Back with 7.5 percent more nonsense!

I should do a correlation study of my blog and see if my threory proves true that I blog more in happier times. I think I would be right. But being right is no fun if there's not a prize. Anyway, the sadness is mostly coming from work these days. Well, OK, it's only coming from work these days.

As everyone knows, newspapers are tanking (hard), and we're no exception here. Actually, we are. We make tons of money. Alas, our parent company has huge debts, and we don't make quite enough money to pay that off. I think the company would be in better shape if they cut the dead weight (book publishing, oodles of free publications, the Georgia edition...), but alas those are Traditions and Important Things to the family and must only pried out of the family's cold, dead hands.

But I digress. As part of the company's money-saving efforts, everyone had to take a pay cut. They were done on a "sliding" scale (that didn't so much slide as it bumped along and stopped hard enough that the people who make the real money won't be hurt), so it could be worse, but I'm losing 7.5 percent of my already not-enough salary. That's a lot of money right now. I already don't make enough to cover the bills, but losing that much more is going to require some sort of magic fix. Fortunately, I am good at being poor.

I suppose my biggest gripe about the cuts (other than the cuts themselves) is that people who make $50,000+ lose 10 percent. That's a lot, yeah, but I feel like that barely touches the corporate people who make a large six figures. Ten percent of $250,000? Ouch, but OK. Seven and a half percent to $30,000? How am I supposed to live? Just sayin'.

So in an effort to cut costs where necessary, I've canceled my cable. TV and Internet. I would feel worse about it but a) Comcast is teh suck and b) I like paying the rent more than I like Grey's and ANTM. Sort of. There are bright sides though. The Boy and I are moving in together when my lease is up here in May, so TV and Internets will return then. And when I need Internet, I'll go back to Starbucks or some other coffee-serving place with wireless and sit and blog and make fun of peoplecheck my e-mail. So my blog will be funny again, even if the effort is not sustained. Rejoice!

Deep thoughts

This morning at the gym, I was really hoping something would happen that I could write about and make fun of later. Sadly, I was not so lucky.

There was only one older dude there when I got there, so my hopes of a good story were dashed. The only thing that happened was that Dude asked me if I was OK after I almost passed out from doing squats because I am foolish and think I can do things like that. Then he ran — RAN — on the treadmill for the rest of the time I worked out, no doubt grateful for his old man body that doesn’t try to pass out from lifting weight. I didn’t eat anything before I went, so that probably had something to do with it, although there is no excuse for fatigue when you use the embarrassingly not heavy weights I chose.

But I digress.

Well, sort of. When I’m at the gym I usually do some kind of weights and then walk on the treadmill for a half hour or something. Let me tell you, that treadmill time sucks. I don’t like walking or running unless I’m getting somewhere, and the time just draaaags by. So to entertain myself I listen to Hanson or NPR and think about Things. These Things are typically pointless and really don’t do anything to make the time pass more quickly because they aren’t really anything that requires deep thought.

Anyhow, this morning I was thinking about work. No, not my actual job because that doesn’t require a lot of outside thinking unless I’m looking at a copy of the paper, but my place of work. Specifically, I was thinking about our entrance and exit gates to the employee parking lot.

A few months ago, a good chunk of the security staff got laid off, so our gates are now the first line of defense against keeping out the riff raff. However, the entrance gate is always up — anyone can drive in, park, walk through the open distribution gate and come right on in the building! How nice of us to make it that easy. Anyway, an e-mail was sent out this week saying the exit gate is now operational and to drive slowly and it will raise when a car approaches.

Erm, what’s wrong with this picture? Why impede employees’ exit but still make it simple for anyone to drive in? I heard there was going to be a card reader installed at some point, but in the meantime, I’m just puzzled. I mean, if someone REALLY didn’t want to wait for the exit gate, couldn’t they just drive out the entrance side? I once drove in through the exit because the entrance gate was down and the guard shack was unmanned. The same thing could happen again!

I guess the parking lot has been open-access for long enough that any real threat of something bad happening is pretty minimal. Now if only they could figure out how that dog got in the parking lot last night…

2008: Good riddance

I've been meaning to do some kind of 2008 wrap-up, but every start I make feels like it doesn't even do justice to the year that was. At the risk of sounding all sentimental and stuff, I'm going to remember this year for quite some time. It was full of really high highs and really low lows, and maybe some points in between, but extremes were the name of the game. I don't know how ot sum up everything; I could write paragraph after paragraph in sickening detail about every little thing, but why? So I can go back and think really hard about some of the crap I put up with? Nah. So for your reading ease and my emotional ease, here is 2008: Abridged.

