Tired

ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz *thunk*

New poem on writings page!

Stop the presses...I put something new on my writings page! I actually wrote a NEW poem!

Thoughts for the day...

• A German Baptist town is not the best place to try and sell henna tattoos.

Spent the morning at the Rossville end of summer festival. SP had a booth there to raise money for the leukemia and lymphoma society. E and I stayed all morning, until the heat got to us. The raffle tickets sold the best and some people just donated money and didn't want a raffle ticket. No one wanted a henna tattoo. I brought home a sunburn and a headache from the festival. E and I both crashed and took long naps after we got home.

My data entry job isn't quite over yet. Friday they asked me to come back for a few days next week so I'll be working Monday and Tuesday. It was nice during the job interview the other day to say that my former employer asked me to come back and do some temp work. That's the best recommendation of all.

Two tents end along paws

I just had my first interview in over 5 years this afternoon. Now I remember why I took a Xanax right before my interview for my job that recently ended. 'Tense and babbles incoherently, except during long pauses that occur in the middle of run-on sentences.' I'm sure that's what she wrote down in her notes.

I sat stiffly on the edge of the chair, partly because every time I moved, the chair responded with a symphony of loud, sqeaky protests. The overdose of caffiene I had today in order to remain altert while doing data entry didn't help either. And did I mention the long, silent pauses? Yes, in the middle of answering a question my brain would "lock up" worse than a computer running Windows ME. When that happened I just stopped talking. And what's up with having to complete a "job application" after submitting a resume? How redundant is that? The only new information they gained was a list of my references. Ooh. Gotta have a form for that!

If offered the job (unlikely) would I take it? Probably not. It sounds like a very good job and something I could easily do given my experience and skills. The pay scale ranged from below what I made to slightly above. Chances are I would be offered less than what I was making at my former job. I want more. Not just more money but more of a challenge. I want to learn something new and become good at it. I want out of social services.

I have a newfound respect for people who make a living doing straight data entry and nothing else. Today I woke up with gunk in my left eye. I think maybe it's from eye strain and the cat hair (see previous post). If I had to do data entry full time for a living I'd go insane. It's so mindless. AGH!!!! I would only do it for this particular place because they were so good to me when the funding was cut for my job and because they're my friends.

Playing the numbers game

Yesterday I tromped all over what used to be called Purdue's Married Student Housing hanging up flyers advertising my house for sale. It's now called Purdue Village or something similar. A lot has changed. Like half the buildings are gone! The buildings are all non-smoking now. But a lot is the same. The buildings still look the same. The first apartment I lived in is still there. Squirrel park hasn't changed much either.

While on my way to hang up flyers I received a phone call from my former place of employment and a plea for help with data entry in the fiscal department - needed immediately and lasting until Friday. I hate data entry. I took the job and started today. I spent the entire day typing numbers into some mysterious fiscal program and at the end of each page I entered, if the number in the corner magically turned to zero I'd "post" and the screen would clear and I'd start again on another page. I also get printouts and match them with the sheets I entered. I'm so clueless. I don't know what I'm entering but I get all excited when the numbers come out like they're supposed to and the sheets match the printouts! And if the value of something on the sheet is zero I don't have to enter it! Whoohooo! I can skip it and go on to the next one! I think I got 4 or 5 stacks done.

A few hours into my temp job my cell phone rang. This was after it was sternly stressed to me by PC, who KNOWS me quite well btw, that I'm not to chat, be on the phone, walk around...basically I'm chained to a desk normally used by a woman who has cat hair all over her chair. Let's just say that PC is a bit stressed out so I'll forgive her...this time ;-) What I don't understand is how on earth she thinks I'm going to enter data "even faster" tomorrow! I think not! My fingers have already exceeded the speed limit in my brain. If I type any faster I might blow a gasket or something.

