Category Archives: Gainful Employment

Dear MF Diary: Fangsgiving 2008. No spirit animal…YET.

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1. Yesterday I took Franny to get her ears pierced, one of those little lady rites of passage I suppose we all go through at some time or other. I got mine done at six and when I was eight they closed up due to me wearing some crap Claire’s earrings for several days in a row. I think I was swimming a lot that summer and they were corroding or something gross like that. Then I was re-mallgunned at ten. Currently I have six holes in my ear; three were mallgunned and three were piercing shopped. I am very proud that Franny’s first unnatural holes in her body were done by a PRO. FESSIONAL. PIERCER. (*is smug*)

She kind of jibblied around a little bit and I brought her back to Earth with a gentle “Hey, this is a big girl thing, so you gotta sack up and act like a big girl for this.” She held very still and listened to directions and, unsurprisingly, thought it was going to hurt worse than it did. Now she has sweet little hoops with captive beads and they look so cute. I feel relieved to finally have fulfilled my birthday promise, despite the fact that spending any money is making me cry right now.

2. I got turned down for yet another job where I made it to the multiple interview stage and got another “We thought you were a really strong candidate, etc.” This is starting to affect my self of steam. In a way I am relieved, because I thought the job sounded dull, and would be tough as a resume stepping stone (it had a weird job title and was kind of nichey writing) but I see another yellow bill come into the mailslot today and I think it certainly would have been better than a poke in the eye. I should have an interview next week for a position that has “editor” in the title, which excites me. I am ready to give blood to get one of these increasingly rare positions.

3. Retail job is going well…except for the fact that my lazy typety type ass is not used to being on my feet for 6-8 hours. When I come home from retail job, I disappear into a pit after barely being able to get the kids done for the night and sleep for 11 hours. I am not kidding. I wake up refreshed and wonder where my day went.

I got hazed on my first day on the floor. A regular employee came in with the foulest mood I had ever seen, and this is someone who spent 5+ years in record stores surrounded by aspiring Jack Blacks-in-High-Fidelity of all stripes. I introduced myself to her and she pointedly ignored me and picked up the phone. Then she told me that if I “put anyone off” with my nose ring I should direct them to her. I told her I wasn’t worried because I’ve had it for half my life now and when I smile people know I am friendly. I mean, it’s Seattle, FFS. People don’t really bat an eye at me. Then the adorable gay boy who took me under his wing was singing and she said, pretty loudly, “Could you be any more flaming?” I forgot how different retail environments are. Sexual harassment, non-PC statements, and just plain-old nastiness just run rampant. I know this happens in offices, too (I have seen it, for sure) but it seems like everything boils down to the lowest common denominator when you slap someone behind a register.

By the next shift she decided I was non-useless, and now I seem to be in the clubhouse somewhat. She has been shoving the ESL/tourists off onto me because I have always had a knack for understanding the Japanese and a lot of patience. Now I hear her call across the store: “SJ! Translate!” I have to say this is the most fun retail job I’ve ever had. Yesterday I was talking to someone about this knifemaster I was reading about in Oly and the difference between Japanese and American knives. The company ethos dictates that you just pretty much stand around talking to people all day. It’s much less dismal than, say, the time I put in at Tower or even the indie stores.

4. Yesterday on the way back from work I was listening to the Nippers, and they were interviewing this lady who wrote Things That Makes Us [Sic] (GET IT??), about grammar. Additionally, she is a founding member of SPOGG, which, you know, right on for grammar analness but yesterday on the radio she was actually espousing correcting our friends and loved ones when they stray off the grammar trail. I was a little saddened by this, because she seemed whip-smart otherwise. She likened correcting people’s grammar to pointing out the fact your friend has spinach in their teeth. I say no to this. She claims that your friends will thank you, I claim that they will not call your pompous presumptuous ass back. Unless this is a form of public trolling, in which case I say WELL PLAYED. IRL lulz are hard to come by, and should be seized when possible.

5. Fangsgiving. I am thinking about my mom today, thanks to an email exchange I was having with my friend and neighbor, who is helping me with my Hester Prynne problems, thank you babby jesus. I was telling him about adventures in cooking for my mother, the ingrate.

