I Saw the Moon Last Night

It's been raining a lot here this summer, making the usual talk of Colorado summer fires and droughts seem extremely ridiculous as they show up on the same page of newspaper where they describe recent flooding in the area. The other side effect of all this rain is that we rarely have clear nights. But last night, Mark and I left to go grocery shopping and stopped just outside our front patio. The sky was clear. We quickly took care of that whole "buying food for the week" task and returned home to see about setting up Mark's telescope. Living in the north Denver Metro area makes finding a dark sky difficult, but we decided to use some protected areas in our apartment complex to look at the moon.

I know I've looked through a telescope before. I must have. My brother had a telescope once. I think. But I don't really remember the experience. So when Mark put his swanky scope together and plopped on one of the high power pieces, I was a bit stunned to actually, really, truly see the moon. Not only could I study the craters and the other surface features, but I had to keep adjusting the scope to keep the moon in my field of vision because that squirrelly sucker of a celestial object was huffing it across the night sky. Unfortunately, there was way too much moisture in the air to really see anything else. Jupiter had already set by the time we got the scope set up, and the bleeding of Denver's light prevented us from getting a lock on Pluto or Uranus. But we have the scope assembled and on display in a corner of our dining room (along with the keyboard, the cookbook shelf, the display thingy for some crystal vases, and, of course, the dining room table; yes, it's cramped, but we'll survive).

If you haven't looked through a scope and studied the moon's surface, you just haven't lived. Check out your local astronomy hobbyist club or, if you're near a big university, see when they have their public viewings. It's a bit indescribable to be standing outside of your apartment, looking into a cardboard tube with mirrors and staring at the detail of the moon as it passes through the night sky.

And in other big news, Mark was able to update our website yesterday. He's even included a little sidebar of entertaining snippets from this humble blog. Check it out.

More Internet Fun

I love playing around with quizzes and such. Via Kat:


create your own visited country map

Which doesn't look nearly as impressive as this:


create your personalized map of europe

Western Europe is MINE! Muahahahaha!

More Good Books

Per my therapist's suggestions, I've been working my way through I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher and The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Good books, especially if you feel a bit lost in your own life, as I've been feeling for the past two years. Reading these two books has been an exercise in catharsis for me. Very helpful, if somewhat emotional at times.

I tried to post twice yesterday, but Blogger thwarted me each time. So I decided to wait until today. I had my sixth interview on Tuesday, and it went really well. I'm still waiting to hear back from interviews four and five as well. I'm hoping these three loose ends will wrap up by the end of the month, and it'd be nice if one of them wrapped up in such a way as to get me a job. I'm just sayin'....

Found this via Jenny:
I will be stung by a swarm of killer bees

How will you die? Take the Exotic Cause of Death Test

Given my penchant for sneezing, I expected I would go by way of "Sneezing your brain out". And I have an issue with the "death by West Nile" option listed. The West Nile mortality rate is nothing, and your immune system usually needs to be compromised in some other way before the virus can be that serious. Although I've been seeing reports that West Nile leaves a lot of lingering side effects (dizziness, fatigue, muscle ache, etc). If people were this vigilant and freaked about HIV....

Joys of Unemployment

There are so many.  Truly.  Sleeping in.  Watching TV whenever you want.  Discovering the bliss that is twelve hours of uninterrupted video gaming.  But nothing compares to the ability to go on extended reading binges.  In addition to the books mentioned on the sidebar that I've been working through, I steamrolled through One for the Money and Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich, and The Gathering Flame by Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald.  Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mysteries are hilarious, though the actual mystery-threads in the stories seem bland.  Maybe that's because I'm used to suspense/mystery elements in scifi and fantasy.  Speaking of the Plum mysteries, I should mention a peril of unemployment:  setting foot anywhere near a book store with a credit card in hand.  I suffer this danger every Tuesday when I go to Border's for my RMFW critique group.  But I guess I'll deal with having a ton of reading material at my disposal.  There are worse things that could happen.  Such as the lowering of your television viewing tastes.  Spending all this time at home as made me far less particular in what I'll become a couch potato for.  Case in point was yesterday morning when I decided to watch the Travel Channel's special on the best Caribbean Resorts.  They were even so kind as to mention the price tags for a stay in some of these places.  I was more scared after that then after I watched Signs.  But the strangest thing happened when they did their little montage thing on the number one resort.  They interviewed the hotel manager, who happened to be Slavic.  No biggie, I'm sure they've got hotel management training everywhere in the world.  Then they interviewed the activities director, and she was Slavic too.  Ok, I think, no big deal, so he brought a team from wherever he trained with him.  But then they interviewed three guests at the resort, and they were Slavic.  Do you smell a conspiracy?  I did, if only to give me something to occupy my imagination for a while.

