Well, after weeks of worry over how I'm going to pay my bills come August, the solution presented itself today in the form of a call from my employer, looking to see if I would be willing to pick up a class next week in LA. Trying to hold back my glee while I said, "Well, I guess I could make that work.." was truly a performance to see.
So I'm off to LA next week, back in an airplane, ick, but with money in my pocket, yay. After buying the new camera a few weeks ago, I followed up with the purchase of a new computer ($435 - $150 in rebates, who can resist that sort of temptation?). I've spent the intervening time trying not to think about how long it will take me to pay off these purchases while paying the minimum payments (approximately 3 lifetimes). Now maybe I can cut down on that amount of time, if only a little.
The trip in August my parents are paying for, more or less. Unbelievably, my mom bought my plane tickets (though it's only a matter of time before she starts bitching at me about paying her back for them, I'm sure. She's already made allusions by saying things like "I know you're good for it"), and they're picking up the car rental ($900 right there), and places to stay. My parents aren't cheaping out on the places to stay, either, at least not the whole trip. Sure, we're gonna stay at some cheap-o places, but we're also staying at some really nice B&Bs, too. And of course, for all of this, it's not my credit card # that's been put on the reservations (this paragraph is sure to nettle my sister, who's not going).
But with all of this in mind, having this little bit of extra money will allow me to be a little more generous and forthcoming with my credit card while we're on the trip. Food and gas aren't going to be cheap either, so I figure I'll chip in where I can ("We stopped for gas half an hour ago? That's it? Well, I'll top it off here anyway." <Magnanimous wave of the hand>).
Then again, maybe I'll just pocket my card. Or leave it at home. Maybe they owe me the trip. We only ever took one vacation when I was a kid. 5 days in Florida. I'm glad I went when I did, I barely enjoyed Disneyworld then, I certainly wouldn't now. But that was it. The pet store really anchored my family at home. And of course, braces for the other kids. I'm the only one who didn't get braces. And now that I'm a "professional" (No, not like Léon), I don't really have time to get braces. I guess once I can afford it I can always go the Invisiline route, but still, one vacation in lieu of braces, that seems like a fair trade to me.
But if I do break out the credit card, I can feel slightly better, knowing that I have a little bit of money in the bank to cover at least some of the purchases. Knowing that I taught another class that I'm not really qualified to teach. Knowing that it didn't matter. All that mattered is that I got the class, I taught the class, and the money kept me going. Like manna from heaven.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Thursday, June 17, 2004
A facsimile of me
My fax machine no longer works, and I just don't know it. I send cover letter, resume, and writing sample using my fax machine and I never get a response.
I wonder if the firms even get blank pages printing out on their fax machine. Maybe 7 pages of nothing comes out on the other side. Maybe it's fitting that they're blank pages. Maybe their fax machines are smart enough not to waste the paper (since they probably put at least my phone number on the top of the page). Maybe there's no record of me at all printing out on the other side of the phone line.
This is somehow more comforting than knowing that they've gotten all that shit from me, they've looked at it, at least superficially, and thrown it in the trash.
The only problem is the fact that I did get that interview last month. The one where he didn't ask me any questions and was on the phone for 8 out of the 20 minutes I spent in his office. The one where I paid $6 for parking. The one that completely wasted my time and made me wish he hadn't even bothered scheduling me for an interview. That one confirmed it. I just get thrown in the trash.
On the bright side of things, I guess my fax works.
I wonder if the firms even get blank pages printing out on their fax machine. Maybe 7 pages of nothing comes out on the other side. Maybe it's fitting that they're blank pages. Maybe their fax machines are smart enough not to waste the paper (since they probably put at least my phone number on the top of the page). Maybe there's no record of me at all printing out on the other side of the phone line.
This is somehow more comforting than knowing that they've gotten all that shit from me, they've looked at it, at least superficially, and thrown it in the trash.
The only problem is the fact that I did get that interview last month. The one where he didn't ask me any questions and was on the phone for 8 out of the 20 minutes I spent in his office. The one where I paid $6 for parking. The one that completely wasted my time and made me wish he hadn't even bothered scheduling me for an interview. That one confirmed it. I just get thrown in the trash.
On the bright side of things, I guess my fax works.
Friday, June 11, 2004
Job time
I've been half-heartedly looking for a job for the summer. Given that it's halfway through June and I don't have one, I have little hope of making any additional money this summer, which is bad news for me. Like, repo-my-shit bad news for me.
Actually, I have a couple jobs from friends that I can work on to probably make my bills for the summer, but it's still depressing. 4 years of college, 4 years experience, 1 year of law school, and no job for the summer. I even went so far as to go to Barnes and Noble yesterday to see if they were hiring. I didn't even have to resort to that in high school or college, and now I have to.
