Filler

Nothing to report, just doing this post so there is an entry for this month. But… it is not a bad thing that I have nothing to report because at least I don’t have any bad news to share. Because I still have my new job! This is a record. I kept the last part-time job longer, but this is the longest I’ve kept a full-time job since being laid off. And I hope one day I can say this is the longest I have kept any job EVER because I surely do love it. It is far from perfect – the software system is a bitch to learn, there is another chick there who has a bit of an alpha female attitude, there is a mandatory retirement fund to pay into – but all-in-all, I consider myself blessed to have found this job. It almost makes up for those months and months of unemployment misery. Almost.

Maybe this time…

Tomorrow I start a new job. The fifth since my layoff back in January 2014. Is this one going to be any different from the previous four? Oh, I hope so very much it will be. Because it has to be. Because I cannot take any more. If this one does not work out, I do not know what I will do. It will work out. It has to. As always, I will not be providing details just yet, but suffice it to say, this job checks off pretty much all the boxes on my dream job list. Location? A mile and a half/10 minutes’ drive away. Benefits? Out the wazoo. Pay? About the same as I was getting when I left the paper, but that was my pay grade after SIX years, this is my STARTING pay. The only downside so far is that it will involve attending some off-site events. That means driving. You all know what I am like when it comes to driving. But you know what, it is about time I grew a pair and got over those issues already. Although, at the interview, I emphasized my tree-hugging side, said how I am always cognizant of my carbon footprint and “Is there ever a time when car-pooling to these events takes place?” Ha!

I’m Still Alive

OK, so the belief I held for so long that I would not live much past age ?? was a load of crap, for today I am 547 days (or one year, six months, and one day) older than ?? and I have got to admit, that is WAY past age ?? (new readers can catch up here and here). So now what? Well, first, I guess I have to say goodbye to the black-wearing, Keats-quoting part of me that has been around since my teenage years. Yeah, that’s not going to happen (90% of my wardrobe is black and Keats rocks) but perhaps I can dial it back a bit. Then, under normal circumstances, I might have wanted to start contributing more to my 401(k) but I cashed that thing in a few months ago (only reason I am not up to my eyeballs in credit card debt). I can think of one thing only right now and that is getting a job.

Oh, that reminds me, only the inner circle is privy to the latest news: I quit the telephone research job to take on another part time (but way better) position. Of course, because my life has been nothing but a farce this last 18 months, I lost that position after a few weeks, and I can’t go back to the telephone research job because they have a stupid rule that you cannot reapply for six months. I applied for my dream job but did not get it, after easily the Worst Interview Of My Life. Although, I do have to wonder if one of the employees there might have put in a bad word for me. We’d exchanged some hot and heavy emails after he’d placed an ad on Craig’s List for a BBW to help fulfill a sexual fantasy he had. It was such a vanilla fantasy but he was extremely embarrassed by it, which I put down to his Catholic upbringing, but I could be wrong because I tend to blame lots of things on religion, card-carrying atheist that I am. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so we never did meet and fulfill his fantasy (seriously, it was so lame, I think Margaret Thatcher might have done it. Or even Barbara Bush). But in the course of our email exchange I learned he worked at this place and so when I got the interview, I sent him an email saying I might run into him. And I did, being shown around the offices after the Worst Interview Of My Life. I am not sure of how much clout he has, but I do wonder if he might have said something to the powers that be. Oh well.

So what now, now that I might have to start believing the fortune teller who read my palm once and said I had the longest life line she had ever seen?

Feast of the Virgin, Year III

 

Gawd, it just keeps getting more pathetic each year, doesn’t it?

The Last Idol Post of the Season

Maybe because my libido is abnormally high right now, but I thought there were some hot dudes on Idol last night. Even Dorothy’s friend Ryan Seacrest was doing it for me, but then again I have always been a sucker (and a blower!) for a Tux. (But you’re still my number one, Brian Dunkleman.)  And Pitbull, wow, on paper he should not be as hot as he is but he is.

The rest of the show was meh. I’d predicted Nick’s win a couple weeks ago so that was anticlimactic for me. And I miss the clip packages, there were only two last night and they were pretty dull. And there were none during the regular season either. And WTF was the deal with last year’s winner not getting any airtime, all he did was walk onstage with the trophy at the end. (Actually, I think I just answered my own question – I can’t remember his name.)

I think they have cancelled this show at just the right time, it is really showing its age. I had actually decided not to watch again simply because I hate that they eliminated the results show. Yes, those were padded more than Julia Roberts’ bra but the combo performance/results just did not do it for me. But now that I know next season is going to be the last I am going to watch it. And I hope I am in a better position emotionally (i.e., I have a fulltime, permanent job) so I can report on it regularly here.

Revenge is done, and so am I

Driving home from work on the evening of May 21, 2010, I fervently prayed to a god I do not believe in to make sure I got home alive so I would be around to watch the final episode of Lost two nights later. I was obsessed with that show (well, obvs, if I was praying, card-carrying heathen that I am). In fact, I spent the entire week prior in a state of unrest, hoping that this would not be when the car accident and/or heart attack happened that I think is going to be the cause of my death. As the final credits rolled, I swore that I would never again get so emotionally involved in a television show. I managed to keep that promise until a little over a year later when Revenge debuted. Its final episode was last night.

 

Oh, how I love that show, big campy soapy mess that it is.

