever; and finally, asking the person questions of a personal nature. If flirting should get to such a level that both parties find it agreeable to partake in any of the activities mentioned above, the flirting should be taken outside of the person's workspace so that all other transactions with members of the public remain professional and so that one doesn't get fired. Otherwise, these things should be avoided at all costs. They just should. I don't know how I know this, but I do.

And I know you all know this, too, but I feel better for having laid out the rules for any of my fellow human beings who may have missed that day in Societal Relations class.

Thank you.

*The answer, by the way, is no I would not.

I know I shouldn't laugh

2006-08-14T20:15:00.000-04:00

...but a woman came in to the library today who had a piece of duct tape over her mouth. It wasn't as though she had just been kidnapped and had run into the library wild-eyed and disheveled having escaped her captors in a frenzied chase, a la a Lifetime Television Movie. Nope, she was just sitting there calmly reading a book, pleasant as can be. With a square of duct tape covering her mouth.

Yep. It is sad for sure, but also a little bit funny. Because if you can't laugh at the psychos? Who can you laugh at?

Violent tendencies

2006-08-13T20:55:00.000-04:00

Something has been eating away at me, and it pertains to the last post I wrote about sexual harassment.

A man has been coming into the library every day for the past week, sitting in the chairs next to my work station, staring at me for a long time, then approaching me, usually when I'm alone, and asking me personal questions, such as whether or not I'm married. I've tried to nip this stalker in the bud myself by being brusque with him, rude even, and making it plain that I want to have nothing to do with him. What worries me, though, is that while any sane mentally balanced man would have gotten the hint by now that I am not at all interested in talking to him, he continues to come into the library every day and perform this routine. It keeps me awake at night, and I am now actually scared of going to work. On Friday I spoke with one of the security guards at the library and he was very sympathetic - he told me that all I had to do was call security and they would remove him. On the other hand there are several security guards who work at the library, and I don't kow if they would all be so sympathetic. However, the larger issue here is that I'm worried about my personal safety, not really while I am at work, but rather while I'm travelling to and from work, and even while I'm in my home. I think about it constantly. My BF is going out of town for a week starting Friday, and I'm afraid something will happen while he's gone. I feel like I'm trapped in this little panicky world of fear, and frankly it's pissing me off that I have to worry and obsess over something as simple as being at work every day, just because some asshole is insane and won't take no for an answer.

And I worry that having this guy thrown out of the library will only make him angry, and will make him more focused on me as a target.

And I'm infuriated that I have to put up with all this bullshit because the administration at the library won't give us an office, so I have to sit in full view of the public all day long, subject to the passing insanities of whichever psychopath walks through the door.

I want to beat someone up.

It just keeps getting better

2006-08-09T19:12:00.000-04:00

I have a dilemma (when don't I?). I've been getting what I casually refer to as "sexually harassed" at my job on a daily basis. Not necessarily by one person (though there are a few of those, too), but mostly from drive-by harassers. By this I mean men who leer at me as they walk by my "desk" in the lobby and say something along the lines of, "How you doin', baby?" It looks ridiculous when I type it, but I swear it happens.*

*I realize that I cannot adequately convey the lechery that these guys put into their eyes and voices. Reading it in print, it seems like I'm completely overreacting. However, I know what I feel and it ain't pretty, and it ain't harmless.

So my dilemma is: how do I react to these men, and in a way that won't get me fired? It's not like I can tell them to eat shit and die, which would be my normal response. So far I've been so taken aback by the casual lewdness that I barely have time to scowl and look away, much less say anything in response. The thing that really gets me is that I know these guys know that they're making me uncomfortable; in fact, that's the whole point of it for them. They know (don't they? they must) that I am in a public service position and that as such I must put on a happy face and appear polite and friendly to everyone, and that I'm not smiling and saying hello to them because I want to hook up with them after work.

What do I say? How do I respond? Usually they're gone before I can open my mouth so it's not like I can go off on some diatribe about respecting my authority or anything. My thought as I'm writing this is that there is really nothing I can do - jerks are going to be jerks, and unfortunately as a young-ish, not wholly fugly woman, this type of stuff is going to happen and I'm just going to have to grin and bear it, given the dregs of humanity that pass through the door. *Bastards* But in case any of you faithful readers have some helfpul advice, I'm putting this question out to you.

So yeah, about the heat

2006-08-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

First things first, I would like to give myself a big pat on the back for refraining from talking about the heat wave the entire week. Thank you very much. All I have to say about the heat itself: it was hot; it was excruciating; I survived, as did millions of others.

Second, I would like to point out that air conditioning has been broken at my work since last Tuesday. Which, luckily for me, resulted in an early dismissal on Tuesday and a day off on Wednesday. However, we've been forced to work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in sweltering conditions. Some of the subject divisions have been closed because the librarians refuse (as is their Union-given right) to work in such heat. But the end result of all this is that I, sitting near said closed divisions (and on a Saturday, no less), have now become the sounding board FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING COMPLAINT about the divisions being closed. Do I look like I give a god damn, people? NO. I myself would rather be at home lying in air conditioned splendor than sitting here listening to you lose your shit because you can't check out a library book.

This is all further evidence, of course, that I have chosen the wrong profession, the wrong city to live in, the wrong interests and hobbies, and the wrong personality with which to go out into the world.

Fun with Blogthings

2006-07-31T19:19:00.000-04:00

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a tempered, reasonable way of thinking.
You tend to take every new idea in, and meld it with your world view.
For you, everything is always changing. Each moment is different.
Your thinking process tends to be very natural - with no beginnings or endings.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

In a Past Life...

