no title today.

I'm bummed. I thought I did really well at yesterday's interviews (plural: there were two, and two tests that I also passed) but I didn't seem to get called. I called HR at noon to find out when I might be called and she said that all offers would be extended today. So perhaps they just haven't finished calling, or perhaps I'm just not going to get the job. Oh well; if I don't get it at least I've been to an interview recently and know what to expect. Previously I hadn't been to an interview in six years. That's before I had to present a resume; I just had to fill out an application. I came home today and sent an email for another job that I saw in a free community paper for an administrative assistant. This time I pretty much wrote a cover letter outlining my qualifications and why I want the job. We'll see if I can get that one. It's not more money, but it's more intrigue. We'll see!

What this try has also taught me is that I can try. I've been scared before, unwilling to take the risk to find something that I would be happier with. Now I'm going to push for more interviews and find something. Are there any newspapers, magazines, or direct mailings in the Tampa Bay area that are looking for a fantastic copy editor, a typist, an admin. assistant or to fill any number of publishing/customer service-related positions? I'm your gal! I'm hardworking, efficient, energetic and nit-picky.

Now that I'm done plugging myself ... I've got nothing else. Tomorrow I'm going with my mother and sister to visit my grandmother in Bradenton. I hope it doesn't rain the entire time or it'll be a miserable. Sunday I'm going with Shea and her mom to see the Diana exhibit at the International Museum in St. Petersburg. I'm not too psyched about the exhibit (I've never been too excited about Diana and the whole British monarchy thing) but it may have some interesting things and I'm sure we'll all have fun. I've nothing to write so I'm gonna just go edited some caching articles.

Oh! And the library got my book in (The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber) so I stopped by on my way home from work. Looks like I have interesting reading now!

lemmings are bookworms too!

Okay, being that this little game has been played by all my blogger friends, I figure I'll join in.

Rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

From The Poet and The Murderer by Simon Worrall:

Ireland was only seven years old when the seventeen-year-old Chatterton commetted suicide by drinking arsenic, but London's gossiping classes still buzzed with tales of his brilliant career. Using the pen name Thomas Rowley, a fifteenth-century monk whose work Chatterton claimed to have discovered at St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol, he forged a series of seductive medieval poems that in their day were as popular as Beatles songs were in the 1960s. Wordsworth called Chatterton a "marvelous Boy."

Your turn! L, I know you're next. :D

NPR and insurance claims.

I've become quite addicted to WUSF, which is our local NPR station. But why does every reporter have to sound exactly the same -- like Alan Alda?

They all have the exact same rise and fall of their voices ... like they're all reading off the same cue card.

But

In

Other

News:

I have gotten another job. At least, I think I have. I go in for a formal interview tomorrow and I'm nervous as heck, but the woman on the phone was very positive, and if I don't completely mess up I'll be starting Monday. It's a Mon-Fri 8-5 job making six grand more a year, and it's something completely new, so I'll be learning again, which is one of the main problems I have with my current job. I'm not learning anything. I'd love to edit for a career, and maybe in the future I'll be able to, but I think I'm going to jump straight into the water.

And, if I hit the bottom my manager will take me back. I'm not about to burn any bridges.

Fog.

The fog rolled in with the light this morning. When I went to work the night was clear, but as the sun rose I couldn't even see the road from the store. I decided not to take the job offer from the other day, but it's nice to know that there are things out there and that I won't be stuck for so long. I have the magazine, but I need something that pays too.

In the news: Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide Sunday. Sandra Dee died from liver disease and pnuemonia. Terry Shivo's feeding tube was again left in. Paris Hilton's cell phone was hacked into, and the phone numbers posted on the internet. Good to live in America, eh?

In other news, I will have lost my boyfriend as of tonight -- Grand Turismo 4 (GT4) came out today. This letter from Pencopal pretty much covers everything. Prepare to fight. But for tonight it's pizza and beer. See ya!

A job offer.

So they emailed me with a job offer yesterday. I called her back and the job is editing a phone book for three weeks or maybe more. Not exactly what I had in mind, but my first actual job offer. I don't think I'm going to take it, but I told her that I would call her back after I talked to my boss about maybe working nights while I work there during the day. We'll see, and I'll tell you how it goes.

High score last night: 141. Subsequent scores: 118, 107, 101 and 102. I kept going downhill. There's a league on Sunday evenings that I was thinking about joining.

Anywho, I'm going to be late for work if i don't get moving. More later!

Fatty Mc Fatterson rides in this car!

You know what movie sucks? A Day Without A Mexican. And that's unfortunate because the premise of the movie is so funny. California wakes up one day and all the Mexicans are gone. There isn't anyone to harvest the fruit or paint the houses ... border control has nothing to do, people start freaking out and buying all the fresh fruit they can (it looked like hurricane prep to me). But the acting was terrible and it moved so slow. So sad. Hopefully 10 years from now (because you know it'll still be an issue) they'll remake it with better actors and a better written story.

The Matchmaker was on the other day and I watched it again. Guilty pleasures all around, people. I love that movie. I tell Christen it was made before Garafalo became a nasty man-hating bitch (even though I like her that way too).

We saw Paperclips on Sunday. Good stuff. Of course, for a G-rated movie, most of the people we watched it with got the senior discount. A documentary, it deals with a small town in Tennessee who started collecting paperclips to honor the six million Jews killed in the Halocaust. If it's showing in your area, go see it!

Books I've read:

A Rip in Heaven

by Jeanine Cummins -- awesome, really. I read it the first night I bought it and stayed up till 3:30 to do so (hey, it's late for me). Thankfully I didn't work the next day. The memior follows a family through a tragedy when two sisters are accosted and they and their male cousin are forced off a bridge. He's the only one that survived, is immediately the suspect in the girls' murder and is severely mishandled by the police.

The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall -- I've never read a more misleading book. It wasn't bad, mind you. Actually it was quite good. I was entranced. But everything on the front and back talks about Emily Dickinson and the Mormon church. IS it about Emily Dickinson? Nope. It's about a master forger who forged thousands of documents, including one Dickinson poem. There are 2 chapters on Emily Dickinson -- the first, where they talk about how they realized the poem was a forgery, and one in the middle when they talk about the parts of her life that Hofmann had to have learned about to accurately forge her handwriting. Every quote (there are 6) on the covers talks about Dickinson's life and Mormon theology -- NOT that she was one of many people forged in a list that also includes Daniel Boone, Harriet B. Stowe, George Washington and many many early Mormons. Read it because it's good; don't read it because it has anything to do with Emily Dickinson.

fiction or fantasy?

Fantasy: Something that could never happen.

Fiction: Something that could happen but doesn't.

I dislike fantasy. I will go so far as to say the H-word on this. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, like Tolkein and Dracula ... but yeah, I hate fantasy. So here's my rule: fantasy is something that as far as we know, could never happen. This includes aliens that take on human characteristics, vampires, werewolves, coming back from the dead, and several others that I just can't think of right now. Please don't make me borrow these types of books. I will read three books of something like Bite by Richard Laymon and realize it's not someone who thinks she's bitten by a vampire but really it's some mixed up underground kid. It's really about vampires and then I will throw the book on the ground in disgust. Blah. Screw that, there's enough wierdness in real life, why do I need to get mixed up in that crap?

There is an exception in the genre -- books that start out in reality but make some break due to a tramatic event. This is evident in Rice's Violin when the main character's husband dies and she starts seeing the violinist and she can't tell if it's because of the trama or if it's really happening. This covers most of Koontz's books where whichever cop is trying to find the robbers or the killers and can't figure out why they can't get to them.