My desires are too varied. I like too many things. I could go to culinary art school and probably like that. I could just go study music and probably like that. The problem is that I never like just the one thing. I like everything. I've had that problem in my computer-related career. I'm not content with knowing what I do, I want to know everything else, too. So instead of getting really good at any one thing, I'm just ok at a bunch of things. Damn my interest in too many things.
Actually, I have a couple jobs from friends that I can work on to probably make my bills for the summer, but it's still depressing. 4 years of college, 4 years experience, 1 year of law school, and no job for the summer. I even went so far as to go to Barnes and Noble yesterday to see if they were hiring. I didn't even have to resort to that in high school or college, and now I have to.
My desires are too varied. I like too many things. I could go to culinary art school and probably like that. I could just go study music and probably like that. The problem is that I never like just the one thing. I like everything. I've had that problem in my computer-related career. I'm not content with knowing what I do, I want to know everything else, too. So instead of getting really good at any one thing, I'm just ok at a bunch of things. Damn my interest in too many things.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Someone pinch me
So, after an excrutiating 10 days at my parents' house, I have arrived back in Pittsburgh, new car and new camera in tow.
The new car isn't really new, just new to me. 1994 Buick Skylark, white with a blue cloth top (though not a convertible). Maybe I'll get around to posting a pic at some point (using my new camera, of course), maybe I won't. It's got 113,000 miles on it, so it's been around the block a few times. Rides nice, gets great gas mileage (it went 260 miles on 7 gallons of gas = 37 MPG). And costs about $13 a month in insurance. Good deal.
The new camera is a Canon Digital Rebel, which cost way more money than I can really afford, but what the hell (spendthrift's favorite thought when spending money). I got it for the vacation I'm taking in August, I wanted to familiarize myself with the camera before actually going on the trip. More on the trip to follow.
In driving out here today, I not only got "driver tan", I got driver sunburn. My left arm is lobster red, my right arm, not at all. Not the most comfortable feeling. The car has air conditioning, but there's something wrong with it (so said the mechanic, I didn't even try it today....just had the windows rolled down, old-school style).
My vacation in August is with my parents and my 12 year old brother, Arn. We leave on August 1st. We're flying to Boise, and then we have approximately 3000 miles of driving we're doing until flying back on August 18th. Sound like a fun time to anyone? With the parents, in a car, for 2.5 weeks. When I first told them I'd go with them, I was kinda thinking it was a good idea; my parents aren't spring chickens, we only ever went on vacation once, mainly due to having the pet store. Other stores you can lock up and go away for a while, but pet stores require care that you don't kill everything while you're away. So we never went anywhere. Except Disneyworld once, for 5 days. So I was thinking that it would be good to go on vacation with my parents, see some of the country with them.
Then something happened. My mom bought the tickets and reality set in. Holy shit, I'm gonna spend 2.5 weeks with my parents. Somebody is gonna kill somebody else. Not sure if it's me killing someone or my dad killing someone, but shit is gonna hit the fan at some point during the trip.
We fly in and out of Boise, Idaho. Every time I say this to someone, they say, "Boise??" Yeah, Boise. The night we get in, we're planning on driving 10 hours to Crater Lake, Oregon. Then we'll take a couple days, up the coast, to Olympic Park, Washington. Seattle, the Cascades, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and then back to Boise. The 5-state tour.
At this point, I can't really back out, even if I could get my mom to not bitch at me for having bought my ticket. My mom's retina detached a while ago (last summer? summer before?), so she's no good for driving for that long. My dad would probably try to do all that driving without me, but that's because he's a dumbass. That's definitely a two-person (or more) amount of driving, so at this point, they need me to go in order for them to make their timetable for driving around to all of those places.
The original premise of the trip was to see my brother's commissioning into the Army. He's been doing ROTC the last couple of years of college, he was scheduled to get commissioned on August 7th in Seattle. Why it's in Seattle is anyone's guess, he went to school at Millersville, in PA. My mom bought the tickets 3 or 4 weeks ago, wanted to make sure she didn't pay too much for the airfare. Then, last week the Army changed the date of the commissioning to August 10th. A Tuesday. I can see having the commissioning on a Saturday, the original date. But a Tuesday? And of course, changing the date was really swell, I'm sure plenty of families will miss the commissioning.
Like us, actually. Because of the timetable of the trip and all of the stuff we're planning on visiting, we won't make it to the commissioning. My mom was going to see about switching all of the reservations around, but the reservations in Yellowstone are hard to switch, she couldn't do it for the dates that we'd need them, so the upshot is that we won't attend the commissioning. Fine by me, it certainly wasn't the reason that I was going, and from what he and my mom have said about it, we weren't even sure that we'd really get to see him before or after the commissioning. We're hoping to try to catch him while we're in Seattle though, on the original day of commissioning.
