Dec 2004

bye bye old year, hello new

2004 Dec 31

should known i was wasting my time riding the bus to medford...i'm a glutton for punishment.

the state of tennessee still got a hold on me too. one thing that should not have ever been, is putting up fences around me and i can't even see them!

pretty cold today. it was sunny, but windy and not warm.

the one successful thing i did all day was make grape juice. been meaning too for awhile, but finally threw everything in the big stainless steel pot and let it boil. various people make grape juice in various ways, most of 'em seem needlessly complex. mine's simple. i just put as many grapes as i've got, into a pot of water, and squish them all with my hands until things look pretty dark in there. if they can stand a little more water, i'll add some more. then i let that heat up until it gets a boilin' and the grape skins release their coloring. then i strain all that stuff out, and let it come to a boil again, add some sugar (as much as i feel like), and then put it in jars and seal them. i had to use wine bottles since i'm all out of large canning jars. don't reckon it'll hurt too much as long as i drink the juice pretty quick...

that reminds me of a website i saw...most of the questions on there were people worrying about getting botulism or salmonella from making grape juice. makes me think that folks are watching too many horror flicks...or we're so far removed from our roots that we're scared to death of anything that wasn't manufactured by tropicana or welches. sheesh. obviously people have been successfully canning stuff for ages (probably even over open fires no less) and most of the time if you use common sense, you'll be fine. clean up your materials and follow basic canning guidelines and things will be aok. if not, it's usually totally self evident...things that go bad look and smell that way...like the aftermath of a microbial assault. otherwise, it's probably safe.

well anyhow, i vaguely recall that i spent last year sitting on my front porch with TJ and whoever else was around. i think we drank some homebrew and banged around on pots and pans, and listened to the mayhem that goes on in the streets of big cities during major holidays. this year i'm staying home because it seems like an obvious choice for where i'm at right now. i've got nice things to eat and drink and a warm place to sit, and that's good enough for me.

just the same, i do miss my peeps back in memphis and chicago and everwhere else, and hope they're having fun whatever it is that they're doing.

do i have any resolutions for next year? kind of.

i'd like to be well on my way to getting into grad school. a job would be good too, although that's more of a necessity than a resolution. perhaps to learn a new and useful skill of some kind.

well, to anyone who may stumble across this and read this, Happy New Year to ya, and let's hope it brings us all something better than what we have gotten ourselves into already, eh?

the year fades away

2004 Dec 30

it's not too late.

"if not now, when?"

listening to tracy chapman reminds me a lot of working at one love, because it was one of the only things to listen to for a long time (besides this one blues tape). since i often worked late at night by myself i would turn it up real loud and listen to her while washing the pots and pans. I can feel it as plain as anything. It makes me miss the co-op too, because the two were joined at the hip, and both places were community centers in their own right. i miss cornbread and collard greens and the weird concoctions i used to make with the beans and rice...

the waters rise in the creek, pushing logs and branches downstream. in winter the creek seems more restless than i remember...during the summer it was a sleepy drift down the hill, but now it's awake. I wish I felt as energetic as it does.

"now love's the only thing that's free, you must take it where it's found"

last night there was a windy gust of a storm that blew out of the mountains into the valley. today the sky looks a bit tamer, but the air feels chilly. perhaps it will snow again.

Hard to believe this year is over. so much has happened during its course. stared off with the felix kids getting evicted from their house. (we have moved around about 4 times ourselves). denny moved out of declerye. numerous other people have come and gone.

my friend uele had a baby, my brother has a baby on the way...next year i get to be auntie. i got engaged. my friends are also planning on getting married.

the war that was officially over has now gotten worse. bush won the election and will no doubt come up with new and exciting ways of ruining the country. it's been a hell of a year.

somethings feel the same though. i still find myself doing a lot of the same things no matter where i am. i still want many of the same things i've always wanted out of life...it's just that now they have new variables and forms, and require consideration of new complications. but since nothing i have ever wanted would be described as easy, i guess it's alright with me. next year, many things will no doubt change, as they often do.

