Holy F*ckballs, We Bought a House

Sooooooooo, a lot has happened since the last time I posted here. The Keeper and I were house hunting from, like, October to December last year. We found a place, bought it, painted it, moved in and we’ve been trying to get it furnished and organized for most of the year so far. Still not quite done with that last part. I’m in the middle of putting a stencil up on a wall in our dining/living room, which is WAY more time consuming than you might expect. Before that there was painting old furniture we got from The Keeper’s grandmother. And before that there was buying furniture. I still don’t have my office set up. But we’re getting there.

A Decent Proposal

As the title of this post suggests, The Keeper proposed to me recently. And he did a damn good job, too. So, I’ve decided to set him forth as an example for anyone out there who is trying to figure out how to go about this, apparently, daunting task.

First, here’s how it all went down:

We were on vacation in the Outer Banks. The Keeper and I had talked before the trip about having a picnic on the beach one of the nights of our vacation. So earlier in the day we bought a picnic basket/cooler and some wine. Then in the evening we grabbed a couple Subway sandwiches, packed them into the cooler with the wine and a couple of plastic mason jar cups with twisty straws, and hauled everything out onto the beach.

 

We tried to pick a place that the was both less populated and close to where we’d crossed the dunes. We ended up close to where we’d entered the beach, but overrun by small children hunting for ghost crabs shortly after we’d spread our blanket out and sat down. We ate our sandwiches and drank our wine and muttered about how it would be nice to have an unobstructed view of the ocean instead of a wall of small children. Eventually the adults that were with the children either decided it was getting too late or realized they were bothering us and they shepherded the kids down the beach some.

We finished our wine, watched the ocean until it got dark enough to see stars, and then laid out on our blanket looking up at the sky. We both exclaimed about how bright the stars were with no city lights to compete with, and then The Keeper said, “Man, this would’ve been a really good time to propose.” And I sort of chuckled and replied, “Oh you just thought of that?” And he said, “Nope”, and pulled out the ring box.

 

And that was pretty much it. He asked the question, I answered, we chatted a bit. Then we went back to the house we had rented.

Now, here are the lessons you should be taking away from this story if you’re trying to figure out how to propose:

1- Unless your partner has specifically said that they want to be put on the spot in front of a huge crowd of people, don’t. An informal poll of all of our female friends, both married and unmarried, suggests that the way The Keeper went about things was perfect. Most people don’t want their answer to such a huge question to be waited upon and scrutinized by a huge group of strangers. Or a huge group of family and friends for that matter. So either find somewhere secluded to pop the question, or if you have to do it in the middle of a crowd somewhere do it in a way that won’t draw the attention of the people around you. That means that if you’re in a restaurant, don’t do that one knee bullshit.

2- Choose a special place. It can be somewhere you go together often and both really like, or somewhere that’s special because it’s new and you’re both excited to be there experiencing it for the first time together. Just try to pick a place that will be worthy of the memory later on. I’m not generally super mushy or sentimental, but I do want to be able to tell people about this event and if the setting had been something boring he would have had to work way harder on the delivery for it to be a good story.

3- Do what feels right for you and your relationship. If it feels right to write out and rehearse a speech beforehand, do that. If it feels better to just wing it when it comes to the words, that’s fine. If you want to go down on one knee, great. If not, that’s ok too. Just take the other two points into account. If the location you’ve chosen means that getting down on one knee will draw a bunch of attention and you don’t know if your partner is ok with that, then either pick a new location or don’t do the knee thing.

That’s it. It’s that easy to get it right. Unless you’re with one of those weirdos who want some outlandish, grand, attention seeking gesture. I don’t know what to tell you about those people.

My First Tattoo

I love tattoos. I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember. Every one is complex. Even if the design itself isn’t detailed or complicated and the person getting the tattoo has no deeper attachment to the design than that they think it’s pretty, there’s something incredibly personal and meaningful about the process of getting it. You’re choosing to actively seek out someone and have them permanently, and usually at least somewhat painfully, etch something into your flesh. It’s one of the more absurd things humans do, but it’s also beautiful.

 

I always wanted to get a tattoo, but for a long time I didn’t think it was possible. I couldn’t come up with a good design. Then I thought of a design, but I assumed I couldn’t afford to get it done. Not that I had any idea how much tattoos actually cost. Once or twice I thought I might have enough disposable income to try getting my tattoo, but I didn’t really know anyone who could recommend an artist. The idea of doing some research and finding an artist on my own was daunting. I would search around online and find shops in my area, but then become terrified I would settle on someone and get the tattoo and it would be completely wrong. So I kept putting it off.

Then on a trip down the The Keeper’s hometown I found out that one of The Keeper’s close family friends who he grew up with was going through the process to get certifications or licenses or whatever it is you need to be able to do tattooing professionally. We talked a bit and this guy’s passion for what he was doing was obvious. He seemed a little distracted and wobbly when it came to other topics, but anything having to do with tattoos or piercings made him immediately perk up and speak with incredible passion and intelligence. I had found my artist. I started thinking about designs again, hoping I might be able to save up.

Fast forward to holiday season 2013. The Keeper and I were in his hometown again doing the Christmas thing and we learn that My Artist was planning on opening his own tattoo shop! We hung out with him for a little bit and listened to him gush about this new venture. He already had a huge client base from the time he’d spent working in other shops and he was excited about the other artists he was going to bring in to work with him. He was bouncing off the walls and telling us that if we ever wanted a tattoo we would have priority, just walk in and he’d bump his other customers back to do our ink.

Now I was getting excited. I’d just got a new, better paying job. I had a savings account again for the first time in nearly over a decade. I could do this! I still hadn’t asked anyone at any point how much my tattoo would cost, but I figured it would definitely be a few hundred dollars. Tattoos are expensive right? So I went home with a plan to save up, email the shop once it was up and running, and set everything up then come back down totally prepared!

Well, despite being super passionate, My Artist isn’t the most orderly, organized business owner I’ve ever known. I was expecting to exchange emails and get the design hammered out, schedule an appointment and then drive down one weekend and get it done. That’s not how My Artist operates. I’m sure there are shops that do things that way, but not my shop. My Artist is more of a hands on, on the fly kind of guy. And he’s far more interested in the designing and poking-you-with-a-needle parts than with checking emails.

I had no idea what I should be expecting or how all of this was supposed to play out, so when my expectations didn’t line up with reality when it came to the communication and the whole process I got super anxious. I probably could have communicated that better to My Artist. I’m sure he would have made an effort to explain things better if he knew exactly how I was feeling and how little I understood everything. Despite all of that though, I did eventually find myself sitting in The Tattoo Chair at My Artist’s shop at 11pm on a Saturday night.

