On Monday, I got an email from Tinny asking me to join her as a friend on the Good Reads site. Every here and again I will get a friend or family member asking me to join them on some social networking site and I always say no. Not cause I'm a jerk but because I don't want to expend energy on keeping up with it. My days seem short enough and I rarely, if ever, go to bed wishing I would have spent more time online. I prefer to keep in touch via email and phone calls and I find many of the social networking sites to be a very insincere way of communicating. I have a My Space account and I check in on it about once every month or so. I have thought of deleting my account on many occasions, but I do like to spend 15 minutes every now and then catching up on what my more distant friends on My Space are doing (as I only have my actual friends of mine as "Friends"). A little catch up, and then I'm off to go play outside.
Upon receiving the Good Reads invite from Tinny, my inner whiner started to crank up. "Jesus" it wheezed "another one of these stupid sties that will suck up my time and I will never check my profile and how can I possibly fit this kind of crap into my day? I have dishes to do and financial aid to find so I can go to school, I don't have time for this shit."
As a gesture of good will (and because I love Tinny) I went to the website to at least look at what it was about. It's a website where you build a personal book list. You list stuff you've read, stuff you want to read, and give little mini reviews. It will recommend similar books and when you get some friends, you share books and thoughts about books. Well, being an avid reader, the kind that would blow off going out with friends to finish a good book, I loved this site!! I don't know what the hell happened, but it triggered this excitement and kid like need to blow off everything and read fiction all the time. I started to compile my list of well loved books and write little reviews and the next thing I knew, it was two hours later and I have a huge pile of books on my virtual "already read" shelf. That was two hours I was supposed to spend creating a training manual for the kids who are going to be taking over my job, but it was so much more fun to talk about books!
I pine for the days where I had time to read for hours on end. I could probably find some more of that time if I stopped talking to people, completely ceased housekeeping (or hired a cleaning lady, something that I long to afford) stopped working and blew off planning my wedding. Plus, I'm so busy trying to know so many things that I have relegated myself to reading lots of nonfiction in the four or five minutes before going to sleep at night. Needless to say these days it takes a long time to read anything and I end up feeling kind of gypped. I want the cake of my nerdy bookworm life and to eat the joy of my currently life too.
While I was madly filling out review after review of delicious book after book on my new Good Reads profile, I started to miss Flea. Flea is the bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. For those of you who have known me since high school, you will remember a time where I was entirely obsessed with the RHCP and was pretty sure they were writing entire albums just for me (specifically Blood Sugar Sex Magick). Every interview in every magazine I could get my mittens on was like gospel to me. At one point or another, each individual band member became my personal messiah. One interview featured a photo spread showing Flea lying on his back with a copy of "Jitterbug Perfume" next to him and he talked about how he loved that book and why. I had just read this wonderful novel myself and took it to be a sign that he and I were forever bonded.
Over the years, as I have replaced rock star obsessions with neato discoveries of me, the obsession with Flea and the RHCP has faded into laughable memory. Then came Fleamail. While on tour touting the By The Way album, Flea checked in with fans via the band website with his Fleamail. Day after day he would talk about the cool stuff he got to see and experience while on tour and he would always talk about what he was reading. I have found so many of the books he read and liked to be books I read and liked. He had such a great way of talking about books that I found myself obsessed again. I couldn't wait to get another recommendation from him. I read and loved every book he wrote about.
That was many years ago. He has since made a new album and on that tour was busy being in love with his wife and new baby. Gone were his book recommendations in his Fleamail. In their place were beautiful tidbits about hiking in the forest with his baby strapped onto his back or his tribute to Patti Smith or his devotion to Ornette Coleman. I can't blame him, I'm in love with Goat and when we have a baby (eventually) I won't read much either; I love Tom Waits and write about him all the time and will be writing about wedding plans and going to college for the first time at the age of 36. I understand that life comes in waves and each one you catch is a different part of the ride. On my current wave I'll get my book fix from the friends I make on Good Reads.
I just miss Fleamail.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Addendum to CANning
Addendum to being CANned.
I just had a good chat with my ad director and the poor woman had to know about me being let go for two weeks before it happened. When you work as closely as she and I have worked over the last two years, it has to be tough to know that your counterpart is being let go. No wonder she acted weird for the last few weeks. It sounded like she was waiting for me to contact her first after the meeting, she didn't want me to feel pushed. She's off my brown list.
So I'm a little less bitter, but just as freaked out.