You Were: An Evil Chief.

Where You Lived: Ontario.

How You Died: Buried alive.

Who Were You In a Past Life?

Hehe. Excellent.

Your Pimp Name Is...

Silky Luv

What's Your Pimp Name?

Indeed.

Your Monster Profile

Cruel Fiend

You Feast On: Fingernails

You Lurk Around In: The Backseats of Cars

You Especially Like to Torment: Priests

What's Your Monster Name?

I obviously don't have enough to fill my time.

Memes R Us

2006-07-29T12:16:00.000-04:00

Before I get started on this week's meme, I would just like to mention that one of the perks of my new job is getting yelled at by crazy people on a daily basis. I quite enjoy it, and think that I have really perfected my skill at being a target for other people's psychoses. Another thing I'm really good at these days is getting eye-raped by every scumbag who walks through the door. So, I'm learning lots of new things at this job and should have quite the skill set to put on my resume by the time I depart.

That is all.

OK, the meme. I got this from the archives at Dooce, and while it closely resembles other memes I have done it is completely new and therefore I am obligated to do it, even though of course I was not actually tagged by Dooce (nor anyone, ever).

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over (the list is much longer than four in my case, but I'll try to narrow it down for you)

1. Office Space - this one is a given. I don't even think I need to extrapolate on its superb qualities of watchability.
2. Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. This movie (all six hours of it) is like comfort food to me - whenever I'm nervous or depressed or just in the mood to watch a hunky man in breeches, this does it for me.
3. Strictly Ballroom. I don't watch this as much as I used to, but it's still a timeless tale of Australian ballroom dancers with really funky hair who dare to dance their own steps.
4. The Breakfast Club. I had to throw in an '80s John Hughes movie just for balance.

Four Places I have Lived

1. Boise, Idaho. I grew up there, as mentioned in another meme. I don't really miss it, but I do miss my childhood home and dream about it a lot.
2. Salem, Oregon. Yep. Not really much to say about that, is there?
3. Tacoma, Washington. A much better place than people imagine it to be, and a much better place to live than to visit. I do miss Tacoma, and its lovely aroma.
4. Ashland, Oregon. Everyone already knows that I currently live in D.C. and before that in Vancouver, B.C. so I thought I'd go for the wild card here. Ashland is lovely and I would live there again - a small town with a lot of culture and character (helped along immensely by the presence of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which despite being located in southern Oregon is actually quite renowned). I lived there during my freshman year in college.

Four TV Shows I Love

1. Little House on the Prairie
2. Six Feet Under
3. Cold Case Files/American Justice/City Confidential (they are all virtually the same show)
4. Daily Show

Four Places I've Vacationed

1. Bahamas
2. Europe
3. Crater Lake, OR
4. Arizona

Four of My Favorite Dishes

1. Burger and fries
2. Filet mignon
3. Beef stew
4. Pad Thai
(Obviously I am not a vegetarian)

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

1. Oregon coast
2. Vancouver, B.C.
3. Alaska
4. Iceland

Four Sites I Visit Daily (or thereabouts)

1. Washingtonpost.com
2. Dooce.com
3. Anything Said
4. Go Fug Yourself

UPDATE: So I got my first paycheck today. It was sort of a punch in the gut to realize how much more the government rapes you when you suddenly become a middle-class wage earner. I literally feel as though I have been physically assaulted and forcibly separated from my rightful income. Long story short, I'm not bringing home nearly as much money as I'd counted on and am now contemplating becoming an illegal immigrant worker so that I don't have to pay taxes.*

*I realize this is an insensitive thing to say.

Welcome to my 100th blog post!

2006-07-23T08:35:00.000-04:00

This probably wouldn't be a big deal if I updated my blog on a semi-regular basis, and I'm ashamed to say that it's also getting pretty close to my one-year blogiversary. Two things about this are sad: 1) There are 365 days in a year, and I've only just now reached 100 posts, and 2) I just used the term blogiversary.

Anyway. I've now become one of the Orange Line denizens who travels to and from the city every day. I mean, I've always taken the Orange Line to get to work, but I used to work out in the burbs, which meant traveling AWAY from the city. Away from city=pleasant, relaxing ride. Toward city=hellish stench of humanity PEOPLE GET OUT OF MY FACE. For those of you not familiar with the Orange Line, what this means is that you spend 30-40 minutes of your morning and evening squished up against a total stranger(s), usually with one arm sticking out awkardly at various angles so as to grasp any stable object in order to stay upright and avoid falling over onto someone's lap as the train lurches down the tracks. Additionally, taking the Orange Line, as opposed to one of the other many lines that also runs through downtown, means you are riding the most crowded train known to man, and it is probably double the actual recommended safe occupancy of the train. It also means that I spend a good deal of time shoving people out of my way as I attempt to deboard the train, only occasionally muttering, "Excuse me," in an exasperated tone when someone clearly isn't moving aside fast enough to let me through.

All of this puts me in a very bad mood. Last Thursday really took the cake, though. On my way home the trains were delayed, as naturally they would be since I'd had a bad day and all I wanted was to get home, and therefore all the forces of nature did everything in their power to prevent me from achieving this goal. When the next train finally did arrive, the people coming off the train took so freakin' long to deboard that hardly anyone (and there was quite a crowd waiting by that point) could get onto the train before the doors closed. This happened twice - a train would come, people would pour off it in a never-ending stream, and only a handful of those waiting would manage to squeeze their way on before the driver sped off again. What may not be readily apparent is that the driver can actually control when the doors close. So basically, these drivers were just being assholes. As if there isn't enough trauma and strife in the world, we now have to put up with asshole subway train drivers who seem to enjoy making everyone's commute even more hellish than it already is. THANKS A LOT, ASSHOLES.