My tattoo is a bracelet of celtic knotwork. There are three open spaces in the knotwork where I had My Artist draw in “charms”. The charms are a Super Nintendo controller, a ball of yarn with knitting needles stuck in it, and a 20 sided die. The first thing I learned while I was sitting in The Tattoo Chair was that it is surprisingly difficult to get a clean transfer of the outline of the design when you’re trying to put it in a band around a place like the wrist. You can’t just wrap the piece of paper around your wrist because the width changes the closer to the hand you get, and any little movement of the skin will mean that the two ends of the design won’t meet up in the right spot. My Artist tried to transfer the design 3 times before he gave up and called his wife (who is also a tattoo artist) over to help. And she tried twice before she gave up on getting a completely clean transfer and just drew in by hand the parts that didn’t transfer cleanly.

That is the point at which I made my first rookie mistake. I noticed much, much later that there are a couple of places where the complicated knotwork isn’t quite right. If I hadn’t been so jazzed up on “holy fuck, I’m finally doing this thing” excitement, and if I had prior experience with this sort of thing, I might have taken a long hard look and made sure the transfer was perfect before the actual tattooing began.

Once the transfer was on the only thing left was to start stabbing me with an inky needle. Over the years I had heard and read so many different things about how getting a tattoo feels that I kind of went into it thinking that it was going to be kind of like sex. Everyone is different and experiences sensations a little differently. Some people find it incredibly painful to get a tattoo. Some people find it pleasant. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what places hurt the most to get tattooed. I tolerate pain fairly well, so I figured I’d be ok even though I was getting my tattoo done on one the places a lot of people agree is one of the most painful.

I was mostly right about how it was going to feel for me. Initially it was less painful than I was expecting. Just kind of a vibrate-y mild burning sensation. Then My Artist got to that little sort of bony protrusion on the pinky side of the wrist. THAT hurt like hell. And something that I don’t think I’d seen or heard anyone point out before- you can’t really get used to the sensation because it keeps starting and stopping. Tattoo guns don’t have, like, a spot for the ink bottle to just be plugged in. It’s like writing with a quill or painting, you have to stop every few seconds and dip the needle in the ink. Which makes the painful parts even more painful, because you can’t just grit your teeth and suffer through and then it’s done. It’s suffer, pause, suffer, pause, suffer, pause… It makes total sense and I’m amazed that I didn’t realize that’s how it would work beforehand.

Roughly two hours later, the knotwork was done. At around 1 in the morning. Now, this is where I made my second mistake… kind of. Once the knotwork was done My Artist did the research and drew up the charms I wanted. He showed me the drawings and got my approval and then we did the transfers and the stabbing again for each one. My mistake can be viewed from a couple different angles. Either I shouldn’t have gone in so late to get the tattoo in the first place, or I should have been extra diligent in checking to make sure the charm drawings were right since it was so late and I was very, very tired. Turns out, tattoo artists don’t just inherently know the difference between a knitting needle and a sewing needle. I know, weird right? So I have a little ball of string with sewing needles poked in it on my wrist now. Not hard to fix, there are knitting needles with embellishment so I’m just going to get some color added later and it will be fine. But still, that’s something I should have caught and I didn’t because endorphins and sleepy.

By about 2am it was all done. At that point I hadn’t noticed the mistakes so I was sleepy and ecstatic all at once. It was incredible. I had a hard couple of weeks afterward when I noticed the problem with the knotwork, but now that I’m on the other side of that I can honestly say that I love my tattoo and I loved the experience of getting it. I’m constantly trying to decide what/where my next one will be. Because I definitely want more. I’m one of those people. Can’t wait to get more.

Am I Alone In Wanting To Be Left Alone?

I was out running an errand tonight and decided to treat myself to some frozen yogurt. So I go into the shop and I’m headed toward the cups when I am accosted by the cashier.

First she welcomes me to the store. Yea, ok fine. I know you’re probably not nearly as cheery and happy as you sound because I also work in food service, but your boss probably requires you to greet the customers so whatever.

Then she asks if I’ve been there before. I had, and I told her that, but why even ask? Why does it matter at all if I’ve been there before?

Lastly, after learning that I’ve bought yogurt from this store before, she thanks me for coming back. Uh… you’re welcome?

Just leave me the hell alone and let me go about my business!! Seriously, am I the only person who actively dislikes all the stupid polite small talk shit that the owners and managers of retail and food service places require their employees to spew at their customers? When I go into a shop of any kind I just want to do my shopping and leave. If I have a question, I will ask.

I don’t need to be greeted, I know you don’t care how my day is and I know you aren’t nearly as happy to be there as you’re pretending to be. So can we just skip that completely pointless interaction? I honestly do not understand why the people who manage these stores seem to think it makes any difference to the customer whether they are greeted when they come in. I have never spoken to someone who was happy with their purchase but wasn’t going to go back to a place because no one said hello when they walked in the door.

I don’t need help. At least not the minute I enter your store. If you’re a retailer, I need to look for the thing I’m there to buy. If you’re a food service establishment, I need to decide what I want to eat. What I do not need is you bothering me before I’m ready to make my purchase. All you’re doing is wasting both our time. Go do something more productive until I’m either ready to leave or I actually do need your help.

I don’t like platitudes, polite small talk or attempts to sell me things. Just leave me alone and let me get what I came for. As long as you’re not rude to me when or if I engage you I will be happy.

Am I alone in this? Do other people actually care whether they’re greeted or like it when a sales person tries to give them a tour or spiel about the products in the store?

No Promises

Eight months. I haven’t written anything substantial in eight months.

And I’m not really writing anything now. But I’ve started to feel the itch again, so I thought I’d pop in here and let anyone who’s interested know that I’m not dead and hopefully neither is this blog.

Hopefully. But I’m not making any promises. That way lies disappointment.

LivingSocial From A Restaurant’s Perspective

Living Social, Daily Deals, Groupon and other deal-a-day sites are great for customers. The Keeper and I have bought deals on food, cleaning services and one for a day out at a firing range from Living Social. But what about the businesses that participate in these promotions? To be honest, I never really thought about what the businesses get out of these deals or what impact these deals have on them when they are redeemed. I was just happy to be paying half price. But last Friday I got to experience a Living Social deal from the perspective of someone working in a restaurant. Here’s what went down:

We started getting calls at about 9:30am (an hour and a half before we actually open) from people asking questions about the deal and wanting to make reservations. The deal in question was with Living Social’s brand new “Instant Deals” function and the deal itself was $20 worth of food/drink and you pay only $1. They’re calling it their $1 Lunch deal and it was supposed to be valid from 11am until 2pm.

