heh.... I finished Nano! 50242/50000!! I did it! Phew!
Anyway, that's where I've been for the last couple of days instead of blogging, I've been cramming a few hundred words in here and there to catch up for the day I wrote nothing! When the Lindsie is back from her dancing, she will win too!
Not much else to report, except that the kiddo will be here tomorrow and the bus that gets me out to the airport gets me there nearly two hours EARLY. Fuckers. Buy Yay! Kiddo's coming, but ar... bus people are fuckers! Aaaauurgh!
I wanted to sleep in!! AND WORK DIDN'T APPROVE MY PTO!! MORE FUCKERS!!
On my way to work yesterday I saw a teddy bear in the window od the thrift shop that's on the corner here and I thought: I have to go and look at him after work, but I forgot. I saw him there again this morning, so I went in this afternoon and he was still there. Now, this isn't any ordinary teddy bear, this is the kind that has endeared itself to my and my mother's hearts for as long as I can rememebr. Say hello to Schlepp and his cousin in brown in case your screen is like mine and fades the edges of images on you. (Yes, I know I can fix the screen resolution, but I have to adjust too frequently. I may need a new monitor!)
I also stopped by Dubyaspeak after work and was rewarded with this gem:
We love the fact that people can worship an almighty God any way they see fit here in America.-- Dubya again demonstrates his inability to separate his own beliefs (in an "almighty God") from the meaning of "freedom of religion", Phoenix, Arizona, Sep. 28, 2002
The man is priceless. Frightening, but priceless.
Ok. Back to the word count... I've got behind, but I can still do it! Wish me luck!
"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named Bush, Dick, and Colon. Need I say more?" ~Chris Rock
Funny.
Work sucked. Home now. Laundry now because it wasn't "sorted" so J could start it earlier. *bah*
Restless sleep does not make for a nice rested feeling in the morning. And it doesn't help that when i finally felt relaxed enough to sleep, there was only about an hour before my alarm was set to go off. Not to mention that John was talking workspeak in his sleep... So here I am half-strung out and I'm heading to work. lovely
seriously, they remind me of chistmas. This is probably because mom never bought them when I was a kid - in fact she never bought ANY snack food unless it was a special occasion - unless it was Christmas and she was entertaining.
I had pretzels yesterday at work and they put me in a slightly festive mood. (Mind you, the fact that it was my friday may also have had something to do with it.)
*sigh* my dreams lately have been mostly fuelled by anxiety. Last night I was trying to find my grandmother's cat in an apartment building - so many doors and people renovating their apartments and so many other people's cats and all I wanted was to cuddle Ebony and be assured that he was safe. The night before I was with someone trying to find a place to ride out a hurricane, but we kept getting kicked out of places for stupid reasons. There were all these houses and narrow alleys and finally a large woman took us in and directed us to her basement, but it turned out she wanted to keep us, which was alarming.
Needless to say that even though I've been sleeping I've not been waking up feeling rested at all lately. Thankfully this morning when I woke up I didn't have to drag myself out of bed so insanely early and I could just lay there in the grey light of morning with both my cats snuggled up to my legs for a half hour. I think that did me more good than the entire night's sleep.
I know where this is all coming from too, not the least of which is the growing despair that I will be stuck in that cesspool job for the next eon. Add to that my impending step-mom status and the need to pay off student loans and you can see that the largest part of the problem seems to be monetary.
I can't help getting paranoid about not being able to go back to school. It's irrational, I know because people have kids and jobs and go to school all the time, but it's having everything up in the air that's getting to me. I'm too earthbound to be good with such things floating in the stratosphere of 'maybe'.
I'm always interested in the ways we trick ourselves, or work ourselves into corners.
