Baby Got Back(Fat)

OK. Here's the deal: I'm going to lose 15 pounds by June 1st. Now, don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a weight loss blog (and believe me, they exist), but rather I am just making this announcement public so that I can be accountable to myself for progress towards my goal. How does making my weight loss goal public information make me accountable, you ask? Well, for starters, if I fall off the wagon and somebody says to me, "Hey, lost any weight yet?" it will shame me into getting back on track (or perhaps just make me hurt you, but whatever). And if anyone sees me eating something like a bag of Chee-tohs, you can frown at me disapprovingly and castigate me with your eyes. Not that it will do any good, but go ahead and try if it makes you feel morally superior.

See, the thing is, it's long been my goal to lose about 20-30 pounds, thus putting me squarely at my undergraduate--and total babe-magnet--weight (pause here for guffawing). Since I moved to Crapville, aka Our Nation's Capital, I've lost about ten pounds, but then, as usual, I plateaued and grew complacent, and haven't lost any more weight. The next thing that generally happens is that my weight will gradually climb up again, until I become so disgusted with myself that I clamp down on the eating and the not-exercising and the french-fry inhaling marathon until I lose ten pounds again. And so the cycle continues. BUT, this time I am determined for once and for all to lose the final fifteen pounds and keep them off forever. So there you have it, in black and white. I WILL LOSE 15 POUNDS BY JUNE 1.

Which reminds me, I watched this grotesque TV show last night on Discovery Health about a morbidly obese man who weighed 759 pounds. It was really gross and very, very sad - it wasn't like this guy had a thyroid condition or anything; he just really, really enjoyed himself some good eatin'. I mean the guy looked like Jabba the Hut for reals, and he got so fat that he basically could not even move anymore - he had to be put in a long-term care facility where, try as they might to help the poor guy lose weight, he eventually died. I kept wondering a) how do you let yourself get to that point? (and immediately changed my mind about that bowl of ice cream I had planned on eating) and b) how do you let someone you love get to that point? (he was married). And also, how do you not seek help from someone at oh, say, 500 pounds, and not plead for some weight-loss pills or a stomach staple or SOMETHING? Of course he was poor, not that educated, and probably didn't have much health insurance to speak of, but still. My guess is the only reason his doctors at the facility didn't recommend a gastric bypass surgery was that his body wouldn't have been able to handle it. The creepiest thing of all was that, though I felt mortified for this guy to have his misery video-taped for mass consumption and I was disgusted by what I saw, I was glued to the TV. I kept thinking, "How dare they put this on television for viewers to gawk at mercilessly? Doesn't this guy and his family have enough problems without putting them on display to the world?" And yet I could not change the channel. But I really, really wanted him to lose weight and return to some semblance of a normal life, and thinking to myself, "It's TV! Of course he'll pull through; they wouldn't show it if he didn't!" I was astounded to learn that after a short while in the facility he died from a blood infection because his body was just too weak to fight it.

The moral of this story, boys and girls, is seek out some help BEFORE you get to the 759-pound mark. So yeah, I'm losing 15 pounds, everyone.

Oh, you know you want it

I've been racking my brain all morning (so about three hours), for a good topic to write about today but sadly, nothing has really come to mind other than to name my picks for the Oscars. Now, you had to know this was coming so it's no use complaining. But of course, when one makes these kind of predictions, there is always the pull between naming who we really WANT to win, and naming who we think will ACTUALLY win (I'm using the royal 'we' here). So I think I'll make up two lists--one for who I want, and one for who will really get it. If my predictions are right on the second list, someone owes me a Coke.

P.S. I don't predict the meaningless catagories like Best Animated Short. As if I care.

Oscar Picks 2006 - If We Lived in a Perfect World

Best Picture: Crash
BF and I had a discussion about this, and my argument went that the two most socially important movies of the year, out of those nominated, were Crash and Munich. And I'm speaking of globally important, not just important to Americans. Thus my elimination of Brokeback Mountain. While I think that is a lovely and haunting film, and very important and ground-breaking for stupid Americans who can't seem to understand that homosexuals might just be humans like you and I, I personally didn't come away from the film feeling like my opinions had changed on anything or that anything in the movie really made me take stock of my values and preconceived notions of the world (but then I'm a Commie bleeding heart liberal, so I realize it's just me). However, Crash and Munich did all of the above for me. And yet, being the stupid American that I am, Crash spoke to me a bit more than Munich, so I have picked Crash as best picture.

