But I still want to be friends.

Come and read about my art-life here.

Come read stuff both Anthony and I post here.

Spike really likes singing.

He hasn’t shown a particular dislike to any music I’ve played, but he will curl up with his eyes and ears heavy with contentment when I play, say, “It’s a Big World”. The soundtrack to “Once” is having a similar effect.

He likes acoustic guitar and simple voices. He likes clear harmonies — thirds, not seconds. He particularly likes live singing. Mom’s old songs as I sing them when I do dishes sometimes in the late evening. I sing Mom’s songs and I sing what I know of Grandpa’s songs and then I switch to God’s songs — hymns I’ve known since before I could read from when I would sit under folding tables during choir practice — and now I sing “It’s a Big World” and whatever that first song is. It’s nice to have an actual being to ask.

Are you a beach? Are you the sand? Are you the wave that washes up upon the land?

He also has been enjoying the audiobooks at night. During the Drawing Hour I sit and listen to 90ish minutes of “The Hummingbird’s Daughter,” (which is read by the author and very good — it helps to have someone who knows how to pronounce the Spanish and say it as it should be said,) and he will lay on the bed or sit with me sometimes on the stool and listen.

Something must resonate in the voice, in a cross-species sort of way. There is something about hearing auralizations that is somehow correct. At first I thought that it may just be that his first house had far more ruckus than he gets here, but it isn’t just noise. He doesn’t really respond to movies — pictures or scripted words set to music. But bare-voiced singing and talking in long unbroken strips seem to captivate him in a very interesting way. So there must be something there. Something deep and True.

I forget sometimes that he is barely two years old. His health certificate says he was 18 months in July, but I actually think he was born in May, not January. We were hand-feeding his litter during a graduation party — May ‘07 — and they were only a few weeks old. So that would actually mean he is closer to 16 months right now. It certainly matches his temperament — he swings wildly between being almost terminally sedate to running feverish laps around my tiny apartment. Last night he spent two hours putting an acorn cap under the rug and taking it out again. He is never, ever bored and I’m glad he’s not a sullen self-loathing sort of cat, despite the occasional scrape in the thigh when he doesn’t quite make his hairpin turn from couch to window sill.

LATELY

1. Work has been awesome then terrible then awesome then terrible. I am doing my very best to simply Not Care — no small task for the Ceaselessly Empathetic, but some art upswing has helped the big syrupy spoonful of Fuck-it go down.

2. I had a bit of a breakdown last Sunday about the art stuff. It’s too much, there’s too much to do, I never finish anything, and so on. I saw this breakdown coming and had enlisted Anthony a week before to be my sort of deadline holder. At the beginning of the week I have to announce some project, send him progress reports through the week, and then finish something by Sunday. But then Sunday came and I hadn’t finished anything and OH MY GOD WHAT’S THE POINT. This was coinciding with contact from a certain lovely someone at creativeshake.com. When a simple question of “do you have 15-20 pieces you feel are strong” was answered first with a timid, “I only feel strongly about two pieces,” I sort of lost it. How will this every get off the ground. I haven’t DONE anything in so long. Blah blah blah.

Anthony essentially had to talk me into my own art. Not a proud moment for me. But helpful, ultimately. It somehow got me back into the groove, now that I’m “allowed” to paint and call the easy-and-fun-to-do-fruits a portfolio piece. I’m still not sure that’s a good way to go as far as portfolio stuff goes, but once I sort of broke that seal it wasn’t long before I was drawing every night just like I’m supposed to be.

3. WordPress has a new feature in the “add media” portion of the entry-input thing. The icon looks a lot like a single breast. I had to mouse-over to figure out what it was. “Add Poll”. Well, okay. Except you have to sign up with their “sister website”. No thanks.

But I’d already thought of a question, so I thought I’d ask you anyway. The following was an actual extra credit question on my Shakespeare final Junior year.

Q: What is the greatest Shakespeare play ever written?
a. The Merchant of Venice
b. Brideshead Revisited
c. Richard III
d. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Answer: b.Brideshead Revisited. That was a semi-secret nobody-showed-up-in-class-today-let’s-make-a-crazy-extra-credit-question-for-the-final type of thing.

So I’m getting a new sewing machine.

I have an old Singer 327. The manual was printed in 1968, though “June 22, 1970″ is written on the inside cover so I assume it was purchased then. That still means it’s seen about (to date) 38 years of heavy use, which is pretty darn good for a machine. It was somebody’s, then it was my Mom’s, and then it slowly became mine as I would sneak into her room while she was out making projects. It moved with me to my first apartment and has turned me from an ocasional dabbler into a full-fledged sewer, though my talents are still pretty limited.

I’ve been toying with replacing it for years, but it seems like a shame to get rid of a perfectly good machine. The fabric doesn’t crawl on its own anymore and the clank and clatter of the moving parts (no matter how greased up they are) makes me worry about sewing projects at night while my neighbors try to sleep. Occasionally the bobbin thread will become inexplicably tangled, it didn’t always feed right, but it’s a machine and it did everything I needed it to, which for me right now means: it can sew a secure straight line. With (somewhat) consistant, even stitches. I don’t do clothes, I don’t do many heavy-duty bags, I do napkins and hot-bowl rags and sew bits of fabric together to make quilts.

