My first enemy.

The alarm.

One more day. Then the shackles of employment slap shut once again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited, both at the prospect of a job that doesn't suck and a big steady paycheck. But apart from school, I've had time to do whatever the hell I wanted for a sort of ridiculously long time now. It's weird to think that I won't be able to check whatever sites I want when I want. That my cell phone will have to go ignored until appropriate intervals. That my time won't be 100% my own whenever I want it to be.

I know, the woes and tribulations, right? Blah blah, bitch some more.

It's kinda cool though. I'm watching my "free" days tick away, and I chose to spend all of today writing. It felt good. Not just from a "I wrote" perspective (though that was awesome), but the affirmation of what I said previously, that when I don't have all the time in the world to do it, I actually do. I sort of suck like that.

So tomorrow is my last day, and I'm wondering what to do with it. Well, I have some errands I have to run, so I'll get that out of the way first. Need lunchy things that are easily preparable, and a new Def Leppard CD that must be made mine. Other than that though, it's a big question mark. Do I work on some organizing I've been meaning to do for like 2 years? Clean up real good and go back to work with a spotless apartment? Veg on the couch all day watching movies and/or playing games? Dive into some fanfic archives and embrace my inner nerd?

So many choices. Only one shot to make the "right" one.

First up, thanks to everyone for the congratulations. It was awesome to be bouncy and happy and have you guys be bouncy and happy with me.

And now, before I go get ready for a day of fun and excitement, ( some job details. )

I start Wednesday with training. It'll be weird to be working again ... but a good weird.

Very excited. :)

Got the job!

Gotthejobgotthejobgotthejob.

More details later. For now

gotthejobgotthejobgotthejob

The interview went great. At least from my end. I'm assuming things from his end. (LOVE ME DAMMIT.)

Now the waiting begins. I'm hoping to hear something tomorrow.

O Fate! Do not let my rare moment of optimism burst into fiery lashes of "and that's what you get, dumbass".

Yet Another Interview to come, this one with the department manager. I think we're closing in here. :)

After about an hour on the phone, I have scored a face interview on Monday.

Now I just have to be wonderful and charming. In person. Ahh, crap.

The race is on ... FIND JET WOLF SOMETHING TO WEAR.

I don't want to talk too much about it now in case I jinx it. But I just got a phone interview scheduled for Friday at 11am. And I would love this job.

Eeee!

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For those of you who've been asking, no, we didn't get the jobs.

I've been pretty upset about it. I was sure we had it all wrapped up, and I don't take disappointment too well. Add into the fact that I sat on my ass and wasted three weeks, and ... well, I've had better weekends.

All is not lost, no matter how much it felt like it for a while there. Gods know I don't want to do it again, but there's another 24 hour answering service which sounds like it's almost exactly like what I was doing before. I'm hoping to hear from them on Monday. Also, there's an employment agency not too far away, and I've downloaded and filled out all their forms.

I'm still quite bummed about the whole thing, but unfortunately moping around doesn't get me that job I need, so I'm trying not to dwell on it too much.

More updates as I can bring myself to write them.

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Imagine that, a productive day.

To start, our interviews were this morning. I really hope we get the jobs, they seem quite cool. The woman that interviewed me was pretty stony and hard to read, so I'm still a little uncertain about it. The one that Mike had, however, seemed quite pleased, so maybe it was just me. Anyway, we should find out either tomorrow or Saturday, so I'll be stressing until then. Boy, if we don't get this, I'm going to be one unhappy Wolf for having sat on my ass all this time. But I won't dwell on that, I shan't no for certain until tomorrow at the earliest.

Afterwards, we went to the courts to reserve our wedding day. Let me tell you, that in no way calmed my jumpy stomach. There were some slots still available on the 30th, which was another point of minor stress for me. We paid our reservation fees, handed over the paperwork, and then received a receipt. What I saw caused us to burst into fits of laughter. Ignore the fact that they spelled Mike's last name wrong, that's not the funny part:

We broke into a routine, spouting off things like:

"Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded--"
"I object!"
"Wedding sustained!"

Unfortunately, we did this a little more loudly than we'd intended, and I don't think the staff found us quite as amusing as we did. Government flunkies. No humour.

Still giggling to ourselves, we decided that our cupboards were looking pretty bare, so we went grocery shopping. Ooo.

Actually, I never enjoy spending money, but we walked out with a ton of stuff for very little money. It's amazing how far your dollar can go when you only have a few of them.

We even decided to get a little naughty, and bought a frozen pizza. Hey, it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno. Especially when DiGiorno is half the price.

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Good news: We have an interview on Thursday.
Bad news: It's at 8am. Ugh.

The dress code for this job is "business casual". That also happens to be the dress code for most of the jobs I'm looking at, so I thought that a glance at my wardrobe might be in order.

I own lots of t-shirts, some pairs of black jeans, and ... that's about it.

A clothes shopping trip appeared to be in order. Unfortunately, my cash supply is running low, and while we have a nice chunk of change in the bank right now, most of that is pre-spent on bills for August. Doubting very much that I could get even a used sock with my "good looks", we needed another plan.

Luckily, one of the many things my mother shipped me out with was a Wal-Mart credit card. Yeah, I know, clothes shopping at Wal-Mart. It made me cringe too, but beggars can't be choosers, and I'm pretty much at "begging" stage right now, so off we went.

Typically for me, nothing is ever simple, and the nearest Wal-Mart was about 25 miles away in downtown Portland. Using my good buddy MapQuest, I printed out directions, and got on the road. I found it with minimal difficulty, and walked out with some pants, shirts, and Diet Coke. (It was on sale!)

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way back, I took a wrong turn, and the 20 minute drive home took about three times that. Still, I got a nice scenic look at Portland, Hillsboro and Beaverton. That can't be all bad, right? Right.