Best Directing: Ang Lee
I know the logical choice here would have been Paul Haggis for Crash, but you really have to give Ang Lee, a Chinese man from Hong Kong, props for capturing the essence of western/cowboy culture to a T.

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger
I said this is if we lived in a perfect world. I can't choose between the two - they were both excellent in their own way.

Best Supporting Actor: Matt Dillon
Again, for Crash. The man just deserves some recognition.

Best Actress: I can't really vote in this one because I haven't seen all the movies, but I'd like to see Felicity Huffman win.

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams
She was hilarious, sweet, and stupid without being over the top.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Have only read In Cold Blood, so I can't really vote here.

Best Original Screenplay: Crash

Oscar Picks 2006 - Reality

Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain
I think it's one of the few all voters will have seen, plus it's gotten the most press and most awards thus far.

Best Director: Ang Lee
They rarely give these two awards to different films.

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman
This was a toughie - I just deleted my first answer (Heath). But Hoffman's gotten a lot of accolades, and Capote is really his movie.

Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti
Again, another toughie - I think Matt Dillon also has a chance, but Giamatti has a slight edge since many think he was snubbed for Sideways last year. Jake Gyllenhaal might be able to slip in as well, hard to say.

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon
I think it's between Reese and Felicity Huffman, but I don't think as many voters will have seen Transamerica. Keira Knightley is too young, Charlize Theron just won a couple years ago, and Judi Dench has been awarded before (plus has anyone actually seen Mrs. Henderson Presents? I didn't think so).

Best Supporting Actress: Michelle Williams
I think Brokeback Mountain just has a lot of steam, plus she did a good job.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain, since it will sweep everything.

Best Original Screenplay: Crash

So everybody watch next Sunday and be prepared to laud me for my keen intuition and insight.

Hope springs eternal

Last week was kind of a downer, and for that, my two-and-a-half readers, I apologize. I made the dreaded return-phone-call yesterday, and the conversation followed my imagined script to an almost creepy degree. But then, how many different directions can something like that go? "We didn't like you, you're a loser, but good luck with your job search!"

Alas, when one door shuts another door opens, to be completely original. Yesterday afternoon I received an invitation to interview for a much better LIBRARIAN position, something I had applied for back in December and pretty much written off by this late date. I'm trying to keep my expectations low this time, and will just look at this interview as another step in the process towards achieving the Perfect Interview, and thus, in time, landing the Perfect Job. (Easier said than done when the base salary for this position is $11,000 more than I currently earn, but I'm really going to try hard this time out not to spend my new salary in my head before I actually go to the interview.)

So I joined the ranks of Technorati recently, only to learn that absolutely no one on the planet currently links to my blog. But I realize that what I have to say is of interest to...well, pretty much nobody, which is fine because it's just for me anyway, right? Right. But from reading other blogs, which I seem to do a lot of these days, I find that I'm missing out on something wonderful and extraordinary called the "meme." I assume this is pronounced "me, me", as in "it's all about me," and what is supposed to happen is other bloggers are supposed to "tag" you, and thus force you to waste valuable blog space answering inane questions about yourself. It's like those emails people used to send out with a long list of questions like, "What is under your bed right now?" and you were supposed to fill it out and send it to all your friends. I find that these irritate most people who have full and interesting lives, but as I am self-absorbed and generally bored off my ass, I love them. No one has tagged me for a meme of course, but I'm going to do one anyway for your reading pleasure.

Ahem.

What were you doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago I was 19 years old. That is fricking unbelievable. I was a freshman in college, and at about this time I would have been finishing up winter term at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, and preparing to study abroad in Germany. I was terrified, because I didn't actually want to go to Germany. I had wanted to study in London, truth be told, but when I came home from Christmas vacation and handed the brochures to my parents, the German program was the one they gave me permission to do (probably because it was cheaper). Oy vey. Those three months in Germany were probably the single most mind-opening, innocence-trashing, grow-upping experience I could have had. It was my first time travelling outside of the United States, to a country whose language I had only the vaguest grasp of, and I was a very sheltered, painfully shy and naive girl going off by herself into the big bad world.