some people say that life is like a road, or maybe a river that flows away from where you are, and takes you somewhere else, so that you can't ever go back. maybe this is true. i'd like to think that it is more like a river, it will carry you somewhere, yes, but eventually the cycle will end, and you will come back in another form. the water evaporates forming clouds, which here form snow, which settles in the mountains, melts, and becomes the river all over again. importantly it means that you never leave anything behind forever.

today i feel lucky. sometimes, even for a minute, i realize that life is good.

a ride on the oregon trail

2004 Dec 29

"can i get a little help?" yeah...

things aren't looking so bad anymore.

sometimes i need a good kick in the ass, i got that. so now i'm looking at graduate school stuff again. i feel lucky that i know exactly what i want to do. that in and of itself is worth something. but even so, sometimes the whole process intimidates the hell out of me. it's pretty confusing. just deciding on a state is hard enough. with teaching it's doubly complicated because every state wants something different out of you.

i guess the whole point behind "no child left behind" was to nationalize a lot of this, but all it does, as far as i can tell is raise new barriers to entry. i understand the idea behind all of it, but since almost none of the initiatives result in better funding for the states themselves, there's not much to look forward to out of this mess.

the one thing i haven't decided is whether or not i want to teach younguns or older kids. they make you decide that pretty early on, and honestly i haven't been able to make up my mind on this point. they both have their merits. it would help if i could substitute teach and get a feel for it, but in oregon they won't let you do that...which i have already said i felt was retarded...who would want to go to all the trouble to get licensed to teach part time and get paid $8 an hour? nobody with a brain...or somebody who is really just doing volunteer work.

one interesting thing i learned today is that the director of the salvation army in portland makes like 700,000 dollars a year. that's just ridiculous. i've always thought they did pretty useful things, and had the highest respect for their women's shelter/program in memphis, but that's just ridiculous for someone running a religious charity to be getting that kind of money...you certainly don't need that much money in portland. jeez.

well anyhow, enough of my vocational ponderings. it just blows my mind that the death toll from the tsunami is up to 77,000 people. that's hard to wrap my brain around. i can't even imagine it. it's so depressing.

well, i don't reckon there's too much more to say about today except that i feel like i'm at a stage where there's more questions than answers. but when is life NOT like that?

i don't know either.

good housekeeping

2004 Dec 28

just wading through the aftermath, and cleaning up around the house. sometimes even anti-capitalist heroes have to take out the trash.

today looked like it was going to rain, so i decided to stick around the house. as luck would have it, it never really did rain, but it's just as well. i have plenty to keep me busy around here.

this apartment is not good for plants. i have a hard time keeping them alive in here. i guess plants, like humans don't really belong in apartment buildings.

my neighbors were out working on assembling a skateboard. gosh that brings back memories of my sk8rat days...i used to have shoes worn out by griptape, and still have scars on my knees. still got my deck somewhere, but not here, alas. here i am living in a skater's paradise, a city with a policeforce utterly uninterested in skaters, and a public skatepark. doesn't get much better than this.

today i'm feeling melancholy from the gloom of the weather. winter's not my favorite time of year anyway. it takes a lot of motivation to do anything this time of year. i guess it's fortunate that no one is asking me to do anything.

well, that's a long entry for a day where i haven't done anything other than clean the house. i think i'll go read a book. that's more my speed than all this broom wielding madness.

tomato

2004 Dec 27

the long awaited package finally arrived today. i really had to restrain myself from opening it, but i sure got a big ol' surprise.

i think this is the year when my ship's coming in, so to speak, because i managed to get both of the things i've always wanted. now don't get me wrong, i'm probably one of the least materialistic persons out there. generally i'm pretty happy with what i already have, and don't feel like i'm missing out on much.

but i ain't gonna lie to you. i always wanted a kitchenaid (i take cooking pretty seriously), and i always wanted a laptop (a person that's moved as much as me can't have a computer otherwise, it's too liable to get broken). now i've finally got both.

i named her "tomato" after ed's computer. we love tomato, she has a nice wide screen with better resolution than the TV (good for watching movies), lots of memory (unlike me), and has rw dvd rom, which is more functional that what i would have settled for. this is pretty exciting for me since i've never had a computer of my own, much less one that i can go sit outside and use. life is exciting! i don't have to envy my friends anymore (and it seems like even my most broke friends managed to get a hold of a laptop).