So when the managers on duty realized what was about to happen when we opened (the manager that handles making promo deals like this was conveniently scheduled until later in the day), they began frantically calling employees who weren’t scheduled to try and bring more kitchen and serving staff in to handle the extra traffic. I work in the back office normally, but being a new employee and knowing that the restaurant was going to be slammed today I volunteered to help out. They stationed me up front with the hostesses to redeem all the deal codes.

We opened at 11am and were pretty much immediately slammed. There was a line of people going out the door waiting for seats and to place carry out orders. There were people who had made reservations who weren’t getting seated because we were so packed. The kitchen was so backed up that people were waiting up to an hour for their food, both dine-in and carry out. We had to cut off service before the time that had been designated on Living Social’s site because of how backed up everything was. It was a nightmare.

Now, to be fair, I doubt this sort of thing happens with the normal deals from Living Social and other such places. Usually it’s a deal for 50% or so and it doesn’t become usable until the day after you buy it. Then there’s an expiration date like any other coupon, so people have weeks, or sometimes months to use the deal. This $1 lunch thing had a window of 3 hours in which to use it before you were refunded your money and the voucher code was no longer valid, so it stands to reason that during that window the places participating would be packed. However, as best we could tell, no one had given Living Social a maximum number of deals we could handle. Their site sold out of our deal before we actually opened, but we have no idea how many deals were bought. This sort of thing is more likely to hurt business than help it, which for the businesses is the entire point of participating.

Pink Eye+New Job= FAIL

After my temp position debacle, I lost all motivation and inspiration. I would sit down to write, but nothing appeared on the screen. Or nothing appeared that I was happy with. I was not quite fully depressed, but definitely in a depression-like slump. The fact that my unemployment benefits came into question because of the shitty temp job did not help.

Then I was contacted by a couple people for interviews and I thought things were looking up. I went to two interviews one week, which was more than I’d had in the previous 4 months or so. But they were both a bust and I continued to wallow in “meh”-ness.

Saint Patrick’s Day came, and with it a phone call. The author of one of the random ads I’d responded to on Craig’s List, despite the lack of simple information like a company name or who to address the emailed resume to, had liked my resume and was interested in speaking with me. But first, for whatever reason, he wanted to make sure we were on the same page regarding pay. He had budgeted $13-14/hour for the position, but since the job was located in the city I was pretty sure that I’d need a minimum of $15/hour to cover the added transportation costs. We signed off of our phone conversation with the understanding that I would do some calculations and let him know if I could make $14 work. The answer was no, but I emailed him to let him know that if he was willing to consider paying the $15/hour for the right candidate then I would still love to come in and interview.

That Saturday, during my monthly Pathfinder game, another man called me from the same business. I explained what I had spoken about and emailed to the first guy and he said they would talk it over and get back to me. A little while later he called back to say that they were still interested in talking to me, so we set up an interview for Monday.

Monday came and the interview went splendidly. I left feeling excited and optimistic. The job would be a pretty basic Administrative Assistant position, but instead of being in a typical office setting I would be working in the back office of a restaurant. A beautiful restaurant with exotic food that smelled delicious. It was perfect. And there would even be room for growth, because this wasn’t just any restaurant. This was a foreign restaurant chain which was trying to expand into the US, and the location where I would be working was the first US location. Now all I had to do was wait while they finished up their other interviews and chose who to hire.

On Friday I spoke on the phone again with one of the two guys I’d interviewed with and was informed that I had gotten the job! They wanted me to start on the following Monday! I was elated! This was the first “real” job I had gotten all on my own, and it felt fantastic.

Then, on Sunday morning, The Keeper started complaining about his eyes. They were irritated and gooey and in pain. By Sunday evening he was having trouble seeing because of gunk forming on his eyeballs and he was fairly sure he had pink eye. In both eyes. My eyes were just fine though, so I decided to go in for my first day of work as planned. I would just tell my new employers as soon as I got there what was going on, so that they would be aware and have warning in the event that I caught this affliction.

On Monday morning I got up, I got ready and I took the bus and the Metro into DC. I arrived at my new job on time and when my new boss began to extend his hand to shake mine I greeted him with the following:

“Hi! Listen, before we get started and before I shake your hand there’s something I should probably make you aware of… this weekend my boyfriend seems to have come down with a double case of pink eye. I haven’t had any problems, my eyes are just fine, but I thought I should let you know before I touch you or anything else here.”

We talked about the situation a little bit and he decided we should probably push back my start date, just to be safe. Since it’s a restaurant and all. I apologized profusely and felt terrible about the whole thing, but I think he was grateful that I brought it up instead of just jumping right in and then saying something when/if my eyes actually started to be a problem.

Excuses

I realize I didn’t explicitly say I was going to try to blog more when I posted my list of 2011 resolutions, but that was kind of my intention with the meme ideas. I wanted to get into some sort of regular schedule, but I seem to be failing spectacularly at that. I mean, the first full week in January I posted on 6 out of 7 days. The next week, twice. Last week, 4 times. And this week is looking like maybe just once. This week I have a pretty good excuse though.

I got a job.

I have been unemployed since February 20th of last year. During that time I have been looking for jobs through Craig’s List and Monster, and I have been in contact with multiple temp agencies. On Monday, one of those temp agencies finally came through with a job for me. It is a temporary position with, forgive me for being vague but I’d like to protect my anonymity, an organization of scientists and healthcare professionals who study diseases of a certain bodily organ. There was no interview and the temp agency initially said that it was a 2-5 week assignment, however I’ve been given the impression that there is a possibility of the position becoming permanent if these people can settle on someone to hire.

The problem is, they don’t seem to be able to find anyone to hire. These people have been through multiple temps from various agencies and have been unhappy with all of them. My temp agency actually submitted me for this position with them weeks ago and they hired someone from a difference agency before coming back to my agency and asking to see my resume again. They asked to see my resume Monday and wanted me to start today. I had to scramble yesterday to buy some work clothes that actually fit and get out to my agency’s office and do the required paperwork.

Today I had my first day of work in almost a year. It kind of sucked. Even ignoring the fact that I’ve come to enjoy being home all day with my cats, my arts and crafts, and my internet it still sucked. It sucked because the guy I’m working for seems incapable of explaining anything in a way that makes sense. He reminds me of my last manager, actually, which makes me wonder if it’s a cultural issue, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, just based on my experience today, I have a suspicion this place can’t keep temps because they have unreasonable expectations and not because there was something wrong with the temps.