The plan wasn’t really “run it into the ground,” but more like “milk it for all it’s worth”. Nurse it along until it will not run any more. So last week when I hit the pedal and nothing happened, I turned knobs and cleaned it out and greased it up to see if it just was needing some love. When I floored the pedal and the needle barely moved, I knew that this required skill beyond my own to repair, if it was possible. I took it to Montavilla and explained what was wrong with it. Adam took one look at my elderly machine and gently told me that when the motor dies, there’s very little that can be done. There are replacement motors out there on used websites, but for the price he said it might almost make more sense to buy a new machine. He said “just use it until you can’t any more.” I said, “I think that’s where I’m at now.” And he began to show me around some new machines.

I know he is wont to do this anyway, since they sell machines at his shop, but really I’m okay with getting a new one. I cannot use the Singer as it is, and there are a lot of drawbacks to fixing it and letting it limp along. I want to learn more about sewing and do more complicated projects. At this point I feel like my machine might be more limiting than enabling, which defeats the whole purpose of using a machine in the first place. I’ve never had a new machine and it would be really nice to do something like sew a zipper without worrying that I am stressing the gears too much. I doubt a new one will last almost forty years, but you never know.

Adam and I played around with a few machines and I told him I’d be back Sunday to make my final decision. I’m trying to researach a bit into brands, but I think ultimately for me it’s about what it can do, not about who makes it. If it breaks I can take it there and have them fix it, so I’m not too worried about that.

A bit sad though, in a faraway, nostalgic type of way.

LINKS

I probably I should have wanted it more.

I need to tell you about the Rainbow of Disappointment. Everything on that blog is good stuff, but that was my absolute favoritest.

This is mostly helpful only for me, but also maybe for any other newbie to Portland’s food scene.

I hate to gawk at images of destruction, but I’ve been to Galveston so many times that it’s hard not to. I defend myself by saying that as I get all my news from the radio this is the only way I would get images from the events at all, and I’m a rather visual person who likes to look at pictures. Then again. One could surely look up the New York Times article and see plenty, right? Hmm.

OH HELLO

I feel icky about that last thing. Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. I have a lot more to say about Those Topics, but I don’t want to alienate people, not over the internet anyway. I like to save Big Discussion About Stuff That Matters for those afternoons when you and I are at a coffee shop for hours, we’ve both had too much coffee, and we start verbal fisty-cuffs. That’s the atmosphere. Here there’s no music, no musty old books to use as props or distraction to diffuse tension, no breeze coming through a window fluttering a handmade curtain. There’s only this cold void that makes me sound like I care too much about stuff. That ain’t no way to live!

So um. It’s been a while. I know I always say that. Or do I?

I fall in and out of love with this here blog, particularly now that I have Goose and Simply Kumquat going, though I haven’t really been pumping content out over at those places either. Lately there’s been the Great Work Struggles, the enjoying the hell out of Anthony moving here, and various other adventures. And at the moment there’s a wonderful aggravated head-cold, complete with fever. (Really? For me? Aw shucks you shouldn’t have). Or I guess that’s what it is. Hopefully it’s that and not typhus or sleeping sickness.

Anyway. The rambling thought-lettes hardly constitute an entry, but I feel like if I don’t now some of these things will never see the light of day. SO LET’S SLOG ON.

VARIOUS THINGS, ITEMS, QUANDARIES OR EVENTS IN MY LIFE SINCE LAST WE SPOKE

1. Strange karma lately. Nice and not nice things said to me by my boss. Bike was stolen. The sickness I mentioned.

2. Last week Anthony and I went to The Noble Rot, despite the pending illness, to celebrate his possible job at the University. He spotted the job through their philosophy listserv he joined a few months ago. it’s a teaching gig, discussion group leader, and would mean a paid tuition (!!) plus a stipend to spend on extra philosophy tools like books and play-doh. We still haven’t heard anything, but we were celebrating the luck of seeing that job and applying for it more than we were celebrating the acquisition of it. Baby steps and all that.

3. We got some sort of organic instant oatmeal from the store on accident. I had no idea such a thing existed. So far no real opinion there other than the “nut” in “Maple Nut” is hazelnut, which tickles me pink as hazelnuts are my favorite.

4. Um. So my job. I refer to it as my Big Dumb Job (BDJ) when I talk to my friends that have more normal-for-our-age jobs (freelancing, waiting tables), because I still feel strange about the whole thing. I am still confused why they like me so much, why I actually got it, and whether or not I can swallow my pride to endure it. I go back and forth on that last one not daily but by the fucking hour, because that job is so uneven. I will be a miracle worker, and then I am doing everything wrong, and then I am busybusybusy, and then I have nothing to do. Things were reaching critical mass as I realized that my Machiavellian boss was in fact Machiavellian (no WONDER I can’t figure him out!) and as I began to worry, as I do with any non-art job, that I am settling for this because I’m too lazy or unresourceful to do otherwise. This was particularly difficult for me the Monday after Anthony got here, since we had spent the weekend exploring waterfalls along the historic highway. I want THAT to be my life and not this, this LAW OFFICE.