Let me explain: I was thinking about relationships, in general. I see people around me in relationships that seem to work, or not, and yet they stick it out and I wonder sometimes what makes them stay, or in the cases where they work, what it is that makes them work. On the other side, I see people who are struggling to find that special someone, or to get over someone, or people who get hung up on someone they can't have and I wonder what will happen to them. Because when you're on the outside looking in, it makes so much more sense than when you're the one drowning in the middle of it. (I have experienced this, trust me!)
We as a species spend so much time being miserable because of a member of the opposite sex, sometimes I wonder why on earth we continue to do it.
But then I remember the high moments and I know why.
We're all after that high. You know the one I'm talking about. It's that fresh butterfly-jitter feeling that comes with new love. It's the wave of affection you feel at strange moments even when you've been together for years. It's in the small things that endear another person to you, the things that make you smile.
But the question remains: what do you do when one of these attempts at true love fails? You could spend the rest of your life pining after that person, after what you had and dwell on what could have been. It would be so easy to do.
Trust me. I know this. I've wallowed in that shallow pool a few times.
But while you're doing that, you'll never get another chance with someone else. That melancholy is attractive to only one kind of person and that's the kind that ends up cultivating it. On the flip side, the desperation that is born from the pieces of a broken heart can become a turn off. Anyone you might turn an interested eye to gets turned off when they realize they will never measure up to a lost love.
But what's the remedy? How can you put that lost love on a shelf and move on? It's so hard to reach the point where you can realise that just because the love is over doesn't mean that there can't be a special place in your heart for what was. It can be so hard to realise that it's part of the past and that you have to let it go. That it's time to wrap it in shiny paper and put it on your shelf of memories to open and look through and get all nostalgic and teary-eyed with a bottle of white wine on a winters day years down the road.
I was asked how I did it; how I got over M and I guess it was partially just jumping back into the "game" as it were; this crazy carousel we call love (or like or casual dating, or whatever you want to call it) even though I really didn't want to. (To be honest I wanted to become a recluse and go live in a hole in a mountain somewhere so I never had to feel like shit like that again.) I just stepped off the ledge and actually landed on my feet. The rest of it came later, and perhaps it was easier for me because I couldn't see him in random places, couldn't hear random things about him - mostly because people refused to bring him up, or couldn't (most of the time - except the ones who had a morbid fascination with him afterwards). It's only recently that I've been able to take a step back and look at what the relationship as it was, and not in terms of what I wanted, or what I lost - and that's over four years ago now. But as for a rote answer: I don't have one. Moving on is as unique an experience as falling in love. The only advice I can give is that everyone else has been through it, or something like it, so you really aren't alone and no, it doesn't happen overnight, but you will survive even though you think you might not be able to stand the anguish anymore. And most importantly, yes, there will be someone out there for you when you are ready, and not a moment sooner.
The fog has not ceased! it's still here! I don't ever recall having had fog this long in one stretch before. It's kind of neat, the way the stret lights look in the dark.
Wrote some more today on the Nano novel. I got past an exciting part - the scene I had in my head to start, but it didn't turn out how it was in my head, which is interesting. This whole thing has been interesting - the characters really do take on lives of their own.
Three days down, two to go before I get a sleep-in. Thurs, J and I have been invited to an American Thanksgiving dinner at a coworker's place. I've said that, haven't I?
I have no life.
This is what amused me tonight:
Khali ~ (li) says: nomitatorship? fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: lo? fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: darn tootin crap flinging land fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: apparently i am a poop flinging screeching monkey you are a nuerotic monkey and lindsie is a wise gorilla Khali ~ (li) says: ooh. fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: ya! Khali ~ (li) says: does that mean I have to pick you two's fleas? fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: i don't think so Khali ~ (li) says: oh good Khali ~ (li) says: I can just be neurotic all on my own. as long as I can hand out with you two I'm good Khali ~ (li) says: whoo fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: so apparently we are going to have a party where i fling poop Khali ~ (li) says: i so want to be there fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: well you would be invited how can i fling poop without you? Khali ~ (li) says: No idea! can I fling too? fuck group work i want a nomitatorship says: ya ya Khali ~ (li) says: WEE !!
