This is my story.

I lost my legal secretary job on March 21, 2008. One year and three weeks later, I FINALLY (yes, it needs that much emphasis after my ongoing frustrations) have a new full-time job. I will start as a Patient Account Rep on April 27 for Barnes-Jewish HealthCare in St. Louis.

I'm thrilled. I think Barnes is going to be a great place to work. They have a good reputation in the area, and health care is a very stable industry. No matter what the economy, people still get sick, and hospitals still need people like me to submit patient bills to insurance companies and Medicaid. Plus the building where I'll be working still has good Metro (public transit) access. I basically drive 5 minutes to the train station by my house, ride the train to the Forest Park stop, and take a special shuttle to my building. They offer Metro discounts, and parking is free. So in case I need to drive one day it would be no hassle to do so.

Yay. I was so sick of job hunting, and now it is finally over for me.

Amazon Rank

Here's the explanation. Thanks to Milly for the Google Bomb heads up.

I don't buy the glitch explanation or the "adult content" explanation. Do I think Amazon is totally anti-LGBT? No. Do I think this was more than a glitch? Oh fuck yes, I do. Honestly, I think this is very possibly the result of anti-gay sources outside of Amazon getting their voices heard by some Amazon higher ups that didn't quite think through what they were doing. I have a feeling this will be remedied quickly. As fast as this fire has spread on the Internet, Amazon would be stupid to not revisit this and fix it.

Did Obama do anything today or within the past couple days that might upset a conservative? My sister and her husband are quite conservative. They were Dubya supporters 'til the end, and, god help 'em, they voted for Huckabee in the Republican primary. Her husband listens to Rush Limbaugh. O_O She's posted status messages on Facebook in the past that were anti-Obama, and the conservative "let's skew stats!" type e-mails haven't stopped just because Dubya's not in the White House anymore.

The reason I ask what Obama's been up to is because of her most recent status message on Facebook.

. . . can't handle much more of this. (And one of her friends commented, "I agree! Now what are we going to do about it?" Blah.)

As far as I know, there's nothing in her personal life that would warrant a comment like that. She seemed fine the other day when she asked me if I could do lunch this Saturday when they're back in Illinois for Easter.

The thing is, with Vermont and Iowa and Washington D.C., it makes me wonder what she's talking about. She's never been cryptic about her anti-Obama comments, but considering I came out to her at Christmas, I could see her making a cryptic comment in response to all the progress made in LGBT rights recently to spare my feelings. Problem is that her cryptic is just suspicious and not that cryptic at all. Or maybe I'm reading to much into it and it does have to do with Obama.

I've known for years that she's conservative and Republican. She and her husband had their soon-to-be teenage son spouting pro-Dubya crap when he was five. It just hurts my heart to think that she would really be this dismayed about giving LGBT folks equal rights. She's my sister and I love her. I don't even know if she realizes that not wanting same-sex marriage laws to pass means she doesn't want me to have equal rights to her. Her 20th wedding anniversary is coming up, and I wonder if she would attend my wedding, if I were to have one. (I probably won't considering the polyamory situation, which I'm fine with. But I still want the right to marry whether I do it or not.)

It's not all that surprising. Just disappointing and disheartening.

I don't think prospective employers quite get what entry-level is supposed to mean. I got my job alert e-mail from CareerBuilder and there was this listing:

F/T ENTRY-LEVEL LEGAL ASSISTANT Position available, experience preferred.

Wait, it's an entry-level position, but you want experience? In truth, here's the translation of that listing title:

The economy is shit. I want someone with 10 years of experience who's willing to take a $10,000 cut in their annual pay for the all the same work.

Maddening! The problem is that the economy is shit, and there are people out there with lots of experience who got laid off and would be willing to get paid less for basically the same job.