But, a job is a job. I intend to work there at least until the temporary assignment is over. Perhaps once I get acclimated to the place my first impression based opinion will change. I mean, it’s not all bad. I have my own office. Not cube, OFFICE. And there’s a Perfect Pita across the street. How bad can it be?

Obligatory Welcoming Of The New Year- 2011

Over the last couple of months I’ve purposely not posted anything here about the holiday season. There was no post for Thanksgiving, no post for Christmas, and I thought that there would be no post for the New Year.

I don’t have anything in particular against the holiday season, I’ve just always been kind of annoyed by the seemingly obligatory “Happy [insert holiday here]” webcomics and blog posts. And, regarding the New Year specifically, I’ve never really been the type to seriously make resolutions. I’ve always felt that they were just sort of pointless. No one ever sticks to their big, meaningful resolutions for more than a few weeks; which is probably due to the fact that they only made big, meaningful resolutions because it was New Year’s and that’s what you’re supposed to do. So usually, I just don’t make resolutions at all. I might think about things I want to do differently in the new year, but I don’t formalize them into resolutions.

This year, however, I joined Twitter and Twitter doesn’t allow you the number of characters it would take to explain that something is not a resolution, it’s just something you’re hoping to change during the next year. Which means that as I thought of things I should probably do differently in 2011 I had to call them resolutions if I wanted to Tweet about them. And then I decided that if I was going to Tweet about it, I may as well blog about it. So, here we are. These are my resolutions for 2011:

1. Cook more; order delivery, take out fast food and go out to eat less. I spend money on groceries, I really ought to actually eat some of them.
2. Leave my apartment on days that are not weekends and for reasons other than D&D or running errands. Seriously, I have been a ridiculous hermit since I lost my job.
3. Create some sort of cleaning schedule for the apartment and stick to it. This place is such a sty most of the time.
4. Have more sex. This will require either help from The Keeper, or his permission to be a swinger.
5. Get an effing job. This is less of a resolution and more of a hope. I would settle for an extension on my unemployment benefits though if necessary.
6. Create more. Drawing, painting, writing, knitting, cross-stitching, sculpting- all things that I don’t do enough of to actually become skilled at instead of just talented.

Campbell’s Noodle Soup

Best. Sick. Food. Ever.

Seriously, this stuff is amazing for when you’re sick. Way better than normal chicken noodle soup. And it’s pretty damn good when you’re not sick too.

The “Politeness” Argument

In any relationship there is bound to be at least one or two disagreements that stem from fundamental differences in each person’s upbringing and outlook on life. One topic on which The Keeper and I have one of these fundamental differences of opinion is “politeness”. More specifically, being polite to people in customer service type situations when we are the customer and the service has been extremely frustrating.

The first time we realized we weren’t in accord on what exactly it means to be polite in such situations was a little over a year ago. We were on our way to visit friends at Virginia Tech, and it just so happened that his sister (who was 18 at the time, but mentally about 12 or 13) was enrolled for a trial period at a sort of college/assisted living community for the developmentally challenged along our route called the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center. We decided to make a brief stop there on the way to check up on her and see how she was liking it.

Now, this place is in the middle of friggin nowhere.

And the day we were visiting must have been an off day for, like, 90% of the staff because there was nobody around. The Keeper’s dad had told us we would have to sign in when we got there, so we followed his directions and went to the main administrative building first. When we pulled up there were no other cars in the parking lot and the only other human being we could see was a gardener, but we went ahead to the building to try and sign in. When we got there the automatic doors opened just fine, but inside all we found was an empty reception desk and empty halls. Back on the doors was a sign with a cell phone number to call for assistance, but every time we called it just rang, there wasn’t even a voicemail.

At this point we were more worried than anything. We thought maybe we were in the wrong place or something. So we started driving around the campus, hoping we would see someone who could help us figure out where we needed to go. We drove around for half an hour without ever seeing a single person. No staff, no campus guards or police, none of the residents of the place- nothin. It was scary, and extremely frustrating.

Finally, we went back to the first building and decided to take a shot at asking the gardener. We didn’t have much hope that she would know anything, figuring she was just someone that was hired from a local landscaping company or something, but it turned out she did know where we needed to go and we finally got some directions. It turned out that we had actually already driven past where we needed to go and all the people that we weren’t seeing were in this little enclosed courtyard area that wasn’t visible from the road.

We asked one of the residents who was out in the courtyard where we needed to go and he pointed out a door, but when we got inside we, again, couldn’t find any staff. There were plenty of residents around though, so we asked one of them for directions again. He took us out the other side of the building we were in and pointed us toward another building. We walked over to the new building and finally found an office with someone in it who seemed to be working there. He had someone else in his office when we got there, so we waited patiently until he was done and then went in to ask where we needed to sign in. When we got in there it quickly became apparent that this man was a high functioning resident of this establishment, which was actually kind of cool. The Keeper very nicely explained our situation and what we were looking for and the guy walked us outside to point us in the right direction.

He pointed to the building we had JUST come from.

At that point we had been trying to find The Keeper’s sister for about 45 minutes to an hour. The main administrative building had been deserted. The only sign that had given any indication of what visitors should do if they couldn’t find a staff member had been the one with the phone number that no one answered. When we finally found the place we were supposed to be it was just as deserted of staff as the main building had been, and when we finally found someone who worked there he pointed us back at a building where we had seen no one but residents of this place. I felt that we had legitimate reason to be upset, so I ran through this list of grievances to the man, calmly but in an obviously annoyed tone. My tone did seem to bother him a little, but he agreed with me that there should have been signs for visitors and that someone should have picked up the one phone number that had been given. Then he directed us again to the other building and said that he would radio the people who were supposed to be there to sign in visitors to make sure they were there when we walked back over.

The Keeper was astounded by the way I’d treated this guy. He felt I had been incredibly rude, simply because I had made my agitation known in my tone of voice. This is that fundamental difference I was talking about. The Keeper believes that being polite means never, ever showing it if you’re annoyed, frustrated or angered by the service you’ve been given. He thinks that to be polite means you must be sweet as pie in any interactions you have, no matter what the other person or organization has done. And he finds it extremely embarrassing to do anything even slightly more aggressive than that.

I believe that one can be polite while at the same time making it clear that there is a problem, something has been done wrong, or whoever you’re speaking to has not done their job in a satisfactory manner. It is not rude to show displeasure unless you show it with personal attacks, yelling, screaming, cursing and the like. If you are calm, speak in a normal voice and you don’t attack the person you’re talking to or call them names or anything like that then I don’t see a problem.

Unfortunately, my perspective on this issue embarrasses The Keeper.