1999. I am living in a rambler in Phoenix with SeaFed. We also have a roommate who thinks that we’re crazy and who is chased out by my mother and sister’s presence eventually. My mother was with us after fleeing the East Coast and her third marriage. I had discovered that I liked to cook after becoming the gothic trophy wife of my drug-dealing husband and finding that I had both too much money and too much time on my hands. I was really starting to get my chefery on at this point. Since we were a small gathering of four for Thanksgiving that year, I decided to get schmancy and make cornish game hens with a honey-apricot-herb glaze of my own devising.

They turned out beautifully. Golden, fruity, crispy around the edges. Stuffed with nuts and scallions and crap.

My mom’s response: “I can’t believe you didn’t make a turkey.”

2000. Franny is a wee little six-week old sprog and we have all caravaned to the PNW’ed (booooo) and are housesharing in Shoreline. I am vaguely and stupidly excited about the prospect of us all Fangsgivinging together in the house, me, my mom, my sister, and now Franny. I wanted to contribute, so I offered to make stuffing. I decided on cornbread and I made an unholy fuckton. I even did it “right” and made it a day or two before so it could dry out a bit beforehand. Verily it was delicious.

My mom’s response: “Mmm, I think I prefer StoveTop.”

2005. I am crammed into the shittiest yet nicest apartment we can afford. Daniel comes over, as well as my sister and mother, who deigns to let me have Thanksgiving at my house. I was very pleased with the company and the group effort.

My mom’s response: “This meal does not contain enough organ meats.”

Conclusion: if you are cooking for someone who is a StoveTop-eating, gibblet-munching, persnickety ass, don’t expect great things. This year I am making it Southern style with bourbon gravy, cornbread stuffing, and beans-n-bacon. NO ONE will be persnickety. Happy Fangsgiving.

P.S. Renee Khan and others, I am working my way through Sepulchre and even taking notes. FOR JOO.

Recap and Loose Ends

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I have been writing so much online lately I feel obligated to catch you up on things. A lot of times when I am depressed or otherwise unmotivated I just puke into the wordbox and run away, which leads to people going “what happened with so-and-so” to which I say “paisley banana” because I am irritating like that. So, an update.

1. Okay, so the lice are beaten into submission for now. I am not so foolish as to say that they are gonesville, because we know where that kind of hubris gets us. That’s right, pregnant with triplets, a pegleg, and with a car we can’t afford to take out of hock. You know, despite the fact that lice can go and be everywhere, I thought I was living some kind of charmed lice-less existence, kind of like how I have never (yet) had strep throat.

This morning I was talking to a friend about it as well, and she was recounting her family’s experience with parasites and how loaded that all is. There are so many implications there about class and money or lack of, and everything. I will say that when I was in school there was one girl who we knew was the lice vector repeatedly and she was always kind of a hot mess and was nicknamed “Booger” because guess what she used to do in the front row of music class? I’ll never forget when Mrs. Giardini stopped playing her autoharp to snap, “JESSICA! Stop that.” I guess I made some kind of connection between lice and personal habits and possible moral turpitude, I don’t know.

I am also feeling extra empaddled by the universe since we just did a month of flea battling. Wug.

2. Job hunting rambles on. Today I stormed off a website that is taking applications for a job because I found it to be one of the most horrendous pieces of application software I have ever seen.

a. The multistep form. FUCK RIGHT OFF with that. You know the form’s going to crash on you when you’re on step seven of nine and it will eat everything.

b. Salary expectations. Hmm, let’s see here. The job description did not include a job title and was rather vague about allocation of duties and time spent. Honestly, the job requirements were even a little vague. I can work well in those vague areas because I am fast on my feet and a quick learner, but you want me to assign a value to a job that sounds, at this point, rather vague? I’d really like to get to know you better and hear what you can offer me before I under or overbid myself, thanks. And what’s that, you won’t accept the values “negotiable,” “$00.00,” or “$1.00”? Screw that.

c. I’m a job applicant, not a study participant. Please don’t make me fill out multiple steps about where I heard about your job or other stupid information like that.

