fatrockstar

It was a low-key night where I didn't do any clay work, sketch books came out, and there was some Mardi Gras maskmaking in the house. I wasted a chunk of time wrestling with iTunes (it won't let me add new music for some reason) but ended up making people come to my computer to listen to songs instead. Preview of WCBnext, anyone?

ECCC inspired me to buy some paint pens. I had no idea where to start and don't really own a pencil set anymore. I ended up skipping the pencil and going straight for the paint. Oh, if only the red pen had worked better... it turned out okay anyway.

I really need a new digital camera. Maybe not NEWnew, but new enough to me. My favorite camera got all moody on me a while back and I've been using someone else's. It's great, but not always available when I have the time and inclination to get pictures taken. I still have a few more items to photograph.

Craft night tonight, with a possibility of new faces joining me. Will they clay with me or bring something with them? Hard to tell. It should be a fun evening.

( The little Flash promo under the cut )

I ordered my eyeglasses on Saturday. My current benefits end at the end of this month, so I am taking full advantage of them. It's about time -- I've been with this agency through three contracts and paid for benefits without using them until now, so I don't feel the least bit guilty about the optical and dental appointments I've made now that I have the time for them.

The glasses themselves, well, I was told to go to Costco ("they have the best prices!") but they don't accept insurance. I was given a few places, really, but settled on LensCrafters. They take insurance and have a slightly larger selection of frames. I picked the most flattering nerd-glasses I could find and called it good. All in all, I paid about $150. I hear that's decent.

The only sucky thing is that I have to wait ten days for them to be finished. At this point in time my eyes are so beaten up from the poor hardware at my last job that I can barely look at a screen for more than an hour at a time. This includes television screens, computer screens, DS screens, movie screens... they all create problems, and the $20 readers you get at the drugstore aren't weak enough for the adjustment I need. I will do what I can online in one-hour increments and keep my fingers crossed that the glasses get finished early.

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In other news, my car is almost inoperable. The brakes chirp because I need new ones, and recently my engine has begun threatening to overheat unless I turn the heater on full blast. The brakes issue is the easy part. The engine temp is a tougher one to figure out -- the radiator is full and there are no leaks to be found. All the automobile knowledge in my head is no help, and until my next job I am unable to take it to a shop.

Not being able to drive is not new. A couple of summers ago I rode my bike almost everywhere and saved a fortune in gas (it was about $4/gallon then). The new challenge is figuring out how to pay for the bus to get me to the major areas where biking the entire way isn't practical. ORCA cards aren't nearly as much of a money saver as good old bus passes were.

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I was denied mortgage assistance because I could not "provide enough evidence of financial hardship." In other words, because I had $200 left over after my monthly expenses and had not missed a mortgage payment even when un- and under-employed, I'm ineligible. This sucks. I pretty much destroyed my credit for no reason by applying for assistance at all, and now I have nothing to show for it. I feel I'm justified in being angry about this. I worked very hard and made a lot of sacrifices to stay current in my payments -- this is my reward for being an honest citizen and trying to do the right thing. I shouldn't have to commit fraud to get the help I need.

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Those glasses can't get here soon enough. Seriously, they can't. I'm dividing my time between catching up on housework, taking care of band business, and job-hunting, and two of those things will require use of my eyes at 100% capacity.

The good news is that I know I will find something a lot sooner than I did the last time I was job hunting, and it will pay enough for me to catch up with everything I fell behind in during my last job.

If any of you local job-hunters find something that looks like a good fit and ISN'T at Microsoft (I'm not eligible to work there again until late August at the earliest), please feel free to send it my way.

I got tired of randomly having the sound on my LG enV3 go off when I thought it was turned off (it was) that I returned to my original enV. Better volume control, but I sacrificed the better camera and built-in editing app. I think I'll live. The enV3 had two volumes, loud and off, and off was unpredictable.

Right now I'm at the Urban Coffee Lounge in Kirkland watching my friend Fae Wiedenhoeft perform. She'll play until 9 if you want to stop by. If not for the music, do it for the chocolate rum balls - they're quite decadent.

I only wish I could provide a better picture.
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I told him I barely remember him, but Jerry seems to think I was his girlfriend. If he thinks this, all the apologies in the world won't atone for me saying "sorry, I don't really remember you that well." Well, I remember him vaguely at best. We were kids in a place I would rather forget altogether.

In other news, my ex and his co-conspirator are now both on Facebook. I would never have known if a) Facebook had not suggested one of them to me, and b) someone in my circle of friends hadn't friended Garret. As a result, I really don't want to do too much there anymore. I thought I was ready to make some kind of peace in the form of a phone call or something, but now I'm not so sure.

The divorce... I really don't know what is going on there. I asked nicely if he'd take care of it like he was supposed to to begin with, and he said he was already on it. I haven't heard from him since -- so much for that. No court record in our state has our names on it except the original petition. Believe me, I'm as confused and frustrated over this situation as anyone else. I have done my homework and have found my hands tied.