Fortunately, I very rarely find myself in situations where I feel it is necessary to react this way. In the two and a half years The Keeper and I have been together I can think of two instances where I have embarrassed him in this way. Considering how many entitled assholes there are out there who do worse than I do on an almost daily basis, I can’t bring myself to feel bad about using an annoyed tone once or twice a year.

There Is No Excuse For Me

I’m not going to try to make excuses, I have been a lazy bitch over the last couple months. I kept thinking, “hey, I should probably post something on my blog” and then I just sat there and did something else, or I posted something but it was sort of a cop out like the “things that infuriate me” post.

Anyway, I apologize and I’m going to try to post more from now on. I’d still rather not hold myself to a schedule yet, but I’m hoping to be able to write something at least once per week.

Now that’s out of the way, here’s what I’ve been up to lately in case anyone has been curious:

• My laptop died and The Keeper had to resuscitate it for me (meaning it kept freezing and refusing to open internet browsers so I had The Keeper format it and reinstall Vista). This worked out fairly well, but since I’m not the only lazy person in this household it didn’t actually get done until a week or two after I decided not to touch the thing until it was fixed. Then once everything was reinstalled I discovered that there were some drivers missing and causing things to be weird, so I had to get him to fix that, which also took a week or two before he got around to it.
• I went through another depressive cycle, which I think was partially exacerbated by my having to use The Keeper’s netbook or the desktop he’s got hooked up to the TV if I wanted to do the things I do regularly online, neither of which do I enjoy using all that much. The netbook is hard to type on because of the tiny keyboard and there’s no comfortable place to sit to use the TV/desktop because if you sit on the living room furniture the screen is far enough away to be difficult to read and if I sit on the floor for extended periods of time my back starts hurting.
• I was basically forced to discontinue the use of my 10 year old LiveJournal because of some drama. I’m still a little bitter about that, so I won’t go into too much detail here.
• I met my new nephew and he is, well, he’s a baby so he’s small and kind of wiggly.
• My job search continues, however I have recently had a wave of motivation/inspiration and intend to work toward opening an Etsy shop and attempting to make a living selling a random assortment of my own crafts and art.
• This week I started reorienting my sleep schedule. As much as I love sleep and hate waking up, I always seem to get so much more done when I get up in the earlier morning rather than later morning. And getting more done helps me not feel down on myself for being a lazy ass. So The Keeper has been getting me up and moving at about 6:50am when he comes back into the bedroom to get dressed and leave for work. So far, it’s working out pretty well. The apartment is much more consistently tidy and I’ve been eating real meals at normal times instead of just munching on whatever will take the least amount of preparation.
• Oh, and I bought the upgrade from WordPress that allows you to edit CSS and had a friend help me tweak a few things. There are a couple things about the new look that I’m not thrilled with that will be tweaked soonish, and at least one of them can’t actually be changed because it would require editing the html rather than the style sheet and WordPress doesn’t give that option, but overall I’m happy with it.

Cats

No, not the musical. Actual cats. See, that’s what has been distracting me from posting here. Let me start at the beginning.

For the last few weeks The Keeper has been talking about getting pets. We’d thought about getting a couple rabbits when we first moved to our current location, but that never actually ended up happening. Then he started talking about dogs and cats (the only animals we would have to pay a pet deposit and pet rent for…) a few weeks ago. He’s never been terribly enthusiastic about pets, having never had any growing up, since most of his interactions with animals before he met me had been negative. But all of a sudden he was enthusiastic and his enthusiasm made me really want a pet too. So we waffled back and forth between waiting till I have a job or not and between cats or dogs or bunnies. The Keeper decided he could afford to foot the initial bills for pets and he didn’t want to wait and have it never happen, so we decided to start searching immediately.

Then we decided that our apartment isn’t really ideal for rabbits. I’d read that the cage should be kept out of direct sunlight and away from vents/radiators. Because of the way we have our furniture arranged, that meant the cage couldn’t be in the office or the living room area. I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep them in the dining area because of fur getting in food and any animal waste smells. Also didn’t want them in the bedroom because of smell and because The Keeper is a light sleeper as it is and we weren’t sure how much noise rabbits make at night. That left one little space in the hallway where we weren’t entirely sure a cage would even fit comfortably. So that was the end of the rabbit idea.

So the decision was between cats or dogs. Cats won out because we figured cats would deal better with being left alone for hours and hours during the day, plus we wouldn’t have to get up ultra early in order to take them for walks.

Once we decided on the what, we needed to find the animals we wanted. That was WAY more difficult than I was expecting. It seems like no one who lists animals on Petfinder is capable of taking decent pictures, so that made things a little difficult when we were trying to find cats we wanted to go visit. Plus, The Keeper wanted a grey cat. Like Russian Blue coloring, all grey. I like that coloring too, but he wouldn’t budge on this and at first we didn’t seem to be having a lot of luck finding greys we both agreed on. We also had some trouble deciding whether we wanted kittens or young cats. Kittens had the advantage of being friggin adorable, but a lot of the ones we were seeing online were too young to have been fixed yet and it wasn’t clear with a lot of the rescues whether the spaying/neutering would be part of the adoption fee and we’d have to bring them back for that and not pay more or if we’d have to foot the bill for surgery ourselves. The Keeper was willing to pay for the adoption and the pet deposit and all, but he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of having to pay anywhere between $200 and $800 within a few weeks of adoption to get them fixed. And I can’t really blame him, especially considering there were plenty of slightly older kittens to choose from who’d already had their surgeries.

Anyway, to cut a somewhat boring story short, we finally found a couple cats and put applications in for them on Saturday. The woman who was fostering the grey called the next morning to let us know that they would both be at a Petsmart down in Woodbridge for an adoption event that day if we wanted to go meet them. We went and loved the grey, but the other cat we’d been interested in didn’t seem very friendly. We ended up bringing one of the grey’s foster-mates home with him instead.

Now, the foster owner had told us that the grey would take a while to warm up and might hide a lot the first couple weeks, but she didn’t really give us any specifics of how to make him comfortable or what to do when we got him home and he refused to come out of his carrier. The little calico/tortie shot right out of her carrier and started exploring, but the grey scrunched as far back in his as he could and wouldn’t budge. We were a little worried and went over a couple times to try and coax him out, but we figured he’d most likely venture out after we went to bed and hide somewhere in the apartment. I even made sure there were a couple places he could use to hide before we went to sleep. And we were right, he did come out in the middle of the night some time. And he ended up hiding under the bed. That worried us a little because we had had to close the bedroom door the night before in order for The Keeper to get some sleep (the calico/tortie kept clawing at his feet and his has a low threshold for pain) and we didn’t want to do that again if it meant trapping the grey away from the litter box. Fortunately The Keeper was a little more relaxed and so was the calico/tortie that second night and we were able to leave the bedroom door open.