And since I'm on the subject of things I hate about the subway, how about those people who insist, no matter what you might do to get around them, on getting in your way and doing so in a very SLOOOOW and MEEEEEEAAAAAAAANNNNNNNDERING manner. I'm ashamed to say, I've come dangerously close to physically shoving someone out of my way when all other tactics have failed. Don't even get me started on the toursists who stand on the left side of the escalator like giant, slow-witted cows, looking very pleased with themselves as those of us in a hurry screech to a halt behind them, or those families with five little kids who mystery refuse to ride the elevator and who force their children to stand on the left for the entire length of the escalator, thus ensuring that an angry mob of commuters will clot up behind them and bolt past them in a show of passive-aggressive rudeness once they reach the bottom.

Ah, the joys of riding the subway, they are many. I mean, I do appreciate not having to drive my car to work, but is being transported by cattle-car really the only viable option in a thriving city with some of the best minds in the country? Surely this is something we can work on.

OK, I'm done complaining (for now). I'd like to send you off with this great link. Enjoy.

So now that nobody reads this blog anymore...

2006-07-16T22:07:00.000-04:00

Hi there. Sorry I've been gone for so long. I've had writer's block/gag lately, what with being sort of between jobs and then starting a new job at a large and public organization that I don't really feel I can talk about here. Suffice to say, I am at the new job, I started a week ago. It is meh. However, the salary is enough to cover the meh-ness, at least for the amount of time I plan to be at this job (one year). So far I've not been given much more to do than I had at the other job, which once again sets me to wondering what it is about me that attracts the blah, boring positions. Do people look at me and think, "Now here's a girl who can sit and do nothing all day, by golly."

Who knows. The whole switching of the jobs has thrown a crimp into my routine, as normally it would, which is causing me to have anxiety attacks and be miserable in general. Once again I am all in a dither as to what to do about my work-outs, but I just keep hoping that things will fall into place naturally as they did the last time I was in this predicament. And not to turn this into a running blog or anything, but I've actually started running on the treadmill once or twice a week - my new achievement has been to run 3 miles in one session, stopping only for water. I realize this is generally a trifle for anyone who has functioning legs, but I am bad at running and therefore this is a triumph for me. And luckily I don't have to worry about boring anyone with the details of my workout routines, since my 2.5 readers long ago abandoned me. It's freeing, actually.

What else? I'm currently reading Made in America by Bill Bryson, which unfortunately isn't one of his better works. But still interesting. The book is purportedly about how American English evolved into what it is, but is actually more of a combination of popular American history and a Lies My Teacher Told Me sort of thing. It's good, just not what I expected it to be. My work station at the new job is right next to the Popular Reading section, so I expect to be keeping them in business. Or whatever.

Well, it's coming up to my bedtime so I guess I'll bid you all (meaning no one) a good evening. Adieu.

Happy Canada Day!

2006-06-26T19:54:00.000-04:00

Well, I started this post a few days ago, but since I haven't finished it yet and since today is Canada Day, it is now the official Canada Day Post. BF and I mosied on down to the Canadian Embassy this morning for their Canada Day pancake feed - this year's theme was the Calgary Stampede, so it was country-music-a-go-go. We didn't stay very long because, alas, the line for pancakes was never-ending--we never did actually find the end of it--and we were starving, having traveled in the heat of the morning to get there. But still, it was nice to be among Canadians and fans of Canada once again.

And now, since it's officially summer, and since I haven't bored you with a list for at least three posts, it's summer reading list time! Hurray! It's also I Don't Have Anything Interesting to Write About Time! Hurray!

These are the books that I think are good beach reads, and there will probably be nothing other than that concept to thematically link them. I haven't really thought that far ahead, so I don't know, we'll see what I come up with. (Incidentally, you know what movie I love? High Fidelity. The sheer number of lists alone is enough to make me drool, and then you add in John Cusack? Plus Jack Black? Love.) Anyway.

Good Summer Reads

1) Bag of Bones by Stephen King. I love to read horrors in the middle of a bright, sunny summer afternoon. This one is particularly well-suited for a summer read because it's set in the summer (if I remember correctly) and because it's not your typical Stephen King demons-and-possessed cars book. It's more creepy than outright scary, and believe me, after awhile it will creep you out. I can't remember all of the plot, but I know it revolves around racism, jazz, and Maine. It evokes the movie Skeleton Key in my mind for some reason.

2) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Again, much of it is set in the summer--hot, sticky southern summers--and there's just something about summertime that makes me ultra-nostalgic for childhood. Which is of course what this book is about, in part - the innocence of childhood.

3) Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. A nice, light summer read. Bryson has a great sense of humor and writes with a very light touch, but isn't shallow. This one is about his efforts to hike the Appalachian trail with an old friend who maybe isn't in the greatest of shape and maybe doesn't quite have his life together.

4) Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. It's about people who get together and read Jane Austen books and look to them for inspiration in their love lives. Light, breezy, perfect to read in like two sittings.

5) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Funny yet pointless little essays. If you haven't read the one about the Macy's elf you will pee you pants from the humor of it all. Just read it.

Extra Bonus - My Picks for Top Summer Movies

1) Wet Hot American Summer - Parody of all those '80s teen summer movies. Quite funny and dead-on.

2) Scream - The horror thing again.

3) Top Gun - Only applies if you are a heterosexual woman (and Tom Cruise is really wearing out his welcome - may have to rethink this one...)