I just had a good chat with my ad director and the poor woman had to know about me being let go for two weeks before it happened. When you work as closely as she and I have worked over the last two years, it has to be tough to know that your counterpart is being let go. No wonder she acted weird for the last few weeks. It sounded like she was waiting for me to contact her first after the meeting, she didn't want me to feel pushed. She's off my brown list.
So I'm a little less bitter, but just as freaked out.
CANned
I got laid. Off that is.
I did see this coming, I have to say. Still, I'm a little surprised, kinda pissed, a tad mopey, mostly freaked out and somewhat excited. This is a large emotional load to carry around all day, so I'm also quite tired.
I have been working for a website for the last two and almost a half years as an office manager, sales support coordinator and ad ops chick. Last November, the website was purchased by a startup company based in California. If you are working for a company and the words "due diligence" or "knowledge transfer" come up in your list of duties, run screaming for the hills. I have been through the wringer with this company for the last year and I wouldn't put my worst enemy through any of it. Not even Rachel.
I knew that a chunk of my duties were going to be shuffled off to the HQ in CA, but I was promised by the CEO and COO that I would stay on staff well after the transition was complete. They lied. Now the transition is complete and now I am redundant.
I could go into how much crap I've taken from them as well as the previous owner, how stressful this has been on me and how I feel that the ad director threw me under the bus, because I do feel all those things. But the truth of the matter is that I could have left at any time and I didn't. Maybe I was naive, maybe I was too hopeful, maybe I was just lazy, but I didn't get off my ass and get a new job.
The last few weeks have been really weird too, no one has been speaking directly to me or including me in email chains that have to do specifically with my job. I was flown out to California a few weeks ago to finally meet everyone at the HQ, and it was like I was invisible. Since my termination has been announced, not one person in the company has contacted me to say anything. Even my direct supervisor, who I have worked closely with for years hasn't contacted me. Prior to the day they announced they were letting me go, we talked multiple times a day. That's just shitty.
Now, over the next three weeks which will be the last three weeks of my job, I get to train all the new kids that will be taking over my job. Not that I ever would, but how fun would it be to employ a little monkey wrenching. Too bad I'm so nice. Goddammit.
This was not a job I was in love with, by any stretch, so that's where the excitement comes in. I have a habit of jobs just showing up for me whenever I need them. I have been wanting to get out of this job for months and the universe gave me the kick in the ass I needed. Let's hope that the universe is a gracious and helpful as it usually is when it comes to my employment.
I did see this coming, I have to say. Still, I'm a little surprised, kinda pissed, a tad mopey, mostly freaked out and somewhat excited. This is a large emotional load to carry around all day, so I'm also quite tired.
I have been working for a website for the last two and almost a half years as an office manager, sales support coordinator and ad ops chick. Last November, the website was purchased by a startup company based in California. If you are working for a company and the words "due diligence" or "knowledge transfer" come up in your list of duties, run screaming for the hills. I have been through the wringer with this company for the last year and I wouldn't put my worst enemy through any of it. Not even Rachel.
I knew that a chunk of my duties were going to be shuffled off to the HQ in CA, but I was promised by the CEO and COO that I would stay on staff well after the transition was complete. They lied. Now the transition is complete and now I am redundant.
I could go into how much crap I've taken from them as well as the previous owner, how stressful this has been on me and how I feel that the ad director threw me under the bus, because I do feel all those things. But the truth of the matter is that I could have left at any time and I didn't. Maybe I was naive, maybe I was too hopeful, maybe I was just lazy, but I didn't get off my ass and get a new job.
The last few weeks have been really weird too, no one has been speaking directly to me or including me in email chains that have to do specifically with my job. I was flown out to California a few weeks ago to finally meet everyone at the HQ, and it was like I was invisible. Since my termination has been announced, not one person in the company has contacted me to say anything. Even my direct supervisor, who I have worked closely with for years hasn't contacted me. Prior to the day they announced they were letting me go, we talked multiple times a day. That's just shitty.
Now, over the next three weeks which will be the last three weeks of my job, I get to train all the new kids that will be taking over my job. Not that I ever would, but how fun would it be to employ a little monkey wrenching. Too bad I'm so nice. Goddammit.