More Camping

Mark and I went up to Dinosaur National Monument this weekend.  The weather was great, the scenery was beautiful, our campsite was perfect, and we had part of the park entirely to ourselves for most of our Sunday morning drive and hike.  This time, we also remembered to bring bratwursts for the campfire.  Yummy.  There were only a couple bad spots to the trip.  The first didn't become apparent until we settled into the tent for the night.  Turns our the air mattress (yes, I know it's a camping cop-out; so sue me) has a leak.  Thank you, kitty hind leg claws.  So we started the night with a very comfy sleeping surface, and woke to the ground.  Not pleasant.  Then we began our drive into the canyon part of the park and discovered a lovely insect called the Mormon cricket.  These guys are cannibalistic, which means all you have to do is run over one of the suckers on the road and you get a feeding frenzy, which in turn leads to more of the damn things getting squished, which brings on another onslaught of the nasty critters, and so on.  Our tires and wheel wells were absolutely coated with smelly, puke yellow bug guts.  Luckily, it rained on the way home.  And that leads to the last bit of unpleasantness of the trip:  spending two hours on a thirty-mile stretch of I-70 because everyone and their gaggle of long-lost cousins wanted to get back to Denver at 5PM yesterday.

But it was worth the trip.  Seeing a huge rock wall teeming with dinosaur bones of several different species was pretty amazing.  And then all the funky geological processes that formed the canyons and mountains in the park is wicked cool - in the "I'm a science geek" way that Mark and I share.  Plus it was remarkable to see the park on a Sunday morning when no one else was around.  I've never seen a place so deserted.  As sad as we thought it was that the rest of America was missing out on something so spectacular, we didn't mind being able to see it by ourselves.  Mark just got around to scanning in pictures of Sand Dunes from our last camping trip, and he will scan in some pictures of this trip (as soon as we get the film developed - hopefully tonight), and just maybe he'll get around to putting them on our long-neglected website so you can see two places you really need to visit if you're ever in the area.  Just stay in Salt Lake City so you don't have to mess with I-70 eastbound into Denver on your way back from the park.

Jury Duty

So I survived my first experience with jury duty yesterday. And it was a fascinating time. I wasn't selected to sit on the jury, but I wish I had been. If only to have the complete experience. It was interesting to see the process and how everyone handled it. The judge seemed to be having fun just getting to know everybody. He asked us all about our general situation in life, asking for more detail seemingly whenever something peaked his interest. The prosecution tried to see how we handled reasonable doubt, phrasing their questions in a way that made me think they had a few holes in their case. And the defense seemed to want a jury with members who believed cops harrass citizens based on their bumper stickers. I'm not sure if the prosecution or the defense cut me. I'd like to know, just to understand the thought-process behind the decisions, get an understanding of how lawyers on either side like to set up their juries. I could've been cut because of my science background. I could've been cut because my uncle is a cop. I could've been cut because I said that I would admit to a mistake I didn't make if the stakes were low enough and doing so would make life appreciably easier (we're talking about "who ate the last cookie" stuff here). I could've been cut because I'm a total babe and that fact kept distracting the prosecutor (Hey, it was a fun story idea to play with, so I ran with it when the questions turned boring).

If I had thought about before I was halfway home, I would've stayed for the trial (I'm pretty sure it was open). Not because the case was really interesting, but because I wanted to see the whole process. I wanted to hear the prosecution present its case and the defense offer its theories. I wanted to watch all the faces, hear all the word choices, see all the postures. It was a new situation for me, and the observing scientist within me just wanted to soak up every last bit of it.

I can't wait for my next summons.