 

But once again I had a week fraught with worry. Of the eight times I had to be in my car, would one of those journeys be my last? Was that twinge just indigestion from the McDonald’s French fries and Taco Bell beefy burrito that was my lunch or was it the heart attack finally showing up? Or would circumstances conspire to bring about my death via one of the other myriad ways I think I am going to die? Like what if one of the tigers at the Mirage escaped and made its way over to me? It’s only 1.76 miles according to MapQuest (1.6 according to Google Maps). Or what if I got a splinter and died from the resulting infection? Or what if a squirrel bit me and I died from rabies? I wasn’t worried about the other way I fear dying - quicksand – because I had no plans to go anywhere once I got home, just down to check the mail where I could run into an errant squirrel or an escaping tiger or all sorts of wooden objects.

 

But the worrying was all just too much for me and once again I am vowing to never let myself get so emotionally invested in a television programme. You read it here.

April Sours

Nothing to report, because nothing of note has happened lately. But I did not want this to be the first month ever of no postings, so…

I am working part-time, but I still have full-time expenses. No other prospects in the wind. I interviewed at a company that has just relocated to Vegas but they turned me down because they thought I would not be happy in such an unstructured environment and “If we were interviewing you in a year’s time when we were more settled, we’d hire you on the spot.” WTF? That was supposed to make me feel better? I’d rather they have told me that I was severely underqualified for the job or that they did not want such an ugly fat lump working for them than that.

Then there is American Idol, which used to be such a bright spot in my dull life. Last season, during my first year of unemployment, it was hard to get excited about it, but this year is even worse. The little twerp was voted out but none of the five remaining contestants excite me enough to want to think about voting for him or her (actually voting is another thing). But, conversely, none of the five (unlike Angie Miller did in season 12 or Jessica Sanchez did in season 11 or James Durbin did in season 10, etc., etc.) are pissing me off enough to vow to not watch it again should he or she win. I hate not having anyone to hate.

Yeah, That’s Not Going To Happen

OK, so I know it has been only a week or so, but no way is the Vegas version of a call center job going to result in the summer of a lifetime, long-term friendships or even sex like the Boulder incarnation did. Way too many people, for one, packed into tiny cubes; too many to interact with any one person. Plus there is nowhere within walking distance to go get a drink. And I am just so anti-social right now and the sort of people this job attracts are, well, not my cup of tea this time around. And my memory may be playing tricks on me, but I do not recall the surveys I did back then being as mind-numbingly boring as these (one was about an electric power line in Arkansas. Another was about how an international trade agreement would affect Oregon. Yawn). One thing that has not changed, however, is how rude and mean and downright horrible people are. You know, if you do not want to do a survey, fine, no need to yell at me about it. And those Arkansans telling me “I hate that son of a bitch” about our President or the number of stoned Oregonians I spoke with are really just enforcing their respective state’s stereotypes.

Will Lightening Strike Twice?

In the spring of 19??, I was living in Boulder, Colo. I was recently divorced and newly unemployed. I had been let go, after a week, from an office position because I did not have a car. They knew this at the interview. They thought it would not be a problem. Turns out, it was. Pisser was, I’d given up a relatively cushy job as an assistant manager of a book store. (Remember those? Funnily enough, it was located in a strip mall along with, amongst others, a travel agents and a Blockbuster. It must be a wasteland now.) Desperate for work, I took a job doing telephone market research. You know the sort, those ’phone surveys about, amongst other things, elections (“If the election was held tomorrow, who would you vote for?”).

That spring turned into one of the best summers of my life, even though I had no money, no car, and a pretty crappy living situation (I was rooming with two girls, an Indian girl who very sweet but boring and a born-again Christian chick who was just boring). I worked mid-afternoon to nine at night and weighed the least I have ever weighed in my American life (I am convinced that shift had a lot to do with that). I casually dated, read a ton, and hung out with some of my co-workers at bars on the Pearl Street Mall during their late-night happy hours (none of us could afford to drink any other time). One time, on a day off, I had a date in one such bar. After the date imploded, I wasn’t ready to go home so I went into the offices to see if anyone was about to finish a shift and wanted to get a drink. One girl did, and said, “Yeah, let’s go to the Cellar, it’s Trivia Tuesday.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

I’d have never discovered the Pearl Street Cellar if she had not taken me there (no one did, it was located, um, in a cellar and at the quieter end of the mall and pretty much everyone who went there had been taken by someone else). My co-worker introduced me to some of her friends there. One of them was a young man named J. He was, at the time, the most handsome man I had ever met in real life. We quickly bonded over our shared Capricornism (is that even a word/thing?) and our love of the Pittsburgh Steelers (although mine was not as advanced then as it is now). 

I eventually got a “proper” job but remained close to some co-workers, one of whom introduced me to her neighbor, T. I became, um, friends with T. who invited me to a party at his house. Also at this party was JTV, a friend of T.’s and a regular at the Cellar! I know to most of you this would seem like a wild coincidence but this was in Boulder, where instead of six, it is just two degrees of separation. JTV had brought along a friend of his. The prettiest boy alive (yep, that guy).

The rest, as they say, is history.

So yes, because of this one job I met some of the most important people in my life. I am still friends with J. and JTV, and T. and I are Facebook friends (he is married now, to someone who used to work with another dear friend of mine, PLL - again, Boulder, two degrees). I continued going to the Cellar in its new incarnation, when it moved to a street-level location in the middle of the Mall, and I took E. and D. there and we made it our regular hang-out in another brief but fantastic time in my life.

So why am I sharing all this? Because tomorrow, I start working a part-time and (god, I hope) temporary position at a telephone market research company.

Will the rest, as they say, be history?

One is the loneliest number

It's the loneliest number since the number one. Cats do not have opposable thumbs. That is all.