This was not a job I was in love with, by any stretch, so that's where the excitement comes in. I have a habit of jobs just showing up for me whenever I need them. I have been wanting to get out of this job for months and the universe gave me the kick in the ass I needed. Let's hope that the universe is a gracious and helpful as it usually is when it comes to my employment.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Engaging Conversation
A few weeks ago, Goat and I trekked to Columbus, Ohio to see Tom Waits perform at the historic Ohio Theater. While we were there, we got to see his friend Jerm, who has been living in the city for a bundle of years working as a doctor. Jerm recently got engaged to a woman who he met while on a rotation in a hospital in the infectious diseases wing. If you can fall in love with someone over the beds of people dying of horrid wasting diseases, you really have got a good thing there. She is a very cool woman and we had a great time visiting with them and surviving a huge bachelorette party doing shots of tequila in the hotel bar. Ugh.
Of course, the show was surreal and astounding, as a Tom Waits show always is. It is impossible to describe, so I won't even try.
On our drive home the next day, Goat and I decided that we would stop at all the antique shops that we zipped past the day before on our trip down. We wandered and found some treasures (like the collection of Camp Snoopy glasses)and kept an eye out for an engagement ring. Over the last few months, Goat and I have been talking about getting hitched and while I'm not too traditional, I did have two rules. One, do not propose to me without a ring. Two, that ring has to be pretty special since it will be one of the only pieces of jewelry that Goat will have to buy me. I'm not a jewelry person, I don't even have my ears pierced and I tend to find suitable jewelry for myself in the plumbing section of most hardware stores. So the engagement ring has to be something else.
I love art deco a lot and I quickly found that art deco engagement ring replicas can run many thousands of dollars. Eek! Our friend who is a jeweler told us that good deals can be found on antique engagement rings at estate sales and antique stores. So Goat and I were on a casual lookout. Our last stop before home was at Jeffery's Antique Gallery in Northwest Ohio, and within 3 minutes of arriving, I found a ring that I loved. I walked into the 38,000 square foot building featuring 250 vendors and find the engagement ring of my dreams in three minutes. Goat and I combed the rest of the antique mall for another two and a half hours and didn't find another ring that was anywhere close to being as cool. We did find an old Kiss album though. After talking to our jeweler friend over the phone, describing the ring and discussing rock swapping options, we got the ring.
Goat and I walked out to the car, passing the ring back and forth and talking about getting it sized and how fun it will be to show it to our jeweler friend and see what he thinks. How a square diamond would look good in place of the round one in the setting and how the sapphires on the sides were so cool. Goat suddenly stopped walking and asked for the ring. Then, he proposed in the middle of the parking lot and we held up traffic as I said yes and we smooched and giggled. He thought it was cruel to buy me such a beautiful ring that I loved so much and then not let me wear it. Plus, he knew I was going to say yes.
Fortunately, right next to my ring in the showcase was a man's ring, the only piece of men's jewelery in the showcase. It was a beautiful silver ring with turquoise and a wheat pattern that matched the wheat pattern on my ring. We bought the ring, just liking the pattern and the stones and it looked great on Goat's hand. So I used that ring to propose to him (I never really understood why men didn't get an engagement ring) and he said yes.
So, there it is. A little story about the engagement that Goat and I got into a few weeks back. Wedding to follow in June 2009.
Of course, the show was surreal and astounding, as a Tom Waits show always is. It is impossible to describe, so I won't even try.
On our drive home the next day, Goat and I decided that we would stop at all the antique shops that we zipped past the day before on our trip down. We wandered and found some treasures (like the collection of Camp Snoopy glasses)and kept an eye out for an engagement ring. Over the last few months, Goat and I have been talking about getting hitched and while I'm not too traditional, I did have two rules. One, do not propose to me without a ring. Two, that ring has to be pretty special since it will be one of the only pieces of jewelry that Goat will have to buy me. I'm not a jewelry person, I don't even have my ears pierced and I tend to find suitable jewelry for myself in the plumbing section of most hardware stores. So the engagement ring has to be something else.
I love art deco a lot and I quickly found that art deco engagement ring replicas can run many thousands of dollars. Eek! Our friend who is a jeweler told us that good deals can be found on antique engagement rings at estate sales and antique stores. So Goat and I were on a casual lookout. Our last stop before home was at Jeffery's Antique Gallery in Northwest Ohio, and within 3 minutes of arriving, I found a ring that I loved. I walked into the 38,000 square foot building featuring 250 vendors and find the engagement ring of my dreams in three minutes. Goat and I combed the rest of the antique mall for another two and a half hours and didn't find another ring that was anywhere close to being as cool. We did find an old Kiss album though. After talking to our jeweler friend over the phone, describing the ring and discussing rock swapping options, we got the ring.
