News from the area and abroad
Mar. 29th, 2006 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceI really need to forgive myself for making these random bullet-point posts and just get on with my life. I need to do this starting...now.
Okay, then.
Okay, then.
- I've decided that I'm quitting the bookstore. Not for any particular reason--well, there is one, actually, which is that thanks to the way my taxes were withheld and the tax bracket the bookstore + my day job put me into, I did not in actual fact take much more money home this past year than I would have if I'd just been working my day job. And most of the people I loved most at the bookstore are gone now, and while I do get exercise when I go, and while it's kind of fun just to hang out and be friendly with the staff, I wouldn't miss it so much if all I did was go for an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon and not get paid for it. Which, thanks to the tax thing, I really sort of didn't get paid for it anyway.
And man, the idea of eight extra hours a week! In which to do whatever I want! My mind is in the process of blowing, over this idea. I'll be handing in my notice this weekend, I think, and here is how I know I've made the right decision: I cannot wait to do it. - While searching the glorious internet earlier today, I found this report about a plague of hamsters in Newcastle. The report was written nearly a year ago, and at first I thought it was just funny, but now I find myself worried about the hamsters, which I guess is to be expected from a woman who at age 36 cannot watch films where animals die without feeling kind of sick.
I hope the hamsters were shipped to some nice pet store. I expect they weren't. But I am going to pretend that they were; the article doesn't actually say they weren't, after all. - Ever since I started working in my current department at work--where I'm sort of the new girl, even still, and not expected to be all that proficient--I have periodic anxiety attacks about my performance, one of which I mentioned the other week when I was preparing for my annual review. I do my job, and I do it well and without complaint, but it's been hard for me to determine whether or not the work I do makes any particular impact on the company as a whole, and this week I finally figured out why this is. It is that I've never really had a tech job before where my position wasn't absolutely essential to the survival of the company. I've always had these jobs where I'm either creating custom programs and get paid by the hours I can bill and am the person to call when one of those programs goes awry or needs enhancement, or else I am the only person who knows anything about computers beyond the basics of MS Office and have to take my cell phone on vacation in case I have to put out some minor fire somewhere.
I've never been a stable-pony in a tech job before. And I guess I'm having a hard time adjusting to that--but I have hopes that now I know where the anxiety's coming from, I'll be able to curb it a little better. - I was also going to discuss this Onion news-in-brief story, which made me laugh and laugh, but instead I am going to only mention that and save the discussion for the Onion's gateway ad, which is for this movie, which. OH MY FUCKING GOD IS THIS A MOVIE ABOUT GIANT MUTANT ALIEN SUPERFAST SLUGS BECAUSE OKAY NOW THEY'VE FINALLY MADE A MOVIE ABOUT MY WORST NIGHTMARE AND I CAN DIE KNOWING THAT HELL CANNOT POSSIBLY HOLD ANY HORRORS FOR ME THAT EARTH CANNOT TRUMP. (And just in case you were in any doubt: I am definitely going to hell.)
Look at that! I am so upset I am double-negative-ing! - I had a very curious discussion today at lunch. We were talking about travel, about people we know, about places we've been. And I am used to you guys, who live all over the world; used to my friends, who left college and just scattered. And there was one other woman who'd been a military wife and who'd lived practically everywhere, and one woman who'd wound up moving here from PA, but apart from us three, there were seven others who had never lived more than 30 miles away from their hometowns.
Most of my RL friends aren't living anywhere near their hometowns--in fact, I can't think of anyone who is. And I think of myself as the provincial, the homebody, because I'd never lived anywhere outside my home state until two years ago, but the people at that table had me beat all around the town.
So I was just wondering. How many of you are still living in or near your hometowns? I ask, you know, merely for information. - And finally, I would like to share with you a newfound obsession which is entirely
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laurelwood's fault: bento boxes. I can't afford the almost sinfully nifty one Laurel sprung for, but I found a quite adorable one on ebay, and I am ready to start creating tiny edible works of art for my lunch.
Here is another recent revelation of mine: I am all about creating tiny, discrete, disposable works of art. I live my whole life around this principle, in fact, from writing journal entries to writing stories to drawing house plans to arranging my life, and so the idea of packing a bento box every day makes me very happy indeed.
I'll try to refrain from obsessively posting pictures of my works of art; I feel I subject you to enough of them as it is. But o my soul, I am already looking forward to inaugurating my bento box by duplicating Frances's lunch in Bread and Jam for Frances. I'm not quite sure I can manage the vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles, because I'm not a huge pudding fan, but for the sake of Art and Frances, I'm willing to try.
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Date: 2006-03-30 12:46 am (UTC)All of this took place in my hometown of Berkeley, California, which is more the sort of place that people move to, rather than from, but I guess it would overflow if nobody ever left. The rest of my family is all still in the Bay Area, and a lot of my friends have drifted back, but I am pretty settled in New York City. The funny thing is, I came to New York right after college and failed miserably to establish myself here. I figured that was that, went back to California for a year, then ended up spending four years in Italy. I was working and living right back in Berkeley when fate brought me back to the East Coast and I actually moved to Manhattan when I was 34, which I would have thought was much too old to make that kind of change. I have been in this apartment more than eleven years now, though; it's the longest I've ever stayed in one home.
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Date: 2006-03-30 01:42 am (UTC)I've got friends who'll drift back home for a time, as you did, when they're going through tough times elsewhere. I don't feel this counts, really, because the goal always seems to be to regroup before taking off for new adventures.