The next morning we were intending to get him out from under the bed if he hadn’t done so on his own and then I was going to try some of the suggestions the foster owner had emailed me to make him a little more comfortable. The Keeper got up for work and couldn’t find him anywhere in the bedroom, so he shut the door and went on to work. A few hours later I went looking for our little scaredy cat and couldn’t find him. Anywhere. I thought maybe he’d just found some extra hidden place, so I started playing a video game to distract me from worrying. But then when The Keeper got home and couldn’t find him either we started worrying that maybe he’d gotten out of the apartment that morning when The Keeper was groggily leaving for work.

At that point The Keeper printed up a flier and went to ask around our hall and down at the front desk to see if anyone had seen him. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown. We’d only had him two days and he’d gotten lost? No one would ever trust us to adopt a pet again. And what if someone had taken him? Or he’d gotten hurt? And really the worst part was that I knew it didn’t make any sense. None of it made sense. We looked EVERYWHERE for him. We even took the mattress and box springs off the bed because we thought maybe he’d found or torn a hole in the lining under there and crawled inside. So we were so sure he wasn’t here. But it didn’t make sense for him to get out either. Every time we’d gotten close to him when he was in the carrier or under the bed, he’d backed away as far as he could. He wouldn’t have just run past The Keeper to get out. And even if he had, there is nowhere to hide in the hallway. Plus, we’re in the middle of the building far away from any of the branches in the hall. He couldn’t have possibly run so fast that he could have gotten out of sight down a branch of the hall without The Keeper hearing and seeing him. It just didn’t make sense.

Today The Keeper posted one of the fliers by the elevators even though that’s not actually allowed. I got up at 9am to take it down, since the idea was just to make sure people saw it on their way out to work. When I got back I got back in bed and tried to stay as quiet and still as possible, just in case we were wrong and he was still somewhere in the apartment. I didn’t hear anything that I could be certain was him, so finally at about 12:30 I got up because I needed to take my birth control. Then at about 1:25 I looked for him again, just in case. And I found him! The little bastard was under the bed again!

Now The Keeper wants to name him Houdini.

Babies In The Workplace

Over the past few months (since I became unemployed I think, maybe longer but I dunno because I don’t keep track of these things) I’ve been devouring the archives of a professional advice blog called Ask A Manager. I’m actually a little surprised that I like this blog enough to go through the archives, seeing as I’m not all that career focused overall, but I digress. The reason I bring it up is because the other night I ran across an entry that got me thinking about a couple different things. The post is entitled "bringing babies to work" and was written in response to an interview Lisa Belkin conducted for The New York Times back in November of 2008. Ms. Belkin was interviewing the founder of an organization which advocates parents taking their new babies into the office and caring for them while they work for the first few months, until the baby is mobile.

The author of Ask A Manager, Alison Green, did not agree that this was a good idea and many of those who left comments on her post agreed. I myself can definitely sympathize with the objectors on this one, but at the same time I can also sympathize with the parents. I think the idea presented in the comments about businesses providing on site daycare and allowing parents to take their breaks there is probably the best middle ground, but I also know that many, many companies would not be able to afford that. For me, I don’t think I would allow bringing babies to work across the board. I think this is an issue that is far too subjective to give it an overreaching generalized answer. I can see how for some circumstances it could work really, really well. If during the maternity leave the new mother observes that her baby sleeps almost constantly and is happy and quiet when it isn’t sleeping or eating, then I don’t see any reason to say no to that baby being in the office at least for a trial run. And if the employee can get their job done with the baby there and without having to work more hours than normal or get extra help from their colleagues? Definitely no problem there. But there is plenty of potential for this situation not to work out, which is why I would treat something like this on a case by case basis if it were me.

Which brings me to something else this old post got me thinking about. Or rather, the comments on that post got me thinking. Is there really that much resentment and animosity between parents and non-parents in the workplace? Or are those comments just a really, really skewed sample? Maybe I just haven’t had jobs where my work is all that time sensitive, but I can’t ever remember getting genuinely pissed off when a co-worker called in saying they couldn’t come in that day because of something kid related. And when a colleague in one of my previous jobs went on maternity leave, I don’t remember being annoyed at having to pick up her slack, I just remember being ecstatic that I wouldn’t have to hear her talk about being pregnant anymore.

About The Third Year Harvard Law Student Being Accused Of Racism

So, I was looking at my Google Buzz and saw that Tony had posted an article about some Harvard student being racist. Normally I could care less because it seems to me that a lot of things that are labeled as "racist" or "sexist" should be labeled as "things that are funny and/or harmless, but offend the uptight and overly sensitive". For instance, people make jokes about how women are crazy and overly emotional. I’m a woman, I laugh at some of those jokes. Some women do not laugh, they get all bent out of shape and go off on feminist rants. Those women are overly sensitive. They are unable to understand and accept that stereotypes come from real world observations. But that’s not really the point. The point is, something about the headline for this news article grabbed me and I clicked the link. Then I clicked another link to an older article. Then I clicked a link that took me to a place where the supposedly racist email in question was posted in its entirety.

From reading the first two articles I was able to ascertain the following:

• Third year Harvard law student Stephanie Grace went to a dinner party
• At the dinner party the conversation touched upon something which prompted a comment from Stephanie regarding race and intelligence
• After the dinner party Stephanie decided to clarify her comment in an email
• That email was leaked, possibly by someone who shouldn’t have had access to it in the first place, to Harvard’s Black Law Students’ Association

Now, here is the text of the email:

"… I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.

In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case."

Now, I realize this isn’t going to be a popular interpretation, but I don’t think she’s necessarily being racist here. We don’t know what prompted the wording of this position. If the conversation at the dinner had nothing to do with race at all, then perhaps this suggests some racism. If the conversation was about intelligence and race, race being used as a general term with no race specified, then this email strongly suggests racism because of her specifying two particular races. However, if the conversation surrounding her at this dinner touched upon both intelligence and African Americans? Then no, I don’t see this email as racist at all. She is stating that she is open to the possibility that African Americans are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. Being open to something is different from believing it to be true. And a group being predisposed to something does not mean that everyone in that group conforms to the predisposition.

I think that this email got blown out of proportion once it was made public. I also think that situations like this where something harmless is blown up by the media do more harm to racial relations than good. We don’t need to stop people from stereotyping and having opinions about large groups of people. What we need is for people to stop letting those stereotypes and opinions influence their interactions with other individuals. There are a lot of generalities and stereotypes about women that I find unfavorable, but that doesn’t mean I assume any woman I meet fits them. I get to know people on an individual basis, generating opinions based on their words and actions. If enough people did that then there would be no more racism or sexism.