Oh, I was talking about my phone call, wasn't I? I let it go to voice mail and called back a bit later. Of all days...OF ALL WEEKS I get a phone call about an interview! Never mind that I had to reschedule my hair cut and my bangs are now providing more shade than my sunglasses. Never mind that I don't have a decent interview suit and no time to shop for one. Never mind that I'm working 8 to 5 the rest of the week. The woman was very nice and offered to interview me after work on Thursday. This is going to be good. I have an interview after a full day of mind-numbing data entry. I will be wired to the hilt on caffiene (necessary so I don't fall asleep while keying in numbers. And yes, it IS possible. I caught myself doing it several times after lunch), antsy as a kid in church on a sunny day, HUNGRY, tired, and in desperate need of a haircut and something interview appropriate to wear. And lets not forget the desk chair of death. Being uncomfortable and about ready to break isn't bad enough. It also has to be covered in cat hair. Can we say ASTHMA and ALLERGIES? I'm taking my allergen reducing Febreeze with me tomorrow! Like I need to go into an interview at Head Start with sneezing, coughing and watering eyes.

[On a serious note - the womam I'm filling in for is gone because her son was in a near fatal car accident several weeks ago. Oh, and the cat hair didn't really bother me...yet.]

Back to selling the house. I put an ad in the Purdue newspaper, the Exponent but I can't remember what days I put it in for. Duh. And my web site stats show a marked increase in page views over the past 2 days. I feel like I'm holding out a big, juicy piece of cheese filled with poison and I'm waiting for some desperate, cheese deprived mouse to eat it.

I mentioned the interview at Head Start. I'm happy to have an interview but I really don't want to stay in social services. I especially don't want a job that is dependent upon state or federal funding. Especially not after how the state EFFED over my clients (with federal funds that are allocated to each state for HIV care) who STILL don't have a local care site after 2 FREAKIN months! And has that place contacted me for an interview? Hell no! *mutters incoherently under breath*

Tired now.

Coffee stains on my mind

Another day of unemployment. On a positive note, the house is really clean! With such unending excitement in my life I'm finding it difficult to decide what, of the many interesting events in my life, I shall share with you first.

While I'm thinking you could go to my friend's Light The Night web site and donate to raise money to help fight luekemia, lymphoma & myeloma. Sandy is a lymphoma survivor - a ray of hope for other's with cancer - so please visit her web site and donate whatever you can.

I've put up a few 'house for sale' flyers around town and hope to make it over to Purdue's married student housing today to put up a bunch there. I found a site online that specializes in advertising mobile homes for sale and they offer a money back guarantee. If the house doesn't sell within 6 months they will refund my money. That's definately a win-win deal. Take a look at the the ad.

Ever wonder if anti-virus software really works? Ever wonder if those free anti-virus programs are as good as the expensive, brand name versions? Here's how you find out. Give a teen a computer of her own. Install one of those free anti-virus program (I've had excellent results with Avast!) and wait. It won't be long you'll hear virus warning sirens going off every time she checks her email! Avast has caught infections from the newest viruses, worms and trojans to older ones that aren't seen as often anymore. So, now you know. Anti-virus software really does work when a computer gets infected. Me, I rarely have a virus. Only a few times and that's just been in the past year.

Busy week! E's locker problem is all taken care of. I went into school with her Wednesday morning, about died going up 3 flights of stairs to her locker! Her locker still wouldn't open for us so we went to the office and they had a maintenace person meet us at her locker. He opened it on the first try. ARGH! He told her the locker is new and stiff and told her what to do so now she can open it ok.

I made flyers to advertize the house for sale on colored paper. The colors are loud and obnoxious!

E was supposed to ride the bus the next day since I can't take her every day. It was time to leave and she couldn't remember the bus # or the spot it parks in after school. I suggested she look at the bus # when she gets on the bus but she wasn't sure if it would be the same bus # after school (I think it would be). We searched all over for the little note with the bus driver's info on it and gave up. I drove her to the bus stop and wouldn't ya know - the bus had already been there. So, I ended up taking her to school anyway.

