GAME05

some touchups left, but just finished this. was trying out a larger board of 20"x30".

yeah, "assertive" is what i really meant. didn't end up saying anything because maybe i'll be leaving sooner than i thought and i'll just mention it in the exit interview. i'm getting both excited and scared/nervous about my upcoming move to North Carolina. a small part of me is still thinking about Colorado because my brother is there, which would be fun, but i also have a good friend in NC and i lived there the past six years. i know it's the right move because i can't continue being as lonely as i've been (and because the job stinks), but having no unemployment benefits and about $4000 saved won't be easy. even small-time jobs can be tough to get these days, and being 35 and over-educated doesn't help for those. $400/mo rent and i can put a deferral on my student loans, so hopefully i can land a $9/hr job to start and get by with that for a while. i'll be putting my work in a major bind, but that's their problem, i guess. now to decide when in April to go...

the pitchers in the AL West will help Pujols' stats.

this is the best offseason sport, ever. GetPaddled is already the Josh Hamilton of Booze Racing.

this is my first attempt at a two-layer stencil. the layers are hard to line up, so i have some white showing. hopefully practice will fix that. i'm wondering if maybe next time instead of spray paint i'll try out something like charcoal. that way i can fill in the gaps and even maybe use some shading.

looks like my apartment complex will let someone else take over my lease, so i get to move out of Texas in early April, a month sooner than expected! it's definitely a seller's market here (lot of rich oil people living out of motels and trailers here), and a friend suggested charging maybe $500 just for giving up my apartment. not sure about that. i'm really excited to get out of here because i hate my job and am very lonely here, and i have a couple good friends in NC. at the same time, i'm a little bit scared to be quitting a job in a recession (so no unemployment benefits) and just crossing my fingers that i'll be able to find something. heck, even Wal-Mart-type jobs are hard to find these days.

maybe states differ on allowing handicap permits. my downstairs neighbour has diabetes because of her weight problem. she's on disability because of it and i assume also has a handicap tag. "The doctor told me i just have to stay away from that fast food, but i just can't help it! It's just so cheap, too!" i think last time i ate fast food it cost me about $8 for a meal. not sure how that's cheap. although i feel for her because she's alone, too, so i bring her healthy dinners sometimes. she talks incessantly, though.

thanks, Cheez. i think i'll still talk to the boss in private about it. call it practice on being aggressive in the workplace instead of being passive. i'll just ask the boss to put himself in my shoes and tell me how he'd interpret it all, then just accept his toned-down response. if i wasn't already leaving, i'm upset enough by all of this that i would have quit, anyway. on a side note, i've learned that men are actually worse gossipers than women are.

The Office could very well go down as this generation's defining tv show, so for that high of a status, i think it needs to stand up to some criticism. otherwise it's merely a good show and wouldn't deserve to be held up in comparison to shows like I Love Lucy, All In the Family, Andy Griffith, Cheers, MASH, The Simpsons or Seinfeld. i think shows that have been the #1 comedy for as long as The Office has at least deserve the conversation, and it's fun for me just to speculate whether a show will hold some sort of intrinsic value long after it's gone the way the great shows have, or if The Office will just be another one of those good shows that will fade from memory after it's gone.

really great point about Andy being the passive sort of personality and not quite working. now, with the secondary characters taking over and dominating the show, it's like watching someone herd cats.

my left front headlight shines only about 10' in front of me. got new bulb, just polished the lens, already had the last place aim the light as far up as he could. and now neither window will work, but i'm not paying $400 to fix one of them. and even though i had my AC fixed last summer, it doesn't work anymore. i hate my car. and the emergency brake is useless.

*post deleted. comments too specific to my job that i only wanted to raise the question temporarily and not leave it up for permanent record. one never knows how deep a future employer might dig into internet records if they'd be able to match up game05 to my real name.

George Lucas is dead to me now. Has been for some years.

even now, when i use Wikipedia, i immediately head over to the lefthand sidebar for the search bar, forgetting that they moved it to the top right. and i'll add that as a former editor i got to be an expert in Microsoft Word. pretty much knew everything there was on that program. but then every single time a new version of Windows comes out, they also have to change up that stupid Word program again and i'm stuck having to relearn it.

so, like, every single show on tv?