Quick Updates

To any new readers who may have found there way here through WordPress’s Freshly Pressed feature- Welcome! I am delighted to have you here and I hope you’ll stay for a while. I was astounded to have my post featured, and even more astounded by the amount of hits and comments that generated.

Due to the increased traffic here over the last couple days and since no one seems all that interested in using Google Buzz, I’ve created a Twitter account for the blog. It seems they have a character limit for usernames, so I couldn’t make my username there ImpassionedPlatypi like I wanted. One strike against Twitter so far… But anyway, the account is created and I’ve posted to it a couple of times. There’s a button on the sidebar that will take you to my profile page. I wanted to use a widget that would show posts there, but it wasn’t working. Also, I quite enjoy the alternate for "Twitter" and "Tweets" that The Over-Educated Nympho came up with, so from here on out I will be referring to the service as Twatter and the posts as Twats or Twatters. Context should pretty easily separate whether I’m talking about Twitter or a person.

The Q&A page that I mentioned in an earlier post is up, so remember to feel free to ask me anything. It can be weird, random, personal, sexual, anything you want. Just bear in mind that I may lie to protect my anonymity. I’ll try to make the answers entertaining if I lie though.

And finally, I’ve added a button at the bottom of the sidebar. The Organic Sister, in an effort to generate income while she and her family RV around the country, has started a coaching business aimed toward helping people who are interested in unschooling but don’t know where to start or how to handle certain situations that can arise. If you have questions, she can definitely answer them.

Anniversary Dinner

March 28th is The Keeper’s and my anniversary. Last year we were both broke and living 4 hours apart, so we didn’t really go out. This year though, despite my being unemployed, we could afford to have a nice dinner.

The Keeper had chosen PF Chang’s because I’d never been there and he’d enjoyed it the one time he’d been with people from work. He made a reservation and everything.

I thought the decor was pretty. They have statues of Chinese generals strewn about and little clusters of wooden lanterns.

The Keeper was driving because he didn’t want me to have to deal with the busted car, so he only had one drink. PF Chang’s has Kirin Ichiban on tap.

I, on the other hand, had three glasses of Kinsen Plum Wine. I had never tried plum wine before, though I had been told it was very, very tasty. And it was. It was so tasty that on Thursday when we dropped the broken car off to be repaired and then went and had breakfast in a strip mall with a wine shop, I went and bought two bottles of it. Good stuff.

We had some dumplings as an appetizer, but devoured them before I thought to take a picture. I liked the pot sticker sauce that came with them almost as much as the sauce that comes from the place we order from during D&D every week.

Then came the main courses. I got honey shrimp on a bed of what appeared to be Styrofoam but was probably some kind of rice noodle.

And The Keeper got some sort of noodly dish, the name of which I do not remember. It was tasty though, I tried a chopstick full.

And at the end The Keeper had been counseled by a colleague to get The Great Wall of Chocolate.

Ridiculously huge slice of cake with fresh berries and raspberry sauce. Probably enough for 3 or 4 people to comfortably and easily share. It was too much for the two of us, so we’ve decided to make sure we have friends with us next time we go.

Subject To Moods

It’s been a week since the last post here, and I feel I should explain the reason. It’s not a very good reason, in my opinion, but here it is. I have been somewhat depressed. This particular depression has been far more mild and short lived that others I’ve had in the past, but it had settled over me like a little cloud and only recently has begun to dissipate. It came to a head on Thursday last week when I tried a second time to make the ravioli I mentioned in the previous post. I didn’t exactly fail in my second attempt, I got the dough to do mostly what I thought it was supposed to do and I rolled it out and was going to try to proceed despite the fact that there didn’t appear to actually be enough dough to make a meal for two people. Then The Keeper came in after I’d asked him to go check something about the recipe on my computer and made a joking little comment about how the sheets looked right although he didn’t think he’d be able to read newspaper through it (which is something the recipe mentioned as a somewhat lofty goal when rolling out the dough). Then, when I started fretting a little over it, because I could try to roll it thinner but I’d already hurt my wrists getting it as thin as I’d managed to, he was trying to calm me down and he accidentally knocked the carton of eggs that I had out on the counter off onto the floor. It was at that point that I pretty much just gave up and sank into a despairing little haze while I cleaned up the eggs.

As tends to be the case when I get into these dark moods, I was caught in a circular conundrum. I felt worse than I might otherwise have because I knew I was worrying The Keeper and that I was relying on him for something that he isn’t naturally inclined to understand and render. But at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it except mumble and murmur that I was sorry. And this was in addition to the stresses which had caused the mood to begin with. It wasn’t the ravioli or the eggs, that was just sort of the last straw. I’ve been unemployed longer than I was hoping, so I was feeling bad about that. And the depression seemed to be making it very difficult to motivate myself to do anything besides read, including getting on the computer and typing up interesting blog posts. Unfortunately it also included things around the house like cleaning, and I sank further under my little cloud because I was sitting and reading all day while The Keeper was out at work. I felt bad for being so lazy, but circularly again, couldn’t seem to get myself to not be lazy. And things just kept piling up until Thursday when the eggs got knocked over and I just snapped.
 
I spent most of the next day sleeping because I’d developed a really terrible headache, which didn’t really enhance my mood much. But then Saturday the cloud began to dissipate a bit and I think things are much better now. I’m still having trouble tearing myself away from the book I’m reading (which currently is Edward Rutherfurd’s The Rebels of Ireland), and I haven’t really been very productive yet this week, but hopefully my spirits will continue to rise and I can get some things done soon. I’ll be forced to, at least, on Thursday this week because of another of the things that had piled up and caused my little breakdown last week- The Keeper got into a traffic altercation. Someone ran a red light and struck him as he was making a left turn on his way to work last Thursday. The offending driver’s insurance should be paying for the repairs to my Element, but unfortunately the asshole is saying that The Keeper is the one who ran the light and since the police weren’t called and there were no witnesses who stopped to give their contact information, we are at an impasse. So, The Keeper and I will be driving to the closest Progressive repair center on Thursday morning to drop off the Element and acquire a rental car. I have to be there for that because the rental car requires a major credit card and I have one of those while The Keeper doesn’t. We are currently kicking ourselves for not electing to get the rental coverage Progressive offers.

Anyhow, I’m hoping to get back into a habit of posting here. The Keeper and my two year anniversary was on Sunday and he took me out to PF Chang’s where I was able to take some wonderful food porn pictures, so that will probably be my next entry.

I’m Not Dead!

