Sometimes a week off here and there is what I need. Of course, that's happening a fair amount lately, both with blogging and with work.
Newsflash to all, however...
I was hired by the university for a job that looks to be pretty interesting and (gasp!) enjoyable. A bit better pay than ever, good benefits...mmhmm.
I made the Dean's List. It's something small, perhaps, but reassures me that I can do this whole academic thing at an actual university.
I, I, I...another a week later.

Hopefully I'll be a bit more bloggy more often. Right now my writing is taking place elsewhere.

Well, I went on a bit of a rant about the temp job on the Vagrant Cafe board, so I won't rehash all that here. The job is over and I can't say I'm one bit sad about that. The need to support myself financially will probably force me into another terrible job far below my capabilities but surrounded and dictated to by those I'd be "supervising" if all were as it should be.
However, I interview for a job at the university in less than two hours. This is a job I actually reeeeeeally really want. If you see this, please pray. They're conducting two rounds of interviews, and I'd at least like to make it past round 1 for now (then get the job after sweeping folks off feet in round 2).
I actually cut my hair in preparation for the interview. I sell out, yes.
I should take a picture.
I need to scan some pictures Stacey just had developed. Great pictures of Flannery, the gorgeous Stacey, and my wonderful longer hair from this fall. Eventually I want to just let my hair grow, establish a beard, and so on.
I, I, I...

This one will be quick.
The level of busy lately is stuck at "crazy." In 21st Century English Literature, we're reading "Major Barbara" by George Bernard Shaw. In Culture of the 60s, working on a media-related article and I'm writing an assignment correlating Sartre and TS Eliot's "The Love Letter of J. Alfred Prufrock." I actually love it but wish I had more time to spend on it and spend with Stacey and do zine stuff. I'm trying to at least take a good while for dinner together the nights I'm home.

I'm trying to keep my mouth shut about the temp job. When I have other employment, expect some fun writing when I get the time.

Okay, no about work this time around, I promise!

Instead, I'll whine about yesterday. Self-indulgence is the name of the game.

I end work at 5 and on Thursdays have a class at 6. Last night I walked out of work at 5:10 (changed my clothes for class) and discovered my tire was flat. I KNOW this is poor form, but I drove a short distance to a gas station to put air in it, grabbed a sandwich, and ran to class. I figured my tire would be flat again when I got out of class but it was fine then and this morning, so it isn't a lethal hole. I noticed that the cap to my stem on the tire is missing, so I wonder if perhaps yesterday's flatness was due to some ne'erdowells or something. Anyway, I'm in my Culture of the 60s class, tired and cranky but having a good time. My head was pounding for lack of caffeine so I figured I'd get some on the break.
The university has a contract with Pepsi and as a result sells nothing but Pepsi. I don't like Pepsi one bit but saw they have Mt. Dew Red (which is all right once in a while) and went for that. The machine wouldn't give me my soda or my money back. By that point in the day, I probably could have legally been committed. I grabbed a roll of paper towel and wrote "piece of shit stole my dollar. out of order." on it and plastered it over the machine, stuffing newspaper in the place where the bottles come out (bottle birth canal?). People looked at me like I was nuts. My second and last dollar wouldn't work in the can machine and I was a nickel short. I finally just got a bottle of water from the water/juice machine.
Today's lesson is to NOT get addicted to anything, not even caffeine.
My big idea for an Abbie Hoffman style guerilla theatre project is to get a bunch of Big K cola and products and hand them out for free at the various major vending areas at the university. On the other hand, that's money and effort toward a fairly meaningless thing to protest, isn't it?

I'm sitting here in a room I refer to as "the Swamp Suite," though I think it's also known as the fish bowl. A large glass window looks in/out into a hallway. Right now some execs in suits are standing out there while I eat. I think they enjoyed watching me eat my banana. This is really the first I've been in here since the beginning of the day. My temp agency told me this would be a data entry/processing job, but my morning was devoted to "filebacks." Right behind the front desk receptionist is a wall of shelves with files on them. In front of the wall are more files on shelves that slide back and forth on a little track. My job was to put files back in their proper places. Several hours of this work rawed my fingers and made me borderline suicidal/homicidal. See, on some of the shelves they've got files crammed in so thick one more just won't go. The whole time the phone was ringing. Voices in my imagination started answering the phone and screaming obscenities at the callers. Every time a file simply wouldn't fit, I daydreamed about ripping it up and setting it on fire. At one point I slid one of the sliding shelves too hard and it hopped off its track so I had to take files from it, lift it up and set it back on the track, and replace the files. After a while of filing, one of my fingertips began to bleed. I wonder if I could file workman's comp if it gets infected.

