Jeans and Sneakers

I’m so unproductive.  I mailed out the dolls, and they’re already in Great Britain.  That’s cool, but they’re not being delivered until Friday.  I’ve done absolutely nothing of worth so far this week.  Yesterday I had a pretty bad headache, and spent the afternoon/evening in bed reading and watching Drunken Master.  Tonight I finished Acceptable Risk, by Robin Cook.  It was recommended to me by someone who is reading and enjoying a book I love, so I had kind of high expectations of it.  What a disappointment.  There wasn’t anywhere near enough character development or non predictable plot in the whole book.  :/

My boss told us on Monday that we’ll be having individual meetings again this week.  I’m not as worried as I was for the last one, although I’m sure that’ll change right before I actually have the meeting.  I’m also kind of interested to see if they’re still happy with me, and I do want to voice my concern about the volume of work that I can’t seem to keep up with.  He already said that he’s looking into hiring someone else, but I’m a worrier, and worry I will.

Getting kind of down about  knowing that I don’t want to work where I’m working, again.  Getting even more down about not knowing what to do about it.   It’s hard to feel good about anything when you know that 45 hours of every week you’ll spend wishing you were somewhere else.  Not to mention the time that I’m at home thinking about how soon I’ll be at work, or how I should be sleeping so that I won’t want to kill myself at work. . .

Wow, this blog is getting pretty repetitive, hunh?

Well, the weekend was a busy one.  That seems to have been the theme of this summer.  Tons of weekends with nothing planned ending up bursting with places to go and things to do.  Never enough time to sit at home and blog every day.  :]

Friday night Rob and I went grocery shopping, and bought a bunch of stuff only to go out to get 1/2 priced appetizers at Applebee’s for dinner.  After the drive back home, Rob asked me if I wanted to learn to drive manual, so we drove back out east to a large parking lot behind Rob’s parent’s house for me to practice in.  I did pretty good, I didn’t grind any gears, I only kept stalling, but I did successfully drive around some back roads!  YAY!

Saturday I slept in, way late, on purpose.  Then after an egg sandwhich I started cleaning like mad, in preparation for the bbq that we ended up not having.  Then we took a nap and woke up around 9pm, to sit around and watch Syriana until about 5am.  Not something I’d suggest doing, especially when you have to be awake for relatives the next day.

Sunday was my dad’s bday, and Wyn came out to my house early-ish.  By early-ish, I mean too early for dinner, but not in the morning.  We went walking around the mall and when we came back we waited for my dad to come over.  When he did, we sat around talking about stuff and things and books until it was time to go to dinner.  Then my dad told Rob he was part of the family and could come to dinner if he wanted, so we all went to Gasho.  It’s sad how showbiz-y that place has become, all of the chefs are told to loudly sing played out songs that weren’t even good when they came out on the radio.  The food was kind of disappointing too, though the habachi rice was good.  I think my dad had a good time anyway, I hope he did.

I got more rows done on Birch in there somewhere, and the best news as of right now, is that my StatYou customer sent me his shipping address and phone number, and I sent out his dolls.  Thank god.  One less thing to worry about.  Now only to hope that they get there in one piece!

This week was exhausting. What with the internet being down for two days at work and having to catch up, and it being the worst week for anything stressful to happen. . .I’m pooped.

I’m pretty angry at the moment too, because a stupid minor car accident from last year is messing up my car insurance!! I know I should have assumed that it would show up, but here’s what happened, and I’ll try to make it quick. This woman started turning in front of me and I started turning behind her, but was looking the other way, so when she stopped, I hit the back corner of her car. I cracked her tail light cover, and my car got a huge dent in it. We exchanged info, and I went home. When we were exchanging info she kept yelling at me to make sure I reported the claim. So When I got home I did. She calls me the net day telling me that her husband said that she shouldn’t report the claim because it would make her insurance go up. (duh.) So I called back my insurance company to tell them that no money or whatever was needed because we were going to settle it ourselves. They said fine and good luck.

The rest of the story is irrelevant to my story now. I’m getting a policy with a new insurance company, and I had a really awesome low quote. When they went to put the policy through, they saw the accident I had reported, and it bumped up my policy price by $125. >:[ If the fucking woman had told me that she wasn’t going to report the accident in the first place, I would have had the lower policy price!! Stupid woman!! Now, I don’t have as much money as I would have, and I’m taking my dad out to dinner with my sister on Sunday for his birthday, and I’m going to have to take money out of my savings account (which is a joke anyway) to pay for it. STUPID WOMAN!! I HATE YOU!!

:[

The good news is I won’t have car insurance payments for the next 6 months. That’ll be nice. And I paid rent already for September. That leaves me in a good position to start chipping away at my last debt. I might actually accomplish a goal this time!!

Speaking of goals, I’ve gotten 2 more pattern repeats done in the past two days on Birch, and I plan to get a lot more of it done this weekend. I want this project out of my house. I want to knit SOCKS and SWEATERS again!!!