Word Count: 34556/50000 on my winamp: Rasputina (feat Marilyn Manson) - Transylvanian Concubine
On the way home today, we saw a cop car pull over a bus. We had to wait for the crossing signal anyway, so we watched for a bit. There was a girl with us on the island and twom ore on the far side calling to each other and it took me a moment to realised that tehre was a fourth over near the bus; a small waif-like blonde with large eyes who came racing back to her friend who was standing next to us. She blurted the whole story to all of us, eyes shining with the scandal.
"It wasn't even the bus driver, it was a hobo who got on with a bunch of bags that were full of drugs and stuff!"
And then they raced off and the bus drove off and the cop stood with the "hobo" on the side of the road. J and I decided to hoof it home, but I was still caught up with the little spy's excitement. She was just so fey and cute and brimming with the news - I had to admire her guts on going over there in the first place.
Was I ever that young and fearless?
Word Count: 32659/50000 on my winamp: PM Dawn - So On and So On
Looks like the place is going to start with a new client soon though, so we'll see how many people clamour to be allowed to work for them instead. (Count me in, man! Unless someone else hires me that is....)
J and I have also been invited to an american thanksgiving dinner at a coworker's place. I suppose I should ignore my original impulse to say no and just go with it because my desire to do so indicates a real antisocial streak... I must really be a recluse or something like it. What is my issue?
Ok, off to bed. Here's hoping I don't dream about being crushed by a mountain again.
Word Count: 31084/50000 on my winamp: PM Dawn - Reality Used to be Friend of Mine
because I have to get up by myself and talk myself into going to work. I "un-pepped" myself so well last week that I had a pretty good week, in spite of myself, but I didn't remember how I did it this morning and I'm dreading going. RR. (It's only a job, it's only a job...)
What makes it worse this morning is that my inner cranky old woman got a taste of teenage inconsideration last night when about thirty or forty half-corked people were outside milling around outside the building and shouting back and forth and up to one of the balconies until about 11:30 waiting for cabs or something. (This is after I went to bed at ten, and their shouting woke me up.) And then they returned at 1:30!! And then some yahoo decided that screeching at the top of his lungs at 3 would also be a grand idea.
I just have to keep telling myself I can sleep when I get home, and it's not such a long time at work, and it really won't be all that bad because, after all, it really is just a job.
My weekend usually consists of thursday and friday, and this week they've gone by too quickly. I don't feel like I got everything done that I should have, or could have, and that is generally a bad way to start any week.
Yesterday I went job hunting and discovered that most of the banks I went to now require people to apply online. Talk about feeling like I had wasted my time. I still managed to hand out about ten resumes and then came home and looked up all these websites... nothing like a little discouragement to begin a weekend. (It's a shame too, because I was all prepared to handle the general blah-ness of rejection that's usually associated with pounding the pavement, but this was a curve ball I wasn't prepared for, so it made me feel a little off, if for no other reason than the irrational conclusion that people didn't want to talk to me.)
Today started wierd, because I had a dream where I was hiding under a rock with two kids. I mean, it was a rock outcropping, under which some critter had made a narrow cave, so we crawled in on our bellies and pushed dirt out to cover the entrance a bit because we were hiding from men with guns and dogs. At one point we could see their combat boots from the opening. Like most of my more visit dreams, this sequence repeated a couple of times, each with more or different details: teh fact that one of the kids was about nine and wearing a dress, that I was wearing slacks and dirt was getting in my socks and shoes as we shifted around, and that I couldn't take a full breath because there wasn't enough room for my ribcage to fully expand. In the dream I was mildly surprised that the dogs did not find us and the first time we clawed our way out we started down into the dark evergreeny forest in the opposite direction of out hunters. The second time we clawed our way out of the cave I opened my eyes and looked at the clock and cursed my brain for waking me up at 6am on my day off.