Amy brought her dog, Odie, over for a visit this weekend. On Saturday we took the two dogs to the local dog park. They seemed to enjoy it. Odie made a couple friends. There was dog in particular that I think was an Australian shepherd mix that seemed to take to Odie. The two of them playfully chased each other a couple times. There was also a male mini schnauzer that Odie got a little fixated on and tried to mount a couple times. Poor little thing was the smallest dog there. I wonder if that's what got Odie so interested. Tasha was a bit less social than Odie. She seemed more interested in just sniffing the area. There was also one point when two women walked by outside the fenced off-leash area, and Tasha whined and showed more interest in them than she did any of the dogs in the off-leash area. It was the first time Tasha was around other dogs off-leash besides our neighbor's chihuahua and Odie, so maybe she'll be more social next time we go.

The funny thing is that this morning Tasha seemed genuinely sad that Odie wasn't here anymore. Last night she only ate half of her food, and her full meal now is half of what we used to give her because she used to eat half of the full meal and leave the rest sitting for two days until we threw away the old food. That was wasting money, so we switched to giving her half as much food. Anyway, back to her depression. ;) We give her a Denta stick every morning for breakfast and she didn't eat that right away either. She truly seemed to be moping around and she wandered over to Amy with this forlorn look on her face like she was saying, "Why'd you take my boyfriend away?" Too cute. At least I know that if we could have a second dog, Tasha would probably like it.

I took Amy to work this morning because she had to take her car to the shop. When we went to the park on Saturday she discovered that she couldn't get her key out of the ignition and then her gear shift got stuck in park. We managed to get it out of park and she found a place that could look at it before they closed. They figured it was something with the electrical system but said they would need a full day to diagnose and repair. So we took her car in this morning. The real worry is how much this is going to cost because nobody around here has a whole heck of a lot of money right now. Hopefully it won't be too much.

Last night I finished The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. It was okay. I didn't enjoy it as much as Affinity or Fingersmith. I think I had a little bit of a hard time feeling for the characters. They're living in London in the time of World War II, and you'd think I would sympathize, but I had a hard time getting in their shoes, I guess. The writing was still excellent, but the plot dragged a little.

I got Tipping the Velvet through PaperBackSwap, so that's next on my reading list. Then after that I am going to get back to the three books I have started that have just been sitting around waiting for me to finish them--Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins, and Smack by Melvin Burgess.

( Book List 2009: 50 Books In 1 Year )

The new Dunkin Donuts commercial has been added to the list of commercials that annoy me. If you haven't seen it, here's a description. Some kids are sitting at home doing whatever when the television emits these blue rays that hit the kids in the face, and the kids start floating and appear hypnotized by the TV. Then dad pokes his head out of the kitchen, a box of Dunkin Donuts in hand, and the kids come running. The voice over at the end of the commercial says something like, "With Dunkin Donuts you can get the family together."

So lets get this right. The best alternative to kids being hypnotized by the TV is for them to stuff their faces with doughnuts? Nice. I don't have anything against doughnuts or Dunkin Donuts advertising their doughnuts, but who ever came up with that ad idea is stupid.

I just wrote 234 words of fiction. This may not seem like much to you, but considering I haven't written much of anything in over 3 years, I'm kind of ecstatic right now. I was in the shower and this idea popped into my head--an original idea, no less; not fan fiction--and when I got out of the shower, I put those 234 words on the screen. I don't know if anything substantial or complete will come of it, so I'm not posting it. I think it's a fun idea, and I need to see if I can follow through.

But just to tease you a little, I'll tell you my title. Not a working title. This will be the title if I finish it.

Operation Pepperoni

*skips away merrily*

Boy, I wasn't prepared to work a 10 hour shift today, especially after having a job interview this morning before my shift. But hey, I made $75 in tips. Yay for more tips. Now, yay for bed time. I'm closing driver tomorrow which means I'm working until midnight. Blah.

You'd think with beautiful spring weather, I would be in delivery driver heaven. I don't have to wear a jacket. I can drive with my windows open and get some fresh air. I don't have to worry about bad road conditions or freezing my butt off tromping through snow to get to customers' doors.

The downside to delivery driving in the spring? There are children everywhere. It's like a freakin' obstacle course. Children of all ages. Teenagers playing basketball in the street. Ten-year-olds riding their bikes all over creation. Kids 7 and younger unsupervised playing in driveways and threatening any second to dart out into the street for no reason.