4) Walking and Talking - Good indie movie with Liev Schreiber, Catherine Keener before she was famous, and Anne Heche. Actually, I don't think any of them were famous yet, but it's such a great depiction of people just being friends.

5) Swimming Pool - British film starring Charlotte Rampling and some French actress whom BF informs me is Very Hot. You think it's gonna be all stuffy and boring, and then it turns dark and mysterious. I love the mystery and the darkness, what can I say.

Welcome to The Misanthrope, where it's Boring Vacation Photo Day

2006-06-23T09:39:00.000-04:00

This is me at Titlow Beach in Tacoma. In the background you might be able to faintly see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

This is Crater Lake, supposedly the deepest and bluest lake in the United States.

Ditto.

The Oregon Coast.

By the way, you may have noticed that I changed the name of the blog - I'm not sure yet if I'll change the URL, but for now it will stay the same.

The big news

2006-06-17T00:08:00.000-04:00

So guess what. I'm going to have to change the name of the blog, because I am no longer either unemployed or underemployed. Yep, you inferred that correctly. I got an offer from the place where I had a really good interview, didn't hear back for two months, got a vaguely worded email asking if I was still interested, didn't hear back for another month, and then BOOM, last week I got an official offer. Though this place isn't my first choice as far as type of library, location and work environment, at least its something. Of course, I have my theories that this job offer is life's little way of whispering in my ear: You thought you had problems when you were poor? How about hating your job and living in dread of going to work every morning? Not that I'm gonna hate it, but I'm just saying. The universe likes to teach me funny little lessons like this. (That's just my pessimism rearing its ugly head - pay it no attention.)

But never fear, oh my vast readership - I shall continue writing the blog for as long as I can think of anything vaguely amusing to say, and probably way after that, too. In fact, I may have reached that point already.

In other news, I'm still on vacation in the Northwest and am actually blogging from the Oregon Coast right this minute. And all I have to say about this whole week is: If I had not just gotten a good job offer, there's no way in hell I would getting back on that plane to D.C. It's going to rip my heart out to leave as it is, and I feel wrenching pangs of remorse that I did not more fully appreciate the natural beauty and down-to-earthness of this place while I had the opportunity to partake of it. And now I swear this oath, Never Again! I bow to you, O Grand Pacific Northwest! Take me back unto your bosom of plenty! Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase!

Alas, it is not to be this trip. Perhaps someday soon...

P.S. Stay tuned for photos.
P.S.S. It was great to see my friends in Seattle - I miss you and I wish we could see each other more often! Soon, soon, my pretties.

I'm back, bitches!

2006-06-03T10:44:00.000-04:00

Or will be soon, anyway. That's right, I'm going back to the Northwest for a short vacay in less than a week and I can't wait. Unfortunately life has been pretty much same ol' same ol' for the past few weeks, with the exception of the sudden arrival of ass-sucking humidity and heat, which is what we here in the South like to refer to as Summer. I had forgotten how disgusting the humidity here can be, although I vaguely remember describing it at length in this very forum; I figure it's sort of like childbirth in that it's the kind of pain that makes you want to kill yourself at the time, and yet a few months later it's only a hazy memory. So the point is, I'm looking forward to ten days in the NW sans humidity and possibly sans heat as well. Yay rain and mild conditions! You can expect a full report when I get back, although I can't say we'll be doing anything too exciting - much of the time will be spent driving a rental car back and forth between Oregon and Washington. Which is fine - yay anything that's not the Beltway! (Not that I would know since I don't drive around here, but I hear it's hellish.)

Other items of business:

The BF and I have become obsessed, along with the rest of North America, with Lost. Only we just now started watching, so we've only made it through the first season and are having a hell of a time trying to NOT hear what went on in the second season finale. (Please just tell me that the blond bitch whose name I cannot even remember but who slept with her step brother either dies, or Sayid comes to his senses and realizes that he is a hot Iraqi who could have any woman on the island, and Step-Brother Whore is a herpes-ridden skank who cannot act? Please?) But we plowed through all the episodes in season one in about two weeks, so no doubt we'll be caught up pretty quick, and then we'll be forced to watch each new episode in agonizing week-by-week one-hour spurts with commercials, which will not be cool. I have a feeling we'll just wait it out until season three is on DVD. We're not really ones for appointment television (when will we get a TiVo? when? nobody knows...), excepting, of course, the Simpsons.

And the TiVo thing brings me to the next item of business, which is really more of a question: has anyone else noticed that somewhere in the last two years television programming suddenly and inexplicably got exponentially better, better even than the current Hollywood dreck in movie theatres? In the past few months there have been very few movies I've felt like shelling out cash to see, yet there are so many TV series that I want to watch. I just wish watching TV could be more like a movie experience, because 1) I hate being at home and 2) I hate commercials. And 3) I hate being one of those losers who says, "I have to be home by 8:00 so I can watch the next episode of America's Top Home-Makeover Idol." As explained in no. 1 above, I don't like having to be home, ever, and I don't need that kind of stress in my life.

What else, as long as I'm boring the bejesus out of everyone? Last weekend BF and I went around to bookstores in DC and found a used bookstore that was selling a selection of hardback books for $4 each, or 6 for $20. Naturally, we being the shrewd business people we are, went for the 6 for $20 deal. So now I'm reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, who sounds like a boy but is really a girl. I'm only a few pages in, so can't really explicate on it yet, but am continuing in my Reading-Lite vein. Oh well, I'm a moron. So shoot me.