Needless to say, my whole day has been a little off-kilter. I didn't manage to remember to eat anything until about 3 and I played AC rather more than I had originally intended. J went to interview potential moving-type people and came back grumpy and we've been glued to our respective boxes o' fun ever since.
I have managed to do three loads of laundry though, and clean my desk, so things weren't totally counterproductive. Just mostly.
I want one more day off. At least.
Word count: 29233/50000 on my winamp: Madonna - Hung up
One more day and I get a day off. I might visit the library as a reward for my attempts to sell myself to potential employers on Thursday. I know my books are due, so it would make sense. *sigh*
Job hunting here I come! Wish me luck!
I really don't have much to report, other than the fact that I wrote more than I thought I would today. I posted all but the last bit, since it doesn't feel finished quite yet, but I'm sure I'll rectify that tomorrow after I've endured another day of the trials and tribulations of a call center rep.
Oh: Lindsie is the cat's meow ;)
~Cheers
Word Count: 24395/50000 on my winamp: Goldfrapp - Twist
All over the map today. So distracted and I can't settle. Why is this? I'm not over-caffienated, in fact I'm kind of sleepy. (God this is a terribly post)
Work was even kind of slow today, since I had supplemental training AND a team meeting - which were both pretty much a huge joke. All I know is that it meant I only had a grand total of about 2 and a half hours on the phones.
This silly thing I found via freakgirl, just confirms what I've known all along. I am a geek. I have read 12 of the top 20 geek novels (that's 1,2,3,5,6,7,11,13,15,17 and 18).
Yeah.
All over the map.
I haven't managed to write anything much in Nano today. Wrote a good 20000 words on another snippet though, which, if Lindsie gets her way, will get integrated into the story at some point. It is, however cross-genre, so we shall see!! (This little scene could possibly be the reason for my distraction, since it developed from a dream fragment from the early am and has been sitting in my brain most of the day.)
Ok. Sleep now.
Word Count: 20857/50000 on my Winamp: Thievery Corporation - Indra
I spent the latter half of my day in my "writing pants" eating pomegranate and scribbling random bits here and there. I wrote some for Nano, but then got completely sidetracked and realised that I've not been keeping up with my scribble book since I've been too bottomed out about this stupid job.
So, I kick myself!
The reason I remembered this is because I recall sometime this am thinking that I should write down that little dream fragment I remembered before I forgot, and then I zoned out in the dark on the bus to work and completely forgot what it was. Damn my mind. I have a feeling that it was something werewolf-y that would have fit with another story I've had hatching in my mind almost as long as HIWTHI. (I really have to do something about the title, I mean it fit when I started, but no longer... sigh. At the end I will fix that.)
Discovered that J's daughter is a poet. She sent me some of her poems and she is awsome. Of course, poetry is a great outlet for teenage angst, having made use of that avenue myself, so I'm ecstatic that she's discovered the power of her pen.
Ah, yes. The other thing I meant to do is list. (not lean, list!) I don't seem to have a daybook that I can ever find, so this will have to do:
~ fill out pay discrepency forms (*shakes fist* bastards!) ~ revamp resume ~ buy a sweater ~ job hunt ~ must get my Greece photos all printed ~ must get started on scrapbook ~ must submit those poems I've been threatening to send off ~ sort out student loan amounts (shudder) ~ research MLIS for next September ~ take mail to the mailbox (ya lazy ass!) ~ laundry ~ 2000 words a day ~ reload computer ~ back up files first (*duh*) ~ get a haircut (ya long-haired freak!)
Two days of work down, three to go. I can make it! Why? Because it's just. a. freakin. job. Thank you! Thank you! This has been your un-pep talk for the evening.
Better mood so far this week, lets hope it lasts!