Your application page is my first indication of you as a company, as opposed to your products. You sound like boobs. I had to X the fuck out of there.

3. Further, I have now been to two trainings for retail job, totaling nine-and-a-half hours of training. Next Sunday I have ANOTHER two-hour training. After the most recent training, they drop the little bomblet on us that because of the way the economy is, we may not get called to work for three weeks in a row, if at all. When I applied I was told that I would probably be working between 20-40 hours a week. They made us come to the training in uniform, which I had to buy, because I did not own pants in their company colors. Some of us may be kept on after the holiday, but don’t get your hopes up. I filled out the availability form with a heavy heart.

The feedback I am getting repeatedly, when I get it, is that whoever interviewed me “liked me a lot” but that they had someone else with x experience. I get it. I have a phone interview for a job I am really interested in on Friday, and am waiting to hear back about a second irl interview I did late last week. I’m tired.

4. Also, lucky me, I wrote the inaugural post over on Uppity Women today. I am going to be posting there Tuesdays at a minimum, with whatever current event strikes my fancy. Some posts will be more feminist than others, I reckon. I am probably going to keep it light over there until I find my voice and figure out what I’m doing. It’s been fun making the shift between here and Blogher, which is a different sort of blog with a different audience, so I look forward to exploring another facet of how I want to write there.

5. I made an Obama cake and I want to show you it, but I cannot transfer pictures onto Abacustop. I am still working on prying my harddrive out of Hester Prynne. Life feels so slow this week and I am all getting my tired on because I am ramping up my running again now that my legs feel better. I ran two miles today and did a mountain of lousy laundry. Booyacah!

Potential Employers, Metal Shit in Your Face, & You

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This afternoon I hopped around my bedroom, desperately trying to get my labret out for my interview today. It was crazy stuck. Was it cross-threaded? I looked in the mirror. It looked straight. Could I pull it through the back of the hole without cauliflowering my lip? Could I cover it with a bandage and say I cut myself…shaving? Makeup, making it look oh-so-convincingly like a really round and symmetrical wart? Not good. This place was WAI too conservative for face metal. Was I going righty-tighty by accident? Which way was it facing? If I was facing it like it was stuck to a wall then lefty would be one way, but it was in my face… WAS I TIGHTENING IT? I had a bus to catch!

THE PLIERS! Pliers are always the answer and sadly have gotten me out of many piercing-related pinches. Speaking of pinches…there was the needlenose and the biggier one, whatever it was called. Needlenose on the inside? I tried to get a grip on the flat disk back of my labret while spinning the front bead loose. Oh god oh god I was going to give myself a fat lip this way. I imagined myself canceling the interview and making up some bogus excuse. “My cat got kicked in the taco and now I have to take her to the cateria.” I drooled slightly as I tried to get a better grip on something, anything. I could not bang my face on the counter as if it was a stubborn jar.

I thought about how I had seen piercers do it. Rubber gloves! Of course. I put on one and got a firm grip and…felt it come loose. That was it. Now I only had a giant hole in my bottom lip. That looked totally natural!

I tried to take it out once, for good, but the absence bothered me. Someday I think my age and maTOORity level is going to be at odds with some of the weird stuff I have going on, like my labret, but I will cross that bridge later.

In other news, the interview went well, but now I have to do audition work for them this weekend. This seems to be a trend lately, like the head hunter who asked me to write a paragraph for each requirement of a job before being submitted for it. I am crossing my fingers that upfront work like this will be less of a trend. I am happy to provide writing samples. It’s been said repeatedly, but this process is so draining. The phone screens, the interviews, the waiting, the smiling, the thinking on your feet. Two long interviews and retail training, with more retail training to come. That’s enough for one week.

Also, I should tell you that Ruby took me out to see John Hodgman read last night. It was less like a reading and more like Garrison Keillor humped the Jerry Lewis Telethon. I had no clue wtc he was until he started talking about hobos. Then I was like, OH, this is the guy that KoL stole a bunch of stuff from. 10-4. The dude from The Long Winters showed up and was massively awesome, as was Sean Nelson, who covered Billy Joel SO well. And that guy that indie nerds are always hubbubbing about, Jonathan Coulton, was there too and sang Codemonkey. They should probably just tour.

