A week or so

July 28, 2003

It’s always a bad idea to try to write after grading the writing tests. My head is stuffed with awkward clause structures and ugly business language, as well as the multitude of ways one can misspell ‘inconvenience’.

I worked at the mortgage company again today. I finished tidying up the evil file room…and was immediately led to another. This one is better; I just have to go through all the cabinets and shred old files. I’m headed back there tomorrow.

I got very dusty going through the files, and I had to drive on the freeway with all the other commuters. Still, it’s fine for now. I can take time off whenever I want. Perhaps I will become a permanent temp for a while. But I can feel the dull stupor of work coming over me. I already feel less like putting any effort into analyzing the day and more like drinking a beer and watching TV.

Evening

Who stole the clothespins off the line in the backyard? Was it the downstairs neighbor, the gay magician-slash-deliveryman? Was it the recently-evicted sociopath? If the former, was he just being thoughtless, or did he perhaps need them for a magic show? If the latter, was he exacting his revenge for losing his apartment and all his stuff? Or were they stolen by a random transient, or perhaps by the guy who reads the meters? Did birds pluck them delicately off to assist in holding their nests to the branches above? My apartment is draped with wet placemats and underwear. This is someone’s fault.

I’m feeling kind of mushy. I want to hold hands and sit on the swings in the park.

July 27, 2003

This has been the weekend of a working woman. All that drudgery on Friday has entitled me to two straight days of gin and inertia. L's off trying to buy a house, and me, I'm reading every blog ever written and thinking about taking a nap. It's Sunday morning. It is splendid.

July 26, 2003

I slept forever. Dragged L to Yo Burrito with me last night after This American Life (which was awesome last night, especially the priest and the parasite stories). The restaurant was closing, but I got some food and warm Schlitz nonetheless. Then I flaked out on not one but two shows: The Thirsties at the Hunter-Gatherer, which I would have rather enjoyed, and another show which would have been socially, if not musically, a lot of fun. I went to bed. I fell firmly asleep for over ten hours. It was exactly what I needed.

We’re supposed to have a monsoon this afternoon, and I’m thinking I’d like to take a walk in it. Other plans include making a band webpage, which will probably have an impossible URL and be really weak compared to the one our old guitarist put together. I might also call my parents.

I just got a super email from old roommate Brent, who just moved to Seattle. He told me to get out of Columbia. Duly noted.

One more thing: I got an email from a student from last year, and it made my week. She was an amazing writer, and was going though all this personal awakening in her journals, realizing that her sorority friends were really lame and that the kids who'd been nerds in high school were way more interesting. She came to my office to talk sometimes, and was very definitely my favorite student. She also failed my class. Too many absences, too many late papers...I was devastated, and had no mercy for anyone else who screwed up that semester, especially the ones who whined and wheedled while Jane went so sadly and with such embarrassment. I tried to contact her, but heard nothing back until this week. She wrote to ask if I was teaching again in the fall. Oh, teaching is a beautiful thing.

July 25, 2003

Christ, I am tired. I had my first temp job today. Band practice was last night, and I drank a lot there and THEN went out for pizza and more beer with Will afterwards. He was in a kind of wistful mood, and I couldn’t figure out why, until he mentioned at the end of the night that he’s quitting smoking Saturday. Our night out was a sort of bachelor party for his lungs, I guess. I bummed him enough cigarettes for his last day, and told him not to call me for support.

Our drummer got a concealed weapons permit. I have no idea why. I’d never actually seen a gun (except in a cop’s holster) before he brought his out of his truck to show us before practice. I was so uncomfortable…I had to kind of wander away while he was showing us. Will told me later he’d been as uncomfortable as me.

Anyway, I stayed up too late, drank too much, and got up at 7:30 to put on office clothes and drive out towards the mall-and-yuppie section of town. I was queasy, thinking I was going to throw up, unable to drink more than one cup of coffee; it was the worst hangover I’ve had in a while, probably because I usually sleep well past 9 or 10.

