Happy Turkey Day!

My baby sister is hosting this year, so after today, I'll probably be offline until Sunday. Have a great holiday everybody!

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Movies!

Tor.com is having Muppets Week in honor of the new Muppets movie coming out, which I want to see so bad it hurts. But that's not the subject of today's post. Today's post is why don't I have these movies already inspired by the reviews at Tor.com?

The only Jim Henson movie I have is Labyrinth. None of the original Muppets trilogy nor any of the later ones. I really don't know how this happened, but if I ever get a chance to rectify it (which means I have disposable income for entertainment again), I won't be buying the movies in order.

First up, Muppet Treasure Island. Second up would be A Muppet Christmas Carol.

The third movie in the list is something I'm willing to rent before I buy Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame because I had no idea it even came out last year. To explain, Judge Dee was an actual Chinese official that a Chinese novel was written about. A Dutch diplomat translated that novel and then wrote more stories with the same character. Now a Chinese film has taken back the character for an extravaganza movie like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (which I ADORED). Oh heck yeah! I must see this movie at least once.

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A Full Week Ahead

Of the paying job at least. No funeral time nor holidays until Thanksgiving. I haven't heard back from my interview last week, so Candi's comic today feels like an accurate kick in the gut. I'm calling for an update at lunch. And at some point today, asking my supervisor to change my hours to 7am - 3:30pm. Even if I don't get that job, it can only help with my commute.

We successfully got through my grandfather's funeral without an incident which would end up on the evening news. Celebrate the little victories in my family, folks. I got a three day weekend thanks to Veterans Day, which I spent on housework, writing, and confirming that I have no money. I haven't had any work to earn money in two weeks.


At least I finished Chapter 15 in Stellar, dived into the first scene of Chapter 16, and finished Chapter 2 of Tin Man: Prince. Oh and somebody sent me a link where Tin Man: Pirates of the Nonestic was recommended with a nice review. Nice to know I'm doing something right in someone else's unbiased opinion.

Interview: Still reviewing things on their end. *Crossing fingers*

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Friday of Fun

A few days ago, I saw a bald eagle on the way home. I thought it was portentous at the time. All raptors are bit of a luck charm, but a bald eagle, WOW! But now I'm wondering what the sighting is portentous of.

Family: my paternal grandfather died this morning. No, condolences necessary. This has been coming for a while and I'm not looking forward to how my father will be screwed over with the settling of the estate.

Second job: I'm looking again and feeling more peeved than panicked. Why when I haven't had any demos all this week? Because I asked about needing to generate leads and was assured I wouldn't have to do that. What actually happens? The only work I got this week was registring people for about an hour and a half for no pay. I got two contacts, but the odds: you need ten contacts to get one demo.



Everybody has been nice, it's a cool product, and it still feels like a great company to work for. But not for me right now with my need for cash NOW! Landing it was a good shot of self-esteem boost that I was in denial that I needed.

So my plans? I'm calling about an interview today and hoping to hear back from a medical test. I need to finish Chapter 15 and start Chapter 16. Taking more vitamin C so I don't catch a coworker's cold. Nearly everybody else in the state is obsessed over the LSU vs. BAMA game, but my only wish is that I could have had a free ticket to resale for a couple of grand.

Overall, it doesn't look like I'm suffering from procrastination as much, which is funny since I just found the perfect description of the whole cycle in Hyperbole and a Half.

Damnit, BMI is still too high for the medical study.

Interview set for Monday. Yeah!

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Crazy Week

I might get home before 10pm tonight. Training for the second job finished last night, I did really well, I get the demo kit today and go out to canvas a neighborhood for people to demo to. Marketing then takes the names and phone numbers and sets up the actual appointments. But the canvasing only lasts until dark and then I can go home. The end result will still probably be me crashing as soon as I change clothes while Mustard is telling me I'm a bad cat mommy for staying out so late and not letting him outside at all, but I'm not complaining. Mustard would probably tell me I have nothing to complain about.

Those who have met my cat know he's not very vocal. Usually he only does it demanding to go outside by a door. So I know it's bitching at me when he's in the hall herding me toward the bathroom meowing the whole time.

Writing took a hit with all this. I've only managed to eek out a page in the rough draft. The scene isn't giving me any trouble, so I think it has been a matter of focus and concentration getting used up. I only have to schedule three to four demo a week for part-time (I initially thought it was ten) so my fears of decreased writing time are gone. The only drawback I've found is the second job's no jeans policy, which I do understand. But it looks like I forgot today was Friday at the DOI.