:’)

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I am just so happy today. I have been randomly tearing up all day. It felt so good to work. And, I have an interview tomorrow for a writing position. To warm up for my interview tomorrow, I will tell you all about my training day, which was wacky. Looking up for now. Now that Ohio’s in the bag I think I am going to turn it off and watch my favorite movie EVAR, Double Indemnity. Have a happeh night.

Thx, Lorelei!

10:42 p.m.: fireworks in the streets ahoy!

10/5, 6:47 a.m.: email from beloved overseas friend!

I am trying not to bawl my eyes out with joy at the election result.
god i am so happy. wow. you should see the papers over here, everyone
loves your country again :P wow… i am going to cry again!

In Which Nicholson Baker Can Suck It

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I am sucking down Mad Men like it is 2007 and I am Britney Spears with a Big Gulp of Purple Monster before me.

Likes:

1. Child “abuse”
a. Children with plastic bags on their heads
b. Children mixing drinks
c. Children being told to sack up and go to bed

2. Constant Smoking and Drinking*
a. At work
b. After work
c. Before work
d. During the commute
e. With your spouse
f. In a house
g. With a mouse
h. In a box
i. With a fox

* Makes me regret not smoking constantly, or at all**
** Makes me remember old relatives who died horribly of Cancer of the Cirrhosis in the ’90s.

3. Stylistic Stuffs
a. Clothes
b. Music
c. Women being exploited at “nudie bar” somehow mitigated by the fact that I cannot see each individual rib.

Dislikes:

1. Egregious Littering/Resource Hogging
a. But I know that people are running after and picking up the beer cans chucked in the woods.
b. Also, three-mile long Cadillac, lol.

2. “Sweetheart, Make Yourself Useful and Get Me a Glass of Water.”
a. I can’t help it, it makes me cringe every time. I keep expecting women to say “bite me,” but they never do. And if they speak up they spend more time apologizing after.

In Other News: UGH

I have to go downtown today and buy black pants for my job, which starts tomorrow. Yes, there is a dress code. What is the opposite of a dream coming true? I am going to be working in a MALL. I have avoided working in a MALL for 31 years. If Satan chooses to smite me on my way downtown, that is okay at this point. What the hell happened to me?

I have two phone screens in the can at the moment and I am waiting to hear something, anything back about them. They both pay about the same but are different types of writing jobs. I would be happy with either. I guess at this point I feel lucky I am still getting interviews? In the meantime I will be wearing a nametag and making $9.25 an hour, which won’t even cover rent. WOW. Living in Seattle is stupid.

I have been feeling kind of anxious and frustrated lately, because I feel like I am exactly where I was during the last election: tense, not enough money, looking for temporary work. Life Same as Four Years Ago, except now I am probably wiser (read: moar bitter). In a way that situation was scarier because I was pregnant then, but it was also giving me something to look forward to, at least until I lost Strudel’s twin, which I thought was all of Strudel. Now the child is here, and I love her, but her feet keep growing and she keeps termiting my cabinet bare. When I was pregnant the first time, I was like JFC this is hard, but then the baby came out and had to eat and be clothed and put somewhere besides a sack on a nail in the barn, and I was like OH SNAP LIFE JUST KEEPS LEVELING UP. I think I would rather be carrying my children around inside me at a time like this. Maybe I can put them in stasis for a while. I’m sure that wouldn’t mess with them psychologically at all.

We’re Calling This a Duck

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I went downtown yesterday to begzor for a job. There was an open house at a downtown shop for retail work.

I have been out of retail for ten years now. I quit working halfway through college so I could really focus on my school work, and then I got knocked up anyway. I was lucky that I didn’t have to keep working then. After that I had grad school, writing gigs, or work I find more satisfying than selling stuff. But here it is, two months into my job search and I’ve turned up nothing, and done office-type temp work exactly once. I am working on some content writing stuff for websites right now, but one I accepted for trade and experience, and the other…I don’t know when I’ll see that money. As usual, I am juggling about twelve balls, but none of them are resulting in regular paychecks.