I’d been assigned to some filing and copying work at a mortgage company, and that’s just what it was. Loan files are goddamn enormous. I copied about seven of them, and it took me over two hours. I think I only messed up the order of a few crucial items. Then I was shown to a little room with file folders piled halfway to the ceiling, covering every surface and much of the floor.
Good lord.
They hadn’t actually filed anything in over a year. I was to unearth the boxes from 2001, send to the shredder anything over 25 months old, free up some boxes that way, move all the 2002 stuff from the filing cabinets to boxes…and then file the thousands of folders in the room. None of this was really made explicit, but this is what I decided after a while.
So I worked on that all day, and will return Monday to keep working on it.
As I stood there going through the 2001 files, every person who walked by said ‘Wow, you’re really working hard’ or ‘Hey, you’re getting a lot done’. Really, I wasn’t. I was hungover, exhausted, hot, and dirty, and moving intentionally slowly so not much would be expected of me. My boss-for-a-day also started warming up around lunchtime, telling me to take a break whenever I wanted, telling someone else how impressed she was. Gradually, I started to hear stories of yesterday’s temp. She couldn’t run a copy machine, I was told, and had left at lunchtime, never to return. I should find out who she is and try to work places the day after she does.

I am really, really spacey, and should probably take a nap or something. No plans yet for the night beyond This American Life. I’m sure it will involve L and alcohol. But for once, the latter doesn’t really sound too good.

Curses

Clevertitle.com is a design company. Clevertitle.net is a blog. Real smart people investigate these things before naming their sites.

July 23, 2003: Evening

What did people do in the late 70s and early 80s? Quite a bit: they were busy making every job training and educational video that would ever be needed. Think about it: have you ever seen an OSHA video that looked like it was made more recently than 20 years ago? Is there a single bus safety video filmed after 1977? No: the feathered hair, pleated pants, and grainy, autumn-toned film quality are all evidence of these films’ ancient origins. But some of these videos treat very recent subject matter. I watched one today about mandatory drug testing, which hasn’t been around all that long. Yet the video featured sickly yellow fonts, moussed male hairdos combined with mustaches, and women with hoop earrings the size of their heads. This means that a canny producer in 1982 actually predicted the advent of drug testing and the needs of future markets! It’s an HR miracle.

Yes, I watched job videos today. I applied at the biggest temp agency in the state. I sat in a tiny room with four other people, all of us in our gooniest office clothes, at least one of us wearing far too much perfume, and filled out about thirty pages of paperwork. Then we got to watch the videos. I smiled to myself throughout, even taking notes on some of the hilarious dialogue*. I must have looked very, very excited to be there.

I had an interview with Denise, whom I liked very much. Then I took four tests. I rocked ass on Word, and did better on the typing test than I’d expected to – an adjusted rate of 54 wpm is pretty good for my haphazard, never-look-at-the-screen method. I scored 84% on the PowerPoint test, which I am quite pleased with, as I have never actually used PowerPoint. I screwed up Excel with 63%, I think, but perhaps I should be kept away from jobs involving math, anyway.

I love tests. I would like a job taking tests all day.
Actually, I would just like a job.

Improvised casserole in the oven: corn tortillas laid in baking dish, covered with diced onions, jalapenos from my own happy plants, tomatoes, green peppers, and cilantro, with cheese, salt, pepper, and a beaten egg mixed together and dumped on top. I figure I cannot screw up too badly with my invention, because these ingredients cannot fail to taste good together.
Well, maybe they wouldn’t be so good put through a blender.
Mmmmm.

I also picked up my bound thesis copy today. It’s still too fresh for me to really marvel at it, but it is cool nonetheless.

* “Concerning ladders, make sure they are sturdy. Concerning stairs, take them one step at a time. Concerning forklifts, only licensed operators should operate them.”
Let’s see: ladders, stairs, forklifts. That’s a wrap!

I may not have many people in my life just now, but the ones I do have are amazing. Russell and I had a conversation last night about getting my shit together, not taking on everything at once, not being stressed out. It started out pretty ordinarily, just silliness and the update on his job, dates, and our parents. Then he mentioned that they were a little worried about me, because it seemed like I wasn’t happy. This upset me; I don’t want anyone worried about me, and then I was crying and really NOT happy, though it was good and cathartic in a way, too. So he talked me through it all, the immediate plans and the future plans and the decisions I have to make tomorrow versus the ones several months from now. And the whole time, even though I was sad and needing to hear everything he had to say, at the same time I was standing back from it all, amazed and SO proud of him. This is MY little brother. The one I used to worry would never develop social skills. He’s a fuckin emotional genius. Wow. And I felt so good after talking to him.

And then L called me to go out for a beer, and I ended up staying at his house, even though it was a work night. No nightmares there. I was awoken at 6:30 by the soft rock station – NPR has been fuzzy all week, and L always wakes up to the radio, and this station was closest on the dial…do these sound like excuses? Anyway, I woke up to ‘Tiny Dancer’, and have been giggly all morning thinking of Mary and her dad singing ‘Hold me closer, Tony Danza…’.

