Listening skills and other talents

When I tell you NOT to throw the half-eaten strawberry at me, DON'T FREAKIN' DO IT!!! And after you do anyway, then for godsakes STOP before you decide to try to remove the stain by sucking on it with the mouth that just ate the other stupid half of the strawberry. The stain. Which is now permanent. On my only pair of decent (read, non-sagging gym shorts) shorts. On the day after I have done our laundry. By myself. As I do every other week. And then, again for the love of all that is holy, don't tell me that I have a lot more to be worrying about than some silly stain on my shorts.

Just don't do it.

Also, when I get up to try to salvage the damage that you have just done to my sole pair of presentable shorts, DON'T slip into the nice comfy part of the couch which I have just vacated and THANK ME for "keeping it warm for you".

Just don't.

And if you do -- which you will, because you can't seem to freakin' help yourself -- then don't expect the love to be flowing quite so freely, eh?

Excuse me, I have some ass-kicking to attend to. &^%@*&*@(*&***!!!!!!

Also

Do publishers think that Americans are totally stupid? (Don't answer that.) I read a book yesterday - set in England - yet, the characters use dollars... Now I haven't been to Merry Old in a few years, but last I recall, they were resisting even a change to Euros. Blair and Bush may be buddy buddy, but I don't think the average Brit would go for the currency switch. The worst part? The author was British. The rest of the book was witty and clever... I can't bear to think that she was the one insulting my intelligence.

Anyway.

There are days

I'm not mentally ill, I'm just moody. According to my mother, that is. Lately I've been especially moody. Poor Jay. We've started joking about my evil twin. At least we're joking. Considering that I'm working on month two of not working at all, I think I'm fairly stable. I was even polite to the Jehovah's Witnesses who came to my door this morning... me with my hair uncombed, wearing my Squatter's Ale t-shirt, boxers, and leopard print slippers. Not to mention the giant zit between my eyebrows. Yeah, I'm sexy.

I put in another job application for an office assistant position at the U of U with the history department. Full time, presumably intelligent people to work around, discounts on tuition. I can see many benefits to the deal. Hopefully I'll hear something on that soon - they're supposed to contact applicants within 3 days to set up an interview.

In any case - time to get off my posterior and get moving for the day. And thank you to Nobby for the pep talk - I think I needed it.

Updating the links

Updated a few links... mostly because I was trying to figure out why the BlogSnob code that I have in my template is not showing up on my page anymore... Well, couldn't figure that out, but I weeded out a few links that are to dead sites and added a few to site I've started visiting.

If anyone knows what happened to The Homeless Guy, let me know. One day I clicked on the link and got an error message that the page doesn't exist. I did a Google search, but nothing pinged. Very odd. I hope nothing has happened to him.

The Wonderful World of Nobby Dobscrub has been inactive since the middle of April, but since his wife is preggers, I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that he starts blogging again.

Anyway, nothing interesting here... Still no job, though I did put in a couple applications yesterday. I don't think the teaching thing is going to work out for the fall. Argh. With the No Child Left Behind Act -- which technically doesn't have to be complete for years yet -- schools don't want to hire teachers who don't have their certifications yet. So, honestly, I just don't know what I'm going to do. Crap.

Heard

So, still no word from the temp agency today about that interview last week. So I called them up and they told me that the position had been filled. Well, thanks for letting me know, eh? I asked if it were typical for them to have nothing for weeks on end. They said, Sometimes. It depends on your qualifications. My qualifications? I'm extremely competant with all the MS programs - Word, Excel, Powerpoint. I scored perfect on the filing and spelling. I type 52 words a minute. I'm equally proficient in numeric and alpha-numeric data entry... Jeez. No wonder they can't find anything for me.

Actually, I think it is the week in July that I will be out of town that is hurting me most. I think I may have to give up on the temp agencies and find something on my own. And I'm going to put my application in to the school districts. Right now.

Aaagghhhh!!!

The jury is still out

I signed up for Blogsnob the other day. Still not totally sure what I think, but I do have the link at the left. It's a really neat concept - linking randomly to other people's blogs. I've visited a couple interesting ones that might become a part of my Blog I Read links... especially since some of the ones I read have gone inactive or MIA.

The problem is that about half the sites I've connected to so far either don't have the code on their page to jump to the next site, or they are inactive. So, while it's a fun toy to play with, it needs some housecleaning.

Is it okay?

I'm reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy right now -- well, not RIGHT now, because I'm blogging, but you know what I mean. And anyway, I'm wondering if people would smack me around if I said I liked the movies better so far. I mean, the books are interesting -- lots more information on some things -- but I don't know if I could plow through them if I hadn't seen the movie to know that the story is really interesting.

Anyway, at least I'm finally reading them.

Still waiting to hear

Haven't heard from the temp agency yet about the job interview yesterday. It would just be nice to know what I'll be doing for the summer. And how I'm going to pay my bills and stuff.

However, I've been putting my time to good use. My new high score on Trogdor is 4326 on level 34. And I also went to the gym for a good hour and a half of cardio. I've decided to work only on cardio for a solid week before getting back to weights and strength work. I'm stronger, and leaner, I guess. But honestly, I would really like to be about 20 pounds lighter. Working at the hotel really screwed me up again. Too much crappy food, too many hours of standing around, too many hours that I could have been exercising or enjoying my life. I gained something like 15 pounds while I was working there... not to mention adding the pasty pallor of my skin or the mental and emotional weekly train wrecks.

So -- and I keep repeating this to myself -- not working is still better than working at the hotel. And if MissShaleyFawcett is still working there and still reading my blog - update me with the latest gossip, please! Just because I can't stand to be there, doesn't mean that I don't care about my people.