Catching Up

Another month gone by. I suppose I should get serious about posting regularly again. It's just crazy how little there is to say when you're not in a workplace 40 hours a week. Plus, I'm far too busy watching Stargate SG-1 in the mornings and then writing in the afternoons to putter around on the web. :)

Yes, now that I've managed to get rid of my Victoria's Secret and Bath&Body Works credit cards, I've discovered the joys of the Best Buy credit card. Last weekend I rustled up seasons 3, 5, & 6 of SG-1 on DVD. So I've gotten into the habit of watching an episode or five after my morning workout. The good thing about that is the story ideas this show generates. Not novel story ideas. Short story ideas. In fact, I'm working on one now (although, it's about 10,000 words, so it's technically a "novelette"). I write these stories for about two hours, take a walk, and then I sit down and work on research for The Masque.

Or sometimes I'll read instead of gluing myself to the couch. In fact, I managed to read a few books I forgot to list as my June reading: On Basilisk Station and Honor of the Queen by David Weber, and A Thousand Words for Stranger by Julie E Czerneda. But I'm starting to slow my reading down now that my writing's kicked back into gear.

Yeah, I think I've finally gotten the hang of dealing with myself while unemployed. But there's a part of me that hopes by saying I've got the hang of it that I will trigger God's Wit and land myself a job in a few days.

The Waiting

I swear, some days it feels like I'm sitting in a field of daisies, plucking petals, and saying, "I got the job, I got the job not." And going absolutely insane doing so. Each interview gives me a chance to start contemplating a career path. And each rejection drags me back to square one, where I have absolutely no sense about what I should be doing with my life until a career in writing becomes feasible.

But at least I have another interview to prep for next week whilst I wait on the last one. You'd think one of these times someone would actually hire me, wouldn't you. The odds have got to start going in my favor after X many interviews, right? Please?

Mystery Caller

Today marks my twenty-sixth year of hanging around on this rock, and it's also the day Mark and I celebrate three and a half years of annoying each other being together. But enough about that, I want to talk about the phone call I got last night. I like to think of it as an early birthday present. Here's how the call went:
ME: Hello?
Caller: Using the slightly drunk and confused voice of your typical college puke Hi, is Abner there? [He might have said another name, it was fairly garbled.]
ME: Sorry, you've got the wrong number. Gets ready to hang up.
Caller: Wait. Who is this?
ME: Not who you were looking for. Gets ready to hang up again.
Caller: Well, you sound kinda hot.
ME: I'm married. Good-bye.

I wish I hadn't had a couple glasses of wine (Mark's early Halfiversary surprise), because then I would've been coherent enough to have had much more fun with this poor slob. I could've had said something like this, in my most seductive voice of course: "Well, you sound like a drunk twenty-year-old desperate for a one-night stand." And then I would've given him the number of the local escort service, which I actually know by heart since it was only one digit off of our old phone number (I think I've blogged about the fascinating calls we used to get due to that happy coincidence).

So I went into my 26th birthday receiving a quasi-compliment about the sexiness of my voice from a total stranger. Amusing and a little gratifying. Now off I go to pamper myself with a nice, long shower and a day of plotting for The Masque.

Juror #24601

If I know how my life tends to unfold, then I think I've just received proof that I will get this latest job for which I interviewed. I've been summoned to jury duty for the beginning of July - right in the middle of what will be my first few weeks at this new job should I get it. And since my life seems to be slavishly adhering to Murphy's Law of late, this means that I most certainly will get the job and then have to try and postpone the jury summons - only to get a new date which will present an even greater conflict that I can't forsee as of right now. This is par for the course: I've been sitting around the house with not a whole lot to do for the past two and a half months, but now that I'm getting really close to landing a job I get a jury summons. And the best twist of this Murphy's Law Moment is that I want to participate in jury duty. I've never experienced it before, I'm really curious, and it always makes me feel good to exercise a little civic responsibility once in a while. I'll probably postpone and then never get summoned again. That's what happened when I was in Arizona. They would always summon me for jury duty while I was at Notre Dame. I would postpone - or defer or whatever the heck Arizona calls it - for one of my summer or winter breaks and then never get summoned until I was back in school. Actually, now that I think about it, my life isn't as bound to Murphy's Law as I thought. No, that law is far too obvious. My life follows some other law that is steeped in a more subtle irony. Something like "The Law of God's Dry Wit".

The SEB is Back Again

Last week just outright sucked. I read, I played video games, and I tried very hard not to think a whole lot because Mark wasn't around to help pull me out of nasty thought-holes. It worked to varying degrees of success: everything from "hey at least it worked for fifteen minutes this time" to abyssmal failure. You'd think reuniting with Mark and some college buddies at a wedding would cheer me right up, wouldn't you? You'd be dead wrong.

