Yeah, I know I haven't been posting lately, but I'm working 8-and-a-half-hour days, and with tax season coming to an end, work has been crazy-nutso. Add to that the fact that the tax office I'm working at is rather posh, with rather wealthy clients (one drove up one day in a Jaguar and talked about how his company was working on [large-scale televised entertainment event redacted due to confidentiality restrictions] and [Canadian large-scale televised entertainment event redacted due to confidentiality restrictions] and because of that had to give up on [even larger-scale televised sports event redacted due to confidentiality restrictions]), and these clients can be rather high-maintenance and frustrating. So, suffice to say, I've been working my butt off and when I get home I'm just too tired to post.

What am I doing now that I can post? Sitting in the jury room at the county courthouse. I got called in today, and they're selecting for a six-week trial. (Yikes.) So a bunch of people (myself included) filled out I-have-an-honest-hardship-please-don't-pick-me-for-this questionnaires, and I think they're still sorting through them. I missed out on the first round of excusals, but hopefully I can get excused today. I really don't want to have to call my temp job and tell them I have to be back tomorrow. They already didn't like the fact that I had to be here today with Tax Day on Monday. Praise the Lord the court has wi-fi.

Now we're just sitting around doing absolutely nothing. The jury admin guy hasn't said anything in close to an hour and a half. I've spent most of the day watching last year's Eurovision Song Contest and creating a drinking game. Give singers an international stage and millions of viewers and have them try to win a singing contest, and tropes will appear. The Fan of Added Drama and Key Change of Added Drama, to give a few examples. Gimmicky costumes also tend to show up every once in a while, as does what I call "alleged English," which is when you get non-native English speakers writing or translating songs into English to try and get a bigger international audience and not bothering to have native English speakers edit it. Belarus' song last year is so chock full of alleged English (and really thick accents) that I can't make out more than about 80% of the words. (Note the use of gimmicky costumes; also, "heartfully" is not a real word. The fun is that what they sing is only about an 80% match of the lyrics posted online. I think.)

***

Luckily, the jury admin guy started reading off names not long after I started writing this, and I got excused from the selection and released for the day. So I called Temp Job and offered to come in, but I'd only be in for 2 hours, so the office manager told me to just not bother. So I got a full day off of work in the busiest week of tax season. No, I won't be paid for it, but I needed the mental health break. I do not know how they do this every year.

So I hit up T.J. Maxx, Ross, and Goodwill yesterday to pick out my Serious Business clothes. I ended up getting a sheath dress, a skirt suit, a ruffly top, a button-down blouse, and a pair of slacks, all for around $70. I ended up looking pretty good for my interview this morning - so good, in fact, that they offered me the temp job today (even though they told me I'd probably hear back toward the end of this week).

So starting Monday, I get to work 8-and-a-half hour days, and 6 days a week once they hit extended hours at the beginning of February (with a Saturday off every so often). And in my perverse indecisiveness, now I wish I didn't have 4 months of all this work ahead of me. Hence yesterday's post about chasing dreams. The more I chase after a full-time job and all that it promiese (health benefits and the ability to move out and get my own car), the more I wish I could just sit around and write. It's what I enjoy, and it's something that I never seem to have time to do while I'm temping (even though working at the last temp job gave me plenty of time between phone calls; the new temp job will have me working alongside someone, so no free time). But of course I said yes, because like I'm going to interview for a job and then say no, especially if they made the snap decision like that. The money should be good, though. Maybe I'll be able to get a car this summer after all.

I've got the rest of this week, though, to figure stuff out, as I'll be at Armine's house watching the Schnauzers (again). I love how it's just assumed that I'll do it, even though with all the places everybody has to be at (new temp job notwithstanding), and only two cars between us, it's going to be crazy - and expensive with all the gasoline we'll be spending getting places. Tomorrow is bad, with Lauren having two classes tomorrow - one in the morning and one in the evening - me having church tomorrow night, and Shannon working all day, we had to piece together a game of Musical Cars just to get everything worked out. And since Armine and family won't be back from Massachusetts until Wednesday, taking me and one car out of the equation Monday and Tuesday is only going to complicate things. And of course the dogs can't be/have never been alone for more than a few hours, and having Shannon and Lauren not know their work schedules until Thursday (of course Lauren has school), it's all up in the air and Hrayr is worried about who's going to watch the dogs. (I submit they'll be fine. I doubt they'll start destroying the house as soon as the four-hours-alone mark is reached, especially if someone is there to take them outside beforehand.)