Things are a little better now — I am getting the hang of the phones and my cold is clearing which helps. I also had an important realization in terms of Life Situation. In a way, it’s perfect that I am here Slogging On and Anthony is there doing School Work. We are both working on stuff that cannot really involve the other person right now. We are doing this so that in two-ish years Anthony can study for his PhD abroad, and so I can go with him, hopefully partially subsisting on a published work at that point. That is my goal: to have some sort of art thing published in two year’s time, and if not, than to have a nest egg saved up to make that whole move somewhat possible.

4a. Also helpful was the joining of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which I sort of joined on a whim not thinking it would amount to much. In fact they’ve sent me tons of stuff: lists of agents and publishers, websites and phone numbers of helpful contacts, grant information which had honesty not occured to me, and contacts for the local chapter. They have a listserv which I’ve joined; not wholly informative but it’s good to be in some sort of loop. Going it alone is hard, but at least now I have some places to start. I feel like I can draw up a real plan with all this information, and it makes my heart sing.

4b. I also watched Garden State. Sam? The Natalie Portman character? She works at a law firm! And she’s not a horrible drone of a thing! That was comforting.

4c. Also watched the Darjeeling Limited. Again.

4d. And six episodes of Fishing with John. Have you seen this? You probably should.

(If you don’t want it, skip this entry. I totally respect you either way.)

I don’t like to do this. But I also don’t like what could happen if I sit and do nothing. I have no readership to speak of, so it’s not like I think this will change anything in a big way for anyone, but who knows. I know there is ONE woman-for-Obama in the audience (ahem!) and so I guess primarily I am talking to you, Beans.

I am also doing this here because I received this as a mass-forward email yesterday from a former coworker at the Trib. It, like every other, urged me to forward it along to [x] people, so that I could be blessed with [y]. So I had a dilemma. I refuse to subject my contacts with spam, yet this is an Actual Thing.

Sort of. I’m not sure how much “power” a bunch of whiny bloggers have.

Here is what the email said. They mostly invite you to Write Something, and then they will post it on their blog. That’s all it is. Just a e-paper-trail record of dissent. It’s not really a call to action so much as a call to dissatisfaction.

From the looks of it, the posting has been slow going. The ping-back email informed me that the feedback has “been immense! We’ve heard from women of all ages from all over the US and internationally….It’s incredibly inspiring to read so many intelligent, wise, and impassioned opinions. We are working hard to post everyone’s message, but please be patient. There are tens of thousands coming in every day!”

I get the impression that it may be only one or two people doing this. I have great respect for them. In this day and age it’s easy to start something; register an email address, grab a domain name from a blogging platform, write a letter. It is not, however, easy to maintain the upkeep on that something. To post the thousands of responses, to go a step further and make this a tangible NO MCCAIN PLEASE, rather than just a bunch of people sitting at home spouting their opinion on a public forum.

I also think: why the hell not. If you’re at home, if you’re female, whether you thought “hmm that’s a bit whack, yo” when her name was announced or if it gave you the howling fantods, say something. It might be neat to see how many people actually speak out.

Here’s what I said:

I do not think Sarah Palin has any qualifications for the position, and believe she has been selected merely to scoop up the more avid Hilary supporters who have not yet got behind Barack Obama.

Shape of genitalia and type of chromosomes are not appropriate criteria for selection of a running mate, and it is vulgar that John McCain has done so.

Many people, as you can tell by the website, have quite a lot more to say than that. I had no frame of reference so I went with pithy rather than verbose. So go say what I left out.

My cat has taken to waking me up at 3am, instead of the usual 6ish. I’m not sure what to do about this. The first night I felt bad because I hadn’t fed him the semi-regular late night snack (which I do sometimes because he eats weirdly small amounts, and sometimes he asks for food at night.) I’d assumed he was actually starving, and my repeated throwing him off my pillow started to feel more heartless than it needed to. So I got up and dished out a little food. That was a big mistake though, because now we think 3am is the perfect time for a snack! The perfect time to wake up! If I don’t move or actually push him back down to my feet or push him off the bed, he will sit on the other side of my pillow which drives me batshit insane for some reason. I have a king size pillow, because when Anthony’s here and we share the (twin-size) bed, a longer pillow makes that easier. When a cat I’m mildly allergic to sits on it, it means hair that I can’t see gets everywhere on my head. If I keep moving him off the pillow he comes back again and again for hours, and I don’t sleep. So what to do? I haven’t worked it out yet. I’m afraid if I shut him out of the room I won’t actually wake up in time for things.

MEDIA

1. Today’s episode of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” features an unusually hilarious ‘not my job’ game, which you can listen to here. It’s The Collected Wit and Wisdom of Matthew McConaughey, and it’s about as insightful as it sounds.