i've been behind the times so to speak. which isn't always a bad thing. but i've been ready to get with it for a long time.

makes me want to go scoot off to graduate school right now.

incidentally, i noticed that the local community college has an advanced japanese course that even i can afford.

assuming the state doesn't mind a little panhandling outta me, things are looking up.

social service mondays

2004 Dec 27

what's an unemployed person to do on a monday morning, but march over to unemployment? generally i don't like this routine much-you bare the facts of your life to some bureaucrat and hope that by some miracle your circumstances are such that you get the carrot. normally i don't bother, and just concentrate on getting another job asap. but around here that ain't likely to happen. there ain't nothing in the job postings except 1. truck driving, 2. medical positions, 3. aluminum welding, 4. shop workers. you see where i'm going with this. so imagine my surprise when i found out that you have to file online...

whew, i needed the exercise anyway.

it was super nice out. warmish without being warm, exhiliratingly breezy. walking down siskiyou, i could smell all the evergreens blowing around in the wind. i could see these curious little violets peeping up through the mulch by campus. you could see the snow covered peaks across the valley. walking down the road felt like less of a struggle than usual, and more like an amble.

after panhandling the state, i went and hung out at the library where they have nice lighting and spent the rest of the afternoon reading, and came home with a basket full of rosemary and thyme.

yay snow!

2004 Dec 26

Seems like for about the past week and a half, I've had to listen to everyone talking about their snow, but we sure didn't have any around here until now.

When I woke up this morning and looked outside, there was snow coming down! Our first snow of the year!

It's so pretty outside now. Every tree and roof and bush is covered with a blanket of white, and still there's big fat flakes pouring out of the sky threatening to drown the road and everything else. it's a real good snow day.

I went outside to walk down to the park, but when I went outside, I saw some funny looking bird tracks in the snow...huge tracks. And a minute later, I saw the turkey. Yep, there's a turkey hanging around in our back parking lot. (I guess I shouldn't be too surprised because the other night there was a doe eating the apples from over the fence) It looks every bit like a wild turkey, but it doesn't seem a bit shy, so I'm guessing she's an escapee from someone's farm. It's so cute! She's about the size of a rather large duck, and she's just walking around pecking around for something to eat, and didn't seem a bit perturbed by me. It wasn't until the neighbor let her dog out, that it took off...

Whew, I'm glad we finally got some of the snow action. Seems like everyone I talked to, whether they were in places that normally get snow (Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire), or places that don't (Texas, Virginia, and if you want to count it, a cold front in Florida) were getting some...and we weren't. Kinda sucks when your friend in Ohio is talking about sledding and you're wondering if you might as put your gloves and scarves away.

In Memphis, they had an ice storm, so I would imagine the kids at declerye are sitting around the woodstove right now. I wish I had a woodstove myself...but at least now I have another consolation prize of winter-snow.

low key

2004 Dec 25

Had a pretty low key Christmas...just sat around and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy and opened packages. Someone finally took my request for socks seriously, so that made me pretty happy.

Brian got the PDR for Herbal Medicine which I personally will probably read breathlessly from cover to cover. It's so fascinating. Who knew that frankincense was good for asthma? Or that garlic is effective against several strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria? Or that cotton is used as a male oral contraceptive in China? I'll be busy for weeks...

Talked to liz for awhile which was good. it's amazing to discover that indeed a lot of the kids i went to school with are still in bloomington. that town is a vortex that people fall into, and never come out of. i can understand it to a certain extent, but as it is somewhat bereft of jobs (and decent wages, because of all those infinitely replaceable college students), i had to kick it like a bad habit. but i can understand the appeal of it too.

for one day at least, i'm going to forget about jobs and employment and just enjoy where i'm at. who knows what tomorrow will bring.

the whole world gone crazy again

2004 Dec 23

i think they're putting something in the water because it seems like folks are actin' crazier all the time...

for starters, you got this crazy woman in TX (doesn't it seem like there's more of 'em in TX?) who paid some fools in the bay area (they're pretty crazy in CA too) $50,000 to clone her ancient 17 year old cat. all i can figure is she's got a lot of extra cash on her hands, and nobody bothered telling her that you can get free kittens any day of the week by calling the numbers in the classified section of the newspaper.

but it's not like these old ladies in TX are the only ones going crazy. there's also the bush administration, whose members i've thought more than a couple of times, mighta been dropped on their heads when they were children...