I found myself staring at the bottom of receipts when I would come back from the drug store or the department store. “Now hiring for seasonal help!” How long is too long to wait before taking the kind of work that you can get but does not line up with your 75-year plan? I guess the only way to answer that is to factor in your mental state and where your bank account is at. I decided I would apply for retail if it went two months, but that I would try not to get 100% wretched retail.

So the idea of an open house is that while you fill out your application, the managers chat you up. I dressed a little boho so I would give the impression that I would fit in with the vibe of the store (not a stretch really, which is why I applied there). I was wearing my red mary jane Fluevogs and just kind of rocking the funky monkey thing. Someone who worked there recognized my shoes and said, “Oh, vegan shoes! They do the vegan ones!” I kind of smiled at her with the knowledge that not only were my shoes leather, but that I also had two garage sale furs in my closet and a death mink. Also that I would probably eat an animal of any size whole in front of anyone at any time. Send the evite; I’m there. Move out of the way, I might accidentally take a bite out of your rump. There was a lot of vegan chat. Apparently world Vegan Day is November first.

Then I got into a conversation about what I have “been doing recently.”

“Oh, I’m a freelance writer,” I said. “It’s slow right now. I need to make some money for the holidays.”

“A writer! Are you going to write about us?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I will change your names.”

Later I got into a conversation with the manager, who told me she was vegan. We chatted about Oprah and PETA and Prop 2 in California. Another associate popped in and asked if I had tried a certain product and the manager informed them that “No, SJ is vegan.”

EEP.

Today I got the call. I’m in. Training starts in two weeks.

It made me think about vegan shoes. I have heard of “recyclable” vegan shoes, but I imagine most of them go on the tip, and we know that leather shoes usually last many times longer than plastic ones. Since I guess I am an inherently cruel person who endorses many varieties of subjugation, I guess I’ll have to go with the renewable resource: a cute cow with big blinky eyes.

Meanwhile, Back at the Angry Lesbian Fortress of Solitude

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I finally got one glorious day of temp work. Well, a half day. I was downtown at a car company’s convention that was some kind of reward for the top sellers/managers of the year. I had kind of a feeling of dread that you get when you’re dealing with the public, and if you know that public is going to be mostly middle-aged white men. Mostly they were nice, but a couple felt the need to make jokes at me, which was kind of frustrating because I was basically taking transcription of the focus group/Q&A portion of the day, and I was trying to concentrate on typing like a furious demon and catching all their unfamiliar company jargon. Type for fifteen minutes, and then switch to a new table and start all over again.

It’s that thing I’ve been dealing with for years, that hyuk hyuk, you won’t mind if I ask you loud personal questions in front of everyone or make a joke about your name. I understand I am going through a phase right now where I am Overly Sensitive to male entitlement, which helps me smile in the face of all this to make my moneys and GTFO.

At one table this hambeast of a guy insisted on knowing what my name “stands” for. I always want to say something bizarre like “ending inhumane chicken farming practices” but that wouldn’t go over well.

“C’MOOON, it’s gotta stand for something,” he pressed. I shook my head nonchalantly.

“It doesn’t stand for anything!” snapped the only other woman at the table with me, who looked like she was in her early thirties and had her arms all stacked up with bracelets and a jaunty cap. Right on. I’m sure she deals with that shit more than she would like as well.

In conclusion, please kill me, I can’t get Smell Yo Dick out of my head.

In Other News: Reader’s Advisory from Awesome Jerks!

Thanks! Here is the aggregation of the awesomeness that you left in my comments the other day.

Nailing Your Wife. Nathan Fillion in PG porn from Lorena.

Violet sent me something from Walmart that was no doubt lewd, but they apparently got huffy and moved it?

Beloved grad school homie JT sends me Darth Montague. ANOTHER channel from the Cheezburger people. They are poised to take over the world, methinks.

Rothbeastie gave us Diesel’s SFW Porn party invite.

Tuckova sent me new Grace Jones! Holeee shit. News flash: she still scares me, almost as much as she did in A View to a Kill. Awesome video.