Word Count: 19286/50000 on my winamp: Juno Reactor - Masters of the Universe
I saw a deer while I was on the bus home today, and it made me homesick. It was just the way that he (it was a nice large buck) was partially silhouetted with some newly-bare trees. It was just getting dark, so while he was indefinate, I could see that he was getting his winter coat in, and where he was shedding the lighter summer one. He was almost the same green-brown as the trees he was next to.
Of course it was just a mere few seconds that I saw him, but it was enough to make me remember sitting on the beach and seeing them up on the bank moving along their impossible trails between the maples and the cedar. I miss my beach.
Work was the same as usual today, but I think I'm getting closer to turning off the "i care" switch that's been so detrimental to my sanity recently. Here's hoping I can keep that up this week. Seriously, I think that's my issue. I actually was giving a shit about the issues people had - and I realised that I just can't. I managed to stop doing it when I was in retail, because it was too much to keep all that in my head, so I don't know why it took me so long to realise that I needed to do the same thing here. The trick is to remind myself that once I get off the line with these people, I will most likely never ever talk to them ever again.
But I'm still looking for another job.
Ok Back to NaNoWriMo....
Word Count: 17975/50000 on my winamp: Conjure One - Endless Dream
I've been feelng so fucking blue for the last few days and I've been trying to put my finger on the exact cause.
Yesterday I graduated from the University with my Bachelors Degree. I have a double major in Creative Writing and English.
Ever since high school, almost ten years ago, that has been my goal. Now that I've achieved it, I don't know where to go next.
Not only that, but I'm working a dead-end dumbass job that I feel like I'm stuck at because I can't really afford to go elsewhere unless it pays the same, or more, because my student loans - which I incurred achieving my goal - have come due this month. However, dead-end dumbass job doesn't even utilize the skills I acquired as a student at the University.
I'm stuck!
I'm bloody fucking stuck in this stupid fucking rut and I feel selfish for wanting out of it because J hates the job just as much - and he worked his ass off while I was in school to help keep a roof over our heads and spent half his time stressing out about it while I was stressing over papers. I give him that, yes, because without him I probably wouldn't have made it through. ANd I know that I have to keep on plodding my way through to keep us both about the surface, just like J.
But it's not wrong to want more. It's not wrong to want a job I actually like going to. It's not wrong to want to be able to use my talents and skills somewhere that they won'tbe wasted. We're both wasted at this call centre, and I know it.
So sad. I admit to being an obsessed trekkie during junior high - and I also admit that I have never lost my love for the show. Michael Piller, who has passed this week was a man who breathed new life into TNG after Roddenberry passed. He really did Roddenberry's vision justice. Whatever he worked on, he contributed quality and insight. He will definately be missed. (Did anyone else ever watch 'Legend' which is something he wroked on with John De Lancie? I miss that show too!)
Got this creeping sick happening right now and it's annoying. Tired all the time, hot, cold, hot, cold, sinus stuffy, headache, migraine... crap. Just shoot me already.
One more day of work.
Mom's coming for my grad thing. Yay ceremony. Ugh.
Proof That "History" is Written (or revised) by the Winner
It isn't widely known that Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians who lived within the borders of Turkey were subjected to a murderous campaign by the Turkish government in an attempt to rid the country of Christian influences - within this last century. We hold memorials for the Jewish people who died in the Holocaust, shake our heads over the continuous turmoil in Israel, and all the other places that people murder each other over race and religion, but we don't even know about these three groups because there have been attempts to make the general population forget:
History has been written by so few disinterested authorities that, depending on the nationality or loyalties of the writer, the facts have been slanted or even twisted to cast the events in a very calculated light. [...] scandals have surfaced concerning the Turkish government's policy of paying American universities endowments, such as those to Princeton and Portland, to ensure that a history is taught [which] is favourable to Turkey, one that excludes reference to the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides. [1917-1920 my note] [...] Turkey's revisionist history has a chance of reaching a large segment of the American student population.
