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Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas!

The gifts between Clive and me are unwrapped and we now prepare the house for the little one to arrive. The B will be arriving around 6:45, so T-minus OMG is approaching.

I'm really nervous. :-( But since she most definitely needs warmer clothing, we will hopefully bond over shopping, at Targeh of course. :-)

So Merry Christmas and have a happy New Year! Let's hope 2010 is a good one!
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A Plague on both your houses!

That's right, ATT and whatever it is that is making me sick!

Thankfully, the sickness is contained and very odd. Fever only lasted a few hours last night and then broke, but I'm now left with a weird icky cake batter where my normal post nasal drip would flow. Probably TMI, but I figure you've made it this far, we may as well share some bodily fluid stories, right?

Anyway...a greater Plague on ATT because ever since I moved to our new beloved Wallyworld, I get crap signals. So crappy in fact that I miss emails and more importantly SMS messages. Emails I'm willing to forgive, slightly, since we do have computer's here and ATT U-Verse for the house is phenomenal, however SMS messages!? Unforgivable.

So I cannot wait until January 31st when my contract with them is up and I will happily get Verizon. Not only was the main man Mark at the Orange Verizon very helpful, but since Clive wants a better phone, we can get the new Droid's!! Clive would get the new macdaddy Droid OMG with the keyboard thingy that comes out (I have no idea what that one is called because it's not nearly as important as mine) and I can get the Droid Eris (see that's why that's so much more important)!!

A phone with my avi name!!! YAY!!!! I'll drop a real keyboard for a virtual one for that apt name change I think. ;-)

Monday, December 21, 2009

*hisses and runs back to bed*

I believe I've caught something and it's just beginning to brew. Lymph nodes are achy and a little swollen, my throat is beginning to get sore and I feel angry and like crap. That'd be a cold and probably the first of the season for me.

Run away! Save yourself! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...*kneels on the floor and looks up with outstretched hands* Why have you forsaken me Ceiling Cat, why!?!?

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Some Job Openings Here and There

Meh, I did my scanning of the various job posting sites to see what may have opened up since last week. There are a few more structural positions which makes me feel a little better. I think either people are anticipating a building rush for this coming spring or have twisted a few client's arms into building something.

"C'mon, you just got a couple million dollar loan approval, build something you stingy bastard!"

"HEY! How did you find that out!?!"

"One of my drafters is dating your receptionist. HA! The money cat is out of the bag! You owe me a project! I gave you all those subs for no retainage!"

*ahem* I got on a slight tangent, but yes, that's probably how the conversation would go, but you didn't hear it from me...;-)

Anyway, a few more places have my resume and portfolio and the waiting game will be played yet again.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

YAY, easier to read posts!

It always used to bug me that, because of the white text on black background of my posts, my eyes would always go a little funny afterwards. So I now have a nice complementary blue background for my posts. HA! I know html too!

:-P











And no, I'm not going to steal from you! If that's the impression you got from my last post you missed the point of me posting it openly. :-P

Old, Hard Wired Habits

It's interesting as you get older you begin to learn that not everything your parents taught you was the best. As you pass 25 (in my opinion, since I'm 27 and beginning to get mind f*cks about what I thought was normal behavior), you begin to look hard and without bias at rules or ways of being that you simply would not even begin to know how to question previously. Things you took to be as facts begin to crinkle around the edges and you finally pull them off to discover they were covering up something else.

Now, I'm not going to say that it was wrong of them or that it's wrong of every parent to do this. No one is perfect, we are all human and nothing is black and white in this world, especially in raising children. What works in raising one child may not work with the other and we're all children of our environment yadda yadda, all that stuff.

Today while checking out at the grocery store, there was a women ahead of us that left $50 in the change tray of the self-checkout lane. Without even thinking about the fact that it was from a woman that probably didn't know how to work the machine properly and more importantly looked as if she would really miss that $50, I took it. I took it because we really needed the money, I'm out of work and Clive has other legal responsibilities he's taking care of that are currently, but temporarily, cutting into our finances.