Just thought I’d clear that up. Yea, I’m not dead. I’ve just been very busy the past few days.

I was going to try and enjoy being unemployed for a little while, but I am a moron and I updated my Monster profile on my first weekday of unemployment last week. That resulted in almost immediately receiving calls from three different temp agencies to set up interviews so that they could look for jobs for me.

This was my week last week:

Monday- chill and update Monster
Tuesday- Interview
Wednesday- chill and play D&D
Thursday- Two Interviews
Friday thru Monday- Out of town in a hotel with no wifi because my Mom wasn’t willing to pay the extra $34/night for a nice hotel, and then staying with a friend who also did not have internet. Yes, those people exist.

So, yea, not a lot of time for blogging. But I have a feeling this week will be a little calmer.

Cleansing A New Home

Ever since middle school I’ve been interested in new age religions/spirituality. I did the whole Christian thing for a while, but I always disliked the way Christians seem to fixate on Hell and stress that if you don’t do what they say you should do you’ll be damned to eternal suffering. The denomination I have the most experience with is Baptist, so it might just be that I wasn’t exposed to a large enough cross section of all the different denominations, but I pretty much gave up on Christianity and organized religion in general by about 8th grade. I read a lot about Wicca once I gave up on Christianity, and I like a lot of what I learned, but for some reason I don’t identify myself as Wiccan. Maybe it’s the association with rebellious 13 year olds, but I’ve adopted the term Pagan to describe my religious orientation rather than Wiccan.

For the most part I don’t really do much in the way of rituals or worship. It’s kind of an internal thing for me most of the time, which is good because my ex, Toad (his chosen nickname, not something I made up for him), was an atheist. He didn’t have a problem with me believing what I wanted to believe, but he also didn’t really encourage me to get more involved in it. Once we split up though, along with a lot of self evaluation came a resurgence of spiritual thought. Once I found an apartment, this  reawakening meant that I gave some thought to preparing the new place spiritually. Cleansing it of negative energies, so that I could move into a positive space.

To cleanse my new space I believe I just lit a bunch of incense, meditated a bit in each room, used a sage smudge stick to trace pentacles in the air while asking for the Goddess and God’s blessing on my new home and then lined the window sills and doorway with sea salt. The incense was to clear the space of negative energy and I duplicated that part of this ritual in the apartment The Keeper and I moved into a few months ago. The meditation was to fill the new space with positive energies, and I did that in my new apartment too. I did not use the smudge stick this time, I honestly don’t really remember what that was supposed to be for. But I did take a new broom and used it to figuratively clean all the surfaces in the place. And I still lined all the window sills and the doorway with sea salt, to ward against negative energies and anything that might mean harm to The Keeper and I.

The Keeper is Christian, but he encourages me to have faith. Any kind of faith is good as far as he’s concerned, it doesn’t have to be the same as his. That’s a very nice change of pace from Toad, and since The Keeper is more open, I tried to include him in my cleansing ritual. He was going to be living here too, so I thought it was appropriate for him to have some input. He felt that most of my ritual kind of conflicted with his own beliefs and faith and raising, but he agreed to come in at the end to ask our respective deities to bless our new home and then share some food and wine with me in the new apartment to start things off with lots of positive energy.

So far, I’d say the wards are holding strong and we’ve been quite blessed.

This Somehow Hadn’t Even Occurred To Me

Just read a blog post by Erik Van Slyke that got me thinking… My layoff makes pretty much no sense from a financial standpoint for the company. They say that the layoff I was part of was intended to streamline the business and help the company to grow later by becoming more efficient, or something. And at the time I was given my notice (9 months ago) it was also thought that by the time I was going to be leaving there would be some procedures in place to make my job a bit more automated and efficient, thereby making me irrelevant and justifying the lay off.

Those procedures are nowhere close to being in place. My team is at least a month behind on what we do. There are three temps helping the team I was working in, two doing the same job I had been doing and one as sort of an assistant to help with things that need done but take up time that the rest could be using to try and put a dent in that month long backlog. It is likely that they will bring more temps in to try and get caught up after I’m gone. Exactly how does any of this save the company money?

After reading that blog post though I’m wondering if the execs at my company might have just been trying to secure their own salaries or bonuses or something like that. I mean, I don’t think we’re one of those companies that gives out a bunch of bonuses, but it might just be that I wasn’t at the level to get one.

The Mundane

Two more days and no more job. I’m part of a layoff and Friday is my last day. I’ve known about it for a while (since, like, May of last year), but it’s a little strange for the day to finally almost be here. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do. Since I was notified about the layoff I’ve been sending resume’s out all over the place, but I’ve had no luck and to be honest I’m not terribly thrilled by the idea of another cube monkey job. I mean, if I can get something that pays well and requires so little effort that I’m able to get online and bullshit around all day like at this place, yea ok I wouldn’t mind that. I just don’t have much hope that will happen. Most other companies have far tighter controls on what people can and can’t do online at work, I just kinda lucked out here.

I could try to do something completely different, but I’m not sure what I’d do. I have a friend (back in the area where I grew up, not where I live now) who took a cake baking or decorating class or something and now has a business where she spends very little time and money making specialty cakes and selling them for ridiculously huge profits. I think that’s something I might be able to do, but I’m not sure. OEN has started her own greeting card business since she got laid off. I have no interest in that, but I’m wondering if there’s anything similar I could maybe do? There are some craft things that I’m fairly certain I could sell, but they take so long and so much effort to make that I’m not sure I could actually profit from them. I’ve begun thinking about basically setting something up so people pay me for general life advice, but I’m not sure I have the credentials for that. I don’t even know what the credentials for that would be, I just know that I give really good advice a lot of the time. I have a little time before the money runs out though, and if I come up with something really, truly kick ass I can lean on The Keeper a little I’m sure. Technically he could probably support both of us on his own, but I don’t want him to have to.

In other news, I think I may start using Google Buzz. If you have a Google account and want to follow me, my Gmail address is over there on the Contact a Platypus page *points at the sidebar*. If you do not have a Google account and you want to follow me, I’ve added a link over on the sidebar under the Other Blogs You Should Read category for my Buzz profile. I realize it’s not a blog, but I didn’t feel like adding a new category for just one link. Maybe I’ll add links for other people’s Buzzes or Twitters I like and then add a category. We’ll see.

I had been considering Twitter, even though I kind of had a bit of a hate-on for it, because a lot of the bloggers and webcomic artists I follow have Twitter and it is kind of cool to go to their page periodically and read through their updates. Especially OEN. But Buzz seems to be similar and is connected with the email and docs I use for this blog, so I think I’ll just use it, at least for now.