On October 27, 1995, The Chronicle of Higher Education, in a report by Amy Magaro Rubin, stated that a petition was being circulated by American scholars that accused the Turkish government of using United States academics in univeristies to manipulate its history by excluding the reference to its genocide of teh Armenians. The Boston Globe followed suit on November 25, 1995, affirming that gifts with strings attached from foreign governments were causing great concern in U.S. colleges. On November 30, 1995, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Princeton University's unethical use of funds from Turkey. The New York Times followed with an article on May 22, 1996 stating that Princeton was "fronting for the Turkish govornment." And on Sunday, November 30, 1997, The Los Angeles Times reported an offer of a one-million-dollar endowment to UCLA by the Turkish government, which UCLA rejected inthe aftermath of Princeton's scandal.
On August 18, 2000, The Chronicle of Higher Education broke the story that the Turkish government had threatened to arrest Microsoft officials in Turkey and ban Microsoft prodicts if it did not change its Encarta On-line Encyclopedia entry of the Armenian genocide. And after passage of an Armenian genocide resolution in two U.S. congressional subcommittees, Turkey threatened to remove U.S. military bases from Turkey, impose anit-American trade sanctions, and cancel lucrative weapons contracts, along with more veiled threats, if the resolution were adopted by Congress. On the eve of a full House vote in October 2000, President Clinton pressured Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-IL), the presenter of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, to remove it from consideration. Hastert complied. Representative Frank Pallone(D-NJ) charged that the U.S. government had "succumbed to the threats of the Turkish government against American soldiers." The European Parliament, Italy, Belgium and Argentina had already adopted such a resolution. In January 2001, the French paliament refused to be deterred by similar threats from Turkey. It unanimously approved the resolution recognizing the Ottoman Empires massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide. President Jacques Chirac then approved the resolution. In January 2001, however, Britain refused to include mention of the Armenian genocide in its Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration. The genocide of 1.5 million Greeks and Assyrians of Turkey has never been considered...
[Not Even My Name - Thea Halo pp129-130]
Isn't allowing this 'revisionist' history to be perpetuated tacitly supporting the massacre of millions of people? We're talking about millions here, people who were systematically murdered, either outright or by marching them out into the Syrian desert with nothing but the clothes on their backs and leaving them there. Is it really too much to ask that they be remembered? It is, after all, the only thing those victims really have left.
Apparently for some, it is too much to remember.
However, this is very a good book. It tells the story of one of the survivors of this murderous campaign that Turkey implemented in an attempt to rid their country from Christian influences. (They didn't seem to care that these minorities had actually lived in that region for centuries before the Ottoman Empire was even formed.) The woman (called Sano) arrived in the States without even her name, let alone her identity as a Pontic Greek, and the book covers her journey back to the region in search of her old home, which she was driven from at the age of ten, with her daughter. This one chapter outlines the history of this "ethnic cleansing", and one can feel the barely supressed rage as the daughter, Thea, writes. I figure the only way we can combat this methodical "forgetting" is to pass on the stories of those who were there.
On that note I really recommend this book. Even if I weren't infuriated over the willingness of government bodies to overlook these horrors in favour of oil and arms rights, I'd still recommend this book. Check it out, because it's an intense read.
on my winamp: Thievery Corporation - Lebanese Blonde
Work was odd today. Don't know why, perhaps because they split up the queues so there are four instead of two now. Maybe it was the Werthers... I don't know.
I got a bill in the mail last week that actually had a hundred dollar credit on it. I have to call them to get them to send me a check. Work has also neglected to pay me holiday pay twice in a row now. Yarg. Maybe I'll get them both at the same time and I can get a haircut. Har har.
Started NaNoWriMo today and I wrote more than I thought I would. So that's pleasing.
Maybe that's why my brain is dead now and I have no idea what it was I was going to blog. Poo.
Word Count: 2240 on my Winamp: Thievery Corporation - Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes
