Domestic Geek

Three days left of the old silkscreen job. Starting to panic a bit about finding work, but I'm trying to remain positive that a better position is just around the corner. I've been tempted to apply for jobs not in the field just to get by, but I'll get comfortable, get stuck and never get back into the graphic design field. I need to tough this out and not take the easy way out. What sucks is there are lots of jobs listed on Craigslist and Monster that are in my field, they're just not within driving distance of my house. Poo.

I worked on nothing job-related again today. I actually worked on a t-shirt for Marcus and one for me. It's my last chance to get things printed that are my own designs. I was feeling guilty about it until the art director asked what I thought of a shirt that he had made yesterday while I was out on jury duty. After that I was like, "Screw it--I'm going to work on my designs." So, I did. The company's deposits had holds on them again and the art director's check didn't clear this week. He was on the phone most of the morning trying to clear up the overdrafts on his account. Man, glad that wasn't me. Still a good thing that I've been given the boot. Employees shouldn't have to worry about paychecks clearing. Nobody's come right out and said it officiall, but I believe the company is toast. All the signs are there.

Speaking of jury duty, I obviously didn't get picked to sit on the panel since I was back at work today. Glad I didn't get picked because the trial was a civil case dealing with guaranteed loan defaults of defunct telecommunications companies. Dry stuff. I had already made up my mind about the case with just the kinds of questions the lawyers were asking those in the jury box. No way I could've been impartial. So, I may get called to serve again next week. This Federal court jury picking system is screwey. I've had to call every weekend to see I had to report the following Monday for over a month. I wasn't picked for Monday, but this week was told I had to call back on Monday to see if I was picked for Tuesday (and I was). Oh, well. Small world, though. My art teacher from Platt (Marty) was there. So I had a friendly face to shoot the bull with while waiting for us to be taken up to a courtroom. He got picked to sit in the other trial, so I have no idea if he's a juror or not. He had to report Monday, wasn't picked, then had to come back on Tuesday. Like I said, screwey.

The dog is having horrible gas tonight. I hope that doesn't mean a repeat of last week. He had horrible gas the night before the sickness set in. I need to go to bed but I'm afraid to try and sleep with him farting like that until Marcus gets home. Figures this is racquetball night when he gets home later than ususal. *sigh*

OK, I guess that's about it. Exciting, huh? Please send good employment vibes my way.

So, after a week of diarrhea and scaring the shit out of me because he wouldn't eat or drink, my old dog seems to be making a recovery. Don't count that 14½ year old dog out yet! No poo on the carpet in two days and he's eating soft food (and boiled hamburger per the vet's advice) and I found him drinking out of the toilet yesterday. He was actually bounding about when I got home from work. Whew.

I got picked for jury duty. I have to report tomorrow. Boooooo. It wouldn't be so bad except that I have to dress nice and I have to go downtown. Downtown Denver sucks. Parking is a nightmare down there. So, I have to get up extra early so I can get pizza work done and come home to make myself presentable to report at 8 am.

Guess I'll watch a little television and make it an early night (if the screaming children next door will stuff a sock in it).

I'm back. I had planned to return in a couple of weeks, but cut my hiatus short because I just had to share this little bit of news:

I got the following in my inbox early Tuesday morning and didn't think much of it. The art director was working on his resume on Monday and I chuckled to myself that maybe he was planning on leaving and I was going to get a promotion.



Well, guess what happened at work yesterday? I was given my two weeks notice that my job at the screenprinter is being eliminated. Sales are THAT BAD. When the art director broke the news, he informed me that he was looking for other work as well. I wonder if the company is finally going under. Anyway, as of November 1st, I am again underemployed. So much for leaving on my terms, eh? Oh, well. At least I got some art production experience under my belt. Like the horoscope said, I'll probably be better off because of it. We'll see.

Even though I was expecting something like this eventually, the shock didn't hit me until I was standing in the aisle at King Soopers. I suddenly went numb and would've started bawling had I not been in public. I had to fight the urge to buy every comfort food within the place. I had to remind myself that I had I finally fit into my smaller pants last week. I've been bike riding with Marcus every weekend since my birthday and I'm finally firming up. Did I really want to sabotage that? No. So, everything went back on the shelves except one bag of M&Ms. Yay, me! Besides, if I don't find other work soon, money will be really tight and I would have felt really shitty about blowing money on junk.

In other news, my poor old dog has had explosive diarrhea for the last three days. Even though I had planned on milking the screenprinter out of every dollar possible the next two weeks, I took today off to tend to him (and me since he's kept me up the last two nights). I'm not sure if the Immodium I gave him is working or not as I don't want to follow him outside in the rain to see if his poo is runny. The poor guy is exhausted, though. I feel so bad for him. I also hate cleaning up poop out of the carpet. How do you moms do it? I don't think I could deal with so much poop on a daily basis. You women are saints.