So  the internet went down at work yesterday around 2pm, and was out all day today.  It’s pretty hard to get any serious work done when you work for an ecommerce site and the internet is down at your office.  At least I caught up on the stupid crap I kept putting off.

I’m dreading tomorrow.  It’s not safe week starting tomorrow, and I don’t want it to be.

I’ve been craving some fantasy.  Like, wanting to watch movies like Labyrinth or reading books like His Dark Materials.  I think my brain is trying to distract me from the relentless realization that unless I choose a direction to move in, I’ll remain where I am.  Of course, I’m talking about the same thing I always talk about, self happiness in relation to my job.  Time moves really quickly when you live looking forward to each weekend.   The week flies by without anything getting done, being enjoyed. . .the weeknights are really just filler space, movie watching time, laundry time, wasted time until I get to really relax on the weekend.  A day and a half, because I’m never relaxed on Sundays, since I know the next day is Monday  and I’ll just have to go back to work.

It’s frustrating having a decent job, because I always thought the reason I hated working at my jobs so much was because my jobs always sucked.  I worked with assholes or I got paid way under what I should have been getting paid, and so when I thought about how much I hated going to work, I just assumed that it was because I was in a bad working environment.

Well I can’t say that now.  My job is pretty great.  My boss is great, my coworkers are great, and I get paid a decent wage.  The only bad thing really is that I don’t get to leave for lunch, I have to eat at my desk.  So now when I think about how much I hate going to work, and a lot of the time when I’m there how I wish I weren’t, it makes me think that maybe I’m just lazy.  Especially since I can’t picture myself doing anything and liking it.  It’s like real life Office Space.  But a nightmare for me.

That might be just because I keep thinking of conventional jobs.  Maybe I just really hate working in an office, and might be good doing some sort of fieldwork?  But I hated my job when I worked remodeling Eckerd’s stores too, so I don’t know.  I’m trying to tell myself that I just have to find the right something, and I won’t mind doing it all the time.  It’s hard to believe though, even from myself.

*** Holy crap, this emo blog post is interrupted for an awesome picture of what Rob just found in our back yard:

I didn’t know there were preying mantis’ on Long Island!?!?!

How freaking awesome!!

You should have seen this guy jump, it was hilarious his legs went all splayed out every which way.  Very cool.

I love that my boyfriend can bring me bugs.  :]

*** Now back to your regularly emo blog post***

So yeah, blah, blah, blah, I hope I can figure out something to support myself that doesn’t make me want to cry when I wake up in the morning and have to go to work.  I’m such a wuss.  :[

But somewhere on the internet I found a site where this woman was talking about how you can make a living without a job and she referenced a book which led me to find other similar books that I now want to look into.  A trip to the library is in order, though I’m really tempted to go to the book store, since I know for a fact that the library doesn’t have the main book I want to read.  :/

I’m trying to not spend money.  Wish me luck.

But I was working on those dolls, as the deadline to ship was Yesterday, and I wanted to make sure they were done in time.  I had such issues with them, I don’t even want to go into it.  I’ll just say that they were done in time, but I have not yet shipped them out, since the guy who ordered them has not confirmed his shipping address/ phone number with me yet.

This weekend was weird.  It was pretty emotional for me, though I don’t really know why, a lot of feelings were flying around my head.  Nothing’s wrong, and I’m ok, but I was questioning a lot of things about myself and my situation for a little bit.  I’m pretty sure it was the hormonal influence that got it going, and that made it get so strong.  It’s got me seriously considering alternatives to hormonal birth control. . . again.

Now that the dolls are done, I can go back to slogging along on the shawl, and hopefully finish it relatively quickly.  I can’t wait to have my life back, and get on to other projects, like the sweater for my dad, and of course. . .socks!!  I was reading another yarn dyeing tutorial this morning and I got all excited and wanted to rush out to the store for kool-aid packets and vinegar.  It’s really a tease, because I have two skeins of ready-for-dye sock yarn in my stash.  >:[  I also miss other stuff I used to do, like reading.  I might cheat a little bit and go to the library this week to see if I can find a good book to get into.

Rob and I went to Target last night for a blender. . .he likes to make smoothies, and I wanted to get my watch battery replaced.  They wouldn't open my watch since it wasn't one of theirs, but we did get a blender, and two really comfy chairs, and some silicone bakeware!!  It's awesome.  I spent money I shouldn't have though. :[

Also, last night we saw Snakes On A Plane!!!  YAY It was awesome, in a retarded kind of way.  I went in with really low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised.  Tonight we're watching the Illusionist.  Yay for Ed Norton and magic!!

I got to clean up the house a little bit, which is always nice, since I hate living in a disgusting house.  My bathtub is clean again, so I'm happy.