January: School. Took 18 hours. Thought it would manageable AS A SECOND-SEMESTER SENIOR. It was, for about three days. Started getting ASB stuff going and realized it would be a slight headache. Lived in the newsroom. Started The Great Resume Mail-Out to every newspaper for which I could find the name and address of a managing editor.

February: Still tried to fool myself into thinking 18 hours was manageable. Slipped a little but what else is new? Witnessed the Versus Valentine Debacle. Laughed hysterically whenever I thought of it. Moped that I had no Valentine. Rejection letters resulting from said mail-out began arriving. Forgot what self-esteem was. Lived in the newsroom. Worked like a maniac on ASB stuff and realized it would be worth it.

March: Totally slacking on classes. Go figure. Keeping up, but barely. Really only cared about Guralnick's class. Lived in the newsroom. Loved ASB. Jarred got fired. I took over The Hustler. My life promptly fell apart. Cried at least twice a day. In one week only managed to sleep 5 hours. Would occasionally forget to eat. Yelled at a lot of people, including some who didn't deserve it. Stopped going to class because I was afraid to be out of the newsroom. Updated the resume and continued to canvass the U.S. with that and my clips. More rejection.

April: Wait, I had class? Never missed Guralnick's though. Realized I AM a good writer. Not good enough to write a paper without reading the book and think the professor wouldn't figure me out. Cried a lot more. Had my first panic attack. Would I graduate? Thought I was going to fail two classes. Took SND Quick Course and gave my resume to everyone there. Got a call from the T-U. Got an interview from the T-U. Got a job from the T-U (on the last day of class). Saw Steve Earle. Cried during my favorite song. Still had to finish paper to get grade for a class. Didn't sleep for three days straight in order to finish paper. Did not finish paper. Lived in the newsroom. More Hustler drama.

May: Flew to Jacksonville to look for place to live. Found it. Foolishly thought I could afford it. Wrote paper that was due last month on plane home. Finished paper at the very last second possible. Got a sympathy grade that let me pass. Washed my hands of the newspaper. Drank heavily and threw up a lot. Symbolic. GRADUATED. Moved to Jacksonville. Started job. Thought I would do horribly. I didn't? Fancied myself well-adjusted.

June: Beaches. Sunburns. Made a handful of friends in the newsroom. Nothing else remarkable. Still fancied myself well-adjusted. Got kittens. Mom visited. Bought furniture. Bad choice. Started Scrabbling heavily with Pat.

July: Friends invited me with them for the Fourth. Realized, "Hey, these people actually care about me!" Got friendly with more people in the newsroom. Melted in Florida heat. Living alone is expensive. Found good places to drive around when I need to drive around.

August: Started working on the daily. Started missing home. Started wanting to broaden social circle. Got scared of my first "hurricane." Acted like a Tennessean with the snow and stocked up on bread, water and toilet paper. Lost power for three days. Met The Boy. Realized I very much liked The Boy. More work nonsense.

September: Whispers of layoffs in the newsroom. Rumors are just that. The Boy and I continue to hang out. Make wonderful friends on the news desk.

October: Birthday month! Work continues. Layoff whispers get a little louder. Start working more on the daily than on communities. Things with The Boy keep going well. Things with new friends going well. BIRTHDAY! More than I could ask for. Cat breaks her toe.

November: Layoffs become reality. One of my fantastic friends gets the boot. Another friend quits. Morale drops to frightening lows. Spend Thanksgiving with The Boy's family. Awesome. Homesick.

December: Go home for a few days. The Boy meets the family. Glad to be home but glad when I get back to Jacksonville. Work work work. Christmas is OK. Work work work. New Year's Eve is fun. Fireworks. New year.

And there you have it, my year in brief. Despite all the lows, I think the highs were enough to get me through it all. I graduated. I got a pretty decent job. I got a great boyfriend.

As soon as I was finished with The Hustler, I could breathe. In just a couple days, my whole self did a 180 and I was finally OK again. I didn't have anything to worry about, I didn't have to stay up until 5 a.m., I had nothing to keep me up until 5 a.m. It's funny; things seemed to just get mediocre and routine after all that, but they weren't. They were finally just normal.

So my year was sucky, and so was everyone else's. I guess 2008 was just Year of the Suck, and now it's time to move on and find something good to look forward to this year. I know what I'm looking forward to, and it's finally something that I want because I want it not because it's going to rescue from a crap situation (much the way I looked at graduation; no more drama). And for once, I'm excited about a new year and seeing what new things happen and how much is going to change in these next 12 months. It's a pretty long time.

If you're a fatty and you know it, clap your hands

I swear my kittens just clapped their little paws. Bess was snuggled up all cute next to me on the couch, when Jorge comes running in and wedges her massive self "between" Bess and me. I say "between" because it more like "on top of Bess until Bess moved over." Now Jorge is stretched out across an entire couch cushion and poor little Bess is banished to the floor. Jorge is very demanding when it comes to attention, especially attention given while she's laying on the couch. She has laid directly on my computer while I'm sitting here because I had the audacity to only pet her on the floor and not bring her up into my lap. Brats. Both of them.