You know what's currently messing me up more than anything else? It's figuring out when the hell stuff is on TV. We still have that <ahem> free cable, and I'm enjoying it tremendously, but I seem to be having more difficulty than is natural with the scheduling. And for some twisted reason, I can't get TV Guide to work for me at all. Channels are, of course, pretty helpful with telling you that stuff is on at 9am EST/8am CST, but don't bother to clue you in on what that is on the Pacific coast. I've tuned in at both 8am and 9am, thinking it's sure to be one or the other, but the thing's not on. But then just today, I noticed that HBO was showing Gladiator at 6:15pm EST, and lo and behold, it was showing for us at 6:15pm too. So now I'm totally screwed. All I know is, for the second Saturday in a row, I haven't been able to find X-Men: Evolution, and it's starting to piss me off.

Oh, and I also know that I hate Hate HATE Digimon. Ye gods, I hate that show. If I have to hear that henshin music one more time, I think I'll plunge a sewing needle repeatedly into my ear, and be grateful for the lessened pain.

Reposted from original Daily Deformations

It's amazing how fast time flies when you don't really have anything to do.

The situation on the job front looks pretty much the same as it did this time last week: A case of sitting on our ass and waiting. See, I really want this job. Both Mike and I have a good feeling about it. But they problem is that they're not actually doing interviews until next week, with work starting the week after. Now, when we went in for the initial application process, they weren't sure when Phase Two would start, but thought it could've been in this previous week. Being loathe to get a job only to quit, as well as predicting possible conflicts in interviews, we looked over the finances and decided to wait and hope.

Well, the waiting we've done with no problem, but the hoping didn't pay off. Not in terms of getting us the job sooner, anyway. So I feel a little bit guilty that I'm still not working, which is in turn keeping me from fully enjoying this "time off". I know I'll be kicking myself for that one after a month solid of working, but that's my life for you.

Anywhoo, we should know about the job for sure by the 3rd. Updates posted as they become available.

In other news, that envelope containing a slightly ornate piece of thick cardboard paper is giving me a mild anxiety attack. Funny how the "M" word can do that to you. I mean hell, Mike and I are getting married on our 9th anniversary. NINE YEARS. And what's really going to change? Bugger all, that's what. But still, it freaks me out. Bah.

I bathed Jett today, and only got moderately damp. <proud grin>

Reposted from original Daily Deformations

Part of the pre-employment process yesterday was filling out an application roughly the size of a college thesis loaded with supposedly insightful questions that always give me a chuckle. I guess that I'm just too cynical to believe that a company really gives a damn about me as a person, but I really want the job, so I cramped my hand, turned on the charm, and spent an hour filling out all four pages of these quasi-essay questions.

As a reward for this show of dedication on my part, I've done bugger all today aside from get out of bed, walk Jett, and shower.

And wallow in cable.

And play Lunar 2.

And write e-mail.

I feel so semi-guilty. We've decided that our finances are good enough that we can hold off until 1 August for the job we want, although I've also informed the temp agency that I'm available for any other work if they can find it for us until then. At that time, they told us that the company may be hiring as early as next week, which would be fabulous. I loathe the idea of working again (Do you realize that I've been unemployed for almost a month now? What a glorious, glorious world this is when you don't have to work.), but I'm going to dearly love the idea of a paycheck.

So now I'm left with potentially two weeks without responsibility, and I did nothing with my time. I feel kinda bad about that, I confess. But I thought a little bit, and decided that while I've not been working for money for the past three weeks, I have been working, and damned hard at that. Picking up one's life and relocating it about 2,500 miles away isn't a brisk walk in the park, after all. So if I want to spend my day watching VH-1 (I do indeed recommend the Def Lep movie if you're a fan of the Sheffield boys, incidentally), I shall do so without guilt.

....without much guilt, anyway.

Now where'd I put that screenwriting program..?

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So. Uhm. Hey.

Well, here we are, in cloudy, chilly Oregon. And lemme tell you, it feels goooood.

I have a bit of work to do on ye olde site here (not the least of which is to go through all of the pages that Amy fiddled with and removing all traces of whatever satanic HTML editor she used <duck>), and that work will go slowly. Bear with me, and I'll get back into the swing of things.

(And yes, I know that I have yet to award the last Fuck of the Week. I realized that somewhere in Oklahoma, but wasn't really in a position to do anything about it. Look for the final award before the week's end.)

I'm not sure how much to put here and how much to leave to Manifest Destiny. Suffice it to say for now that I love our place. It's a two-story townhome that is, admittedly, a little smaller than I was expecting, but in a "cozy" way as opposed to a "cramped" way. Mike and I have slowly but surely been putting up some wall hangings, and bit by bit, the place is coming together. Boxes are disappearing and clutter is creeping into various closets and such where we don't have to look at it (which is where clutter belongs, after all).

Today we also made our first steps towards employment. Things look pretty darned good, too, though I'll hold off on any details until we know for sure that we have it. The only problem is, things won't go down until the beginning of August. Bleah. So now we're left wondering what exactly to do. Neither of us are fans of seeking out a job only to leave it within a few weeks, but we're also not too keen on sitting on our asses and not making any money. We're currently considering going to a temp agency just for the interium time. Nothing glamerous, nothing guaranteed, but we'll at least have a shot of raking in some bucks before our real jobs start. I'll keep you posted on that front.

That new chapter of life has started. With a bang, too, I haven't really had time to sit down and enjoy it too much yet. I can tell you this much, though: I adore this weather, the Sleep Cocoon of the Gods is even more wonderful than I originally expected, and I'm so glad we managed to bring that ugly-ass chair because it's damned comfy.

<sniff> I missed you guys so much.