book sale

It's SO hard for me to motivate myself to work during the week of the Friends of the Library Book Sale! Argh. I have a box full of books sitting in The Boyfriend's room at the foot of the bed (something I think he doesn't appreciate because he hates clutter, but there's nowhere else to put them currently) that I'm dying to start thumbing through.

I love the book sale! I love dollar books that I may or may not even end up reading, but, hell, they were a dollar. I love rummaging through aisles books in the hot, stale air of the the McKinley cafeteria. Okay, not love the last one. But I deal with it because I love books. The Boyfriend constantly preaches about his Kindle and it's convenience, but I don't think I'll ever love something as much as a paperback to tote around in my bag or stacks of books on my nightstand to pick through before bed.

This year's book sale seemed to yield slim pickings initially. I'm quite certain that it was much, much smaller than previous years. The sci-fi/fantasy section was practically non-existent. There were also a large amount of hardcover books and seemingly small amoung of paperbacks in comparison. I'm not a big fan of hardcovers because they're harder for me to maneuver when I'm trying to read in bed. Mostly I don't prefer them because I often drop them on myself when lying down and reading, and those things are, by nature, hard. I typically only purchase a hardcover book when it's something I've been dying to read--in recent memory, only the Harry Potter series has motivated me enough to do so. I got two long days of browsing in though and was rewarded with 18 books, but I didn't feel they were as easy to come by as previous years. I've picked up 20 or more books on a single jaunt before, and the variety of those were much more varied.

It did strike me as odd that most of my choices ended up being books by Asian American authors. I typically shy away from them, especially women authors. I chalk that up to a combination of two things. First I experienced utter disappointment when I was in an "Amy Tan" phase a handful of years ago and ended up thinking "I just read this exact same book" each time I finished one of her works. The other was that around this same time, I was still in school and, as an English major, I was reading a number of Asian American authors, which further convinced me that the books meshed together too much in my mind without memorable twists in the plots. They were good books, but too much at once.

I'm enjoying this latest haul though.

(I also realize that this is the first reference to "The Boyfriend" in almost a year. To clarify, this is a new beau that I've been seeing officially for about four months, unofficially for almost six. People who know me IRL or follow on Twitter should have no confusion, but just thought I would add a note to clarify)

I actually wrote this last week, but I'm not sure why I didn't finish one last sentence and post it. Oh, well. Happy Fourth of July!

family

I thought I was getting through today alright, but in the last hour or so I've realized that I am incredibly sad. And I know that it's expected and understandable so I figured that I would just go with it for a little bit. It's not one of those out of control, lock myself in my room and cry kind of deals--and I'm trying to deal with my emotions better.

I just miss him. And I realize that I really miss being a family. Because ever since late 2005 when my dad started getting sick, my immediate family life and my extended family life just went to hell. It really bothers me not to have it.

Me and my sister bought an orchid from The Engineer's family for one of my uncles as a Father's Day gift. I drove out to the nursery to pick it up and wasn't really sure if it would be awkward since I haven't seen any of his family members since we broke up last September. I was just going to sneak in, pay for the plant and leave, but his parents came out to greet me when I got there. And they were genuinely happy to see me, and I was happy to talk and catch up with them. I used to love spending holidays and birthdays and weekends with that family. It was the kind of home life I never really had growing up, and is completely out of my reach.

I don't know where I'm going with this anymore.

birthdays

Tuesday was my dad's birthday. We're in the middle of that weird stretch that always kind of gets to me. His birthday, Father's Day, my birthday. Not always in this order, but usually within a week or two of each other.

I didn't bring it up on the day of. I didn't freak out. I didn't let it consume me. I don't think I'll let the next two events do so either. It made me sad. It made me miss him so much more. But I dealt with it. I cried in the shower Monday night, but that was the worst of it.

And part of me was proud to have been able to handle something that in past years has been a blur of alcohol and bad decisions and blinding pain. But other parts of me chanted something I wrote early on, "Moving forward feels like leaving you behind."