2. I went to OMSI last weekend with the geohashers, and in the physics lab they were playing a series of films by Arthur Ganson. By and large my favorites were those akin to this, which reminded me of Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine. No one else in the room was as struck by these films as I was. It was out of context of course — his machines involve simple machines like pulleys and levers, but the films are clearly art house and not simple documentary footage. I stood there for half an hour watching these things, and then had to leave and go with the group to work on wooden puzzles. Of course Anthony was as geeked about this as I was, and I think we’re going to by the DVD once we both have money again.

3. Last week I netflixed the BBC’s “The Human Face,” hosted by John Cleese. I was completely delighted by this segment, and would re-watch it every day before going to work. The final two episodes were a little more depressing to me, dealing with fame and what makes a beautiful face beautiful, and anyone who’s ever had to endure a Women Studies 101 class understands why this question instantly tires me out. The fame episode in particular made me feel hollow and unhappy, because as much as I pretend like it isn’t true, there really are people out there that only want fame and celebrity out of life. And it scares me. But in order to adequately explain to you why fame is so Very Beside The Point when it comes to life, I would need to have you here with me in person, so we could go fly kites and stand in cold water and yell at the ocean.

FOOD!

I live next door to one of the Thursday farmer’s markets. Along with the normal stalls of fruit, veg and meats, they have little stands of ready-made food, making Thursday night dinner a cinch. Sometimes they have little events; last week was a coupon with every $5 spent, good for a free corn on the cob (corn on the kabob). This week I also got milk. Fancy unpasteurized milk from one of the local dairies. I’m still a little afraid of milk that I need to shake first in order to distribute the solids, and I worry about how foul it will be when it does in fact go foul, but the taste is clearly superior to any other milk I’ve ever tasted, even from other dairies. So drinking it up fast should not be a problem.

It is also melon time evidently, and there were samplings of all these wonderful tiny melons. I came home with two, and mutilated them with my melon baller this morning.

I ended up with crescents instead of spheres, but they still taste the same. I’ll just have to practice on more melons.

Melons in their original guise usually can’t be friends with me because I cannot eat a fruit the size of my head before it goes bad. And pre-cut melon from the store makes me wonder when it was in fact cut. I adore these fist-sized things, half is just enough for a bowl of mid-morning sweetness. Good for either second breakfast and elevensies, if you will.

NOT QUITE WELSCHMERTZ

There is a phenomenon Anthony and I have been talking about. It’s when you are doing something that should Feel Very Significant, yet doesn’t, somehow. Moving to a new state, starting grad school, getting married, buying a car, quitting your job as a CEO to join the Peace Corps, things like that. Clear jags in a life-path that one would expect would sort of feel epic. But doesn’t. It’s the lack-of-feeling-epic feeling. We want there to be a word for it, and as yet have not found one, and instead refer to it as, “that thing again, you know, the lack-of-epic-epicness” or something similarly inarticulate. So we’re on a bit of a WordQuest, to see if there is in fact a term for this. I suspect if there is one it’s in German.

EVERYTHING ELSE WITHOUT A GRATUITOUS TITLE

I’ve been shying away from talking about work because it’s been a bit awful lately, and that does not make for good posting. It also causes me additional pain to rehash every waking moment of the day if it was both physically and mentally exhausting (I’ve lived it once, must I DWELL on it?). I’m also working hard on rebuilding that on/off switch between Work and The Part Of My Life With Meaning, with limited success. I’m getting there but it’s a slow process, particularity when you were unemployed for several months. And when before that you had a job you loved. It continues to confuse the hell out of me. On Wednesday I went into HR to quit, and left that day with a promotion instead. Back when I was doing a lot of research on Schizophrenia, a common metaphor I came across was the ’switchboard metaphor’, whereby one’s various mind-and-emotion connections are plugged into the wrong places, and therefore send signals to the wrong places. That’s a bit what this workplaces feels to me, what with my actions turning up with all these strange outcomes that make no sense. There is absolutely no degree of predictability whatsoever. It should probably feel fresh, but instead it feels unstable and confusing. Even threatening at times.

However, there was a moment yesterday when six of us were in the kitchen making macaroni and cheese for 80 football players. That was really fun.

Although there are no pictures yet to prove it, I have finished that quilt I started all that time ago. I backed it with a couple study homespuns instead of flannel, so this is an Adventure Quilt. A quilt to use out in the wilds as well as on the couch on the weekends. It is also the most boisterous quilt I have ever done, with a couple eye-achingly bright strips that really kick out on a cloudy day. I adore this quilt. I brought it with me to the Avett Brother’s concert at the zoo last Sunday where I was rained on for three hours. I eventually bailed when I noticed I was sitting in a three inch puddle of water. I also saw her there, but shied away from saying anything because I thought that might be weird. I recognized her right away not by her looks, but by her Adventure Quilt spread out under a tree.

Today there is a crispness in the air that feels decidedly autumnal to me. Me and my Adventure Quilt are ready. Bring it on!