Krumpy my Krumpy sends me Gay Porn Twins Go On Robbing Spree (Srs)

La Pequeña Sarah Palin comes from Styro. YEAAAAH. [NSFW, NMS.] “When John McCain dies I will be president. MWAHAHAHA!”

Julia sends Gay Mount Everest. Doh. I love live news redonkulousness.

Lady GaGa! How did I not know her? Man, I love pure pop music like this around the house. And yet I am running to Andrew Bird right now. I dunno! Thanks, Meredith. I need to listen to our local dance station more and less NPR. Oh, the economy’s bad today? How about now? Still, yes. And tomorrow too, right? Yeah.

Also, today I wrote about Tim Burton’s film homagery at Blogher. I love writing over there. I know I’m not curing cancer or anything with my pop culture blurbery, but it’s so much fun to focus and nerd out on a topic besides…well, me.

Hey this is like a real weblog or something today! Thank you, my homies, you are cheering.

Bulletin From Your Vagina-American

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WOW I’m a fricking genius. Longtime readers may know that I have special issues with the wetting myself (once, I swear) and being able to pee in public at all. Well, friends, today I had an interview for a job I would enjoy having, I think. I put on my foncy lady clothings and took the metal shit out of my face and tied my hair back into a bun so awesome that undead Melvil Dewey would have immediately taken me as his unholy bride right on the spot.

Look at this, disclosure within disclosure! I have also discovered the wondrous world of Spanx in the past six months. Let me say, you cannot hide what is there. It will not go away. Where will it go, into some kind of weird vacuum hammerspace (“Yeaaaah, I’m only a tubbo on the weekends, thanks.”)? But it will make things smoother. Ensmoothen, if you will, and I know you will. So you can look nicer in your foncy lady pants.

Of course I had purchased the one that was best for wearing under thin summer dresses, and as such provides a fair amount of coverage. So much coverage that you don’t even have to pull them down while you’re out and about. They have this weird gussety thing, and you just kind of…pee out of that. I know, I know. Doing it the first time scared the pickles out of me, because it just sort of feels like you’re wetting your pants or something, but it worked, and all the other times after that, EXCEPT TODAY.

Did I mention I had an interview today? Yeaaah.

I took a loooooong drive to get there, nom nom nomed the coffee all the way there, stuck in traffic, etc etc and slammed a big glass of water before climbing into the car. I was doing the carseat peepee dance by the time I got to within a block of the interview site. LO! There was a giant department store just calling my name.

I wanted to pee and pick up a magazine (No, Jessica Simpson, I don’t want to hear about how you Found Love Again, please choke on your hair extensions) to kill some time, since I am appropriately afraid of the commuting situation in this town and left very early.

I went into the bathroom and got ready to do my thing, positioning myself over the toilet in a way that seemed like optimal deployment. Some ladies, I know, can fire it off with no mistakes or trouble, and can even go standing up, but I am one of those who can get all cockeyed and pee on my leg and stuff. No homo. I was just having that thought, “Gee, this would be terrible timing for me to OH GOD OH GOD what is that FEELING NONONONO!”

There I blew. The pee went all cattywampus and ended up soaking into the edge of the gusset. No NO NOOOOO! I couldn’t stop, though, I had been holding it too long. The problem soon spread about a bit, as it all wicked around. I hopped around in the stall desperately, trying to contain the wetness with wadded toilet paper and prayer. Blot, blot, blot, Jesus God, I am going to be that person at the interview, Spanky McWettibutt. This is my Fergie Ferg moment. It was middle school all over again: EVERYONE WILL SEE AND EVERYONE WILL KNOW. I will be that weirdo who leaves the wet spot on the seat. I can’t untuck my shirt. Should I take it off? Then I will have nothing. I can’t go commando to this important interview.

I imagined myself cramming the moist Spanx into my purse and then them somehow jumping out at the interview (like I wouldn’t just leave them in the car) like a snake in a can of trick peanuts. Nice to meet you, BOINGWETSPANX.