Demos are scripted, but they let me tap into my improv skills that I haven't used since I hung up my cutlass. So any time the Fear Monger tries to twist me up to anxiety-addled-me my response is a laugh. "This is no different from renfaire, only I have a lot less crap hanging from my waist." Seriously, I should weigh my belt of renfaire gear if I can find all of it again. Fear Monger gets huffy and drops it. I'm also positive Dug-In-Heels Defender has been activated over the whole second job thing. "Mom is acting weird about it. My supervisor flat out told me 'you won't like doing that.' I will prove them WRONG."

Plus I'm broke enough to make prostitution of my mind look like a good idea. How far before I contemplate prostitution of the body? If this job keeps me from thinking that they are viable options, I'm in a much better place. Last plus, I can walk away once I've paid things off. Unfortunately, because of how crazy this week has been, I haven't developed my timeline estimate for when that will be yet. Four of my Big Rocks for this week deal with the Budget and I've only gotten one done so far. I've got a busy weekend planned making up for what I've missed.

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Naysayers Already

Janine Melnitz: Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?
Winston Zeddemore: Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.

Financially, I'm so close to the edge, I'm hanging on to a root with my fingernails. So my attitude is totally Winston right now. I've got good vibes about the company, I'm asking questions to make sure it's not a scam to blow up in my face, and overall feel very relieved over the opportunity to earn some money.

My mother who has been spending at least the last six months silently fuming whenever I have needed to borrow money and can't pay it back is now suffering from I'm not saying anything because you're so excited but something ACK! is going to happen to my baby on this new job! I'm not sure what bad she is expecting and really don't want to ask and invite the drama into my head.

My supervisor doesn't think anyone should have to work a part-time job. I asked for my annual work performance raises back. Today she's convinced that I will hate a demo sales job, to which I responded, "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I will sell whatever they want me to."

I am not going to plop my financial statements on either's desk. No one needs the dirty details but me, and hopefully they'll be more in the black this time next month.

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Political Feel Free to Skip It

If you really feel Obama hasn't done anything while in office, please read this post from the Daily Dish.

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Sitting Next to “Peter’s Laws” Poster is a Sign

I have an interview with a potential second job in less than an hour, and the Fear Monger and the Perfect Girl have ganged up on me. The Perfect Girl is freaking out that I don’t look professional enough, that I didn’t grab the reams of paper supporting items on my resume, and when I tried to wing it from memory, I only filled half a page of the resume. The Fear Monger is focusing on how I can’t afford this meal at Raising Cane’s and what will I do when I get rejected. Not “if” but “when;” the Fear Monger is such an optimist.

The decorating scheme of Raising Cane’s concentrates on framed movie posters and other pictures of pop culture significance along with some stuff for the town or university. I picked this booth to be out of the sun and sat down before looking at what was on the wall. Next to the Easy Rider movie poster is one titled “Peter’s Laws: The Creed of the Sociopathic Obsessive Complusive.”

1. If anything can go wrong, Fix It! (To hell with Murphy!) The audacity of that statement shut them both up and I nearly laughed out loud. When I got to #5 Do it by the book… but be the author! I am convinced I need this poster in my home office.

15. Bureaucracy is a challenge to be conquered with a righteous attitude, a tolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary. Maybe a copy for the office cubicle too.

16. When in doubt: THINK! 17. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing. I’m ready for the interview now.

8:00pm Update: I got the job! *Snoopy Dance*

Snoopy Dance taken from this page of Penny and Aggie.


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Did we just skip autumn all together?

Temperatures dropped into the thirties overnight and is STILL 36 degrees according to my desktop weather gadget. The DJs this morning keep saying "coldest day so far this fall." This is too damn cold for fall!

Rizzo has shoved my second job search to a new urgency. Last night, I spent two hours fighting traffic jams to get out of Baton Rouge. I finally reached Denham Springs and got back on the Interstate at 6pm. Then, just past the Juban exit, one of my tires goes flat. And by goes flat I mean it had a blowout but stayed on the rim. A nice trucker helped me put the spare on, but now I have to go buy tires, which I have no money for.

I don't know what else to do. I'm looking at a medical study for compensation, but I was over the BMI they were looking for. Convergys rejected me. The home based businesses that I bought this computer for rejected me. I walked away from Craigslist last night seriously considering selling my papers to a site that will sell them to plagiarizing students. I'm telling myself that I'm not desperate enough for that or street-walking yet.

Yes, I was stupid for the last two paychecks. But all the math adds up to I have to get more income in order to keep my head above water. I have a few more ads to check out. Cross your fingers for me everybody.

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Cleaning out opened tabs

I will eventually type up the blog posts I have written. But probably not today.

John Scalzi gives out writing assignments based on sci-fi films. If I actually needed a prompt to get me writing, #4 intrigues the hell out of me. But I don't, even if Monday's fire drill at the paying job and Tuesday's power outage at the paying job really knocked my progress off its feet.