Went to lunch with a friend and we had a nice chat. Afterwards I went to Goodwill with SP and found a few things including some owls really cheap. Then I picked E up and SP came over. She'd printed out a banner for her brother's 50th birthday and needed help putting it together. It's 9 pages by 9 pages! We laid it out in the driveway because it wasn't windy so what happens? It gets breezy! We took it inside and taped it all together, laid it out in the driveway again and taped over the seams with clear packing tape then taped it to the side of the house to see how it looked. WOW! It's HUGE!!! She and her nephew put it in his yard last night along with a huge birthday cake. He lives right on a busy highway and the sign says to honk for his birthday!!!!

Last night E and I went to a Weird Al concert in Merrillville. We met a friend for dinner and met up with more Al Gals at the concert. Before the concert we saw Steve Jay, one of the band members. He gave us each a hug and chatted for a few minutes. Afterwards E asked who he was! I told her and she was really surprised. E ended up with an aisle seat so she was really hoping to get some Al attention when he went into the audience. The concert was wonderful! During one song Al came into our side of the audience and sang right in E's face for a few seconds! She was on cloud 9 after that :-) Afterwards we waited a long time hopeing Al would do a meet & greet but it was finally announced that he really wanted to meet his fans but couldn't tonight. There was a REALLY big crowd waiting but we stayed a little longer and Al waved to everyone as he got on the tour bus. While we were waiting we did get to see Steve Jay again and I got a picture of E with him. She also got to meet Jim West (another band member) and get his autograph and picture with him.

Went to the state fair Saturday. Felt like I'd walked my a$$ off but it was still there the next day. While there I got a henna tattoo. Don't panic - it's not permanent but it does last several weeks. Found a new copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires on sale through The Literary Guild for only $2. No, it's not for me! It's for E.

I moved my fractal pics to Web Shots to save space on my Verizon account.

I made a web site for the house to help sell it. It's at www.house4u.info

No job yet but I am signed up for unemployment benefits.

E started high school today! I think it went well other than a problem with her locker. I plan on going to the school with her early tomorrow morning to get the situation dealt with. They seem to think that if the maintenence person can get it open that there's nothing wrong with it. I tried at least a dozen times to open it with no luck! She had teacher and other kids trying to open it today and they had a lot of trouble with it. When I called the school and told them about it for the 3rd time since registration they got a little snippy with me. So, tomorrow we are going to deal with the problem in person....which shouldn't even be a problem. It's locker! It's not like I'm asking for some kind of special priveledge for her like a light in it or a cooler or a bigger locker. Every student gets a locker and should be able to open it with little to no problems. I will not stand for a locker making her late for classes or missing the bus. It concerns me that such a small, easy to fix problem is becoming an issue. If the school can't efficiently and effectively deal with something this small how do they deal with bigger problems? Oh, and the woman I talked to implied that we don't know how to open a locker. Give me a break. It's not rocket science. Dial the combination, pull up on the handle and pull the door open. DUH! The stupid lockers use exactly the same type of lock & handle that MY lockers in high school used! AGH! I'm throughly irritated.

*kicks soapbox under desk* I'm done now.

Going to see Weird Al Friday. Got the tix month's ago. It'd be a aste not to go.

House Website Woes!

Due to verizon's sitebuilder giving my house site a standard index.html file name there's a bit of confusion now as to which index page browsers go to. Sometimes they want to go here, to my blog page, which is named index.htm (one letter difference!)

If you're having trouble getting to the house site with the url I gave you try this one
http://mysite.verizon.net/res16vtj/index.html

Hopefully the url forwarding will be working soon and you can use www.house4u.info

Chickens & Flyers

Went away for a few day to visit my mom. Had to come home today for kids freshman orientation at the high school. She said hello to at least 20 kids in the half hour we had to wander around the building. As we waited in the auditorium for the presentation she wailed, "None of my friends are here!"

No interviews yet. I have a plan though. The plan is this: aggressively market the house and sell it, even if I have to take a small loss. Move in with mom. Find excellent paying job within approx. 120 mile radius of mom so she doesn't have to drive any farther to visit than she does now. A few of the cities I'm considering are Fort Wayne, Chicago, and Ann Arbor, MI. Other than the friends I've made I have nothing keeping me here. E loves the idea of moving away as long as she can still have contact with her friends. The only way I could possibly avoid moving in with mom is to get a new job and sell the house at the same time. Not likely. I can't really search for a job outside of the local area until I sell the house because I can't accept a job, move and continue to pay on this house.