Today I was turning around in a cul de sac, and as I was coming to the straight part of the street, this young boy--surely no older than 7--was walking along the small curb on my side of the street toward me. He was walking on it kind of like a balance beam. Because that's what kids do. I used to do that. It looked like he saw me as he kept his straight line on the curb, but then as I straightened my wheel to head off that street, he took three quick steps out into the street in my direction. Only then, apparently, did I register on his radar and he stopped, just as I put on my brakes (although I wasn't going any faster than 5 mph anyway). Luckily for him I'm a careful driver and he was on my radar much longer than I was on his.

Yet there wasn't a parent in sight. No adults or even older children anywhere.

People in subdivisions are getting too lax about stuff like this. I see this in my sister's subdivision, too. Kids all over the street not paying attention to cars moving around and not an adult in sight. I'm not speeding through these subdivisions like Speed Racer. The kid who was using the curb as a balance beam was in an area that was 15 mph on an Air Force base (Scott AFB, IL, if you care). Sure 15 mph (or the 5 to 10 I was doing as I came around the cul de sac) wouldn't kill the kid, but I'm sure it would hurt and cause some injury that his parents would've sued me and Pizza Hut over. Because of course it would've been my fault, right?

There was another time on Scott that I was driving through a subdivision similar to the one where I almost ran over the curb walker today. I was doing the limit or less. I drive slow when I have to find houses. There were cars parked on my side of the street, and all of a sudden this kid came flying out of a driveway right in front of a parked car and right into my path. Even though I was driving slow, I still had to slam on my brakes so hard that my tires squealed and the delivery bag and 2-liter of soda in my passenger seat flew off the seat to the floor board. Luckily for the kid, I didn't hit him, and luckily for my customer the pizzas weren't messed up from flying around in my car. I did warn them about the soda, though.

So the moral of this rant, ladies and gentlemen, is to supervise your damn kids and don't take subdivisions for granted. Streets are mostly meant for cars. Cars are heavy and can squash people. Get a clue.

Finished Death's Daughter, the first solo noveling venture by my favorite celeb, Amber Benson. It was pretty good and fun. You can read my full review on Amazon. I gave it 4 stars. Impalicious, I think you would like it. BTW, if any of you do read it, post a review on Amazon when you're done. Amber said once she gets 85 reviews on Amazon, she'll videotape herself doing the Macarena and post it on Youtube. :op

( Book List 2009: 50 Books In 1 Year )

Not a lot going on here, which is why I haven't updated much. Helped my brother get a washer and dryer through Freecycle so he doesn't have to come over here to do his laundry anymore. I'm really hoping to get a call from Interface tomorrow for a 2nd interview. Fingers crossed. There was also a job I sent my resume out for on Friday. It was to be the secretary to the principal of an elementary school and I'd kind of like that one, too. If not those, then something. I'm nearing the one year anniversary of losing my legal secretary job. It's time for me to get hired, dammit.

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.



( And I still have the one from the last time I did this meme. )

Mild carpal tunnel sucks. I'm trying to fill out a job application by hand and it's hurting like a bitch. I actually am using typing this entry as a break. I have braces for carpal tunnel, but putting one on didn't help when I was writing. I would consider checking with my doctor, but I kind of don't have insurance right now.

I really think Pizza Hut is a large reason why I have carpal tunnel to begin with. I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel shortly after I started work at the law firm, and it stopped giving me problems not long after I quit Pizza Hut. Now I'm back at Pizza Hut and it's acting up again. Not just when writing either. I was on the computer the other night and needed to put the brace on my right wrist. It's that damn cut table. If you've never seen how Pizza Hut cuts pizzas, we have these huge rocker knives. They're basically half circle shaped blades so we can quickly cut the pizzas and stuff. Problem is you generally have to use a fair amount of force to be sure you get through the crust. I think that jarring motion is what has aggravated my carpal tunnel.

Last night I got pulled over while I was working. Thankfully the officer gave me a written warning rather than a ticket. I honestly think that he gave me a warning because I was on my way to a delivery. Well, and also my driving record has been clean for over 5 years.