OK. That's it. If any friends or well-wishers would like to get together with me while I'm in the Seattle/Tacoma area, send me an email so we can plan and/or so I can give you my cell phone number (yes, I finally bought a cell phone).

Congratulations, MLIS grads and soon-to-be grads! You know who you are.

2006-05-25T19:36:00.000-04:00

SUCKERS. Joking, joking.

But seriously, I thought I'd take some time to share a little of my hard-earned post-library school wisdom with my friends who are now emerging onto the library-job-search scene, so that they don't get the same smack-in-the-face-HELLO!-what-were-you-thinking wake up call experienced by myself and my contemporaries upon our descent into the seedy underbelly of the entry level library job hunt.*

*Here's where I promise I will try to keep the cynicism down to a minimum-to-only-slightly-snarky level, so as to not discourage you and make you flee in terror from this wonderful world we like to call Library.

**Disclaimer: Everything I'm about to say applies only to the U.S. I have no experience searching for jobs in Canada, but it seems from judging by the number of my Canadian friends with jobs vs. the number of my American friends with jobs that the Canadian market is quite a bit more open than the American one. Just something to keep in mind.

OK, first, I have heard from sources that it is pointless to look for jobs in New York state. Now we all know someone who got a job there, but I'm just saying what I heard. Apparently the library school-graduate ratio to library jobs is not in our favor, what with all the library schools they have there, and they just keep churning out the grads every four months or so. Also, you can take it from me that unless you have connections or are some kind of wunderkind, do not even bother applying for jobs in the Washington, D.C. area. It's too competitive. Everyone else applying for jobs has too much experience, or knows someone high-up who can pull strings. I would also guess that Washington state and the Pacific Northwest in general is not the A-number one place to look, either. I see a lot of jobs advertised in California and Florida, though.

Second, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but there are no entry-level jobs. They just don't exist. Yeah, it's a real bummer. See, you will find job postings that say they are entry-level, or imply by their required qualifications that they are entry-level (i.e. the only requirement will be an MLIS from an accredited school), but in fact the job market is so saturated in the U.S. that employers will actually receive several applications from people who have a few or many years experience. And since people with experience generally need less training and handholding than those of us fresh out of school, guess who will get the job. And so much the better if the person with the experience is willing to work for an entry level salary. The result? We all get paid less! Hurray!

Third, be prepared for the job hunt to take a lot longer than you were expecting. Using myself as an example, it may take a year or longer to find something that pays half-way decently and is professionally satisfying. OK, in my case, longer than a year. And counting. You may have to take a job that is unworthy of you, just to make ends meet. You may have to endure countless humiliating interviews that turn out to be dead-ends, each time suffering the agony of either a) sucking ass in the interview and knowing it or b) sucking ass in the interview and not knowing it, emerging from it in breathless anticipation of an offer, telling your friends and loved ones you just KNOW this is The One, only to never hear back from the place again, except maybe in a distant chuckle on the wind.

Hmm, not doing so well with the cynicism. But anyway. I'd also like to share some of my tips on interviewing for the new grads, since I'm so accomplished in this area.

1) Try to get sleep the night before a big interview. I highly recommend it. If you get sleep, you will feel powerful and alert, whereas if you don't get sleep, it will take a Herculean effort not to drool all over yourself, much less say anything intelligent.

2) Try not to make it seem as though you lied on your resume and/or online portfolio. I think we all remember my own personal debacle with this, and how it turned out. (If you can't remember, I think it was in my very first blog post ever. It should be archived. I'm too lazy to figure out how to link it.)

3) For God's sakes, think of something good to say! At the very least, try very hard not to sound like a blithering idiot. This is where I always fail.

4) Remember to write a thank-you note, which I always forget to do. I don't actually know if it has any effect on the hiring outcome, but a little sweet-talkin' never hurt anyone.

5) If you haven't heard back within two weeks, you aint gonna. Sorry. [Except, of course, in my case, where I suddenly, inexplicably heard back two months later. And speaking of that, I still haven't heard back from my "yes, I am still interested" email. See next tip.]

6) The people doing the hiring are in general big jerks. They only get back to you, if they get back to you, on their own schedule, which is usually long after your interview, at which point you already know you didn't get the job anyway and seeing that reject letter in the mailbox is like a dagger in the heart. Like a kick in the balls when you're already writhing around and moaning on the floor. (Not that I would know of course, but I hear it's quite painful or something.)

Well, that's about all I have for you, grads. The deep, deep wisdom of Un[der]employed Hack, in all its stupid glory.

Congratulations again, and best of luck with the job search!

Hillbillies

2006-05-21T19:48:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday my coworkers and I trekked down to the main campus of our illustrious university, which is located in the rolling hills of southwestern Virginia they like to call the Appalachian mountains. We went to a library in-service day there, which was a lot like this.

Anyway, the little town itself was very cute and nice. The university was large and architecturally pleasing; the grounds were beautiful and our hotel was excellent. The people, however. Let us just say, I really think southern Virginia needs to invest in a few more dentists. And maybe some elocution lessons, and some basic biology courses with the focus of: why it is not advisable to marry one's sister. And I can tell as I write this that it's all coming out to sound very mean, but what you must keep in mind is that this is the home of the Confederacy. I have very little sympathy for people who still use the 'n' word and drive pick-up trucks.

As for the "mountains." They were pretty, I will give you that. But as compared to the Cascades or the Rockies? MEH. I'm sorry, I can see at least as pretty if not prettier scenery driving down I-5. That's all I'm saying. And let's not even get into something like Whistler because, please. The two do not compare. They are not even the same sport, let alone the same league. Maybe it's just my northwest bias talking, or maybe it's just plain FACT. I'll let you decide.