"The Bush administration issued comprehensive new rules yesterday for managing the national forests."

So basically they took whatever slack rules that those "forest-y tree-hugger types" back in the Reagan administration (James Watts) had come up with, and managed to make them even worse. I didn't even know you COULD make a Reagan era environmental protection law weaker...but as usual, i was wrong.

Now we're letting the corporations run things...hmm doesn't that seem a little bit like letting the inmates run the prison? Or letting drug addicts run a drug treatment program? Or letting thieves run a bank? in otherwords, any thinking person would have to get a' wonderin' about that style of management approach.

Don't get me wrong, I've known all along that forest service policy has basically been evolving continuously towards giving away public land resources/timber to whatever corporation they could throw it at first. Bush and Co. just seem to be a bit more obvious about it (because we let the monkey man do what he wants, idn't he cute?). So they want to let the timber companies decide how many trees they want to leave behind? oh yeah, right. i like to call that, the "no tree left behind" trick. around here that also means something like "no salmon left behind", because among other things. "U.S. species at risk of extinction -- including more than 25 species of trout and salmon -- live in national forests."

"The changes will reduce the number of required scientific reports and ask federal officials to focus on a forest's overall health, rather than the fate of individual species, when evaluating how best to protect local plants and animals". got news for y'all...nothing in nature (or in the human world for that matter) acts alone. an ecosystem is just that. a system. a system that works best when it's balanced. since most people don't know how that balance actually works, you can't claim have any idea whether or not the system is healthy. because you really can't tell until something goes really wrong. of course by then it's too late.

but what would a bunch of people helping themselves to free timber care about matters like forest health? don't tell me that forest companies don't "shit where they sleep". they do it all the time around here. if that's what passes for progress these days, i reckon we all better start rolling around in piles of shit, or we'll get left behind too.

well i'm wasting my breath here. those trees are preforming a service to this planet whose economic value (in natural disaster prevention) is something the corporate world with its short term ways can't even begin to fathom. don't come crying to me when global warming hits. sheesh.

On a similar note, "A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll released Monday found that 52% of respondents said Rumsfeld should resign." I couldn't agree more. He's such a jerk, always saying the most arrogant and thoughless things on television.

Now I've always thought it seemed that the Democrats in the past 10 years were trying real hard to be Republicans. and hardly anything proves this more than the headline i saw today, "After long defining itself as an undisputed defender of abortion rights, the Democratic Party is suddenly locked in an internal struggle over whether to redefine its position to appeal to a broader array of voters." seems like the politicians in question, should just do the sensible thing and just join the party they feel more comfortable with--which obviously would be the Republican party. i know that democrats these days think they need to try to appeal to EVERYBODY, but i think they're wasting their time on this lame attempt to appeal to conservatives. the conservatives are going to vote republican anyway, just because that's what they do. they don't even really need to think about it at all, they just do it. now the rest of us who don't get into the whole republican party agenda (of telling people what to do with their lives, while somehow not wanting anyone to tell THEM what to do with their money) would rather have people out there we can count on NOT to do the same lame things the republicans. don't get me wrong, i don't think politicians do anything useful to advance the cause of humanity most of the time, but i'd rather have some people out there that i could count on not actively try to harm me. whereas i suspect republicans masturbate while thinking of new and exciting ways to squash little bugs like me--the non-shareholders of the world. the people who just want to be left alone.

so in conclusion, here's the quote of the day: "What I expect is more people will be here to protest Bush's inauguration than to inaugurate him". I wish i could be there in DC too, i'd have a few rotten eggs to throw at the man and his pals who seems hell bent on destroying what little hope i have for the future of this country. (who cares about the future, right?) but I'm thinking, maybe i'd be better served by going to crawford texas and cutting down a few trees. maybe W would feel a little differently about trees if me an' a couple of my good buddies at the Freebox Rustlers Timber and Deposit Bottle Recovery Unit took all of his away from him (after all, in the scheme of things, he doesn't REALLY need them, does he)?