Argh. At least staying at their house Monday and Tuesday will put me significantly closer to my new job for two days. Right now, though? I need The Middleman. Maybe MST3K. And maybe even some Eurovision Song Contest before bed. I have to be up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am to drive with Dad to Armine's, so he can pick them up for the airport and drop me off without having to make an extra trip, otherwise I'd be there right now.

There was something supremely cool today, but more about that when the pictures are available for download. :-)

Ugh.

I don't think I've talked much about it here, but I've got myself a new project: an advent calendar podcast. Similar to Grant's Advent Calendar, but different in that I've got all sorts of activities planned for the 25 days until Christmas. Today was supposed to be putting up decorations. Except once I found my decorations and got them up (and my room cleaned, seeing as the entire internet was going to see my room), the night slipped away and it was almost midnight - my sort-of unofficial posting deadline. And while I'm filming my post, my camera battery dies. I quickly ran over to grab my iPod touch, hoping to use that camera instead. Except I forgot that it, too, died today. I ended up using my cell phone to take still shots instead.

And then I remembered that I still had laundry in the washer.

So it's drying now, and I have to wait for it, because if I let it sit overnight, all my nice work clothes will get horribly wrinkled. Not that it really matters, because tomorrow's Casual Friday and my last day at Temp Job, but still. And after going to bed at midnight since September, I'm crashing hard at 1:30 am when I used to be able to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning.

So I'm going to go check on my laundry, and please go take a look at my advent-ivity calendar and make all my trouble tonight worthwhile. :)

The room does look nice, though, and I got to watch MST3K ("Santa Claus") while I decorated and cleaned.

And my laundry's done, so I am so going to bed.

I am currently missing the season premiere of Community because my sisters have taken over the TV to watch Bones. Thanks to the fact that we now have AT&T U-verse, they each have DVR boxes in their rooms. (I'm the only one with a room too small for a TV.) So why is it that I still can't watch what I want to watch on TV?

Currently contenting myself with Community on DVD. I haven't seen the early episodes since they came on, so I'm having fun reliving the awesomeness that was Jeff and Pierce's Spanish presentation. The special features are awesome.

So, I really owe you all a post about how awesome my Paul McCartney Experience was. Because it was so awesome, witness must be paid to said awesomeness. Yes, it was that awesome. (Think I've used "awesome" enough times so far?) But to be honest, between continual temping and trying (and failing) to get my next book review filmed, I haven't had a lot of time to sit and collect thoughts on much of anything. I've had about two or three fairly good ideas spinning around my head, but I haven't even been able to squeeze more than two or three sentences about each one. But tonight I'm making myself do this, because I really want to be fairly emo about today, but I want to focus on good things first. The whining will come later.

So...

( 'And the first one said to the second one there, I hope you're having fun...' )

Okay, I've been away from this for far too long. Here's what's been going on in the month(!) since I last posted...

Gleanings was great. I had a cabin of 13 amazing girls, and I had a blast, despite: all that junior-high girl-drama I wanted to avoid; the fact that allergies, spice powder and dust, and one of my girls' flu-ish bug conspiring to keep me from breathing; and a few boys' game of "let's annoy everyone we come across." As a group, we packaged near to one million servings of vegetable soup, probably cleaned one thousand buckets that will be filled with dried fruit this summer, and made/fixed more drying trays and pallets than any other youth group in at least nine years. We've got a great bunch of kids.

When I came home that Friday, on top of feeling completely drained, I found out that my bank account had become overdrawn because one of my Prudential paychecks didn't get direct-deposited, so I had to scramble to get things taken care of... it's a good thing I did, because I woke up Sunday morning with a 103-degree fever, and I was sick for at least half the week. The general consensus is that I had what-was-then-known-as-swine-flu, even though I didn't have all the symptoms. Whatever. The best part is that due to not eating all day Sunday, and then keeping it easy for the next few days, I lost five pounds. Which I've managed to keep off so far. Yay me! Another five and I'll actually have met a weight-loss New Years' Resolution for once. I guess I need to be flat-out sick more often.

While I was sick, I called in to work, because even though my fever hadn't broken yet, I felt okay enough to tutor, and I wanted to let my bosses make the final call as to whether I should come in. Turns out, though, that while I was gone, my kids got rearranged and I didn't have any left to tutor anymore. They all ended up at home tutoring, and I just didn't feel comfortable being in someone's home all by myself, so that's right. I came back from my missions trip sick and without a job. I knew it was going to be ending soon, but it was so abrupt, and combining it with being sick, life just sucked.