What were you doing one year ago?
One year ago I was looking forward to my graduation from library school...hard to believe it's been almost a year now. I was suffering through Subject Cataloging (huge debacle involving a change of instructors mid-way through the course), as well as Database Design (completely over my head), and Advanced Information Retrieval (that one was a cake walk, however). As of about April 7, it will be exactly one year since I started my post-graduation job search.

Five Snacks You Enjoy
Any fried potato product
Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream
Chocolate covered pretzels
Dried cranberries (when I'm being "good")
Cheez-Its

Five Songs to Which You Know the Lyrics
In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel
Possession by Sarah McLachlan
Linger by The Cranberries
Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O'Connor
Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes

Five Things You Would Do if You Were a Millionaire
Pay off my student loans and credit card
Start up a scholarship fund for creative writing majors at my alma mater
Buy a house in Vancouver
Buy a house on the Oregon coast
Become a Canadian citizen

Five Bad Habits
Whining incessantly about my life
Losing my temper over inconsequential things
Emotional eating
Becoming so bored at work that I forget I'm there to do a job
Not writing

If anybody reading this actually has a blog, consider yourself tagged.

The big black hole of despair, and other uninteresting musings

Is it wrong of me to be grumpy because the person who interviewed me for the Job I Did Not Get called this afternoon and left a message for ME to call HIM back? What is that conversation going to be like? (BTW, I found out I did not get the job through both a process of elimination and through a connection who works at the library who told me point blank that I did not get the job. The call I received today was supposed to be the formal rejection.) First of all, only once in my ten months of job searching has anyone ever made a personal phone call to reject me, and that was only because they wanted to ask if I would like to be considered for the same position at other libraries in the system (it was that lame 6 hours-a-week-on-Sundays job). Now, I know almost certainly for a fact that this man will not be asking me if I'm interested in another position.

So...do I actually need to call this guy back so he can tell me I didn't get the job? What is the protocol here? How awkward is that going to be? Here's what I think the call will sound like:

ME: Hi, this is So and So. I'm returning your phone call from this afternoon.

HIM: Oh hi, So and So. I just wanted to let you know that you didn't get the job.

ME: Um, OK. Thanks...I guess.

HIM: (Awkard pause). Well, have a good day!

Click.

I mean, who wants to go there? Why would someone want to subject themselves to that, on either end? Why did he not just leave a message, or better yet, not call me at all and just send an impersonal letter like everyone else? Because the thing is, he made it very clear to me, and I assume to the other people he interviewed, that if we were the top candidate, we would have heard back by a certain date. That date has passed (and also I have concrete confirmation from my inside source, but that's beside the point). The point is, those of us who did not get the job are all well aware that we did not get the job. So why add salt to the wound by MAKING US CALL HIM BACK so he can tell us we didn't get the job? I don't get it.

BOO. Plus, to add to my general depression I just found out today that my Plan B --becoming a permanent resident in Canada-- isn't going to work because it costs a buttload of money, to the tune of $10,000 CD. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. I am so frustrated and irritated and just plain hopeless right now. So yeah. Happy Friday.

Unsurprising news

Well, well. Wellity wellity wellity. Guess what. I didn't get the job I didn't think I was going to get! And now that it's over with and there's no chance in hell I will ever set foot in that place again, I think I can dispense with all the secrecy and come out and say that the place where I interviewed last week (you know, for the job I didn't get) was at the Senate library. Yes, the United States of America Senate. That one. I did not get the job there. And I think it's offically unanimous - I suck a big fatty! (Not literally, of course.) But oh well. Life goes on. I'm sure there will be many other jobs I will not get in the future, and some of them will probably also be jobs for which I am technically overqualified, and yet I will still not get them. And that's fine. Really, I'm fine with that. Yay for not getting jobs! In fact, there are very few things in life, I find, that are more satisfying than NOT getting a job. You know what I think is overrated? Financial stability. Financial stability never got anyone anywhere. So really, I should be thanking my lucky stars that I didn't get this job, because then I would be financially stable, and if that happened, what would I have left to worry about? Nothing, that's what! And then what would I do with all my free time? I would become one of those vacuous people you see driving safe, reliable cars, clogging the freeways and belching toxins into the air, on my way to some cultural activity such as a play or concert, supporting the arts in that disgusting, bourgeois, not-a-care-in-the-world manner they have. I would start wearing hip, fashionable clothes, instead of the threadbare togs I currently own, and become another mindless drone of the fashion mafia. Most gruesome of all, I would start putting money towards that piteous symbol of middle-class suburbia: the retirement fund. Ugh. It's better this way, it really is.