Anyway, here's a little incident I'd like to leave you with, which is completely unrelated but interesting in its own way. On Tuesday after I'd returned home from the "mountains" I checked my email. Turns out I'd received a message that afternoon from the library where I'd had the kick-ass-in-my-head interview, which by the way was two months ago. They said they were in the process of "checking references" (for two months??) but wanted to know if I was still interested in the position. So now I'm thinking, "OK, two months?? But still, hot damn! They want to hire me!" Fast forward to today, Sunday. I have not heard word one from the library, nor has my boss, who is one of my references and is now out of town for a week. So my question is this: WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Oh Vancouver, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

2006-05-13T13:59:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately for some reason about how much better Vancouver is than the rest of the world. Probably because I moved from there to the Worst Place on Earth, and since then have been reevaluating my decision making skills and sanity. So, as per usual, I've compiled a top ten list of reasons why Vancouver is better than everywhere else, because I'm too riddled with ADHD and caffeine to write in coherent paragraphs.

Top Ten Ways in Which Vancouver Rocks

1. The mere existence of Stanley Park. The thought of it fills me at first with peace, just knowing it's out there in the world, and then with rage, knowing it exists and that I cannot enjoy it, nor anything like it, here in Urban Monuments and Office Buildings and Sidewalks and All the Brick You Can Handle.

2. English Bay. Water is good. Water is refreshing. It is nice to look at blue, blue water. Water equals life. Asphalt, on the other hand, equals death. So does the Potomac River, for that matter, so don't even go there.

3. It has a soul. Meaning, you can go to Vancouver and know you are in Vancouver because it has a certain aura, a certain culture. Also, everyone has a Canadian accent. Unless they have an accent from, say, India or Greece or France or China.

4. Good food at reasonable prices. I could afford to eat well in Vancouver (maybe a little too well), and there were many lovely restaurants within an easy distance of my apartment. Here I can afford only a handful of restaurants and the food quality ranges from "meh" to "I'd rather eat a can of soup at home." Even the high-priced ones don't really live up to Vancouver standards. We don't eat out a whole lot anymore.

5. Fruits and vegetables and bread, oh my! Fresh markets. Bakeries. We don't have these things here. We have Safeway and Whole Foods ("Choices" for hippies with an inheritance), if you're lucky. Oh, but not in walking distance. The amount of money we spend on wilty, half-dead produce in a week would make your hair curl. And forget about fresh bread. Just wipe it from your mind. It doesn't exist.

6. A city built with the option in mind of (gasp!) actually walking for here to there. Americans, as we all know, are lazy, obese bastards. No one walks anywhere if they have the money to own a car, thus the sidewalks here are narrow, crumbling, and mostly non-existent. If you choose to walk, you run the risk of getting mowed down by a motorist every time you cross the street.

7. People there, in general, are friendly and easy going. People here, since they are always in a mad rush to get from one place to another (and I don't discount myself from this), are pushy pushy pushy. In the grocery store, people in line stand so close to one another that the person behind you could easily memorize your PIN as you swipe your debit card. There is no such thing as a "personal bubble" here, or more to the point, respectful distance.

8. It's in Canada. Land of gay marriage, universal health care, and abortions as far as the eye can see.

9. The government, presumably, will not tap your phone nor really give a crap whether or not you are a terrorist.

10. Beaches. Vancouver has awesome beaches, and it's not even on the ocean. If there is anything more perfect than lying on the beach, gazing at the azure blue sky against the backdrop of green mountain tops on a completely cloudless August afternoon, I don't know what it is.

Why my parents = headache + ulcer

2006-05-08T21:01:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, my parents came to visit this weekend. A good time was had by all, especially me, especially the part where my mom told me she sincerely believes that I'm going to hell because a) I'm living in sin with the BF (and have been for several years; I had assumed she was over it by now) and b) I don't believe in God. After a few days of being incredibly hurt by the fact that my own mother would both think this about her child, who so far has not done anything particularly spawn-of-satanish, and then tell said child of her fervent belief of child's imminent damnation, I have gotten enough distance to find the humor in the situation. Ha ha. Well, if my mother is correct, I guess I'll probably see her there for being a judgmental bitch. Ha ha.

Anyway, let's move on. I know you all love memes as much as I do, so I thought I'd do another one for you all that I came across this morning.

A-B-C Meme

Accent: West-coastish. If that can be called an accent. I guess its most distinctive characteristic is its lack of distinctive characteristics. I like to think that I sometimes have a wee bit of a Canadian accent, but I know in my heart that I don't.

Booze: Sadly, I really enjoy me a Smirnoff Ice, although it isn't as popular out here. A rum-and-coke comes in at a distant second. Although lately I've been craving margaritas.

Chore I Hate: Cleaning the effing bathroom. Unfortunately it's something I make myself do weekly, because not cleaning the bathroom is too disgusting to contemplate. The only reason I dislike it so much is that the other person I live with claims they are "too busy" to do it, thus I must do it myself Every. Single. Bloody. Week.

Dogs/Cats: I have one cat named Easy (see sidebar). She is 13, and her hobbies include hammering, looking out the window, and meowing at the top of her lungs every night the minute I fall asleep.

Essential electronics: My computer. Obviously.

Favorite perfume: I like the smell of Chanel No. 5, but since that's a little out of my tax bracket, I pretty much just stick with Tommy Girl.

Gold/silver: I have one white gold chain. I am gem- and precious metal-poor. And also just plain poor, too.

Hometown: I reluctantly admit it is Boise, Idaho. It's OK if you laugh a little.