Thankfully, I got another student who needed to finish up her hours, but at the Learning Center (actually in Modesto instead of technically-in-Modesto-but-might-as-well-be-Ceres, and actually on my side of town - a mere 5 minute drive!), so I got some more hours... she's a busy (read: fairly hyper) kindergartener who might be borderline-Down's Syndrome, at least according to a tutor I share the classroom with and was apparently a superintendent for who-knows-what-district for who-knows-how-long... in other words, I don't know whether to believe him, and I don't have any experience spotting it, so I can't say. The point is, that she would rather play around than work on learning her letters, and even though it's frustrating, and every day I work with her I am reminded of why I decided to teach high school, but I can't blame her after being in school for all those hours and then coming straight to another two hours of tutoring.

Anyway, I also have another job lined up - I get my old temp position back from last summer working with the county starting on the 15th and going for 6 weeks. And it actually pays better than tutoring, just because I'll work more than 2 hours a day. So I'm still looking for a job - one with medical benefits, because I don't like the idea of not being covered and these wisdom teeth have got to go - but in the meantime I'll still be able to have some spending money, and buy that title I've been wanting for so long. :-P

Oh, and I bought a new book - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is a great book, and won tickets to Star Trek last night, which blew my mind with its untold levels of awesome.

There, I think I'm pretty much caught up - a lot of the rest of the time was full of getting better or being lazy.

I got an email today from Higher One (the bank that issued my Liberty student ID/credit card) telling me that the seven cent deposit that was supposed to clear out my account was denied because of bad bank information, whatever that means. So I called them again, and this representative told me that they couldn't deal with any amount under $2 over the phone, so I needed to send them the money so I can clear out and close my account.

I don't have any paper checks (don't use them), so what did I have to do?

Go to Wal-Mart and ask them for a seven cent money order. Apparently you can get one for that little. At least it only cost 46 cents to get a money order - I thought it was $3.

So on my way to work today, I'll be mailing the infamous seven cent money order, and hopefully now I can get this whole crazy mess behind me.

I took Victoria's cord to Radio Shack after work to get it looked at, and it isn't the power cord. Now I basically get to pay $65 to have somebody look at it and tell me that the connector pin is more than likely broken, which is basically what the Gateway tech just told me. Or I just write it off and start saving for a new laptop, though GatewayCasey did suggest finding someone who could do tiny soldering work and have them fix the pin.

Which brings me to another point. I think having a credit card is really unnecessary. Why would I basically agree to pay more money than something is worth? Just so I can have it now instead of later? My dad suggests that I should only buy something if I have the money to pay for it. So why wouldn't I just wait until I have the money and pay cash? I know it's important to build good credit, but I just don't see the point.

Oh well. Time to call Uncle Curt about what he would like me to do with his futon...

Tonight was Dodgeball Night at Newgen, and since I do indeed have a cold (blech), I decided that I wasn't going to be running around and playing, since I'd have to stop every few minutes and blow my nose anyway. I ended up sitting in the sound booth and manning the CD player. And eating some rather spicy nachos, which fortunately managed to clear up my sinuses for a while. Toward the end of the night, I had just eaten a rather nacho-cheese laden chip when... I can't even describe what happened. Nothing went black or anything, but it did get kind of shaky for a second. Suffice to say that I got a rather forceful dodgeball to my right cheekbone... if I were standing out in the open, it might have actually knocked me down instead of knocking me two inches into the wall. On top of that, my tongue was burning from the nacho cheese.

Everybody at church was very sweet, and the kid who threw the ball asked me about 6 times if I was okay. I think I would have been okay if I had taken it more to the forehead instead of to the cheek, and a few of my teeth are kind of hurting right now, but a few ibuprofen before I go to bed and I should be fine in the morning.

Before all this, though, I was talking about my trip to Cinematic Titanic (12 days!) to another Newgen leader, and she knew MST3K! Most of my friends don't know the show, so this was awesome. I pulled Katherine (iPod) out and showed her all the songs I have from their albums and we ran outside so I could play her a few of them. For the longest time I thought I was the only MSTie I knew, and now two ladies from Newgen have said they love the show... I should try to organize a watching party.

Point of the Anne Boleyn icon - I almost got my head taken off tonight... yeah, I need to go to bed.

ETA: Also, the person who decided to make cold meds taste like "cool ice" needs to be dragged out into the street and shot. Stuff is freaking nasty!