I blotted. I flushed. I tucked and emerged, remembering that no matter what I do, I will do it clunkily and with as little grace as humanly possible. I looked at my butt. I looked at my front. Butt. Front. Butt. Front. BUTT. FRONT. Rhythm! I started to dance. “WHAT IS LOVE? Baby don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me, no more.” I remembered that it was 9:15 in the morning and snapped out of it, making a hasty exit from the large department store bathroom.

I sat down in the car with my legs open a little bit like I had seen dudes do, as if I had nuts to mash or something. I waited til it was almost the appointed time. I peeked into my crotch a little, like it was the aforementioned snake in the can. I could see my pants looked a little darker. Oh dear. It would be hidden by standing and sitting, I reasoned.

I walked into the interview. I smiled. I sold myself like crazy. How was your day?

If you are having no luck with comments, I always like to get an email. (sj at this site.) But not you, Nebulon. No one likes your style.

Randomata, and Fake Jorbs

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Someone in my neighborhood likes Morrissey as much as I do. I can heaaar yoooo. Would it be wrong to knock on every door asking to borrow a cup of angst and pompousness until I found the right house? Probably.

I did not get the job I was gunning for, or any job yet. Dang internal hires. I suppose that was my chance to knock their socks off and pwn the internals, or I can look at it as practice, or I can look at it as I was the token outside interview. Perhaps I will look at it as a ham and brie on a baguette.

Franny’s grandpa called me a couple of days ago. He calls me or I call him maybe a couple of times a year. Earlier he asked if he could send Franny to camp this summer (YES PLZ) and the other day he asked if he could scoop her up and do a Friday night sleep over. He mentioned they hadn’t been seeing her much, now that Franny’s dad moved to an island.

So, YES, that’s news, I am realizing as I’m typing this. After all the back and forth and mediation and moneys last fall, SeaFed just abruptly plopped her on me for most of the time and is taking every other weekend for now til he moves back. Here’s hoping that island life suits him well.

PS, when I started this blog two days before the National Bummer I was very deliberate in my  choice of name. I saw a couple of bloggers hitting that earlier fame jackpot, and I thought, hmm, what if I blow up (ha ha ha)? Which in those days, of course, meant that a lot of people had “hand-coded you into their sidebars” because you were funny, embarrassed/ing, or had staged your own death. This is less snappy than getting “Dugg,” no?

Anyway, I thought I would never run in a publication or that no one would ever take a quote from I, Asshole for newspapers or magazines, but then I was mentioned in Esquire like hump hump no bigs for the July issue, and now my url is in the Houston Chronic thanks to Jenny. Lo and LOL, the geek shall inherit the Earth (and I shall copyeditzor their documents).

I Never Write About Work Because It’s BORING

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Hey, it’s Friday and I almost feel like myself again. Except I sort of feel like my sinuses are a huge radiator with a block of ice cream sitting on it, you know, the yucky old kind that came in a box with flaps. Who thought that was a good idea? I’ll tell you who: the box industry, that’s who.

Aren’t we glad the days of boxopolies have come to an end and we now live in the era of cling wrap. Hail, cling wrap overlords.

So, Strudel’s been screaming at the table for the past fifteen minutes while I’ve been checking my email for auction shit and updating the catalogue with last minute changes. I don’t know what happened to the database. It starting throwing 3075 errors, like I EVEN know what that means, which resulted in the catalogue not dumping to a Word file that only needed a little tweaking. It looked like it was trying to pull something I don’t even need.

Luckily I could dump it to Excel and cut and paste into word. It took SIX HOURS to format that shit. Of course I had to feed the kid and wipe her butt in between, and she yammered at me constantly, poor thing. Usually I am doing things like taking her to the park or reading to her after school.

But the catalogue is in place, and now I am waiting for it to be proofed. Since they’re pretty old school, I suspect that this will be a red pen affair, and if I even said the words “Track Changes” it would earn me nothing but a blank look. The scary thing is that this is what on time looks like. HUR. Eight days to go.

And now I have a fun weekend of database mongling. I know what it did last summer.

HEY the kid stopped screaming. HOW DARE I make her the toast with honey that she asked for. Probably the neighbors have already called CPS, though.