(This is from a lengthy email I sent to my Mom yesterday, but I think it belongs here too. Maybe.)

WHAT I WORE

I wore basically a suit: black pants, black blazer, white shirt, black shoes and belt (it’s reversible so I only had to buy one), with a silk scarf. Basically, as close as I could get to a suit-and-tie without actually wearing a suit-and-tie. It felt a little over the top one the bus and less over the top once I got there, but I will feel okay about dressing slightly less To The Nines now that I’ve seen what the office is like. I think I will feel most comfortable in a suit, there are some kind of high-strung bigwig type people. We are supposed to have a blazer around so that even on “dress down” type of days we can throw them on when important clients come in. And that’s fine, since I want to have a place to keep my transit card, ipod, etc. Although I didn’t plan things too well, so I actually didn’t have a chance to seam-rip open my jacket pockets today. I did cut the back threads that keep the vent closed so that I wouldn’t look like a moron who’s never owned a real jacket, but I would have liked to have pockets today. Ah well. Today I got a bit warm — it was about 80* at noon — but the shirt was not ironed to perfection, so I had to keep my jacket on. I doubt anyone would have noticed, but I would have. Also I was sweating because I was NERVOUS.

WHAT IT WAS LIKE

It was a bit strange, because although today there was a crisis going on and a lot of people were running around like insane things, I was this little island of calm. Relative calm. There was nothing I could usefully do to help the crisis not be a crisis, so for most of the day I was told to “look at the website and the memorize staff”. Yes really. There is a practical reason for this, I think reception will be one of the first Big Things I do and it really helps to know who people are when some confused person calls and says, “I’m looking for Jamie?”. But um. Kind of a weird use of a day. There are only so many times you can look at a bunch of faces and names. I tended to look people up as they walked by, and then I looked up whoever was logged into iChat (an instant message program) which is how people keep up with everyone. We don’t email, and we don’t tie up the phones, we iChat. The world, she is a neat place. Apparently sometimes during staff meetings we will include someone from our other offices, in which case we have a big television screen in the conference room and they will video chat. That is, my office is equipped with things that all the superhero movies have. Rediculous!

WHAT THEY HAD ME DO (THE OVERLY-DETAILED PLAY-BY-PLAY)

I first got there and filled out all the necessary paperwork. Then HR turned me over to IT, where I learned the computer, and I learned I have a desk (which is cool — I wasn’t sure how it would work). He also taught me to use the copier. Then he turned me over to someone near reception, who told me what she did and then she turned me over to someone in accounting, who told me what SHE did. She was about to give me to someone else, but at that point the near-reception lady burst into the room and said “I have an emergency”. There was a big impossible task that needed to be done, the admin who sits in the filing room was notified, and I was dropped off at my desk. By and by HR came back by, taught me to use the copy machine (again), and then let me go back to my desk. Then lunch (see below), then back to my desk. 1pm. By this point the admin sitting next to me felt bad for me and starting talking more about what it’s like to work there, and I offered to help him put tabs in his folders. He had to go cover reception, and then an hour later he came back..and…showed me how to use the copier! Apparently it is very important to know how to use the copier. It’s sort of a swanky, newer version of what we used at the Trib, and it can send faxes and scan things to a PDF (which is really cool), but I mean…once you’ve used a copier like this you’ve pretty much used a copier, right? Maybe not, but at least I will definitely know how. I have both unlocking codes memorized.

At about 3:30 my supervisor, who spent most of his day upstairs dealing with the crisis, called me into his office. He collapsed into his chair and said, “whoooo. Here’s the thing.” Evidently the biggest of all the bigwigs has a new assistant. This B.O.A.T.B.W.s is a bit…difficult to deal with. By which I mean: every single person I talked to today warned me not to take it personally when I meet her and she insults the way I’m dressed or looks at my fingernails and snorts or something. She is an evil thing to everyone, but that’s why she’s one of the best lawyers in the area and she is very good at what she does. Suffice to say: it is no easy task to be her assistant. I have no idea how the guy is staying alive. Apparently his workload is too much. He gets things he can’t finish. Little tiny meinial things. “So what I need you to do for right now,” Super-man said, “is sort of be the secret assistant to this assistant.” he apologized for not being able to actually work with me on the phones yet or anything, but this took priority and will be much better once the assistant gets more used to his job.

And I’m fine with this. Whatever, I can look things up or call people when my boy upstairs is overwhelmed.

So at 3:40 I was actually given a job finally, which was to stay at my desk and make sure he could get a hold of me. About two minutes later this guy iChatted and asked if I could look up a phone number. It was a tricky phone number to get — a VIP frequent flier miles direct number, which they don’t want to give you, they want you to go through customer care — but I got the number finally, and sent it to him so he could get it to Her Royal Highness.

Then HR came by and gave me a stack of binders. The old revised pages had to be taken out and the new revised pages had to be put in. More my hat. It was mostly color-coded and fairly easy once I could parse the instruction sheet, so that was nice. There’s a huge box of them that need to be updated, so I know what I will spend time doing tomorrow.