First, the wedding was in Wisconsin. Long-time sufferers readers of this blog know very well how much I despise the Midwest. So that was a definite strike against the weekend. Second, I was within spitting distance of my brother (his new company is in Madison, but he's not there anymore as they shipped out to California for training yesterday) and of my mother's family. But I had no time to spend with them. Had I known that I was going to be unemployed and interview-less last week, I would've flown out with Mark at the beginning of the week and spent the time he was at the conference with relatives. And, finally, simply stating that I was a college buddy of the groom was enough to stamp a glaring "SEB" on my forehead.

What, you ask, does "SEB" stand for? Super Elitist Bitch. I have no idea what kind of stories this college buddy told, but I suppose it has more to do with the popular impression of Notre Dame students being trust-fund babies or something. This is the second time in my life - that I know of - that I've been very much mistakenly lumped in with well-off kids who dropped $100,000 getting their degrees and still had money left over for a very nice SUV and a convertible. The first time, it was an ex-boyfriend telling me I had no right to be upset about my parents' divorce because I was a Notre Dame senior and therefore in the top 2% most financially stabile people in the world. That he said this as part of his seven-page email detailing exactly why he had dumped my ass didn't help anything either. And this wedding marked the second time. Had I known it would've been a problem, I would've introduced myself in the following fashion: "Hi, I'm Kellie, a college buddy of the groom. Before you go making any assumptions, I was only able to attend Notre Dame because I got a fair amount of scholarships. And I suppose now's a good time to mention just how much money my parents shelled out for the experience and how much money I'm still shelling out for those four years of educational bliss."

It was just a weird night all together. There were only three college buds there, and one was a groomsmen. So that left me, Mark and the other college bud to fend for ourselves at a table with some random cousins of the groom. One of said random cousins, on hearing that we were the groom's college buddies, said, "Well, I didn't go to college, so what does that mean?" And then he spent the rest of the night butting into our conversations when he had a nice undercutting thing to say about us. As soon as we got up to get some drinks at the bar, the random cousins invited quite a group to take our seats. And it just sort of continued on from there. The crowning acheivement of the evening occurred when the groomsmen/college bud introduced me to the bridesmaid he'd been cavorting with all evening. No, strike that, she introduced herself. And this, I quote, is exactly how she went about it (be sure to read this with a so-there-you-wanna-make-somethin'-of-it attitude): "Hi, I'm M-----. I went to a cheap state school." I didn't dash out her name to protect her identity. I dashed it out because I can't remember it. I'll probably bump into her again and go, "Oh, hi, Cheap State School. You must remember me. I'm Super Elitist Bitch."

Another Month Already?!?!?

Holy Cow, tomorrow begins the month of June. The month of summer, the month of my birthday, the month of our Halfiversary (Mark and I will have been together for three and a half years), the month where warm weather mostly decides to settle into Colorado and give up the strange 80s one week, 50s the next see-sawing of spring and fall. And let's hope that June also becomes the month in which I at last see the end of Unemployment.

So, catching-up. I didn't get the job I was really excited about; my brother's doing great and will be in Iraq in August after a couple months of training; my writing's in a strange "holding pattern" that I'm trying to break out of; don't see the movie "Troy" if you harbor any appreciation for the actual Trojan War mythology; do see "Van Helsing" because Hugh Jackman kicks just as much ass in a trenchcoat and hat as he does in that pleather-ish "X-men" outfit (also see it because it's overall a fun flick).

Now for the details; don't go on a week-long trip the week before your significant other is set to go on a week-long trip of his own.

The interview did indeed go very well. And I suppose I should be impressed that I even got the interview considering the two other candidates had PhD's and at least five years more University level instruction experience on me. Still, it would've been nice to have gotten that job. True, I would've had to face a decent amount of demons from my past to enjoy the experience and get the most out of it, but I don't like the idea of letting those demons linger much longer.