Appalachian Prison Book Project Seeks Donations. Admittedly, why I don't weed out my books more often is I want them to go to a good home. Shipping charges may bunt this worthy cause out of my league though.

This year is going to be a pull the costume out of the closet Halloween. So I'm leaning towards Joan of Arc. More likely Joan of Arc taking a rest day, since I don't have a full-plate suit of armor in the closet.

Oh and cruise around Take Back Halloween for more costume inspiration. Their inspiration is to give women more options than just "Sexy whatever" for Halloween. And they gave me a source for Christine de Pizan's hat. Whenever I get to the project again, I can buy the damn thing rather than figure out how to build it.

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It’s a Lovely Idea But...

My house has a front porch and a back porch and to accuse me of not using them to their fullest potential would find me guilty. I’ve lost count of the years Mom has been storing the furniture that wouldn’t fit on their garage after she closed shop on my front porch. The carpenter bees have been feasting on the roof joists and ceiling and it’s not screened, so that limits the time one can spend on the front porch without becoming a blood donor.

The back porch is the laundry room and storage shed for my tools and yard equipment. I’m nearly convinced it will cave in and take the back half of the house with it. Remodeling is on my bucket list at this point.

The weather is crisp this weekend, so I put bug bombing my house on my to-do list, which means four hours and thirty minutes out of the my house. So I relocated current writing projects and part of my old desk to the front porch. I had a lovely idea of making myself a writing desk on what space I could carve back for myself on the front porch.

But there’s no way to sit at it with the desktop surface propped on sawhorses. All I have to sit on are rocking chairs and I’m composing this on my knee. Not comfortable at all.

I still love the idea for those times when you have to get off the computer. But I’m afraid I will have to get legs and make a table out of it. The last time I tried that the results were less than pretty. With this piece—formerly the leg of my L-shaped computer desk—I have screw holes already created in it. I’m considering some premade table legs or stair banisters that I can screw in to make it stable and give me leg room. When I get some money.

Second job hunt hasn’t gone so well, so I’m reopening my account at Freelance.com. I had luck there before, hopefully I will again. Now if my true side hustle is writing fiction, I’ve got three and a half hours to make a dent in Stellar’s rough draft.

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Let's start the countdown!

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Things to Share

Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy.:
I can't make this shit up -- Why not researching who you are talking and then name calling is a BAD IDEA. But funny for us watch the Internet unleashed.
"Surprise! Meet the Internet. It’s kind of pissed." John Scalzi's take on the situation.
And now Wil Wheaton's.

OneLug recreates the Last March of the Ents from the movie Two Towers DUDE! I didn't know that many black Legos existed. Ssh! Don't spoil it for me if they could use paint, okay?

Why Steve Jobs Matters I don't own any Apple products and I don't use iTunes, but the world is better for having had him here and we should all be mournful of his loss.

Can't decide what to read? Use this flowchart to find something. ;)

Okay I think that cleans off this group of tabs.

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Project 333

Posting daily metrics at DUF saps my inclination to post here. Something to bear in mind if you feel I need checking up on.

This weekend ended up being a lazy one for me. The crisp autumn air we have been blessed with didn’t give me any drive towards housework. All I managed to do was switch out my closet. Since the end of June, I’ve been following Project 333 and now is time for a progress report.

I haven’t seen a drastic reduction in the clothes I own in total, but only being able to wear 33 items is reducing the number of shoes I have: two pairs wore out and another pair I’m discarding because they hurt my feet.

Another thing that struck me as I continued reading blog posts on Project 333 was the complaints about the neutral basics. Just change up in the next three months was my conclusion until I had an epiphany. I can’t pinpoint when I had it, but I still remember: other people didn’t keep enough clothes to completely change over their wardrobe every quarter. I’m not ready to throw out more clothes than I already have, but it’s not a bad goal to have in mind.

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Almost Doing It Again

I’m considering a weekly schedule, mostly for “hello, I’m breathing” sake. Posting daily at DUF takes out much of the oomph to post here too.

Lee ended up being much alarm about nothing really. But if I hadn’t prepared for no electricity, the power would have gone out. Only lost one tree on the border of the lawn and the woods and it didn’t hit anything. The enforced quiet time to work on Stellar was a boon I’ve missed in the weeks since—especially this week.

Last weekend I spent with Eric and Suzanne and the break was worth the havoc on my sleep schedule.

This week the home computer is being a pain in the butt. McAfee Security Center developed a tick that I had to contact tech support over (the program came free with the new computer). The fix last night doesn’t seem like it held and now the computer is freezing up the first program opened. Before leaving for work, when I should have been working on budget stuff, Quicken froze up so I told the computer okay, it could reboot and examine the RAM. An hour later it was still logging off. I have no idea what I’m going to find when I get home, but I’ll be running Malware Bytes or something else to see what I’m missing. Unless some of the RAM died, I should have issues with it this soon.