LUNCH

There is usually an in-office chef. We have a tiny kitchen, and lunch is always provided. Not in a cafeteria type way, but in fact someone goes and gets some ingredients and whips up a meal for about 30 people. So a pretty good deal, although you have to be pretty flexible. You also, at the moment, have to be okay with whatever the high school interns whip together. We don’t have a chef right now. They do fine — today we had a chicken casserole type of thing. In about three weeks they leave and I guess if we don’t get a chef it will be up to the admins (yikes!), or whoever else steps up to the plate. But they make a big deal about this providing a lunch thing, apparently if clients are in the office they can have lunch with us, that kind of thing. Which is kind of cool. The lunch hour is set aside, so when you are done with eating you are free to go do whatever until it’s time to come back. Work is walking distance from the library and many of the things I like downtown anyway, so that’s rather exciting. I spent my remaining half hour on a bench outside people-watching. I need to look and see where the nearest park is.

And no, I don’t think the lunch thing is mandatory, so if I needed to go do something else during lunch I’m sure I could. It’s a nice thing to do though, and a good chance to get all chatty with people without needing to keep an eye on your email.

HOW IT ‘WENT’

I think ultimately…pretty good. My morning was a bit of a muddle: burnt everything in my breakfast, had to iron my shirt (I’d thought it was ironed the night before, but alas,) caught the later bus which made me nervous, and then I couldn’t get into the building because our offices do not open until 8:30 and though I was supposed to be there at 8:15, I didn’t have a key. Luckily the downstairs suite houses a non-profit that opens earlier, and one of their attorneys was all smiles and showed me which door upstairs wasn’t actually locked. (“Don’t worry I did the exact same thing when I first started here.”) So I made it in on time. All the idleness in the morning made me feel kind of strange and unhelpful, but once I actually started getting tasks it was much better. The office itself is kind of…intense. Besides that main lady, my own boss is a little abrasive (his method of getting Eric’s attention is sometimes to simply knock the adjoining wall with his fist and yell his name) but I am assured by everyone that he’s really great, he’s just tough so he can Get Stuff Done. So my own personal day was not that activity-laden, but the frenzy around me still made me a bit jittery. Eric tells me this wears off as you become used to it, and that makes sense.

THE BITS I DIDN’T TELL HER

I had a sinking, awful feeling in my stomach yesterday night about this whole job thing.

My last few jobs have been got in desperation to get out of other jobs. I haven’t in a long time interrupted a period of non-employment for employment and this particular time, while not without worry, was leisurely and filled with art and many things I love. So to eschew that for a day of sitting in a high-strung office was a bit trying. So I think that’s part of the dread, the horrible realization that really, I didnt have fun. I didn’t like it. But then that’s a new layer to it: I’ve never really come home from a job to think, I didn’t like that. Not on the first day. So that’s worrisome. I talk myself out of this by saying the money’s good and it’s only a year-long assignment, but that’s terrible in and of itself isn’t it? One should not do something one doesn’t want just because one does not want to, right?

Then again, my Grandpa always said, “work to live, don’t live to work.” And I don’t. But how does one find time to live when one is drained all day?

I exaggerate. It’s easier to continue to do something after work when it’s summer on the Pacific coast — my day doesn’t end until sundown at 9:30. That’s a long day, particularly when I came from the eastern plains of CO; the Rocky Mountains essentially block the sunlight at about 5pm, no matter the time of year. I worry about winter a little, and I worry that I will become my friend at my old job who would just go home and collapse in front of the TV. Her life literally consisted of this and work only. She didn’t go for a walk in the evening, didn’t go to coffee shops, bars or museums all that often, she didn’t make herself a nice dinner or go out all that often with her boyfriend. I worry about people that do this. I’m a broke shut-in, but at least I go out. I use the library, I visit the farmer’s market, etc. I feel like these are a healthy things.

The bus ride home, while choked with people, helped. At least there was a leisurely drive home over the river with Zero 7 on the ipod. Anthony called and while my words were fast and choppy and manic, like the office I’d just come from, at least I could vent. I did finish the last block (I think) on the quilt, so now all that’s left is to finish assembling things.

And now: eat a breakfast, dress sharp, and bus back in.

AN IMPORTANT FISH ANNOUNCEMENT

As I try and sail the choppy waters of Responsible Eating — whole grains and foods when I can, many colors every day, servings sizes, etc — I sometimes forget that there’s another side to this whole eating thing. The eating green part.

On principle, I am totally down with this. I want food that came to me as soon as it could have, not to be obtained in a way that destroys forests and oceans, let alone the poor guy gathering it (although fair trade and green are not always a happy couple, which is a shame.) It is harder in practice, what with a strange label nomenclature, people cashing in on this movement, and the straight up difficulty in choosing food in the first place. I’m not sure what a good pear should look like, much less where it should say it comes from. And then there’s the decoding. An apple from New Zealand had to travel farther than the mushy things from Washington, but the Washington apples aren’t labeled organic and those New Zealand apples are, plus the Washington Apples are mushy because they aren’t yet in season I think, or is it just this store’s batch? And on and on ad infinitum.