Most of my family still lives in South Louisiana. Aside from my nuclear family, of whom I was the last to leave the state, there are very few who had any interest in living elsewhere. hahahaha, I didn't think of them as I was writing this. Oops.
Also! Welcome home!
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Date: 2006-03-30 01:01 am (UTC)I just know Brooke's going to want to see that movie. You perhaps know how she feels about slugs, even those with unkind intent.
As for hometowns, I'm definitely one of those stick-in-the-muds: Brooke will eventually be attending the same highschool where my grandmother taught, I attended the college where my grandfather taught, and my sister, who's back in our old neighborhood, will be sending her kids to the same grade school that she and I went to as kids. Only my parents have moved out of the 10-mile extended family radius!
Yay, someone else who's gotten caught up with that bento business! My family thinks I'm nuts, but I can't stop looking at pictures of beautifully-arranged food. You'll have to describe the container you bought and I'd love to see your Frances-inspired inaugural lunch. And I know what you mean about disposable works of art. Sometimes I even leave the folded laundry out on the bed longer than necessary because I enjoy looking at the tidy, segregated stacks.
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Date: 2006-03-30 01:55 am (UTC)As for your hometown, you're like Amelia in that you're from a place people move to rather than from--but I think it's incredibly cool that you actually live in your grandparents' house (that is right, isn't it?)--and the worst thing about living far from home is that I do miss my family very much.
:::
This is a picture of my first-choice bento box:
It's a six-inch cube with three layers. It's vintage painted lacquer-look plastic, and it's not modern and airtight, but I can live with that, I think, and just stick to packages-in-packages if I feel like eating anything that's not finger food.
I have an emergency backup lined up in case I don't win this auction--a smaller blue set with tiny flowers and a dragonfly on the lid.
And your laundry! The fact that you understand how these things work just makes me love you even more. :D:D:D:D
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Date: 2006-03-30 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 03:42 pm (UTC)Anyway, I opted out of the emergency backup as well, and instead got this one:
I'ts not quite as nice as the one I linked to before (it doesn't have the little handle carrier, and it is not cube-shaped), but it is pretty anyway, and I will spruce it up by making it a little carrier-bag.
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Date: 2006-03-30 02:12 am (UTC)If we're talking hometowns as in places we grew up - I have grown up in a couple of different places, both in the same state but eight hours from each other. My mum still lives in the town I went to high school in, and while I moved to live in a big city, it's conveniently only an hour or so from my high-school town, and my mum.
I would love to move to Melbourne one day, which is two states away (we only have eight to choose from in Australia!), but I would have a hard time moving far away from my mum. It's true, I'm a sucker mummy's girl. She's my best friend.
BENTO BOXES, HOW EXCITING!! I hope to see some of your bento box art in the future...
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Date: 2006-03-30 02:37 am (UTC)I'm a mommy's girl as well. For real, that's how I ended up here. I can't live with her, but it's so nice to be in the same town again, for the first time in a while.
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Date: 2006-03-30 07:28 am (UTC)Oh don't worry, I can't actually live with my mother either, we'd possibly end up killing each other. But when we're not living together we're the closest of close. Closer!
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Date: 2006-03-30 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 02:40 am (UTC)THIS is why I love you! Or admire you. Or something. It comes through so clearly.
I'm all inspired now.
(please post pics of your bento lunches : )
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Date: 2006-03-30 02:46 am (UTC)Still! Who needs work, anyway!
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Date: 2006-03-30 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 03:17 am (UTC):D:D:D:D:D:D
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Date: 2006-03-30 03:15 am (UTC)I envy you, living so close to your mother--I'm twenty minutes away right now, which is pretty cool, but sometimes it'd be really nice to walk.
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Date: 2006-03-30 03:19 am (UTC)When I went to my high school reunions, it seemed to me that most people still lived close by.
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Date: 2006-03-30 03:27 am (UTC)And you've put your finger on the thing that surprised me most about my lunchtime conversation: not that people stay at all, but that it seems as though a huge majority stay. I think if you'd have asked me before today, I'd have said the opposite is true.
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Date: 2006-03-30 03:27 am (UTC)This is the most perfect intention that has ever been expressed in the English language, or possibly any other.
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Date: 2006-03-30 03:31 am (UTC)When I was a tiny girl, maybe three or four, it was my ambition in life to be a badge exactly like Frances. I was quite heartbroken when my mother broke the news to me that it would never be.
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Date: 2006-03-30 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 03:32 am (UTC)bento bento?
Date: 2006-03-31 04:51 am (UTC)Re: bento bento?
Date: 2006-03-31 03:45 pm (UTC)Translation, s'il-vous plait?
Re: bento bento?
Date: 2006-04-04 01:28 am (UTC)Sounds like "ee-ta-daki-maaaaaas!"
I hope you're proud to be an AMER-CAN, btw. Because freedom isn't fuckin free.
Re: bento bento?
Date: 2006-04-04 12:48 pm (UTC)Me! Hippie! I beg to fuckin' differ, man. I like my freedom costly, you see--I'm no pinko commie flag-trampling Delay-hating asshole.
Re: bento bento?
Date: 2006-04-06 03:43 am (UTC)Re: bento bento?
Date: 2006-04-04 01:30 am (UTC)Re: bento bento?
Date: 2006-04-04 12:44 pm (UTC)