Speaking of the girls getting very snuggly, now that it's cold at night, they like to sleep even more ON MY PILLOW than they already do. Last night was cold enough that it felt like home. The low was something like 29; it was 37 or something when I left at 8:45 this morning. Unacceptable. This is Florida, for crying out loud.

I wore real shoes (if you really consider flats real shoes)to work, but I didn't wear a jacket. Just a long sleeve turtleneck (not even a sweater). Some people at work though wore coats and scarves and are saying they want to put space heaters in their cubes. Pansies.

The Boy is excited about coming home with me in December, but also kind of not excited because it's going to be effin cold. Mom ambushed him last night when I was on the phone with her and asked if she could talk to him. I was like "Oh he's busy. His hands are full. [Other excuses.]" and she was like I'll wait! So they talked, and after he was like, "Maybe next time can I get some warning?"

I'm Giving Thanks with his family next week and trying to think of something to bring. His mom said I don't have to bring anything, but I feel funny coming empty handed. Apparently the whole family is on a diet ("Hi, I'm Elizabeth. I've never been on a diet and thus only know how to cook fatty Southern food. I do best when the recipe requires more than a pound of butter. Nice to meet you [y'all]!"), so that really limits my options. I'm thinking banana bread or something safe that doesn't necessarily have to go with the actual meal. Between that stress (mild though it is) and work stress and my usual high level of stress over nothing, my digestive system is rebelling against the rest of my body in a bad way. Happy Thanksgiving!

UPDATED: Eating half a bag of Swedish fish does nothing to aid in the recovery of normal digestive processes. Make note.

As long as it's not a cuckoo clock

So this weekend I went with The Boy to a work get-together at his boss' house, and everyone who was there has at least one kid, and some of them even brought their baby (or three, in the case of one of his co-workers whose poor wife popped out triplets). It was a little awkward, as The Boy and I neither are married nor have babies. But one of the babies was ultra precious and pretty cool, and we played for a long time. I mean, I pretty much ignored most of the adults and just had fun with the kid.

And last week a co-worker brought his daughter to work, and she's maybe one of the cutest baby I have ever seen and she kept looking over her shoulder and kind of raising her eyebrow at us really skeptically, and it was hilarious/endearing.

And then I looked at this (one of my favorite bloggers' Flickr stream), and now my biological clock is all TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK.

Ugh. This is my life.

Improvements continue...

So today I got two important things: a haircut and new bedding. The hair is great (took off almost six inches — good riddance!) and the bedding is extra-great! I've been a little unhappy with my bedroom because it felt a little dark and not very cozy, but the new stuff brightened it up a little bit. If I can find a cute headboard on the cheap (I'm thinking of just painting the wall behind my bed to avoid hardware, etc.) and some kind of desk, I'll be good to go! Pictures of both:

I had to do the awkward MySpace-mirror picture I hate so much, but the kittens haven't yet figured out how to work the camera, so they couldn't take it for me. Sorry.)
My pretty new bed! The kittens are laying on it as I write this, so I take it they approve. And yes, I sleep with that bear. He will turn 22 years old this year, so we've been together a long time. Don't judge me.

Home improvement

Ah, I finally got a rug for my living room! I still have a long way to go in there in terms of making it cozier, but the rug helps. The kittens seem to enjoy it too, since they were all over it as soon as I laid it down. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out:

There's no place like home

Lately, I've been really missing Tennessee. I want to go to Nashville more than I want to breathe, and I really miss mountains and, well, I just miss land that isn't flat. I get great gas mileage here, but sometimes I miss having to gear down to make it up a hill. Also, Florida isn't as fully Southern as East TN. Or so I thought.

Jacksonville is close enough to Georgia that we get our share of rednecks, hillbillies and people who speak in terms I can understand. Today, I had to drive out to the ghetto because that's where the nearest Comcast store is located, and on my way out there, I passed a road called Confederate Point. All of a sudden, it was like I was home.

Another good story to do with home (my home here, not so much the ones in Tennessee): I locked myself out of my building last night. I keep three hooks on my living room wall on which I hang my keys, purse, etc., and when I came in I hung up my keys and not my purse. Then when I left, I grabbed my purse from the couch, locked my door on the knob (requiring no key) and went to my car. As soon as I got to my car, I realized I had no keys, and even though I tried, I couldn't break into my apartment or pick the lock. Part of me is glad that I couldn't just push my door open because it doesn't look very secure, but I would have broken the frame and probably the door if I'd gone that route. Comforting. Long story short, my landlord was out of town, but his business partner (whom I'd never met until last night) had keys and came to let me in. Good. I'm getting copies made of my keys ASAP, though, and giving them to Pat or Stef or someone reliable.