Paying job: 312 lawsuits to go before the backlog of paid for dismissals will be finished. I’ve promised myself the day after I finish them is a vacation day and now it’s easier to slough through them.

Project 333: There’s fifteen days before I switch my current closet for the October, November, December set. So I should probably analyze what isn’t worth saving in this set. I already killed one set of sadals. There’s a skirt I never wore once. Thinking about this reminds me of the formula developed by What Not to Wear for putting together an outfit: “love, like, plus bling squared.” I’ll have to use that as a fine tuner for the next set.

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Tropical Storm Lee update

Haven't lost power yet, so maybe we won't. *Knock on wood* But the storm is going nowhere quickly, hovering on our coast and in sending feeder bands of rain. They issued tornado warnings yesterday, but I never saw weather that bad at my house. The center is around Morgan City, but it is very undefined there. The feeder bands are now stretching from Tampa, FL to Louisiana.

The back bedroom leak has nearly filled the bucket, so I need to use a lull and dump that. The kitchen had a few drops when I woke up yesterday morning, but since I spent most of yesterday writing at the table, I never saw more water pour in. The back porch yikes. Even the light fixture had water running over it. I need a new roof, but I can't complain too bad about the water. We need it to put out a marsh fire near New Orleans and my yard is soaking it up like a sponge.

I finished crushing all the cans to get a little exercise during the lulls and to make sure the porch wasn't going to sling junk at my parents' house. I got my words done for NPI and have reached Chapter Eight in the rewrite of Stellar Gift of Death. Today's plans: laundry, dishes, Stellar Gift of Death rewrite, vacuuming, any other housekeeping chores I've put off, paperwork, cleaning up the book list project that I put on hold, and I think that is enough.

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Don't Know Why I want to Remember This

On the old saw that “relationships take work”:

I think of this in terms of maintenance vs. repair.

All relationships take maintenance, just like cars. For a car, you have to put gas in it, and change the oil, and wash it, and get the engine checked, and rotate the tires. If you don’t, your car will stop running, no matter how good a car it is.

For a relationship, you have to treat your partner with respect and kindness (even when you’re tired and stressed, or mad), consider their needs and wants as well as your own, pay attention to how they’re doing, speak up, respectfully, when you have a problem, and listen honestly when they do the same. You have to make time and energy for you as a couple — date nights, pursuing mutual interests. And if you pay attention to maintenance, when a serious problem does come up (and it does), you have the foundation to weather it.

On the other hand, “relationships take work” should not be used as an excuse to do the relationship equivalent of buying a 20-year-old beater with faulty brakes and no floor, and pouring all of your money and energy into trying to get it to run, because you’re never going to get a reliable car out of it.

If your partner doesn’t care about whether you are happy, doesn’t regard you with respect and doesn’t think there is a problem (or vice versa), all the work in the world isn’t going to make a healthy relationship out of the two of you. If you have to work to put up with them or enjoy their company in the early stages of the relationship, it’s unlikely to improve.

As a corollary, sometimes it’s a great car, just not one that serves your needs. If you have four kids and live in a snowy climate, you’ll regret buying that sports car, no matter how good it looked.

J. Carolyn Hax Sept. 2, 2011 Column

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Really, it’s Friday

Blogger is trying to roll out a new interface. I tried it, got aggravated, and told them my complaints. So I’m not rehashing here but it is a good opportunity to make sure all my labels are more appropriate to the titles before the old interface goes away. For example, “Zy’s Novel” is now “Stellar Gift of Death” and I decided on “Zy Universe” for a series title (as far as DUF in concerned—this is no reflection on what the books may have).

Already getting rain from Lee as I drive into work.

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Tropical Depression for the Weekend

Looks like I better cancel my weekend plans and bunker down. Craptastic, I better ask what are the contingents for NPI.

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Love Affair with TV Monitor Over Already

I didn’t think I would be disillusioned over hardware before the sore feet. Well, I was wrong. The whole reason I used the TV is I didn’t want to deal with moving the monitor and its sensitive cord and I was hoping to transition to watching things on the computer more. I thought all the kinks were ironed out.

This morning was a whole new kink. The margins of the desktop moved off screen on all sides. I spent an hour tweaking everything and researching what could cause this. When I finally stopped to get dressed, I had managed to get the taskbar back (except for the Start Button) and the highest screen resolution, which is too high for the recommended setting.

So tonight’s project will be shifting the monitor and seeing how to kink the cord so it won’t put the images on the monitor in the green spectrum. It’s like viewing everything with Emerald City sunglasses when that happens.

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