CHOOSY CONSUMERS CHOOSE TEDIUM

I must admit: now that I live in a verdant land with fertile soil, it is easier for me to do this. In the arid high plains there is less local bounty, though if I had gone to the farmer’s market more often while I was there I probably would have surprised myself. Then again, I know we didn’t have the climate to grow mangoes and oranges that some of the people were peddling. So it’s hard to know.

And back to fish — it’s hard enough trying to wade through all the labels. When you suddenly have real choices it becomes a nightmare. The local tiny butcher has dozens of fishy comestibles, many I had never seen fresh (anchovies, sardines), or have only read about in french cooking blogs (sole). What can I say? I’m not fancy.

When Anthony was here, we went up to Newport to see the aquarium and the town. While walking by the sort of industrial part of the wharf, we saw men in waders processing fish, to which I’ve always thought, “that is the way of things here, no big deal.” And I thought this until I turned the corner, and saw processed tuna being dumped into a huge dump-truck. The tuna meat was overflowing onto the ground, and the seagulls were calmly waiting, which is strange for a seagull. Evidently this was so routine that the birds had learned that with this feast, it’s okay to wait. Sure enough, the truck pulled alway, and the birds flew down and feasted on the heaped tuna bits.

A kind of shaggy guy was walking near us and when on a Corporate People Making Money That They Just Throw Into The Streets – type rant, which I kind of ignored, but it also kind of bothered me. Because he was right. Really, who do they think they are? If there is enough to spill onto the ground regularly, there is too much, I think. So that’s no good just on a straight up excess sort of way — in this economy you can’t afford to be sprinkling money everywhere methinks — but when you then consider the over-fishing aspects it’s a little appalling.

And maybe I’m wrong — I don’t know anything about the fishing industry, and I have no idea what works and what doesn’t. I’m not mad the seagulls got fed of course, and fishy stuff is much better for them than fritos. So what is one to do?

Well, one can ask them about it, which is what I plan on doing. Not in a condescending sort of way, just a letter in ernest. Probably they are doing exactly what they should be doing, and cannot do any more. But then I would feel better about it. And if not, maybe I can help them learn something.

It’s a naively simple strategy, yes. But I think it’s a good start. Quietly request sustainable fishing, one letter at a time.

I was just checking up on my food blogs and Clotilde wrote a really thoughtful piece about this very topic. It included (for us Yankee Doodles) charts c/o the Monterey Bay Aquarium, saying exactly which fish are the best eco-friendly choices, which are okay alternatives, and which you should stay away from in your area.

And you’d be surprised: There are just as many options for the Central US than there are for us North Westerners. Fish lovers, rejoice.

As Clotilde mentions, this isn’t exactly the be all and end all of the problem, but it’s a start.

WELL THANK SAINT CAJETAN

Because I just got an administrative position in a law office. It certainly won’t be vibrant and exciting, but it will pay the bills. A decentish wage, benefits after three months. I start on Tuesday, which also means I get to work on my quilt and art things for the next few days without feeling guilty about it.

However I do need to work on my dress. What I wore to the interview was, I was told, not acceptable. I know that going into Professional Dress from the world of business (very) casual in the newspaper (and that was just the forward-facing people — the graphic artists and sports writers could wear t-shirts and jeans) would be a step up dress-wise, but I didn’t realize it would be THAT much. As someone who wears those hideous 1970s poly-disco shirts with sweaters for just going down to the bookshop, it’s quite a change. I dress “up” in comparison to other people I know, so it’s interesting to suddenly be the slob. I’ve literally been searching Google for “conservative dress,” image-searching Law & Order, and pulling up the store directory from the swanky mall back home. This is really new to me. I don’t even know where one can get sensible blazers that fit on your body, as opposed to the general vicinity. I will of course go Goodwill-Hunting first, but the thrift store roulette doesn’t always deliver the goods, as we all know. Especially when you are a Weird Size (in my case, Lanky 12-year-old-boy). I can’t really suit-and-tie it like I want to, because with my haircut I think it would be a little too butch. I think for now it’s best to, um, play is straight (no pun intended) and go for something that would make me look professional to on our alleged high-end clients. From what I can see, based on the area of town, I’m to go for “invisible”, essentially. Again, this is new to me.

INTRODUCING THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

This picture makes him look like he lives up to his name, despite my insistence to the contrary. This look is a look of simple confusion about the big black camera, not the thinnly veiled plot of world conquest that many cats toil after.

Anthony and I have been amusing ourselves by thinking of having a cat as having a tiny mentally impaired roommate living with you. One that lives rent free, eats your food, uses drugs (i.e., catnip), needs to be occasionally entertained, and requires a bedpan.

And hey! Speaking of! Anthony’s visit was awesome, thanks for asking. You’ll notice the lack of WebContent. Things like updating a blog tend to be way less important when your favorite human visits you.