My marketing ideas are simple. Create a website for selling the house with pictures and lots of info about the house. Put flyers all over the place with the web address on them. Advertise online. Advertise everywhere. SELL SELL SELL!!!!! I may even register a domain name just for this purpose so it's easy for people to remember. Domain names are cheap at My Domain. That's where I have my niteflytes.us name registered. Speaking of...I recently discoverd I could get niteflytes.com back. But, sadly, that will have to wait.

Zzzzzz

Applied for unemployment today. Not much to say about it. I think the worst part was my cell phone ringing while I was there. It was so quiet in that place and then my phone blasts out a David Bowie ringtone at full volume!

Sunday was busy. I spent the day helping a friend pick out a computer. She took me out to lunch and then we took her computer to her house and I got it all set up. When I got home I decided it was time to get all the sap spots off my car. Note to self...never let sap spots bake in the sun for several weeks before trying to clean them off. My arms are SO sore! I scrubbed and scrubbed and there's still spots on it. I got some bug & tar remover and it's also supposed to remove sap. When I can use my arms again I'll give it a whirl.

Spent most of the weekend and today using Linux (you thought I gave up on it, didn't you?). I'm using Mandrake Linux. Ease of installation gets a 10. It's easier than installing windows and it found and recognized my printer, sound, video and internet. For ease of setup with a wireless internet connection I give it a 1 right now. I searched the net and tried everything I could think of and I still can't get wireless internet in Linux. Ease of overall use I give it an 8. Ease of installing software I have to give it a 4. Some things are easier than others and I'm still trying to figure out how to compile. System stability I give it a 7. I seem to have the ability to crash any computer I touch.

Tomorrow is registration and the kid has a Dr. appt at 7:30 am. AGH!

Falling around

I woke up last night and when I got out of bed I almost fell flat on my face. My equlibrium was all messed up and it felt like the room was tilted. I stumbled to the bathroom and grabbed the doorframe while trying not to step on my dog. What a weird feeling! When I got up this morning I still felt dizzy and that made me feel sick to my stomach. I guess it was from my allergies & sinus problems. I was going to make a trip to my mom's for the weekend but decided it might be better to stay home since I'm not feeling too good.

Left the house again today! Have to wait until Monday to get my meds filled because the HMO is taking their sweet time getting my COBRA activated. But the pharmacist gave me enough to get through the weekend so it's no big deal.

My head is swimming. I think it's time for bed.

AGH! I had a blog here and I accidentally hit the back button before I posted and now it's all gone!

In a nutshell....Talked to insurance agent about purchasing health insurance. Got out of the house. Ate a Happy Meal. Shopped at Goodwill. Went into former place of employment and wasted people's time. Rented movies. Tried to refill Rx's and discovered little problem with COBRA. Went home. Discovered kid left her purse at Goodwill. Went back to Goodwill and got purse. Went home. Daughter & friend having Freddy Krueger marathon. Watched Legally Blonde 2. Blogged in bed. Dog joined me on bed. Lost entire post. Started over. Too lazy to add links & details because it's 2 am.

It's my lost post!!!! I found it!!!

I got out of the house today and went places! It was amazing! The sun was out, I actually got to see AND talk to real people! For lunch I had McD's and to save $ I got a "Happy Meal". I'm now the proud owner of a mini beanie Hamburgler. My daughter was mortified that I got a Happy Meal.

Hey! My dog just invited herself into my room and jumped up on my bed. Yes, I blog in bed sometimes. Gotta love wireless internet and laptop computers. The only disadvantage is the heat my laptop generates. I'm only in here because my daughter and her friend are having a Freddy Krueger marathon tonight. I can only take so much Freddy in one night. I was surprised to learn there are 7 Freddy Krueger movies now. He's quite the resiliant and resourceful villian. Between Freddy movies I plopped Legally Blonde 2 into the DVD player. It was cute but not as funny as the first Legally Blonde.