In more pleasant news, I got paid. Now it is time to get my damn certifications and get on with it.

...I just sing a pointless phrase to myself over and over to keep my brain occupied and amuse myself. The most recent phrase? "Big ol' butt, big ol' butt, big ol' butt, big ol' big ol' butt-butt."

Yeah, I am a grown-up. I also have a college degree and don't do drugs. much. lately.

I'm burning out on Facebook. The only things I like to do are Vampire Wars and Bejeweled Blitz, and one is becoming too hard while the other is becoming too easy. I also get tired of the insta-response to my status updates by phone or text. I'm trying to start a dialog here, just comment on the status and join the fray -- I promise, whatever I wrote is NOT a cry for help.

The wind picked up last night enough to make the power at my house flicker a bit. My computer was on at the time, and I lost a bunch of PhotoShop work I was going to upload to Etsy today.

Grady has a Twitter account now. So far he's not terribly interesting. I think his tweets are deceptively intelligent for how big a doof he is: twitter.com/gradybrownblue

I think I may have just put the last dressing on Grady's neck.

This is good, because I am all out of gauze now. He's been scratching at it, and (unfortunately) getting his tongue and teeth caught in it as he eagerly makes up for lost bathtime in certain places. Getting his mouth caught on the dressing is not fun. He makes this Quazimodo noise that's scary as hell, so I've kept the cone on as much as possible.

Tonight, though, I looked at the wound and it's healing up rather well. If he hadn't torn it open earlier it would be over and done with sooner. I'm going to put the cone on him tonight, and if it looks good in the morning I'll let him go naked tomorrow. He should love that.

I am looking forward to getting back to my daily walks to and from the bus to work. The activity will do me good, and I really need to burn some of this crap off my body. I already bought a new pair of pants because of it. I did not enjoy that AT ALL. Least favorite shopping trip, ever. However, it was either that or change into Crazy Cat Lady sweats every day when I get home. Pants that don't fit are a constant reminder of the Feline 15 I just put on.

In other news, I have begun to receive comment notifications in my LJ Messages in addition to email. I went to my account info and am unable to un-select this new option. I can either get notices in email AND within LJ, or not at all. Huh. That is incredibly irritating. I blame the Russians.

My eTrust antivirus is no longer supported by CA, and I am in the market for a new program to protect me from all the riffraff. I need the standard antivirus protection and a firewall -- malware is covered by an app I downloaded recently that I really like.

I am considering returning to CA for this, but feel it may be overkill since all I really need is the antivirus and firewall right now.

Suggestions are welcome. Remember: I want to pay for this.

Today's second wave of layoffs over at MS will make the job search a little harder. Not that I'm not used to it by now. My life as a musician isn't bad, it's just severely lacking in funds. I don't know what I'd do if Ethan wasn't here.

Today all the fired people will flood the job hunter market immediately. For the next six weeks, applying to any MS job through their website will be pointless as those who remain place an unofficial priority on their former employees to fill those open positions. It's the law they have to post the job publicly, but they don't have to look at your resume. After six weeks the employees whose positions were eliminated will have run out of time to find new ones, and they will be removed from the payroll. Maybe then I'll have a chance.

It's unfair, but then again getting into MS as a full-time employee hasn't ever been a cake walk. The only place harder to get on the payroll for is probably Google, and that's only because Larry & Sergei want so badly to "not be evil" that they became "total assholes" about screening applicants. I did wonders for that company, but their prerequisites overlooked the person and focused on what I was missing in my past. It's not my resume, y'all. My resume, accomplishments, and references are solid, and my experience provocative -- I'm a Rock Star in every sense of the term -- but you can't hire someone based on a piece of paper. Sometimes I think hiring managers forget that.

My heart goes out to all that lost their jobs today. My only advice is to find something you love to do and throw yourself into it. If it makes money, that's even better.

That, and network, network, network...

I'm making this public because there's nothing in what I'm about to say that needs hiding. As someone directly affected by the entire situation I feel I am entitled to voice an opinion, and would hope that a hiring manager motivated to investigate my blog would understand my position and respect it. Nothing in this entry is illegal. All figures stated are either mine to share or a speculation.

Recent events that began with a mass firing/layoff at Microsoft have finally reached contract staffing. Microsoft's mandate to reduce billing rates is being passed directly to the contractor by almost every agency that provides such staff to them. I was told earlier today that this manifests as a $10/hour pay cut for people in my line of work with my level of experience. I was appalled. I expected to take a hit, but not such a big one.

( Let's do the math here. )

( Emotions run high on this issue. )

( I worked long and hard to reach the amount of pay I get now. )

( Everyone I know is affected by this situation. )

In the meantime I will wait and see how this whole pay cut thing works out. With the amount of press it's getting, it may fix itself.