But there's an upside. I got a call from a company I had previously applied to with Kelly Scientific. They wanted a phone interview for a Technical Writer position. I obliged them on Thursday, at which point I discovered that they didn't have the resume I submitted through Kelly Scientific. No, they had my resume from Monster.com, the one I had fashioned in the hopes of finding an entry-level administrative assistant position with a biotech/pharmaceutical company. This same resume is so horridly set up due to it just being sloppily transferred from an MS Word document to the Monster format. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the worst of what I've got out there in "Please Hire Me" Land. And they wanted to interview me. And after the phone interview, they wanted to interview me on-site. I'm extremely jazzed about this job, and I'm also fairly confident in my chances of landing it (barring, of course, the appearance of another couple of PhDs and their hoity-toity five years plus of experience). The only problem is that the woman who interviewed me hasn't emailed me or called me about setting up an interview time and she's gone this week to the same conference Mark is abandoning me for. I'll probably give him a copy of my best resume to bring with him on the off-chance he bumps into her.

The week with my brother was a good one. We got to chat a bit about his previous experience in Iraq and his combat training in general. My mother didn't appreciate it too much, but it made me feel oddly comforted. I don't like that my brother's going back to Iraq. I don't like that they're going to give him a gun again and expect him to use it. I don't like that he will use it. But at least I have confidence in his ability to deal with the situation. And that goes a long way toward settling my nerves. It does nothing to change the fact that I'm going to kick his ass for a month straight when he comes back for putting me through this again.

The writing.... That's a topic for another post.

The movies were fun. And had I known that "Troy" was only called that because it served as a backdrop for some good dramatic representations of the lives of Hector and Achilles, I probably would've enjoyed the movie more. I think the fact that the whole Helen-Paris story was relegated to a thin subplot should tell you a lot about the historical accuracy of the flick. Also that the last lines as given by Odysseus were "If they remember my name, let them remember that I walked with giants. That I knew Achilles. That I knew Hector" (or somesuch). I mean, come on. People are lucky if they remember that the whole reason Odysseus is at sea in the first place is because he's starting his voyage home from the Trojan War. Don't even get me started about how they decided to end the damn movie. It should be explanation enough that I would have to provide a spoiler warning for those who know the history. The only reason to see this movie is to watch Achilles fight. Whoever choreographed it did a fantastic job.

And the last thing is Mark being out of town as of tomorrow. That's another post as well. Suffice to say, I'll be happy when this week's over.

And Now For The Bad News

No, the interview went great. I'll be hearing the Verdict next week. The bad news is that my brother is going back to Iraq. You might be confused, seeing as how my brother got out of the Marine Corps in November, and also seeing as how his reserve unit was set to go to Okinawa this year. Well, my brother, in all his Marine Corps honor, bravery, etc glory was asked to volunteer to reactivate and go back to Iraq, should the Corps need him. Brad said yes a couple months ago, Corps said, "we need you," a couple days ago.

Here's the one really good thing about being unemployed: I'm able to drop everything and fly out to Arizona next week so I can chill with my brother before he starts the training and shipping out process.

Let's hope this is the only bad news for a while. It'll keep me occupied for quite some time.

Good News

I've got an interview tomorrow. This is a Genetics Instructor position with my old department at CU. The call setting up the interview was very positive, and I'm really excited about this job, so keep your fingers crossed. And adding to the fun tomorrow, I'm going to a Writers' Munch in the morning. Should be a fun and productive day.

Yes, I Want Tires With That

The 8-page synopsis and entry into the writing contest has gone right out the window. Sanity is in high demand and short supply these days, and the minimum amount required to write the synopsis far exceeds my stock. Then we can start talking about the cash required to enter the contest and go to the conference where the results are revealed, and we'll see an even greater supply-demand imbalance. So the synopsis has been ditched. How does this relate to tires? An excellent question.

See, I was still toying with the idea of writing the synopsis yesterday when I brought the car over to Firestone so one of our tires could get checked for a leak (some of the roads we traversed at Great Sand Dunes were a little mean to our poor car). Silly me, I thought this would be a lunch-time endeavor, leaving me the entire afternoon to write. They gave me an estimate of an hour, so I went wandering in the nearby Wal-Mart and mall. Then I came back and waited patiently for another fifteen minutes until the hour was up before I asked for my car.

Now, when they had asked me for my information, I had given them my home phone number. Had I known that they wanted to be able to call me while I was waiting for the car, I would've given them my cell number. Had I also known that they had tried to get in touch with me, I certainly wouldn't have sat around for fifteen minutes in the friggin' place, reading an old and insipid issue of Entertainment Weekly. But wasting time seemed to be the theme of the day, so I guess it all works out. Anyway, upon my request for my car, I found out that they couldn't patch a hole in the tire because the tires were bald and it was illegal for them to do anything other than replace the tires. I was a bit shocked to hear this as Mark had told me that the tires had another year to go before they needed to be replaced. Feeling very much like I was getting scammed, I called Mark and had to play Info Relay between him and the salesperson.