Testing email blogging

So I know that the blogging by text message was a huge fiasco but I have high hopes for the email version for mobile blogging.

My new job gives me an hour lunch but having no one to eat with really drags that out. It's not that I mind eating alone as much as I eat way too fast and have nothing to do. I'm here for 9 hours a day and they include an hour lunch so I may as well sit around like I've been doing.

Just remembered that I set this up so if it posts successfully, then expect many more lunchtime posts.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

not unemployed. for real,

SO, I got the job :)

Started today. Have a lot to learn. I think it's going to be a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Get to do writing on top of the general office work too.

Had to quit The Restaurant without notice last night though. No time because they wanted me to start right away and the hours clash. Would have liked to help train a replacement, but whatever. New manager is gonna run it into the ground service-wise anyway.

doh!

I had my first job interview of 2009 job hunting this morning.

Potential Job #1 was something that I initially just emailed my resume to because the unemployment office requires me to apply to three places a week to receive benefits. I had thought it was a position that I wouldn't terribly mind doing, but didn't really want to take because it wasn't something I really wanted to do. I am determined that my next job with be permanent, something that I can have a career in, and something I enjoy (pretty much anywhere I can write). Of course, out of the jobs that I applied to in the past couple of week, the one I wasn't crazy about was the company who called me to interview.

I was hesitant about it last night because I do not want to just take the first job offered to me, that is how I got into the mess with The Other Place and I was miserable. However, if they offered me a job and I didn't accept, I could get my unemployment benefits cut. Plus this appeared to be a customer service desk and phone job, which isn't the ideal place I wanted to start. So since I was working on a big freelance project anyway, I decided that I would do my best but not do my usual interview prep of researching the company and doing practice interview questions in writing.

Not a good idea. Potential Job #1 was not advertised in the way it was discussed in the interview. They selected me because of my background in writing and would probably let me do a good deal of it since they're in the process of expanding. I didn't know that the section of the company hiring is actually a newly independent division of the big company I knew about initally. It actually sounds pretty interesting, although very intense, and the perks are great. Eh. I've already come to terms that I may not be offered the position, but the interviewer seemed to like me well enough, which is about the best I could have done without proper preparation.

Lesson learned.

And the job hunt continues.

only half as smart as i was this morning

Just got home from pulling two wisdom teeth (right side) so I'm messing around on the computer until the Novocaine wears off.

Some thoughts about the process:

1. That huge needle they use to inject you with Novocaine is just as scary when you're 24 as when you're 10.
2. I have big ass teeth. Not just big teeth. Big ass teeth.
3. And a small ass jaw. Not just a small jaw. A small ass jaw, which made it exceedingly difficult for my dentist to get in there with all her scary dentist gadgets and yank those suckers out. She estimated an hour, but I was in the chair getting multiple Novocaine injections for an hour and forty-five minutes.
4. It's still cool to keep your teeth. I did. And posted pictures on Facebook. And Twitter.
5. I always did enjoy poking my numb face and moving my numb tongue around in my mouth;
6. The go-to food of request for me is still Campbell's chicken and stars soup. It's chicken noodle soup with tiny star-shaped noodles that are easy to swallow whole.
7. I am still traumatized from childhood teeth pulling during my pre-braces years. It was freaking scary, but I'm glad that my dentist didn't have to crack any of my teeth during extraction. That sound just freaks me the fuck out.
8. At one point, I didn't close my lips over the spit sucker thingy propery and got blood and drool all over the place. That is why they make you wear those plastic-lined bibs.

I anticipated a quick recovery even if we had planned on pulling all four wisdoms today (no guts, no glory!), but I wonder if it'll be more painful since she was in there for two hours rummaging around to get the teeth loose? We held off on the other extractions since the right side was taking so long and my bottom left molar isn't fully out yet so my dentist didn't want to have to do any slicing and dicing to get at it.