In order to get some extra cash, Katie had me put her DJ set up for sale. I tried twice on eBay and it didn't sell. So I tried Craigslist. Yesterday, I got what appeared to be someone interested in buying the set for my asking price of $400. Unfortunately it was too good to be true. It was a scam. The shipping address was in Nigeria, and they sent me some bogus Paypal e-mails in an attempt to get me to click through the e-mails to confirm things and make it look like they paid. Luckily I'm not stupid and I went directly to Paypal and saw that there was no money being transferred to my account.

Sadly some people are gullible enough to fall for stuff like this. If there weren't people falling for this crap, the scammers would eventually give up.

Anybody want to buy a DJ set? :op $400 or best offer. I'll ship within the U.S. :o)

I know some of you watch Bones. So why didn't anyone tell me they FINALLY revisited the Grave Digger plotline?

Seriously. The original Grave Digger episode was, in my opinion, one of the best episodes of Bones ever, if not the absolute best one. It was an awesome concept, awesomely executed. It was also back before they took Zack away, back so far as when Zack still had the floppy geek hair and didn't wear suits to work every day and didn't help psycho cannibals kill people. Yeah, that's how long ago and great it was. I think it was also the episode that really got me to finally like Hodgins more.

After all the light and fluffy episodes they had (yes, I consider a lot of the episodes this season light and fluffy...Booth and Brennan went undercover at a circus, come on!) it was really great to have a truly serious, tense episode. I like some occasional fun and lightness, but they've been doing too much of it ever since Zack left. I don't know if the two things are related, but that's when I started noticing the schlock and a real change in the show's direction. When the words "Grave Digger" came out of Brennan's mouth I almost jumped off the couch in excitement.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the episode, and I think they did an excellent job finally getting closure for Hodgins and Brennan in the Grave Digger case. And I loved it when ( tiny spoiler )

ETA: And I now remember why I no longer participate in fandom. I just went to a Bones LJ community out of curiosity to find out what other fans thought of the episode and people are so nitpicky and critical. Being nitpicky is part of what made me stop liking Charmed (that and crappy writing). I just want to enjoy the show and be entertained.

I was going to say that I miss Our Lady Peace because I thought they broke up, but it turns out that's not the case. I know I don't listen to the radio all that regularly, but I don't recall really hearing anything from them since they released Gravity in 2002 (of which "Somewhere Out There" was the only single, I believe). It says on the Wikipedia page that they nearly broke up while working on the album after their live album (which was after Gravity) and that some of the band members have changed.

Apparently they're planning to release something this year, though. I may have to check it out. I also need to fill the gaps in my OLP discography. I have 3 of their 6 studio albums and also their live album. I need the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th albums as well as a compilation they released before the 6th album.

I saw them live a while ago. They played Pointfest 13 in 2001 and were totally awesome. I've been to 4 or 5 Pointfests and I think that was the best one, even though it rained and by the time the last band came on (Weezer), we decided to leave because we were freezing. Other bands included Staind, Cold, Puddle of Mudd, Tantric, and Fuel, among others. It was one of the best concerts I've been to, after Tori Amos, the Evanescence/Cold concert, and the Linkin Park/Korn concert.

Edit: Other bands included Staind, Cold, Puddle of Mudd, Tantric, and Fuel, among others.

We were Cold and Staind
by a Puddle of Mudd,
but we had Tantric sex
and Fuel'd our fire.

Ahem. Sorry, had to do that. Carry on.

It's 1 a.m. I will make stupid jokes if I want. Actually, Valentine's Day is technically over. Oh well. Late sentiments will have to suffice.

Tonight was the Valentine's Day Dance hosted by CHARIS, the choir Katie, Amy, and I are in. Katie was the DJ and it was a lot of fun. There were a few minor hiccups because Katie wasn't used to using the touchpad on my laptop (note to self: next time, bring external mouse) and this caused her to accidentally delete the play list a couple times and switch to the next song before the current song was over. But overall it went well.