no worms on the 99 odyssey

2004 Dec 23

today had all the makings of slackville until i rolled out of the house at 11am. ah joy, my first day of unemployment, part 6 or whatever we're up to now...

took a breadbag full of change to the bank and traded it for some bills, and rolled on over to icca to do the victory lunch. one thing about icca is it's a self-esteem booster...in the sense that my problems always feel so much less problematic when compared with other people's problems.

i waited for the number 10 to come around the corner, and went off on the quest to medford. coulda drove, but some times you just gotta do it the other way. didn't have any luck getting paid after all, so i did the next best thing, and finally got around to getting my phone number changed. bet a lot of folks believed i'd never do it at all...got all motivated to ride for awhile, so i went down highway 99, and through phoenix and stopped at the tienda, and ended up riding all the way to through to see if i could get worms at phoenix organic. no luck, but discovered some worthwhile randomness, japanese garden tools, and varieties of apples i've never heard of.

took all day to get back home, but i even made it over to the library, so in a sense i had a pretty successful day. if you ain't in a hurry, might as well see some stuff.

wonder what kind of trouble i can get into next week...

busy times on procrastination street

2004 Dec 20

thought for sure i wouldn't get very many calls today, but there's lots of people out there still doing the christmas shopping thing, so it's a lot busier than it's been for awhile. not such a good day for me because i was really tired and not as with it as i would have liked, but i survived the trials and tribulations of other people's shipping problems, and came home with my sanity mostly intact.

hard to believe that tomorrow's my last day. considering that i didn't know how good i'd be at this sort of thing in the first place, and with healthy reservations about working for a large corporation, i'll admit that it wasn't bad at all. i can't say i liked every single moment, but for the most part, the people calling were reasonable and undemanding, and the general work environment is better than many others i've toiled in. and i've gotten quite used to getting up hours before the sun gets around to poking its way out of the clouds.

i'm not really looking forward to being unemployed again. it's fun in the summer time and i love the freedom, but in the winter, i'd rather just be working somewhere, since i can't do anything terribly interesting with all the time i have on my hands, and never have enough money to take advantage of it properly. i guess this is a problem i've had time after time and like many times it's just one of those things. it would be nice to get a teaching job somewhere, but i'm not going to hold my breath. makes me want to hit the road and go to all these nice warm places people keep calling me from, but you need money for that sort of thing.

maybe i should go live out in the woods with grateful and help him chop wood and learn to get excited about hot water, and snow free days. nothing like hard labor to make you appreciate what you have.

last minute rush

2004 Dec 19

now we're getting into the last days of bcc, and the procrastinators are calling. as a procrasinator i can relate to that. had the hardest time waking up today. drove to work half asleep, answered questions half asleep. and spent most of the morning sprawled out yawning at the partition of the cubicle and watching the fog drift outside the windows.

was a pretty nice day by the time i got off so i rode my bike around town and did some stuff, nothing too exciting, but it felt good to be moving around, and talking to a few folks, and watching the ducks swim around at the duck pond.

pretty nice day, but it feels weird, like an extra long week since I haven't worked weekends in forever. oh well, in a couple of days i'll have nothing but free time on my hands, and no doubt i'll be loafing around at icca, doing the homeless at the library gig, and sniffing around town up to no good like all the other unemployed hippie types that you see everywhere. sigh.

gotta love winter.

almost over

2004 Dec 17

hard to believe i'm gonna be on the unemployment line come tuesday. my seasonal job is basically over next week...and oddly enough i'll miss it. bear creek's not a bad place to work really when you get right down to it. getting up super early's not that fun, but i could do it for a little while longer. sigh. prospects don't look real good. i haven't seen anything in the classified ads in weeks...unless i developed a sudden interest and/or work history in such exciting fields as logtruck driving, aluminum welding, or veneer manufacturing, that is...

it's been cold and foggy here, just the way oregon is supposed to be. wish it would actually snow, because it would be so pretty. sigh.