Somebody get me a career coach, stat

I didn't get an interview for a solo librarian job in Cheyenne, Woyming. Let me just repeat that for you: rejected for a job in Cheyenne, WYOMING. WY-BLOODY-OMING. Did anybody else actually voluntarily apply for this job, other than me? Does anyone live in Wyoming who wasn't born there or wasn't forced for some reason to live there at gunpoint? I know that I shouldn't feel so bad, considering that I myself do not actually want to live in or near Wyoming. But this does not bode well. Oh, and let's see: also apparently rejected for the humanities librarian position at U of O, and things don't look well for the job I interviewed for last week (which, lest anyone forgets, was a paraprofessional position). The more I think about the interview, the worse of a feeling I get. I knew at the time that some of my answers were just plain bad, and I could feel the words coming out of mouth, knowing that they were wrong and not good and wanting to stuff them back in again, but alas, it was too late. They were already out there.

I'm thinking now that perhaps, maybe, quite possibly, I have chosen to enter the wrong profession. Exhibit A: I do not actually like people, and in fact am of the opinion that most people deep down just plain suck. And quite frankly, I don't care whether or not they ever find the information they are looking for. I chose librarianship as a profession because I wanted to work with books and was pretty sure that the book-editor thing was never gonna happen. It wasn't until I entered library school that I realized the majority of what a librarian does these days does not have anything to do with books, and in fact librarians are the few people working in a library who actually do not handle books on a daily basis. And the technical services jobs are getting fewer and fewer by the day, as more of those duties are being done by library techs who do not have to attend two years of graduate school and thus do not have to waste their lives. Exhibit B: I am apparently not qualified to do much more in a library other than pick my nose, and let's face it, I can probably do that anywhere. It doesn't have to be in a library.

I am badly in need of a pep talk. Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?

Is there anything better than being old AND being unable to get a job?

So my little ploy to get more email didn't work, but that's ok. I had my interview at the undisclosed location yesterday but I have no idea how I did. My gut feeling is that I didn't make a very good impression. I barely got any sleep the night before because I was so nervous for some reason, even though I've never lost sleep before an interview in the past, and certainly not before as unimportant an interview as this one. I think perhaps I'm going slightly insane. So anyway, I was trying really hard to act like I wasn't about ready to pass out, and I'm just hoping I didn't seem stoned or drunk. I was trying really hard to keep a light tone as well and create some rapport, but I think I just came across as frivolous and unprofessional. That's me, frivolity in a fat suit.

Anyhow. I'm a little tense because they were supposed to make a decision by noon today, so at the moment I write this I either got the job or didn't, and there's no way I'll know until next week sometime. Oy vey.

So guess what else. I'm 29. That's the first time I've seen it in writing and I think I'm going to go cry in a corner and contemplate my mortality for awhile. I have exactly one year left until I enter miserable old age and become just another dried up spinster librarian (or should I say, library assistant?). Christ almighty.

Hahaha

OK, you guys have to see this - it's a "trailor" for Brokeback to the Future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfODSPIYwpQ

My favorite line taken out of context is: "Hell, I made it with you and even I don't understand it!"

And FYI: Apparently Brokeback Mountain was filmed entirely in Alberta. I thought it was too pretty to be Wyoming!

A query

Did anyone else apply for the University of Oregon humanities librarian position, and if so, have you heard back yet? The deadline was December 1, and while I didn't expect to hear anything in December I thought perhaps they might have started contacting people for interviews in January. If anyone out there has an interview, let me know so I can stop thinking I have a shot at this one. Thanks.

The new news

So now that it's official I can tell you my news, even though I've now built it up way beyond its actual importance. Anyway, I have an interview for a library tech position (no progress being made on that front) which pays better than what I make now and is at a much more prestigious library. I will not say in this medium which library, but if you email me I will tell you. Really, it's not that big of a deal except that maybe I have a shot at making a decent salary for once. You guys with your big fancy librarian jobs will probably scoff and roll your eyes, but alas, it seems that paraprofessional positions are the best I can do at this point. So, that's that.

The instruction session went so-so yesterday, and only sucked insofar as that none of the students were interested in anything I had to say and my answers to the few questions they asked me were either completely wrong or just wrong enough to make me look inept. Ah, life.