Additionally, I had to drive to the Comcast store earlier to get a new power cord for my modem. Why? Because my cats chewed through the other one. I'm surprised I didn't end up with fried kitten at some point, but thankfully I did not. Now if only I can get them to stop snoring, we'll be golden.

Addendum to previous post

A woman is sitting at a table near me talking to a dude about various topics. Here are a few of the things I've heard about this evening and a summary of her comments in parentheses:

Coffee (it gives her the shits, but she likes Frappucinos)
Faking orgasms (she used to with some guy and he TOTALLY realized it)
Asian porn (it's weird; Asian women look funny)
Pornography in general (the women scream like they're getting killed; she doesn't have it in her to scream like that even if it's good)
Pulling hair during sex (there's an art to it [dude chimes in: you've got to twist it around] so that it doesn't really hurt)

I can't keep doing this because I'm really getting upset. I need to go home. And hang out with my cats. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO.

(As I was getting ready to post this, the conversation took a horrible, horrible turn that I shan't disclose here because writing makes it too real, but suffice to say this whole talk made me a little bit glad that I'm single.)

UPDATE: OH MY GOD THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT CRAIGSLIST CASUAL ENCOUNTERS SECTION AND HOW THEY'VE RESPONDED TO ADS ON THERE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I BET THAT IS HOW THEY MET

Oh, Sbux

People (not baristas, mind you) at Five Points Starbucks are friendlier even than people in Nashville, and that's tough. But it's an odd friendly, like a please-stop-talking-to-me-I-am-clearly-preoccupied-making-fun-of-
you-in-my-blog kind of friendly. Dude is sitting next to me reading the T-U and New York Times and asking me, "Did you hear about [fill in the blank]?"

I WORK AT A NEWSPAPER YES I PROMISE I HEARD ABOUT IT.

Also, I feel a little funny not preparing to go back to Nashville/VU. Now's about the time I'd be peacing out of Tuesday Morning and spending time "packing" and "getting my stuff together," which means I'd just be spending more time laying on the couch with Kenny and letting my mom feed me.

In other news, I'm getting a neighbor tomorrow and a new stove within a couple weeks, according to my landlord. Hooray! Four fully functional units I can cook on!

Also, I went to the beach this afternoon with Deirdre, et al. The sun wasn't terribly strong, but I laid on my stomach most of the time and the backs of my legs got burned. So I quite literally have a hot ass. Not comfortable, I'm afraid.

Because, yeah, I'll cry in public

The authorities had discovered the rarest and most pitiable of creatures: a feral child.

I found this story linked through Dooce, and sat in my little corner of Starbucks last crying like a fool. Please read it at some point, but maybe wait until the end of the day or something because this is not a story that will necessarily make you happy.

On the completely different topic of newspapers and the Internet (one we all know I am quite fond of), this is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long time. (Linked from Romensko.) I mean, really? Thank heavens the T-U is into Web (mostly), but I can pick out a few people who would think the Inquirer made a brilliant move. Good grief.

Easily annoyed

What's worse than a girl in too-tight pants that give her a uni-butt and muffin tops? A man in too-tight pants that give him a uni-butt and muffin tops.

Gross.

This guy at Starbucks is probably wearing a 28 pair of pants when he should really be in a 34. I'm upset.

The great wall of ... idiocy

This weekend I stopped by Publix to get some cat food and other sundries, and while I waited in the line to check out, I noticed that the new issue of Time was out, so I picked up a copy. The main headline was "The Great Wall of America," and the story was about the wall going up between Mexico and the U.S., something I've been following for a while.

I put all my stuff, including the magazine, down to be scanned, and the check-out was doing her thing, when she picked up the magazine and exclaims, "America has a great wall? What?!" At first I thought she was kidding — people joke about things like this, I suppose. But she kept going with it, and then the girl who was bagging pulls the magazine out of the bag she just put it in and goes, "I thought only China had a great wall! What are they talking about?"

At this point I felt like it was only fair for me to intervene, so I told them the story was about the wall between Mexico and the U.S., and they looked at me in utter disbelief. They didn't seem to know that, yes, a wall/fence/barrier of some sort is being constructed in order to "reduce" illegal immigration. 

Check-out girl laughed a puzzled little laugh, and bagger girl says, "Can't they just hop the fence? They think nobody's going to climb that wall? People's crazy and they'll climb anything!"

At that point I'd paid and attempted to gather up my stuff, but they were STILL carrying on, so I just stood there for a minute then said I had to go and walked away.

This is just so blatantly idiotic I don't even need to make fun of it. It takes care of itself.