Kid & I went to Goodwill today. She looked at the clothes. I helped. I found a few things that looked new and were what I thought was her style. Nope. She didn't like them. Next thing I held up was a bright pink tank top that was made out of fake fur. She wasn't impressed. She didn't like the red, quilted, zippered vest either. I got bored and drifted over to the stuff in my size. I held up every hideous shirt I found and yelled across the store, "E--, Look at this!" I'm such an obnoxious mother. :-)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

That's a book by Philip K. Dick. The movie Blade Runner was based on it. If you thought the movie was strange, the book is far stranger. Not sure why I thought of that. I think it was one of my free associations while trying to think of a title for this post.

I spent a good part of my day adding some cool, yet totally useless, gizmos to my web page. You can see the slide show. There's 49 pictures in it. And there's the tag board where you can leave messages & comments (which I've enjoyed reading so far!). On the Fun Stuff page I slaved over adding a cute, little game. I might add more. Maybe.

Said to daughter and her friend today..."If you're going to laugh until you spit out your Pepsi, spit it in your glass! Recycle! I'm on a budget here! It's your own backwash. It won't kill you!"

At my belated birthday lunch last week, with some friends, one of them asked me what I did with my dog while I was on vacation. I honestly don't know what comes over me sometimes. I replied, "You know those bags that you put things in and then suck all the air out of?" She just stared blankly at me.

I had a dream the other night that was really odd and I may turn it into a story. I dreamed that a family (mom, dad, son, daughter) somehow ended up on a planet that looked a lot like Earth but wasn't. The people there spoke the same language, lived in houses, had jobs, etc. very similar to us but there were little things that weren't quite the same. My dream even had a plot. It was so detailed and vivid that I woke up thinking this had to be a movie I saw or a book I read. But I don't think so. Since this is a highly public forum I'm not going to give away my story idea and tell you the plot. But after I write it, I'll let you know where you can read it.

The dream got totally weird, like dreams do, in some parts. At one point I was in the story rather than watching it like a movie. I was in a cave-like tunnel with some other people. It was brightly lit, not dark. I walked down the tunnel to a small group of people and sat down with them. Then I watched ME walk down the tunnel and sit down in the group of people. Then I started talking to the other me. I was sitting face-to-face, talking to myself! My mother has been known to use the phrase, "beside yourself". I've often wondered how anyone could do that. Now I know.

I dreamed about fractals last night. I've got to get out of the house tomorrow. In the morning...since it seems it's already tomorrow.

Lightbulb Effect

*BLINK* OMG!!!! I figured out why my archives didn't look right!!!!!!!!!! *tralalalalala* I'm so happy! *happy dance*. I fixed it I fixed it I fixed it! Go on...take a look at an archive. Any archive and it will look just like this page except it will have old posts on it!!!

It takes so little to amuse me these days *sigh*

Fractal Tag

Who knew math could be beautiful? Fractals are images made from mathematical equations and have their basis in chaos theory. Fractals have some interesting properites. They often resemble things in nature, they are self similar and they are independent of scale. Thanks to computers I don't have to understand the math to make them! I used a free fractal generator called xaos to make my fractals.

Comments section is gone. In it's place is a tag board located on the left side. Scroll down until you see it. Just type in your name and a comment and click on tag. Easy nuff, so go use it. I'll wait...................See that wasn't so bad.

I'm tired of being at home all the time. I need something to do! I think hell has frozen over because I'm actually getting tired of being on the computer!!!

My life is full of overwhelming excitement. How much can one person take?

Redneck Diablo

Diablo II is an excellent time waster and one of my all time favorite computer games. I played that a little bit today until I got frustrtated with my character constanly dying. I also created a silly little web page on a whim.

My daughter has me hooked on a country song about being a redneck woman who keeps her Christmas lights on all year long. I keep telling everyone they are NOT my Christmas lights! It is decorative deck lighting.

Coming soon...I will be eliminating the "comment" section of the blogs and go back to using a tag board for comments since I've had complaints that Blogger is making it difficult to actually leave comments.

It's 1:21 and my dog wants to go out *sigh*