Insomnia: No, thank you. Haha. Yes, I have it all the time these days, which really sucks because historically I am not a troubled sleeper.

Job title: My "title" is Library Specialist. However, in reality I am but a lowly library assistant, with the salary to prove it.

Kids: No, thank you.

Living arrangements: Piddly dungeon of a one bedroom apartment in Arlington, which I share with my BF and cat.

Most admired trait: I don't know if this is supposed to be a trait most admired in myself or other people. I guess for both I would have to say a sense of humor, which I seem to be lacking more and more these days.

Number of sexual partners: As though I would say. However, I will tell you that it's a prime number.

Overnight hospital stays: None so far.

Phobias: Driving, getting hit by a car, and spiders.

Quote: "Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling." If you don't know what that's from, I don't think I care to be associated with you anymore. (Kidding. Sort of.)

Religion: None. Was raised Catholic. If I had a shred of faith left, I would still be Catholic.

Siblings: An older brother and older sister.

Time I usually wake up: 7:00 on days I go to the gym; 7:30 on non-gym days.

Unusual talent: None that I am aware of. I don't think I have any usual talents, either.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Cucumbers. They taste like a fat lot of nothing, with maybe some talcum powder mixed in.

Worst habit: Being a gigantic pessimist, which apparently I get from my mother. Funny story: my mom had been going on and on about how the end times are coming, judgment day is near, I'm going to hell, yada yada yada. A little while later I said something about how I probably won't get a better paying job within the next year, and my mom says, "Oh, don't be such a pessimist!"

X-rays: I've had them for my teeth. That's pretty much it. I have incredibly durable bones.

Yummy foods I make: I can whip up a mean beef stew, and I make incredible no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies (which I realize need a sexier name).

Zodiac sign: Aquarius. Unfortunately I exhibit none of the usual Aquarius characteristics like artsy-fartsyness, a carefree spirit, and a go-my-own-way attitude, but rather am militaristic in my slavish obedience to rules, am anal retentive, and am decidedly untalented in any artistic field of endeavor.

There. I'm tired. And by the way, no word yet on the private school. Apparently hell's temperatures are well away from freezing at this point.

Stephen Colbert: A Man for All Seasons

2006-05-03T19:37:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't heard by now, Stephen Colbert (of the famed "Colbert Report") gave a scathing, balls-out performance at the White House Correspondent's dinner the other night. I won't be able to say this any better than any of the other bloggers, but Oh. My. God. If you haven't seen it yet, you really need to watch it. The skit is really uncomfortable in spots but so worth it. He's basically doing the same thing he does every night on his show, only this time he does it RIGHT IN FRONT of the very people he satirizes. W. himself was sitting just a few feet away during the whole thing, and boy did he looked pissed off; the rest of the audience basically sat in silence throughout, apparently stunned that anyone would have the TRUTHINESS to actually say what the entire country is thinking, damn the consequences. You really have to give it to the guy. Oh yeah, and it was pretty damn funny too, even if much of the humor was of the "Oh my god I can't believe the Secret Service hasn't shot him yet" variety.

In other news, there is no other news. My parents are coming to visit this weekend, which should be a hootenany. Actually, I'm looking forward to it since I haven't seen them for a year and it will give me a break from the routine. Also, free meals (I'm hoping). Now I've become one of those blogs where I recount the mundane details of my day-to-day existence without bothering to wonder if anyone actually cares about things like my self-tanning incident-of-horror. (Don't worry, I won't bore you with the details except to say that no one, under any circumtances, should buy L'Oreal's self-tanning spray. It just isn't worth it.)

I will tell you, however, that I am currently reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and it's one of those books where reading it makes you want to sit down and write. Or start of a book club just so you can talk about it with other people.

Which reminds me, going back to the mundane details of my existence, that I quit my book club recently. I just decided I wasn't getting enough out of it to make it worth my while to leave work an hour early once a month and make the trek into DC. I had originally started going because I thought I would be able to meet like-minded people and make some friends, but then the group got very large and stupid people started showing up, and the stupid people ended up dominating most of the conversations to the point where discussions devolved into the more intelligent members of the group trying to explain the finer points of literary criticism to the idiots. And plus the group kept picking books that I had already read or had no interest in reading, and one group member (albeit one of the club founders) kept pushing the Communist Manifesto and I'm sorry, I just don't want to spend my free time pouring over Karl Marx right now.

So I'm looking for another book club and thinking about joining a writing group, and meanwhile enjoying books of my own choosing, thank you very much.

Updates

2006-05-02T14:55:00.000-04:00

Another reason why I love Canadians and all things Canada-related.

And Tab Energy? Tastes like crap.

Temps rise in short term, but will the cold snap return? Hell News at 10

2006-05-01T15:49:00.000-04:00

Sweet Jesus, I'm tired today. I'm sitting here at work and cannot keep my eyes open. Seriously. I may have to go buy some sort of energy drink to make it through the day, even though I've already had about 30 oz. of caffeinated goodness so far. I was all jazzed up to try the new Tab Energy pink extravaganza-in-a-tin-can but they didn't carry it at the store I went to this morning so I settled for a Diet Dr. Pepper; obviously a mistake . My drowsiness might be from the allergy pill I took this morning, which for some reason doesn't seem to hit me until about mid-way through dosage cycle - in this case, 6 hours. I hope I don't fall over and injure myself somehow.

Anyway, this is the reason that I love Canadians and all things Canada-related.

Oh yeah, the headline obliquely (or not) refers to the fact that I haven't heard back from the school yet, but it's been less than a week since my interview so who knows. I will of course keep you updated as events warrant.