It turns out that tires can look just fine on their outer edge but be bald on their inner edge when the alignment is shot to hell, thus fooling someone who's looking at the tires from any other angle but underneath the car. Our car now has four brand-new tires on it, our credit card is wincing (though not nearly as much as Jerry's - see the May 15th entry), and I'm now entirely convinced that the synopsis idea is even worse than I thought if it's jinxed like that. I mean, if I tried to write the thing again, we may have to replace an engine or something.

Oh, Great

One of the related searches listed in the top banner of my blog is "middle finger". Perfect. And I thought my life was complete before with that odd boyband related search. Yup, life is good. Now, if only I could figure out how to quell the clamoring voice in my head that insists on listing all the issues I need to address in my writing so I can focus on the synopsis....Oh, and a job would be nice, too. Then life will really be perfect. Until the next strange or amusing related search comes along.

A-Campin' We Have Gone

Went camping this weekend in Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was a great trip. It felt really good to get away, even if that did mean not showering for a couple days, smelling like a campfire the entire time, and finding sand in all sorts of places. We took our buddy PJ with us as he's having some wicked knee surgery in a few weeks and wanted one last hiking hurrah before going under the knife. With his knees, my knees, and my general lack of endurance, we hiked up to the highest dune in the park in true leisurely fashion. But my quads and calves are still killing me. Note to self: hiking up 650ft over the course of a mile isn't a big deal unless it's all sand. The hike back down was fun, though.

PJ's one of the more serious amateur photographers I know, so he had a fun time playing with all of his lenses and filters and films. Mark and I brought our own point and shoot cameras. We realized the necessity of this during our trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Mark takes the pictures for photo albums and the website (assuming he'll ever update that thing again), and I take pictures of little images that inspire story ideas or belong in my fantasy world. I had a lot of fun with that on this trip. Great Sand Dunes will be a prominent feature on a continent of Velorin that I hadn't really fleshed out a whole lot yet.

There were two problems on the trip, though. The first was the wind at our campsite. There are 88 sites at the park, available on a first come, first serve basis. We got the very last one, and there was a reason why it was the very last one. There had been a slight fire near our site in the recent past, robbing the immediate area of trees and large bushes. And it was at the very edge of the campgrounds. So Mark and PJ had fun making sure our tent was secure enough to withstand the wind. It held up fairly well until we woke up Sunday morning with one side of the tent blowing completely over PJ with each gust. The second problem was the meat we brought to grill. PJ doesn't eat red meat, so we decided to bring nothing but chicken breasts since the only other thing we had was hamburger meat. As we're sitting over the grill on Friday night, we remembered that we have not just one but two stacks of cheddar bratwursts sitting in our freezer that we had completely forgotten. So the phrase, "I can't believe we forgot the cheesy brats," was uttered frequently. They would've been the perfect camping food - in addition to the barbecue sauce smothered chicken.

So that was my weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I have to get back to the grind this week and finish my 8-page synopsis for the RMFW Colorado Gold Writing Contest. I'm hoping to mail my stuff off by the end of the week, but writing a synopsis this long is a very hairy process.

A Month of Books

That's what April was. Every time I turned around, I was in a bookstore, a used bookstore, or a library and walking away with an armload. I found all sorts of cool books, some non-fiction, some fiction, some reference. It was really sweet. Sales everywhere, bargains galore, freebies for volunteering some time at a book sale. I still have two boxes worth that I haven't been able to place on our already crowded shelves anywhere. I'm afraid to count how many books I bought in April, but I know that I spent less than $100 for them all. You should see the gorgeous books on Mythology, Egypt, and Archaeology I nabbed from a sale at Borders. Not only will they be invaluable for research for my intergalactic archaeologist series idea, but they're also pretty swanky coffee table books. I'm pretty excited that I scored all but one of the Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series. I could go on and on about all my finds. The take home of this post is: I have enough books to last me through two years at the very least, and I'm afraid to set foot in another bookstore or library again lest I walk away with more books.