I’m going to Roper Staffing today. It’s the biggest of the Columbia temp agencies. The cat is being sweet. It’s dark and gray out, and I’m sleepy, so sleepy. But I’ll shower, put on pantyhose, and trudge on out there. Then I have to tell my landlords whether I’ll be staying for another year.

July 22, 2003

Selections from the job ads in today's newspaper:
* Supervisor Shipping & Receiving for aggressive metal fabricator in Columbia area.
* Licensing Analyst: Detect, address and resolve issues, problems and requests.
* Civil Engineer/Survey Party Chief needed.
* Friendly, smart neat, people apply at Arbys.
* EVERYBODY'S SOMEBODY AT WENDY'S.

Despite the lame, lame job market, things seem better by day than they did last night.

My old boss just came in and oohed over my shoes, asking where I got them. I told her the truth: I found them by the side of the road. I scored quite a few nice things in the end-of-year college moving blitz, actually. These shoes were left out for the garbage trucks. She was pretty grossed out...but what was I supposed to say? Like some other people I've met who grew up under Communist regimes, Mila is virulently pro-capitalist, and definitely pro-consumerist. But she seemed actually offended.

July 21, 2003

I've redesigned this page in hopes that I'll post more frequently now. I plan to archive this front part every week or so. I've considered going to one of those free blog/diary sites to start a regular log, but I know it'd drive me crazy: very little control over the code, no space for images, etc. (as though I were a real web tech, which you can see is not the case...). I just feel like I'd post more if writing were the ONLY thing I could do. As it is, I wonder whether to put the navigation business on the left or right side, and wish the Photoshop Elements trial hadn't expired on this borrowed computer. And I wonder who's reading, and whether I should write about L or not, and things like that.

Another problem is that I read enough other blogs and diaries that I am in daily awe of the casual writing skills of others. This should be inspirational, but is instead kind of crippling. And now that those fears are out here, I am going to ignore them.

I got a letter from Bettina in the mail today. I was so good about saving it, not opening it until the perfect moment, waiting until the cat had been fed, getting a glass of wine in my hand, that I forgot about it altogether until just now, many hours later. So I'm having another glass of wine. I'm listening to Bedhead. The cat is running back and forth across the wood floor making jerky gurgling noises (this is normal). We just had a brief, enormous storm, with branches hitting roofs all across Shandon and hot, wet air blowing all the papers off my coffee table.

Bettina's letter is wonderful. She wrote it alone in her apartment, drinking a beer and listening to near-emo, with her cat flipping out over the weather...remarkably similar conditions to my own. We all used to write so much more, me and Bettina and Mary and Julie and John, but the past few years have gotten pretty dry. I don't like it, because I'm lonely out here. But I'm not writing letters. I should be. There are a number of things I should be doing: going to temp agencies, "networking", acquiring tangible job skills, writing more songs, practicing more often, saving money, deciding what to do about PhD programs, doing research on Kaplanian Monsters, writing the book I had the fabulous idea for two weeks ago, grooming my thesis for the LSA...oh, I could be so much more pretentious if I really worked at it. Mostly I read books and other people's websites; I am much better critic of the pretentiousness of others.

I graded writing tests this evening, nineteen of them, and they were pretty messy. Ate cereal for dinner; after about a month straight of cooking and reading food books, I didn't feel up to making anything. I discovered my phone was broken when, out of nowhere, I heard my brother's voice emanating from my bedroom. The phone hasn't been charging up well lately, and I think the battery just quit altogether today. I borrowed a phone from L until tomorrow.

I had a nightmare last night. I don't remember any of it except that it involved a short woman with short dark hair and occurred at 5:30 AM. Nightmares usually mean something's not going well with me. It's true: I'm almost unemployed, quite close to broke, and not trying hard enough to get a new job. I'm in love but have spent two whole years certain it won't last, that it isn't forever. I'm around very few excited, creative people, and it makes me sad. So, yes, things are wrong and scary enough for the nightmares to be popping up. And I knew that, but I somehow...oh, I just didn't think it was that bad. And I know I need to do something about it, about all of it, but in the daytime I adhere to a routine, going to work even though there's hardly anything left to do there, and the day always seems to pass without my having done anything.

I think that's enough for a first entry. Nothing is worse than self-reflection born of low air pressure and a night alone with cheap wine.