So August is pretty much the vacation, then school. I'll have about a week in between the two, maybe I'll clean up my already-messy office (?). And for now, I need to find a job. No classes to teach on my schedule, so I need some money from somewhere else, and right now I have no idea where that is going to come from. And I'd probably best not mention the fact that I can't work for 3 weeks in August when trying to get the job.
I'm gonna try to post more frequently, I've been really awful about it.
The new car isn't really new, just new to me. 1994 Buick Skylark, white with a blue cloth top (though not a convertible). Maybe I'll get around to posting a pic at some point (using my new camera, of course), maybe I won't. It's got 113,000 miles on it, so it's been around the block a few times. Rides nice, gets great gas mileage (it went 260 miles on 7 gallons of gas = 37 MPG). And costs about $13 a month in insurance. Good deal.
The new camera is a Canon Digital Rebel, which cost way more money than I can really afford, but what the hell (spendthrift's favorite thought when spending money). I got it for the vacation I'm taking in August, I wanted to familiarize myself with the camera before actually going on the trip. More on the trip to follow.
In driving out here today, I not only got "driver tan", I got driver sunburn. My left arm is lobster red, my right arm, not at all. Not the most comfortable feeling. The car has air conditioning, but there's something wrong with it (so said the mechanic, I didn't even try it today....just had the windows rolled down, old-school style).
My vacation in August is with my parents and my 12 year old brother, Arn. We leave on August 1st. We're flying to Boise, and then we have approximately 3000 miles of driving we're doing until flying back on August 18th. Sound like a fun time to anyone? With the parents, in a car, for 2.5 weeks. When I first told them I'd go with them, I was kinda thinking it was a good idea; my parents aren't spring chickens, we only ever went on vacation once, mainly due to having the pet store. Other stores you can lock up and go away for a while, but pet stores require care that you don't kill everything while you're away. So we never went anywhere. Except Disneyworld once, for 5 days. So I was thinking that it would be good to go on vacation with my parents, see some of the country with them.
Then something happened. My mom bought the tickets and reality set in. Holy shit, I'm gonna spend 2.5 weeks with my parents. Somebody is gonna kill somebody else. Not sure if it's me killing someone or my dad killing someone, but shit is gonna hit the fan at some point during the trip.
We fly in and out of Boise, Idaho. Every time I say this to someone, they say, "Boise??" Yeah, Boise. The night we get in, we're planning on driving 10 hours to Crater Lake, Oregon. Then we'll take a couple days, up the coast, to Olympic Park, Washington. Seattle, the Cascades, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and then back to Boise. The 5-state tour.
At this point, I can't really back out, even if I could get my mom to not bitch at me for having bought my ticket. My mom's retina detached a while ago (last summer? summer before?), so she's no good for driving for that long. My dad would probably try to do all that driving without me, but that's because he's a dumbass. That's definitely a two-person (or more) amount of driving, so at this point, they need me to go in order for them to make their timetable for driving around to all of those places.
The original premise of the trip was to see my brother's commissioning into the Army. He's been doing ROTC the last couple of years of college, he was scheduled to get commissioned on August 7th in Seattle. Why it's in Seattle is anyone's guess, he went to school at Millersville, in PA. My mom bought the tickets 3 or 4 weeks ago, wanted to make sure she didn't pay too much for the airfare. Then, last week the Army changed the date of the commissioning to August 10th. A Tuesday. I can see having the commissioning on a Saturday, the original date. But a Tuesday? And of course, changing the date was really swell, I'm sure plenty of families will miss the commissioning.
Like us, actually. Because of the timetable of the trip and all of the stuff we're planning on visiting, we won't make it to the commissioning. My mom was going to see about switching all of the reservations around, but the reservations in Yellowstone are hard to switch, she couldn't do it for the dates that we'd need them, so the upshot is that we won't attend the commissioning. Fine by me, it certainly wasn't the reason that I was going, and from what he and my mom have said about it, we weren't even sure that we'd really get to see him before or after the commissioning. We're hoping to try to catch him while we're in Seattle though, on the original day of commissioning.
So August is pretty much the vacation, then school. I'll have about a week in between the two, maybe I'll clean up my already-messy office (?). And for now, I need to find a job. No classes to teach on my schedule, so I need some money from somewhere else, and right now I have no idea where that is going to come from. And I'd probably best not mention the fact that I can't work for 3 weeks in August when trying to get the job.
I'm gonna try to post more frequently, I've been really awful about it.
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