Well, other than that, my life has been the same the last few weeks. I've still been slowly going through my junk and throwing stuff out. Why do I own so much freakin' junk?

I was playing with the Google Maps API last week at work. I had planned on implementing it into the company website before I got the news I was canned. That thing is really cool. It's too bad there's no reason to put that on any of my personal sites, but it's still a cool thing to know. I wish my javascript skills were better. I'm sure I'd pick the scripting of it up a lot quicker if they were.

I'm also trying out a new font manager. I haven't had one since my free trial of Suitcase and Font Reserve ran out a looooong time ago. I found a post about it over at Mezzoblue. It's put out by the folks over at Linotype and it's called Font Explorer X. Supposedly a Windows version is in the works, as well. It's very iTunes-ish. I haven't had much time to mess with it, but I like what I see so far. I hate Suitcase with a passion and swore never to waste my money on it. Speaking of fonts, I wish foundries would lower the price for their fonts. Offer fonts for $.99 like the Apple store does music and see how many people would actually buy legal copies of fonts instead of pirating them. I bet the foundries would make more money. I know I would have less of a problem buying a font for a couple of bucks as opposed to $25 or more. It's working for iStockPhoto. Just a thought.

Speaking of iStockPhoto, I'm seriously considering getting myself on there as a contributor. I can do vector illustration just as well as anybody on there. It would never make me rich, but hey, everybody could use a little residual income here and there, eh?

Well, guess that's about it. I'm sure I'll have a lot of posts coming in the next two weeks because the screenprinter probably won't get a lot of work out of me. My motivation is totally shot. That's why I'm all for severence packages and being let go on the spot. Let's hope the next company that hires me can actually afford to provide the benefits that I was promised after 3 months.

So, I can't take a shower. For the third time in as many days, we have no water. We've not been warned as to when these water outages will occur, we have no idea who is turning the water off and we have no idea when it will be back on. I also need to run some laundry and the dish washer. I am not a happy camper right now.

Man, I really hate that cheery/happy mood icon that goes with the set I use. Someday, when I have time, I'll have to make a different set of my own mood icons. Yeah. When I have time...

Well, just as I thought it would, not being able to keep even water in my stomach for several days led to my body developing a bladder infection. It cost $97 Friday to pee in a cup and get them to give me drugs for a condition I already knew I had. Jerks. I wish you could get UTI medication over-the-counter like you can yeast stuff. I know it will never happen since they're antibiotics, but a girl can dream. Good news is I've kept food down with no nausea for the last two days. Yippee!!!! Eating is good.

I told Marcus a few weeks back that I was finally ready to start letting go of some of the crap that I hoard. I'm a total packrat and it's gotten way out of control. He absolutely did not believe me. I can't say that I blame him, though. I talk a good game, but rarely do I follow through on my plans. Well, not this time. My life is in total chaos and I decided I needed to get rid of clutter in my life. So, I started with the physical clutter. Things have been going in the dumpster left and right. Ancient class notes, out-dated calendars, old sheet music, craft supplies I'll never use, worn out clothes, VHS tapes, cassettes, floppy disks, gifts from people I'll never see again and never cared for in the first place, rickety shelving, tacky decorations--if I haven't used it since we've moved back to Denver, it's probably getting tossed. When it comes time to move again, I don't want to be moving any of this crap again. Better to get it out of my life and out of my way now so I can move on to cleaning up other areas of my life.

While I was going through stuff in the craft room, I came across my "Maggie the Messmaker" cross-stitch kit yet again. I remember blogging about how I was so upset that I had lost the instructions. A quick search turns up that I did that way back on MARCH 19, 2003! Dimensions had sent me new instructions by March 27th. Here it is 2½ years later and I still haven't started on the darned thing! I started pondering this and can't even remember the last time I cross-stitched. I used to do that all the time. I always had a kit in the car to keep me busy should something come up. I can't even remember the last time I did anything crafty at all. I think that's one of my biggest problems right now. I don't allow myself time to do the things I enjoy that keep me sane. Christine at Big Pink Cookie was mentioning The Martha! Show where everyone there had a knitted or crocheted poncho. I'm considering making the crocheted one. I used to have a poncho when I was a kid in the '70s and I LOVED IT! Marcus' sister asked me to make a quilt for her youngest daughter. That's should be fun, too.

OK, I've wasted enough time sitting here. I need a shower.