Underworld cooling trend continues

2006-04-26T14:14:00.000-04:00

I went for an interview today at the private school. It was meh. Not the school, but my interview. Actually, it went much better than I could have hoped for, since I didn't get any sleep last night due to hideous allergies and my body's erroneous reaction to Benadryl (the well-known drowsiness effect? Didn't happen). My feeling is that they will ultimately go with someone who has a background in either teaching or young adult librarianship - the question I kept getting asked was, "Why do you want to work with high school students?" and I can't exactly answer that it's been my lifelong dream. It was a whim, people, a whim! A passing fancy. A thought experiment, if you will. I tried to subtly indicate that without saying it outright, but even I admit that you can't blame someone for not hiring me. Why bother hiring a candidate who may or may not fit in and who may or may not like working with kids when you can hire someone who specializes in hanging out with the teenagers?

The good news is that I called in sick today so I don't have to work till 10:00 as previously planned. The bad news is that there is probably nothing but crap on TV.

Cat blogging Sunday

2006-04-23T19:26:00.000-04:00

I know that traditionally cat blogging is supposed to take place on Friday in the culture of the so-called, dare I say it, "blogoshere." But I forgot to do it on Friday and Saturday, so here it is Sunday already, and I'm just now getting around to the cat blogging.

But anyway, as you can see from the photo above, we finally put the lazy beatnik to work around the house. Here she's struggling to wield a hammer, but don't worry, she got the hang of it after a few tries, despite the lack of opposable thumbs. And she only gouged out that one eye, so it's all good.

This just in: Storm clouds heading toward Hell; cooler weather predicted

2006-04-18T21:46:00.000-04:00

OK. I think you all know how I feel about children and all things child-like; i.e. scant to zero interest, particularly when it comes to avenues of librarianship.

However. There comes a point in the job search where you begin to take seriously career possibilities that would never have occured to you without the sudden clarity of desperation.

Namely, I have just applied for a position as a private school librarian (high school), and even received a call back about it. The thing is, I came to the decision last week that, after having worked with adult students in academic libraries for awhile now, perhaps working with kids wouldn't be half bad. And it isn't as though these would be little kids - they would practically be adults, but I would have the abilitity to tell them to sit down and shut up, something that is not within my power at my current job.

So we shall see where this leads. I am apprehensive and yet open-minded about the possibilities, and am already savoring the idea of 8:00 - 5:00 / Mon.-Fri. hours. No weekends!

Oh, life and things like that

2006-04-15T10:13:00.000-04:00

Here I am at work again, on a lovely spring Saturday for which the projected high temperature is 82 degrees. And you all wonder why I hate my life. But the greater tragedy here is that my one-year anniversary of looking for a full-time professional position has come and gone, with little fanfair and even littler chance of finding said job. I am having a really hard time being positive at the moment (as though I'm so positive at others times), especially since I joined Weight Watchers a few weeks ago and am now in a constant state of semi-hunger. Which is fine and good, and as it should be. If weight loss were not painful we'd all be thin, right? There would be no "obesity epidemic" (although frankly I have my doubts as to whether or not there really is an epidemic anyway).

So, that being said about the gloom and doom and the weight loss and what have you, I'm just gonna do a meme for today, which will be nice and lighthearted and allow me not to have to work really hard to craft anything witty. This one is kind of lame, but you will just have to deal.

Top Five Must-Haves:

In My Fridge
1) Thomas' Light Multi-grain English Muffins - they're only one point on the Flex Plan! And reasonably filling, for an hour or so anyway.
2) Carrots - sad, but true
3) Weight Watchers Chocolate Sunday Cones - Technically these are in the freezer, not the fridge, but they are quite yummy for being a diet food.
4) Unsweetened applesauce - As BF calls it, babyfood. *Sigh*
5) Nonfat cream cheese - God I'm boring.

In My Closet
1) There are really no "must-haves" here, other than jeans, but at the moment I only have three pairs of those. Someday I would like to have nice clothes that I am not ashamed to wear out in public.

In My Purse
1) Various and sundry keys.
2) At least one breath-freshener, preferably of the gum persuasion.
3) A book or magazine to read on the subway - I just finished Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller, and it's a good thing cuz that book was heavy.
4) Lip gloss or lip coloration of some kind. Very important. Right now I have about five different tubes in my purse. The little pouch in there intended for a cell phone currently houses them. Alas, I am still cell-phone-less.
5) Change so I can buy sodas at work. Sodas (notice how I no longer say "pop"? I am becoming so cultured out here) are one of the few joys I allow myself, and they keep me from strangling myself with my mouse cord.

In My Car
1) Let's see: motor oil?
2) Gas.
3) Radiator fluid.
4) An engine.
5) Someone to drive because I sure as hell aint gonna. I don't drive a lot these days, see?

In My Netflix Cue (was orginally supposed to be "in my TiVo", but I don't have TiVo. How behind the times am I?)
1) Six Feet Under Season 5 - I am addicted to that show and it will always hold a special place in my heart. I only wish season five wasn't the last.
2) The first season of Lost. Like I said, behind the times.
3) Twenty-Eight Days - never seen it. Hear it's good. Zombies and shiznit.
4) The Ice Harvest - I don't know if I've spoken of my John Cusack love here, but I think he's pretty much The Man. Right up there with Johnny Depp. They are The Men. So anyway, Cusack is in this movie, hence its no. 2 spot in my cue.
5) The Best of the Best of the Electric Company - ah, the halcyon days of childhood, when learning how to say big words was the most difficult challenge we had to grapple with.