Clive said "no, give that to the cashier to credit to that woman's account." We did, and the cashier said they could easily put it on the woman's store loyalty card and then we left. However, I was upset, actually upset. Not at my dishonesty (which is what I'm now mad at), but because Clive gave back the money! Wow...

We talked afterwards and I admitted that that's how I grew up, if the opportunity arises and it won't directly hurt anyone that you care about (very important fact, hence all of you people reading this are safe), stealing is a way to show your love. The opportunity came up, someone left $50 in the tray, so I took it because that's more food for us or maybe something to put away for later. The logic being "that woman is stupid enough to let $50 go away from her, so that is a clean opportunity for me, she's not family or a friend of mine or someone I care about, so since this is here, it is now mine and ours."

I'm glad this happened though, this unfortunately was a very hard wired fact that only someone I care about on much deeper levels than even my family and someone who's been much more poor than I could ever dream could break in me.

Hi. My name is ... and I'm a recovering Robin Hood.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Calmer and Wrapping Presents

Well, the person from that company that was supposed to give me a phone interview never called, so I placed a call of myself. Nothing mean or even sassy, just a "I'm letting you know what's going on behind your back" call.

I spoke with one of the receptionists and apparently they had no one working under the name of the "recruiter" that was contacting me. *sigh* So she took down my name and contact info. and said someone would be in contact with me.

I probably won't work for this place, even if they were to call me back, but still. It just made me feel better to call up someone and tell them what is going on and that people are being either lied too or just left to dangle in the wind. Not cool either way.

Calmer is my state of mood and getting presents together is my soundtrack.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

short⋅ly [shawrt-lee] - adverb

short⋅ly

[shawrt-lee]
–adverb
1. in a short time; soon.
2. briefly; concisely.
3. curtly; rudely.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME schortly, OE scortlīce; see short, -ly


~

OK, cool, that's what I thought shortly meant too.

So when someone says on Wednesday that they will be contacting you "shortly" for an interview that means "in a short time."

It's now Sunday and still no call.

You know what, WTF!? You contacted me saying that you liked my resume since you found it on Monster and that I'm the #1 candidate for the job, so...if you just planned on baiting me along anyway, what was the point of that initial touching of bases.

Don't mess around with me, not during this time especially. I just experienced my second layoff in the span of under a year from my very first lay off. I'm on unemployment, depressed slightly and really anxious and nervous. Don't f*ck with me.

I am an unemployed engineer: I have a bunch of time on my hands and MacGyver-like skills. Don't push me.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Been a while, but good to be back

Hey there everybody. Glad to see that some of you people are still poking around here. Sorry for not updating, but life decided to happen and thus my blogging switch got turned off.

So here's a quick recap of what's been going on:
- I was hired again back in August. (yay)
-Decided to move closer to this job and move in with Clive (yay!) so we landed this cute "house in the sky" as we like to call it (3rd floor of a very well build house from the turn of the century: true 2x wood, very well blocked floors and in excellent condition).
-Got laid off from new job around Halloween. (BOO!) (Sadly that's all the font enhancing I can do at the moment and I do not feel it conveys my actually feeling about the situation, but I digress...)
-Moved in the end of November anyway and finally unpacked and decorated for Christmas. (yay and yay)
-Now very bored and looking for things to keep me occupied.

Oh yeah, and studying for the PE exam. I keep forgetting that I actually manned up (yes, I feel comfortable using the term manned up, HA!) and sent in the application. If all the paperwork goes through I should be taking it in April of 2010. W00t!! Really I'm so scared out of my mind that the portion of my brain that should be caring right now is hiding out somewhere with it's dolly and sucking it's thumb.

So yeah, that's the scoop right now. I have been dabbling a little with new painting techniques, ie. paint between two pieces of glass and the fun and coolness that ensues when the two pieces meet! Cool things indeed. I may start a whole series on this and I'm thinking of calling it the Squish series, cleverly named of course.

I have a small Flickr set to start, but will surely be adding more and more as I play around with the new medium.