Goat and I walked out to the car, passing the ring back and forth and talking about getting it sized and how fun it will be to show it to our jeweler friend and see what he thinks. How a square diamond would look good in place of the round one in the setting and how the sapphires on the sides were so cool. Goat suddenly stopped walking and asked for the ring. Then, he proposed in the middle of the parking lot and we held up traffic as I said yes and we smooched and giggled. He thought it was cruel to buy me such a beautiful ring that I loved so much and then not let me wear it. Plus, he knew I was going to say yes.
Fortunately, right next to my ring in the showcase was a man's ring, the only piece of men's jewelery in the showcase. It was a beautiful silver ring with turquoise and a wheat pattern that matched the wheat pattern on my ring. We bought the ring, just liking the pattern and the stones and it looked great on Goat's hand. So I used that ring to propose to him (I never really understood why men didn't get an engagement ring) and he said yes.
So, there it is. A little story about the engagement that Goat and I got into a few weeks back. Wedding to follow in June 2009.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Trial Cohabitation
A few months ago, Goat's neighbors received a knock at their door. Upon answering they met a Hollywood location scout who wanted to use their house for filming a movie. After much back and forth, agreeing on specifics with the assistance of lawyers, the neighbors (Todd and Liss) agreed to let a film crew take over their house for the month of July.
Odd side note: I went to high school with Todd and I find it kind of weird that he and his family live across the street from Goat. To further the oddness: Todd went to college with Goat. To add even more oddness: even after not seeing him for well over a decade, Todd recognized Goat from across the street on a snowy morning at 6:30am while a bundled Goat shoveled his driveway.
Those of you who aren't familiar with the inner workings of Hollywood film making might not know that they will do whatever they need to create their set. Todd and Liss' house has now had the back ripped off (so they could park a car in the dining room), the entire downstairs has been painted a yucky rosy mauve color and the pounding and drilling from the inside of the house went on for days.
Todd and Liss have two dogs, two cats and one 15 year old son, Eli and all of them had to move out of their house and take their stuff with them (except the microwave, that's in the movie). The stuff went into storage. The family wanted to avoid staying at an extended stay hotel with so many pets and a teenager who would be stranded in a far away part of town away from his friends for half of summer vacation. They found a great house to rent a few blocks away from their house, but the jerky landlord changed his mind about letting them rent the place for a month. He informed them of his wizened decision 5 days before they had to be out of their house to make room for the set crew. So Goat and I decided to let them rent his house for July and he would move into mine.
Thus began trial cohabitation for Goat and I.
In the 17 years I have lived out of my parent's house, I have had a roommate or roommates for collectively one year and 5 months of that time. I'm a woman that really appreciates her space. The nude sauntering, the 3am laundry, the postponing of housekeeping (after all, I'm the one who has to look at it)and the hogging of the bed and covers have suited me just fine over the 15+ years of no roommate living. So the idea of infringement had my back up a bit, made me worry that I would discover that I love Goat, but I just can't live with him. Or anyone. So I was a little edgy when he came to stay for a while.
A few days ago when he got home from work, he delivered a silly "Hi, Honey. I'm home." and I got teary. I was so happy to see him even though I couldn't sleep in the middle of the bed the night before because he was in it with me and I had to clean the dishes in the sink because we made and ate dinner together and I couldn't saunter naked because we were entertaining friends he had in town. So far, this cohabitation thing is pretty good.
The family of Liss and Todd are happy in their rental house, watching all the action going on in their real house from the porch. It's kind of surreal to have people who you recognize from movies standing in the middle of your street.
Liss and I are both former actors and the other day, while she was showing me what the film crew had done to the house, we got laughing. After all the years we spent trying to get regular acting work, suffering endless auditions and rejection with dreams of being on the big screen in our heads it's her fucking microwave that ends up in a movie.
Odd side note: I went to high school with Todd and I find it kind of weird that he and his family live across the street from Goat. To further the oddness: Todd went to college with Goat. To add even more oddness: even after not seeing him for well over a decade, Todd recognized Goat from across the street on a snowy morning at 6:30am while a bundled Goat shoveled his driveway.
Those of you who aren't familiar with the inner workings of Hollywood film making might not know that they will do whatever they need to create their set. Todd and Liss' house has now had the back ripped off (so they could park a car in the dining room), the entire downstairs has been painted a yucky rosy mauve color and the pounding and drilling from the inside of the house went on for days.
