News from the area and abroad

[constance]

I 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.

• 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 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.

Comments

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I feel badly that I have such a horror of slugs--vaguely akin to those women who stand on kitchen chairs when a mouse pays a call. I admire Brooke for her fortitude, but man, oh man, I can't share it. I wish you joy of that movie if you take her to see it--will you?

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

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

That box is beautiful - I hope you get it!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Me too! :D

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's gorgeous! People at work are going to be so envious and awe-inspired! I'll keep my fingers crossed that you get it. All the best bento cookbooks focus on this traditional style of bento box, so you'll be able to cruise for no-adaptions-necessary ideas.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

:(:(:( I lost the auction--my internet was down last night and I missed the end, and one of those people-who-bid-at-the-last-possible-second caught me. I hate those people.

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.