Dwight is getting a spinoff.

i like that the show was Jim vs. Dwight. i missed that in a lot of the previous seasons. take away Carrell and that bit of the show is still it's bread and butter. at first when Carrell left i thought the show would only last a year, but i'd bet it goes at least another year past this. it still has to be a big money-maker, and the actors aren't so big that they're going to easily jump ship to another project like Carrell could. although it does seem like the major characters are starting to reach their ultimate conclusion and there won't be much left to add to the narrative. Jim has his family already and now Dwight has his kid and will probably get back with Angela (The Senator is a great character). so i guess they'll spend the rest of the season on Dwight and his kid, next season will slowly get Ed Helms hooked back up with the secretary, and then that's about all there is left to tell. any predictions? Ed Helms/Secretary--seems obvious they end up together unless the writers want an unexpected ending. Angela--it's revealed soon that she and The Senator have never actually had sex. hinted that she'll get back with Dwight. Dwight--maybe ends up with Angela. personality softens considerably with his kid. Kelly Kapoor--comes into money. BJ Novak--with Kelly into money, asks Kelly to marry him because he sees it as a career boost. Creet--just doesn't come into work one day and is never heard from again. big secret about him hinted at, like he's on the FBI Most Wanted list or something. that accountant--he will help reveal that The Senator is gay. the boss--i don't really care.

after some thought, i think i'm just going to leave things as they are. i already told her i'd be willing to come over or that i could do an initial phone interview, and i got no real response from that. and it's a different person doing the interviewing, who will know i'm still interested. if he'd throw my resume away without going through a minor hoop of at least calling me, then i probably wouldn't have landed the job, anyway. and more, i'm going to be thin on money as it is when i move there in April, so $500 is a lot.

huh. the 'desperation' thing is something a friend also mentioned, though i hadn't considered that it puts HR in a tough spot. when the lady said "so do you want me to just take your name off the pile?" i said i'd still like to be considered (for whatever that's worth). i'm not sure how else to put it other than explaining that the opportunity is valuable enough to me to cover my own flight. and heck, in this market there aren't that many decent opportunities out there. but it wouldn't be the first time i've lost an interview because of distance. going to bed now and will have to decide when i get up on calling her and pushing the flight or not calling at all.

got a call this morning and the HR lady was very impressed with my resume, even said so twice. i think she mostly called because she wanted to find out if i actually did live 1,000 miles away like my resume indicated. once confirmed, the air kinda went out of that balloon. a phone interview is not an option, and there wasn't much of a reaction when i offered to fly out there because the pay really doesn't merit the expense of flying out there (at least in her opinion, anyway). i think the best route is to check my work schedule tonight, look at flights, call her back and be able to say "hey, i found a flight and i can get there next Wednesday. how would that work?" at the least, as an HR Director, she would be able to say if i'm a top top candidate to make the trip out worth my while, or if i'm kinda so-so and don't have a great chance. i have the feeling that a lot of prospective employers are just disregarding my application since i'm applying for mid- to entry-level work from so far away. stinks to be an out-of-state applicant, but at the same time, i've become much more marketable in the field by taking this job than if i'd stayed closer.

i work with a pseudo-governmental organization that deals with water use/usage in Texas, and we have a pretty small lab. (actually, i think we're hiring for lab technicians.)

sorry i can't remember where exactly it is, but there's a drag strip just a little west of the city. even if it's not exactly your thing, it's fun.

the Coors Brewery tour in Golden can be fun if you take the abbreviated tour--a self-guided trip through a few "in the beginning" posters and straight into the tasting room. i'm not a fan of Coors beer, but at the tasting room it was awesome. it's also best if you take their "limit four" rule as more of a suggestion. the Denver Art Museum is fun. just a simple drive up into the mountains is very beautiful, especially if you find a place to stop and take a quick trail. i prefer the non I80 roads, but all the ones along I80 are small and touristy (which isn't necessarily bad). a trip to Boulder is nice, and is definitely a good place to walk around. it's a lot like Madison. Pearl Street=State Street.

http://i756.photobucket.com/albums/xx208/game06/CIMG3096-2.jpghttp://i756.photobucket.com/albums/xx208/game06/CIMG3069-2.jpg very cool cribbage boards! i'm also of the type who can't draw a circle. but i can't afford to go out and i don't want to spend all my time staring at a computer, so i've started doing some artsy-crafty projects. i needed to find a hobby, so this was how i managed to avoid a second job as a freelance writer:) i've taken to silhouetting/stenciling because i don't have to create the original image, but just completely bastardize it to make it my own. i couldn't draw to save my life. these are my third and fourth pieces. i don't pretend i'm anything special at all, but don't much care because it's just fun to do. btw, if anyone wants, GIMP is a good PhotoShop-type freeware. and i use PosteRazor a lot (also freeware) to expand/contract images and to print out large pieces using only a regular home printer. edit: GIMP works fine, but i kinda feel like spending the $90 to get PhotoShop and learning on that partly just for the sake of learning how to use the most popular program.

in my six years as an editor, i always used AP, so it would have been tough to switch to Chicago. but you say it really well. even from issue to issue, if the writing style isn't standardized, the publication comes across as amateurish. and it's a mark of value, too. if a publication doesn't bother the time to proofread, then you can usually tell the lack of effort in content, too.