I BE HATIN THE HILTON YET I BE LAUGHIN AT HER VIDEO

Well played, is what I gotta say.

Of course when I was over there I had to visit my favorites, including Power thirst which brings me immediately back to my senior seminar, in a way that Charles Dickens does not. I am brain damaged.

I have an actual art gig!

The pay is pathetic ($80 for a 9×12 full page) but at least it’s something. It’s a one-off for a splash page, basically. She’s a brand-new t-shirt peddler, I’m trying to beef up my portfolio and to do so for some cash vs. pro bono works for me, and it certainly works for her. Sold! I have several sources to work from but she really liked James Jean’s work for the 2007 Prada campaign so I’ll be focusing on that style-wise. A little of that, a little Bosch for surreality’s sake, and of course a whole lotta me.

For having absolutely nothing official about my illustration abilities, I was flattered to have essentially scored this purely on this drawing which, I gaged correctly, fit what she was after:

Obviously she wants something a little more crisp, something with her subject matter.

And I guess I shouldn’t kid myself. Definitely I want my art to be “worth” more, but when it all comes down to it: when you have $5.86 in your checking account, $80 really is a lot of money.

LINKY-DINKS

I have been binging on ectomo’s archives, because I haven’t been reading it since I moved here. Usually Anthony reads this and most of the Wired blogs religiously and bubbles all the interesting stuff over to me. This was one of the many things I enjoyed.

I kind of look like this kid, particularly the four pictures in the middle where he’s making faces. That’s basically my haircut, and what I look like in the morning before coffee. I don’t know that I look that charming, though. I should do my own shoot and find out.

This is fantastic. Good stop-motion gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, as does weird surrealist stuff.

I do this.

THIS WEEKEND

I went lazer-tagging. It was a sort of last-minute thing for me, I invited myself to another outing, but I had fun. We were the oldest people there. Our team obliterated everyone in the first three games, and then we were stalked and murdered by all the little kids in the subsequent two. Fair play to the kids, really.

And I also went walking around for the geohashing time. It was just myself and one of the guys. I drove, he (sort of) navigated, and we just had a nice two hour walk near Eagle Fern Park. We didn’t really make it to the point, but we had a nice walk. And I saw an inch-worm! I have this catagory in my head: quasi-mythical beasts. Things like aardvarks and such, that you hear about but never see in a zoo and you almost wonder, real? I think I always placed inch-worms in that catagory, but Saturday! Saturday I saw one. I also saw a caterpillar that morning when I went to get coffee. It was a good wormy-day.

Then yesterday was interesting. Got the art gig as I mentioned, which was essentially a result of my insomniac questions about the ad on craigslist. And when you ask questions about art stuff, the best was to do it is with sketches, and the rest just worked itself out rather well. I took my $20 advance and bought coffee beans, and then went right home to get started. About two hours later, Anthony and I texted each other at (weirdly) the exact same moment:

Me: I got the gig!
Anthony: I am thinking seriously about buying Dani’s car.

I guess I need to back up a bit so you can understand my shock.

Anthony did not drive when I met him. His learner’s permit had expired long before, and he’d never bothered to learn to drive, as he’d been carried along by friends up until that point. About three weeks after we started hanging out/ kissing, I lost my license for six months as penitence for being a lead-foot. And when you live in a place like Greeley, CO, there is only so long you can go without a way to get out of town, particularly when you are used to having a car. So we dealt with it for awhile until about a month later, when Anthony told me he’d get his license so we could go to Denver sometimes on the weekend. So we reinstated his learner’s permit, I guided him through some basics he was rusty on, and two weeks later we were mobile. I essentially played the part of hardcore copilot — checking shoulders when he didn’t and telling him to BRAKE sometimes. And, when the weather was icy, occasionally I was illegal pilot. (Only twice.)

So Anthony can drive, but since he hasn’t constantly since age 16, he isn’t very good at it. He’s fine if it’s a long stretch of highway. But shaky skills in conjunction with absolutely no sense of direction and you can understand why we usually just let me drive. I love to drive, he loves to be a passenger, so it works well for us.

So he’s buying a lemon off a friend. Or wants to. Part of me was thinking Dude we have a beautiful little beet that is paid off why would you want to insult it by doing that? But of course this does make lots of sense when you remember he will be going to school in Eugene for the next two years. And on the weekends, we certainly won’t want to be spending time there. (No offense, Eugene.) The logistics of me driving there, getting him, driving back, then dropping him off and driving home Sunday night…quite a headache. I just assumed it wouldn’t be able to happen all that often, but now it looks like I could be seeing a lot more of the guy, which is always a good thing.

And let’s be honest: it makes one feel pretty special to know a guy would buy a car so he could visit you more. Oh yes indeed.

Here are two things about the river from lately:

1. Last time I was on the bus, I saw a barge with big piles of sand on it! I have no idea what it was doing, but I liked it.

2. Overheard on a different bus ride: “I like bridges — it’s like a city stitched together.”

Well, I have some drawing to do. And then cleaning, since Anthony is coming in on Wednesday.