made the post office rich today. the rates seem to have gone way up to ship boxes. guess i'm not going to be getting a driver's license anytime soon, because there's almost nothing left over after that highway robbery they pulled on me. i don't want to hear anyone complain about our shipping charges, because frankly, they're almost the same.

i've only read a little bit of wendell berry here and there, but i'm tackling a full length book, and can tell already it's my sort of thing. ahh, it's delightful. yes.

control room

2004 Dec 11

pretty quiet at the co-op for a saturday. guess everyone's busy doing something else. not that i mind, it's usually so crazy in there.

don't ya just love it when people stand in line talking on their cellphones? i know i SURE DO. ;)

had a pretty successful experience at the library too. kinda nice being able to ride my bike too, it's been too cold and rainy to do it much lately and i miss it.

on the way home i stopped by the recycle center so now i have everything i need to make christmas/new years/winter greeting cards. i love scrounging.

watched control room later on. been meaning to, but like a lot of other things that i've been wanting to see, it's a popular flick around here and never in stock. pretty interesting movie. i didn't know al jazeera had their headquarters in qatar. (but how would i know, i don't speak arabic...beyond 5 or 6 words that is) most of my al jazeera experiences have consisted of me going to the medmart and casually glancing over at the tv while i was waiting for my falafel. from that i could tell that they talk about george bush alot, and osama bin laden, and so on, but not knowing the language, my basic impression was that al jazeera was the CNN of the arabic speaking world. i'm guessing that a lot of people have probably never heard of it, but i discovered their website recently and find it to be a good companion to bbc/australian media coverage of the iraq war. so control room was kinda like watching a documentary on CNN only a little gory sometimes...

about baghdad, about me

2004 Dec 10

the evil death rays of the computer and telecom equipment didn't get to me as fast as they usually do, so i worked later than usual. thought someone ganked my jacket but it turned up. stopped by the outlet on the way home and discovered interesting facts about wine shipping--generally, you can't. i guess it's bootlegging or nothing. BOOTLEGGING!!! That's a great word, indeed.

went to see about baghdad. pretty interesting movie. kinda sucked that the subtitles were low enough on the screen that you couldn't see half of them for craning your neck to see over people's heads. brian says, "why didn't they dub it into english". i have my doubts about that approach, (i have a subtle appreciation for the sounds of arabic, which i kinda miss hearing, but i think nobody would understand that, except some poor exchange student maybe). not that i wasn't disturbed by the whole iraq situation to begin with, but i guess you could say i'm more disturbed. what a mess. like a lot of folks he interviewed said, it's nice that saddam's gone, but it would be nice if we didnt' have to have an all out occupation at the same time.

after such serious fare, ended the night by watching elf. i'll admit that i was highly skeptical of this movie, but i'll confess that i actually liked it. yep. mainly because it's soo zany and had me laughing, because i could either see myself doing something that silly, or am guilty of doing rather silly things. so it's not as bad as i thought it would be.

had a rare day of non-precipitation, so i hiked on up wimer to look across the valley, picked a couple of fine tasty apples outta some folks trees, and reflected on the meaning of life with my friend shauna.

finished up home ecology too. that was mightly educational. now on to something new.

a brief bit of sun

2004 Dec 10

nice to sleep in for a change...ah joy. needed it though. had a weird mishap with the heater and the temp in the room got to be about 100 degrees or something. not pleasant.

went to work on my day off. not quite as insane as it sounds. call me a sucker for free food, so i went to the holiday party. on the way back home i saw a hawk fly over the parking lot and out over some pear orchards. been awhile since i've seen one. also, there's some really cool agate just lying around in the gravel. never noticed before because it's usually poring buckets when i get out there, so i've never had time to look.

spent the rest of the afternoon in front of the co-op hanging out at the peace house table. had some interesting conversations with people that walked up and amused lots of children, as i am prone to doing.

brian beat me home today so i had to leave my big surprise in the car for now. no way to smuggle it past him today.

i spent the rest of the afternoon out walking around looking for greenery and herbs, both which are plentiful around here. been meaning to for awhile but it's been raining non-stop. kinda nice to be free of it for one day.