Not really looking forward to going to work tomorrow.  I'm not going to bitch about it anymore, because I sound like a broken record.  Anyone reading this knows I don't want that kind of job.  I have to pay off my debt though.  I'm pretty excited that my car insurance is coming down this year, I called Geico and Progressive to get quotes, and Progressive gave me an awesome one.  Once I ship out these dolls and ensure that the customer is happy, I'll move the money over to my account and probably pay for the full 6 months up front, so I don't have to worry about it, and I can save more cash/pay off more debt.  It'll be so nice when it's all paid off and I can use my money on whatever. . .*sigh*

I also applied for a credit card this week. . .we'll see if they approve me, I doubt they will, but if they do, I'm going to start building up my credit again.  Most of the bad shit should fall off my credit report this year or next anyway, so that's good.  And I've got the steady payments I've been making on my school shit to boost it a little bit.  :]

We’ll see if I have anything else to write about this week. . .last week was pretty uneventful.

This one was pretty good though.  Friday I went out to the city to hang out with Wyn, we found this really cool restauraunt and I got to see her new place.  Ended up staying out wicked late and coming home and crashing.  Yesterday I worked on the dolls a little bit, and then we ran some errands and came home to the first of the people coming over for the bbq.  The bbq went way better than the last, people actually showed up to this one.  It was a good time.

Today we went to this pow wow at a local park. It was ok, but much like the ren faire, it’s total purpose was consumerism.  I didn’t buy anything.  *pats self on back*

When we came home I attempted to work on the dolls some more, but I may have messed them up . . .if things get bad I might have to just make entirely new ones.  I should have stuck to my original technique.  Oh well.

This is kind of a lame post, because I felt like I should post, but didn’t really have anything to say.  Maybe I’ll have something during the week.

I do!!  Because he is great and makes my design that I drew up on my computer into a functional template to use on my blog.  YAY FOR ROB!!  :]

I was bad recently.  Tuesday night I went out for coffee with Shirah, and had a ball.  We stayed out later than I’d anticipated, and Wednesday I stayed home from work.  :O

I was pretty disappointed in myself, and going back to work today totally sucked.  I was bugging out last night and today at work also.  I really need to either man up or shut up.

*Why is Rob also awesome?  Because he just put on Beetlejuice.  I’m so excited!!*

Enough whining, I’m going to go watch a great movie!!  Hope you like the new layout!

I started messing with the layout, and now I’m too tired to make it presentable again.  :/

No, I’m not talking about years.  I’m getting ahead of myself.  Yesterday I came home knowing full well that Rob wanted to go out to some hardware store type places to look for stuff for his upcoming car painting project.  So I didn’t plan to do anything yesterday.  It’s a good thing too.

The last store we went to was Home Depot, where we also looked for a spigot.  I call it a spigot.  Apparrently they’re called sillcocks.  Whatever.  Point is, our spigot (ha!) has had the lowest water pressure EVER since we moved in to this house.  It’s really annoying to try to wash your car in the driveway, and your hose only reaches to about 3/4 of the way down your car, and when you put your thumb over the end of the hose to try and spray it, the water just stops coming out.

So we had an adventure, Rob moreso that I, trying to fix the broken spigot.  See?

That’s a nice split in the 12″ pipe that’s connected to the spigot.  Rob had to get all different kinds of dirty in the crawlspace under the house to get the old one out, and then again to put the new one in after I brought it back from a second trip to Home Depot.

We had just ordered chinese food when it happened.

This is what a blackout looks like from my desk.  True, you can’t blog during a blackout (unless you have some kind of crazy wireless internet device), but that wasn’t what bothered me.  What did bother me was that last night was probably the hottest night of the year up until today, and the a/c was powerless.

I have so many mosquito bites on my back from sleeping with the windows open.  I guess I’m spoiled now, I find it hard to imagine a time when I didn’t sleep with an air conditioned room.

Here’s birch, in all of her 6 row repeat glory.  I’ve definitely got the pattern down now, it’s just a matter of schlepping through the other 23.9 repeats.  I’ve been lazy since the weekend, and the heat isn’t helping.  Plus, I started those dolls this weekend, and the deadline date is only drawing closer.

I got kind of pissed off today at work.  A customer called asking where his order was because I’d told him that it would go out last week, but it didn’t because one of the guys decided to hold it until the item that was on backorder came in so that he could ship out the whole thing at once.  They’re back and forth on that.  Sometimes they’ll ship out the order without the backorders, and sometimes they’ll hold the order.  Anyway, the guy got pissed off and cancelled his whole order.  So my coworker got pissed at me a little bit because I was the one who told him the order would go out.

And that’s when I got really determined to not be where I am now by this time next year.  For real.  I’m sick of trying my best and taking the blame for other people’s mistakes.  I’m sick of not knowing the answer to a question, and asking one of my “higher-ups” for them only to give me a half assed or no assed answer, and then have it come back on me when the shit hits the fan.  I need to stop slacking off, pay off my debt, and start up a business.  I need to work for myself, so that if I don’t know an answer, I can find one, or make one, and only have myself to blame if things go wrong, and I think that’s fair.

So I’m going to try to start promoting my side project, to see if I can build up traffic on the site, and in the meantime just throw money at my debt until it’s gone.  I figure, hell, I’ve got enough yarn to last me awhile. . .now’s the time to not buy anything and get stuff done.