Todd and Liss have two dogs, two cats and one 15 year old son, Eli and all of them had to move out of their house and take their stuff with them (except the microwave, that's in the movie). The stuff went into storage. The family wanted to avoid staying at an extended stay hotel with so many pets and a teenager who would be stranded in a far away part of town away from his friends for half of summer vacation. They found a great house to rent a few blocks away from their house, but the jerky landlord changed his mind about letting them rent the place for a month. He informed them of his wizened decision 5 days before they had to be out of their house to make room for the set crew. So Goat and I decided to let them rent his house for July and he would move into mine.
Thus began trial cohabitation for Goat and I.
In the 17 years I have lived out of my parent's house, I have had a roommate or roommates for collectively one year and 5 months of that time. I'm a woman that really appreciates her space. The nude sauntering, the 3am laundry, the postponing of housekeeping (after all, I'm the one who has to look at it)and the hogging of the bed and covers have suited me just fine over the 15+ years of no roommate living. So the idea of infringement had my back up a bit, made me worry that I would discover that I love Goat, but I just can't live with him. Or anyone. So I was a little edgy when he came to stay for a while.
A few days ago when he got home from work, he delivered a silly "Hi, Honey. I'm home." and I got teary. I was so happy to see him even though I couldn't sleep in the middle of the bed the night before because he was in it with me and I had to clean the dishes in the sink because we made and ate dinner together and I couldn't saunter naked because we were entertaining friends he had in town. So far, this cohabitation thing is pretty good.
The family of Liss and Todd are happy in their rental house, watching all the action going on in their real house from the porch. It's kind of surreal to have people who you recognize from movies standing in the middle of your street.
Liss and I are both former actors and the other day, while she was showing me what the film crew had done to the house, we got laughing. After all the years we spent trying to get regular acting work, suffering endless auditions and rejection with dreams of being on the big screen in our heads it's her fucking microwave that ends up in a movie.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Woosh!
That's the sound of time barreling by.
The garage sale was a success and a blast. Goat's glorious neighbor provided a big tent which proved to be invaluable as it did rain a little during the garage sale. Mom, Goat and I unloaded a bundle of crap and I got to meet some of my neighbors. The big ticket items didn't move, but that's what Craig's List is for.
I took the Friday before the sale off and spent the morning ripping around my house in a cleaning panic. Goat's mom had never been to my house in the two years that he and I have been together, mostly because I wanted to hide the dog induced hole in the couch, the cat induced tears in all the furniture and the seemingly terminal, messy state in which my house exists. I have enough of my mother in me to feel like the house needs to look impossibly organized for company. Not only was Goat's mom coming over to help at the garage sale and be introduced to my domicile, she was also bringing her childhood friend, one Miss Dixie Lee.
As you have probably figured out, I tend to use nicknames for the people that I reference in my blog. For some reason, I feel like it still gives them a buffer and a modicum of privacy. If they choose to be associated with the likes of me, they can volunteer that information themselves. Miss Dixie Lee transcends any other moniker as no other name could begin to encompass her.
Goat's mom loved the house as did Miss Dixie Lee. The garage sale was a success, we made a little money, got rid of stuff and I got to hang out in a lawn chair in my driveway with my friends and mom. Hooray! Getting ready for it was a tad harrowing, but it was worth it.
Next stop on the whistle stop tour of my life: Trial cohabitation.
The garage sale was a success and a blast. Goat's glorious neighbor provided a big tent which proved to be invaluable as it did rain a little during the garage sale. Mom, Goat and I unloaded a bundle of crap and I got to meet some of my neighbors. The big ticket items didn't move, but that's what Craig's List is for.
I took the Friday before the sale off and spent the morning ripping around my house in a cleaning panic. Goat's mom had never been to my house in the two years that he and I have been together, mostly because I wanted to hide the dog induced hole in the couch, the cat induced tears in all the furniture and the seemingly terminal, messy state in which my house exists. I have enough of my mother in me to feel like the house needs to look impossibly organized for company. Not only was Goat's mom coming over to help at the garage sale and be introduced to my domicile, she was also bringing her childhood friend, one Miss Dixie Lee.
As you have probably figured out, I tend to use nicknames for the people that I reference in my blog. For some reason, I feel like it still gives them a buffer and a modicum of privacy. If they choose to be associated with the likes of me, they can volunteer that information themselves. Miss Dixie Lee transcends any other moniker as no other name could begin to encompass her.
Goat's mom loved the house as did Miss Dixie Lee. The garage sale was a success, we made a little money, got rid of stuff and I got to hang out in a lawn chair in my driveway with my friends and mom. Hooray! Getting ready for it was a tad harrowing, but it was worth it.
Next stop on the whistle stop tour of my life: Trial cohabitation.