The choir president actually asked Katie if she had business cards because she was going to pimp Katie out to the guests as a DJ, but Katie doesn't DJ on a regular basis. In fact, the equipment she was using, with the exception of the microphone, my laptop, and her external hard drives, belongs to our friend, Danny. So either Danny would have to rent/sell his equipment to Katie for gigs or she'd have to buy her own. Probably wouldn't work out well. But anyway... Everybody obviously had a lot of fun and the dance was sold out, so total kudos goes to everybody.

One (of the many, it really was fun) things that amused me was the reactions to songs. The crowd was 98% female and lesbian. Katie played Melissa Etheridge by request. Not many people dancing, kind of a bland reaction. Katie then played "It's Raining Men" and almost everybody went nuts and started dancing and singing along. Lesbians...singing with "It's Raining Men"...that's something.

The biggest reaction came for "Dancing Queen" though. Katie was in the restroom and still heard everybody scream. Poor Katie hates ABBA, too, but managed to give in to the request for one song. That's a pitfall of being a DJ. You have to play stuff you don't like. The Kanye West was proof of that. Ugh. Although she got about 5 requests for Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" and refused to play it on principle. Well she didn't rudely say no to people, but she just told them she didn't have it. She played "Hot 'n' Cold" by Katy Perry. I think that's enough. I suggested she play Jill Sobule's "I Kissed a Girl" but unfortunately she truly didn't have that one.

Fun was had by all. This looks to be an annual event for CHARIS since we sold out this time. They're hoping for a bigger venue next year. Don't know if Katie will DJ again. It would be fun to be an attendee instead of a volunteer, though.

For those of you who didn't know (because I didn't until last night), Nathan Fillion has a new show premiering next month called Castle. I don't know what it's about because I saw the commercial at the bowling alley last night and there was no sound, but here's hoping it has at least moderate success. It's not airing on Fox, so that's a start!

Castle
ABC
Premiers Monday, March 9 after Samantha Who

*ahem* Check out PaperBackSwap.

Back when Facebook started up I was still kind of against social networking sites. I still griped about how crappy MySpace looked, and if I remember correctly Facebook was only for students back when it started. Because I remember getting invited by someone and then not signing up because it required me to have a valid school e-mail address, which I didn't have because I was no longer in school. So now I'm on Facebook, I play the little games. I have people I actually know in real life connected to this thing. And yesterday, I added family.

My sister, Lisa, sent me an e-mail to my main e-mail address, the address that I wasn't using on Facebook. She wanted me to sign up for Facebook because she had, and come to find out our sister, Laura, and her husband, Bob, have had Facebooks for a little while. Considering I came out to the last of my family at Christmas, there are only two things they don't know as far as Katie is concerned--the fact that Katie is trans and the fact that Katie is poly and in a second relationship. My profile says that I'm in an open relationship with Katie. So if they know what it means to have an open relationship, that one's out of the bag. Then if they choose to add Katie as a friend and she adds them back, they could possibly discover the other factor. I briefly considered creating a second Facebook account that would be family only, but then I decided that I just didn't care. If they found out, they found out. It's their problem if they can't deal. So I changed my e-mail address on my Facebook account and added them.

I added Lisa and Laura and Bob. Then I had a message this morning saying that my oldest brother, Eddie, wanted to add me on Facebook. So apparently Lisa got him to start one.

Then I got home from work tonight and checked my e-mail. There was a notice that someone had added me on Facebook. It's Bob's mom. That's right. My sister's mother-in-law requested to add me on Facebook. I rarely have contact with this woman. Pretty much just holidays and sometimes not even then. She's nice enough. However, if I've ever mentioned how conservative Laura and Bob are, Bob's mom is ten times more conservative. I'm just bemused by this development. I honestly don't give two shits what this woman thinks if she reads that I'm in an open relationship with a woman. Like I said, I have very limited contact with her. My brain just did a double-take when I saw her name attached to that Facebook friend request. It's possible she already knows. I don't know what Bob tells his mom. His parents aren't horribly talkative people, so it's sometimes hard to gauge how close Bob really is to them.

Gosh. I'm just really amused by this. I would love to be a fly on the wall if she ever looks at my Prop. 8 Protest photo album. Hoo boy! I should make an album for Pridefest, too. I think I'll do that right now. *evil grin*