No update on the blog for a bit because, well, I've been quite busy. I accepted a temp job working for an insurance company. Besides bill-paying wages and the usual benefits to having a job (I'm trying to forget detriments and just be grateful), I also value the following:

1. I can listen to my music on my computer.
2. No phone interruptions. Thank God.
3. Business casual. Expensive golf shirts and Dockers for some guys, Dickies and thrift store treasures for Joel.
4. A lovely view out of the window of other office buildings, McDonald's, Best Buy, and other blandities that urge my amnesia onward until I forget where I am.
5. Less than a 5 minute drive from work to the university campus.
6. Within walking distance of a Chinese Buffet and a Borders Bookstore.
7. Reasonable, relaxed environment (we'll close it out with generic one).

I've been spending more time than I probably should be on this web page. Hopefully it will all be worth it. What you see right now is most of the basic structure of the "home page" with more pages to be added later; those will be linked to from the bottom right.

I just remembered that last week sometime (I wasn't home) my roommates talked with some door-to-door Mormons and scheduled for them to come back on Tuesday. It's Tuesday and I'm the only one here, looking like white trash and very happy to be uninterrupted. I hope the poor Mormons come back another day because of the cold.

(later note: No Mormons ever showed up.)

Yesterday was a big Job Hunt day. After stopping by the University to fill out an application for a new opening in the Chancellor's Office and find out what books I'll need this semester, I took part in a group interview for some temporary positions with MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) recruiting volunteers for a "lock-up fundraiser." 16 people, 5 positions, a 3 week project. We came from various temp agencies (such as OfficeTeam, Remedy, etc.) and met in a conference room. First we had to talk to another prospect and then tell the rest of the group about that person and his/her favorite job. The guy I "interviewed" is an MD who took a break from clinical medicine for a while, managing family farms and now looking for temp jobs before making his way back into medicine, apparently. A few of the other people there had quite a bit of experience in recruiting volunteers (the work we were all vying for) and telemarketing, so I figured my chances to be pretty slim. After the two MDA staff explained everything to us, they instructed we applicants to write a sample script to use when recruiting volunteers. After several minutes, we read them aloud. Mine impressed the MDA staff and many of the applicants (only one other got any real response). However, apparently that wasn't enough because the job started at 9 this morning and no one every called me yesterday.

Okay, let's try an update. I'm experimenting a bit with CSS styles and scrollbar colors and I really should get back to more important things.

Hello, all.
This is the first post to my new website. New site, same old drivel, of course.
I'm planning to add quite a few links in coming days but am still ironing out how exactly.
Most likely I'll be creating individual pages for various categories: other blogs, zines, bands/artists, literature, film, Omaha stuff, spirituality-related links, and so on.
I also plan to soon add a little blog window in which I will address what I'm currently digging. That way I can recommend a band or album or book or whatever in case people are interested in checking out new stuff without skimming through whatever else I might happen to be blathering about.
And then I'm sure someday I'll get around to posting pictures and other items of "interest."

I didn't do anything too exciting for New Year's, just hung out at home and did some reading, watched various "marathons" on television, cleaned up a little bit...pretty much perfect. Walker and I hung out a bit last night and today we're going to a Chinese buffet and checking out Cold Mountain. Stacey is flying back in tonight, which is great...I miss her quite a bit. Flannery misses her a lot, too, I can tell. I've been watching quite a few Twilight Zone episodes lately (2 day marathon on SciFi Channel) and if I ever write anything as cool as just one of the really good episodes, I'll be happy. I'm eating some Krispy Kreme []d=---------gffffttttonutuij23333333s (the seasonal is Pumpkin Spice and amazing) in an attempt to cushion that extra holiday weight and the cat keeps suspecting something's up and coming over to check out the situation. She has this habit of drinking out of my water. I don't mind sharing and my socialist tendencies say "hey, no problem," and in all reality, it's probably more healthy than sharing with a human, but I can't get over the fact that she licks herself all over and I really just don't like thinking about that when drinking my water. As a result, I keep a glass of water nearby on the floor for her. Today she knows something is up (I'm hiding the donuts in a box) and to get me back, she keeps trying to drink out of my water glass instead of hers. She finally would only drink out of hers after I pretended to drink out of it; then she lapped up quite a bit. I'd give her a piece of donut but both Walker and I gave her small pieces last night and the last thing this cat needs is a sugar buzz.
And I'm stingy.