up on maple street, i can look out across the valley and see the wreath of clouds over on the mountain. i miss being up there alot. (although on days of bad weather, i'm kinda glad that i'm NOT up there, but i do miss the wildlife and the views). now i understand why all the rich people in ashland live up high.

right now i'm reading home ecology which has been pretty informative, even for someone like me, but now it's got me all paranoid about stuff. not that reading the news is any better. ignorance is bliss.

deluge, deq, disfunction, dmv, delusion

2004 Dec 08

today wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either.

disfunctional: today was one of those days where none of the addresses people gave me seemed to work to the computer's liking so i spent an awful lot of time fooling around with the comment lines. not a fun way to spend a morning. bleh.

deluge: started up a' rainin' again sometime last night. hasn't really stopped since. there's a lot of standing water on the road, crappy visibility and any road that slopes has it's own waterfall. i'd say the fire danger is negative at the moment...i'd go swimming in the back parking lot if it was warmer. sheesh. felt sorry for the jailbirds out picking up trash on I-5. i personally am really glad i'm not out working in this weather today. really grateful, actually.

DELUSION: some crazy kid in goodwill came in the door singing "i love the rain, i love the rain, i'm so happy it's rain-ing!" some people should be shot. or maybe somebody higher on the chain of command shouldn't have bred. or maybe i'm just cranky and have no sense of humor because it's just really nasty outside.

DEQ: after getting the bad news i'd have to take the car for emissions testing, i decided to tough it out and go see if it would fly. amazingly she passed. i guess i'm paranoid because i have bad luck with this sort of thing, but i got lucky.

DMV: went back to the DMV, this time jumping through all the hoops that needed jumping through. after relieving me of a week's worth of pay, I now no longer live in fear of being cited for driving an obviously unregistered vehicle. now i only live in fear of driving on a technically invalid license ;)

wee!

one thing i've noticed is that i'm always unemployed in the month of december. this is a pattern i need to look into a bit more thoroughly...of course i'm not really unemployed right now, but i know that pretty soon i'll be right back kickin' it with the regulars at icca. i guess it could be a lot worse, but i'd kinda just like to get a job here in town doing something stable. but i just don't know if that's going to happen. it was like this in memphis too, and worse actually because here at least there seems to be some pickup work even if everyone's scrambling for it at the same time.

life's a confusing mess...

the almighty blahs

2004 Dec 06

the weather has taken a turn for nasty around here. pretty much been either misting or drizzle, or outright rain. alas, no snow as of yet.

but most of the people I've talked to, say it's the same where they are, so I guess I won't complain about it too much. awfully hard to get motivated to go anywhere though.

ice skates

2004 Dec 05

finally went iceskating downtown. that was pretty fun. i was a bit shaky at first, but after awhile i picked it right back up. need some work on skating in reverse though.

christmas shopping horrors

2004 Dec 02

i bet most people who do their christmas shopping over the phone have no idea what it's like for those of us on the other end of the line trying to take their orders, so here's the lowdown.

1. you get pretty tired of talking nonstop for several hours. you would not believe how much water you have to drink to keep from going hoarse. and i'm not even doing 8 hour shifts here! (i drink at least as much water as i did working outdoors all day in 90+ degree weather, which never ceases to amaze me).

2. sometimes it's really hard to hear people because the connection is bad. that can be a real pain in the butt sometimes.

3. people should really not order things over the phone if they're in a hurry. especially not for 30 people. it just doesn't work. i have to make sure all the addresses and items are correct, and you can't really make the computer go any faster. and all of this takes time. if you are tired, call back later too, don't take out your grouchies on me.

people are really funny sometimes, but all in all most people that call are perfectly reasonable to deal with. i've had some horrors but it's not the majority of people calling. sometimes people will cancel an order over a $2 sales tax (save your complaints for your state dept of revenue please, i can't help if if they decided to tax catalog orders)...or they'll freak out about shipping charges (but yet want it to arrive the next day). oh well, what can you do.

it's a bit surreal taking telephone calls at 6 in the morning, when it's still dark outside. but it's a job, and not that bad of a job either.