Okey dokey - ShowahTime

Thinking positive

This whole not working thing has been nice, but honestly, it's starting to drive me crazy. As in depressed. Money is part of it. But more than the financial aspects of unemployment, the not having any sort of schedule or interacting with anyone else during the day is getting to me.

Soooo. The good news is that I have an interview set up through one of the temp agencies for a job that would last all summer. 10am Mountain Time up near the U. Wish me luck.

More on Childhood

In class the other night, we somehow got on the subject of things children do that embarrass their parents and other adults around them. Which reminded me of the reason my mother finally demanded a second car so that she wouldn't have to ride the bus with us kids anymore.

She survived my little voice with only minimal embarrassment. "Mom," I whispered, pointing at a very large woman ahead of us on the bus. "That lady is fat." My mother, being younger than I am today, thought that perhaps ignoring me would work best. Poor Mom. Instead, thinking that she hadn't heard me, I said, louder, "MOM, that lady is FAT." Still no response from Mom. "MOM! THAT LADY IS REALLY FAT!!!" We got off at the next stop.

My brother's turn at embarrassing my dear mother came similarly, except he traded my fat lady for an elderly black gentleman and the phrase "Mom, his nose is really big!"

But mom, being the youngest of 4 and only girl, used to all sort of creative humiliation, weathered this surprisingly well. Though we did get off the bus sooner than planned a few times... No, it was not until my sister Karlyn that she decided our bus riding days were over.

See, Karlyn was a little more social than the rest of us, though she wasn't a big talker. She liked to walk around and look at stuff - under the seats, for instance. The end came on the day my mother discovered her chewing on a piece of moldy gum, peeled from the underside of one of the seats.

Yum yum. New car, here we come.

My dog Ruff Ruff

When I was about 4 years old and my brother was 2, I used to tie a string around his waist (we weren't allowed to tie stuff around our necks - mom's rule) and walk around the house with him - especially when my parents were entertaining. He would crawl on his hands and knees and bark like a dog. The adults thought this was kind of cute. When one of them would acknowledge us ("Oh, aren't you cute!") I would say, "This is my dog Ruff Ruff." Polite smiles. "He bites." Squeals of pain as "Ruff Ruff" dug his teeth into their ankles.

After a few parties like this we were given a new rule. Bite the guests, lose our teeth. heh heh. Fun while it lasted.

Not as useless as one might think...

Reconnected with another old school friend today. Classmates.com isn't completely the waste of time that some might think. What's funny about it is that I was just thinking of her the other day... lounging on my sofa and flashed back to one night trying to squeeze four or five of us on the wrap-around couch in the living room at her house. That couch was way more comfortable than my futon, of course... but anyway. Must have been 9th grade I think. That year was the one that probably ended up keeping me as far away from cliques and partying in high school as anything else did. I just couldn't take the drama.

Alrighty. I am being harrassed to get my a** to the gym so I can get home and we can EAT!!! Can't mess with a hungry belly, you know. hah!

Hip, hipster, hippilicious? Or something. Found this link off Sheila's page (Star Lines - link at left) One of the less annoying quizzes I've seen lately.


You are the Low-Fidelity All-Star. You were born
with your cool, and it's totally natural. You
run the gamut from Hipster Supreme (only they
can ingest as much coffee as you) to the geeky
hipster (Mario Kart, anyone?).


What Kind of Hipster Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Progress

Perhaps. I contacted the temp agency I worked for back when I first moved here 2 years ago. Turns out I'm still in their system so all I had to do was update my address and phone number and they will check it out and should call me back on Wednesday. I still haven't heard anything back from the other agency. At this point, I don't even really expect to.

Anywho - I should get over to the Gateway to pay my phone bill and perhaps stop by the hotel to say hello. After that... gym. Maybe biking if it doesn't start raining again. I know we need the rain, being in a desert and all, but this is getting silly. We've had almost a week of rainy days. Shocking for this part of the country.

Ah ha!

Well, I wrote in to Blogger Control and they fixed my little problem. Seems that when I updated my template, my code was corrupted. Why? Well, that's a bit of a mystery. But it's fixed now and I am happy once again.

Still haven't heard from the temp people yet. I'm going to call another agency today, I think. I can't keep going around spending money that I'm not making.

Still seeing blank space where my posts should be

And I pay for this service? Granted, not all that much when you break it down, but still... I am so less than amused by this. And the temp people still have not called me back. I'm unimpressed with them as well. If this keeps up, I may have to go to another agency. And we all know that's another pain in the ass I don't want to deal with. Must do something soon though or I'll be in deep doodoo. Crap. Grrrr.

What the heck?

I just added some new links to blogs I've started reading lately and now all my posts except the one I did today are *poof* GONE! Aaagghh! They're still here on my "edit your blog" page, but they aren't showing up on the regular one.

Not that it matters since I have so many readers... hah. Maybe it will come back on its own. Maybe.

Where does the time go?

Honestly, I feel like I just updated this yesterday, but it's been more than a week. Another week in which I did not work. Hopefully my temp agent will call be today about the rest of the week. I should have lied and told them that I would be here through the end of August instead of letting them know about that first week in July when I'll be in New Jersey.

So what have I been doing with all my freetime, you ask? Reading, visiting schools, going to the gym, hiking, and digging out my rusty arts and crafts skills to make a wedding present. Jay and I are putting together a tea box for our friends who are getting married at the end of July. I'm doing the box and all the containers for the inside; he's doing the tea and the recipes. Obviously, each of us is trying to stick with what we know. It's kind of fun, really.