Giving You the Finger...Update

So it's now been five weeks since I battled with canned peaches and lost. There's a nice white scar forming, and it's still a bit sensitive to the touch. After not being able to feel the top right side of my middle finger, sensation seems to be coming back, though it's still not back to normal. And that makes gripping small things with my right hand a real joy. I didn't find out that fun fact until this weekend when I kicked Mark's butt in SolarQuest (the little fueling station pieces proved a tad too tiny for my impaired finger). But at least now I have complete range of motion back in the finger with only the occasional odd twinge. And, if you really want to look on the plus side of this whole mess, I now remember clearly when I had my last tetanus shot. That will come in handy for the next Can vs. Hand show-down.

Whoa

Drop off the Internet for a while, and Blogger goes and changes everything. Don't get me wrong, I like the switch. But it just makes diving back into a connected life seem more...monumentous? So, uh, thanks go to Blogger, I guess, for making my return feel all the more spiffy.

And why exactly was I gone for so long? It's not as if I'm really busy or anything. Well, sleeping until 9 or 10 and then playing Final Fantasy X and X-2 for twelve hourse straight does have a way of eating up your schedule without you realizing it until suddenly two weeks have gone by. Yes, meet Kellie the Industrious Unemployed Writer/Scientist/Jill-of-all-trades-if-it-will-get-me-a-friggin-job.

So about a month ago to do the day, I had a Cooking Accident that resulted in four stitches and the start of a minor depression. I had enough going on with Human Dignity to keep me from admitting that I was getting a tad depressed. And then I started my Final Fantasy binge, which resulted in my further denying that Anything Was Wrong. To be fair, I started the binge in order to keep from over-analyzing everything in the days leading up to and just after my two interviews. Seemed like a good plan at the time. My writing projects were all in beginning or end stages, making it hard to just sit down in front of the computer and let the words consume me. (It's funny: I hate writing the middles of books, but being in the middle of the book is the easiest time for me to immerse myself in a project, apparently. Or perhaps I'm just a big-ass font of excuses. Methinks the latter.)

Why did the Culinary Incident kick off a depression? Mainly because it was a noticeable blip in the system. My first week of unemployment went fairly well. I was working out everyday, pounding the Internet pavement with gusto (I'm still pounding it now, but it's rather half-hearted), working on my books, staying connected with my on-line haunts, and just in general eager to make the most of the time I was going to have unemployed - however long it should be (and I really didn't think it was going to last much more than a month). Then I sliced into my finger and was out of commission from a surprising number of things: writing, swimming, holding anything resembling a weight for my workouts. Pain was a big issue as was general dexterity (which wouldn't have been such a big deal had I decided to mutilate my pinky or any finger on my left hand; but no, I had to hack into the middle finger of my right hand, and right by the spot where a pen rests when I write). Seeing as how I had decided to write away my unemployment, the Can of Peaches Pop-top From Hell proved to be an extremely cruel foe. And then all the job leads started to crumble, not helping anything.

I actually kept any sign of depression well-hidden. Sure, I wasn't happy for most of April. Sure, I spent a lot of time thinking I was never going to find gainful employment, that a certain former science boss had been right and that I was Dumber Than Shit. Sure, I overanalyzed every dark corner of my self and decided that Mark was either a saint of an idiot for sticking with me even this long. And sure, I'm even being overly dramatic in describing how melodramatic I was in my not-quite-depression. But it wasn't until I started sleeping ten hours a night and wanting to sleep more that I realized just what was happening.

Mark's got this great ability to just tell himself that he's being stupid about something, or that general sentiments about something are just dumb, and the problem is solved. He's determined that his thought process was wrong or just unhelpful, so it's immediately fixed. Anytime he starts down the path of these thoughts, he remembers that he realized it was stupid, and he stops. I'm hoping that I'll learn this neat trick from him at some point over the course of our marriage. I'm only beginning to understand how it works for him. But it's painfully obvious how dumb all my self-pity and depression is. "Dumb" doesn't mean I'm dumb for succumbing to it. But it's dumb to continue it, and I don't like to do dumb things. So off I go on the Road to Wellness.

Starting now, I will not just give up on myself. I will get my revenge on that infernal Pop-top. And I will not let some idiots in Corporate America - who thought they could save a shit-load of money by axing me and a bunch of others - determine my worth. Good. Glad that's done. Now where's the chocolate and Playstation 2?