| Deconstructing Fullmetal Alchemist (TV series) |
[Oct. 25th, 2009|12:32 am] |
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| |  ditzy | ] |
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| | Enigma | ] |
It's time for more OCD TV series watching. I'm at episode twenty-five and so far I'm just in love. Of course, I'd caught a few episodes two or more years ago on Adult Swim but I'd just not been caught by the anime craze. This has enough going for it that's still able to keep a kid brought up on Thundercats and Transfomers interested. And at the same time it's darker and more adult. Something an American like me wasn't really told cartoons were for until Adult Swim was invented.
On my recent trip to Florida a hotel stay allowed me to catch a re-run of the premier episodes. And the thin nature of the hotel walls only let me have a volume level where I could only catch snatches of dialogue. But I'd knew characters from back a couple of years. Only now it looked like something more than Pokemon. And those first episodes are tame. View later ones where evil things start happening and you know this isn't for little children. In fact, this series flirts a few times with the usually unapproachable-in-TV-shows of a young child's murder. On screen. Heck, if you count Ed's being nearly killed by an insane serial killer, they do it three times in the first twenty five episodes!
I keep hoping someone out there is pitching a Harry Potter-like live action script of this series for a series of big screen films. The largest problem to such a thing might be finding an actor to take the center role, and the niggling problem that there's not enough kids in the story to draw the correct audience to the theaters. (As compared to Potter, which might be a benchmark no film can rework at this juncture)... But hey, I'm sure there's a cheeky, blond, four foot-eleven inch tall actor out there itching to be the Fullmetal Alchemist. After I, Robot I'm sure that there's a way to get any magic, any setting, and metal limbs done like an expensive cake-walk... (Plus any limb removal as needed.)
Here's a few endearing things I've noticed:
1. Poor Ed is a clutz. I always thought the running joke in The X-Files was Scully getting mashed over the head. For poor Ed (and sometimes Al) it's tripping. I guess having a fake leg (auto mail or not) is a ticket to faceplants and getting mowed over by the bad guy of the day. Add to that that Ed gets hit over the head almost as much as Scully, and he's pretty helpless a lot of the time.
2. I've peeked at the first two collections of the printed comic. I'm really liking how the TV series writers reworked the first few stories to make Ed and Al just coming to Central City for the trials. And the train story gained a bunch of undercover agents to help them out. It created a nice relationship between Ed and Hayes from the start.
3. Characters make mistakes that come back to haunt them. It's a cool thing. Life is riddled with mistakes, so why not comic characters?
4. Ed's auto mail limbs get broken. Quite a bit. It's a brave writing choice. It's Ed's krytonite. And I sort of pity Ed when he loses both arm and leg in one episode. He's had it so good with the auto mail he hasn't worked out a way to get on without them.
5. Alphonse. Like I told my coworker. A lot of why I love the show is the incongruency of a boy's voice from a seven foot tall suit of armor. And he's really such a sweet kid. Give any other kid a suit of armor for a body and chaos would ensue! Plus he's being minded by a diminutive fifteen-year-old. Surely, in any other world this dynamic duo would be out of control!
6. Fullmetal vs. Flame. Heck. I like this episode so much I've gone back to it about three times. The "fist to his face!" strategy of Ed's for dealing for his battle assessment with Colonel Mustang is nearly epic FAIL. But in the end there's a tiny bit of new understanding between the two characters and that's kinda sweet.
I can't wait for my next paycheck to get the next set of disks.
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| A moment to reflect |
[Aug. 18th, 2009|11:58 pm] |
It's a interesting thing. I tried to draw a sketch of my main Stargate Fan Fiction characters and can't. Maybe I haven't described them well enough. Even to myself...
It probably didn't help that I introduced Molly as a non-human character in my first fic. We get all the way to the end before O'Neill gets us up to speed in the epilogue. So that description is colored by what he notices. He notes she's thin, chopped hair and blue eyes. It seems that he's not really looking at her because he keeps picturing the inhuman form. And Molly's smile does affect him unconsciously when she lets it loose. And then he's floored by what she says to him.
Molly's has always been a girl-next-door kind of woman. With a slightly beaky nose. 5' 9". Dark blond hair, steel-grey blue eyes, strong hands and an unusual strength overall (which helped her control jets in combat.) Her smile is wonderful when it's unrestrained. The in-joke of one story where Brian rides in on a Freesian horse, Brian claims she's the Isabeau to his Navarre (from the movie Ladyhawke) which she quickly refutes. She has a fighter-pilot's slim build, which could match some supermodels, and maybe if she ever did get into a little black dress and makeup men might mistake her for someone famous. But in only one instance was she meeting up with SG-1 in anything other than combat fatigues or SGC blue jumpsuit or Air Force blues, so it's not been put to the test. At least, not with a civilian who's not also a co-worker.
Brian has always been modeled after the lead actor from Ladyhawke, Rutger Hauer. Crystiline blue eyes that are a touch sleepy-looking, and spiky blond hair, long nose. His eye color is creepy-looking in some lighting situations like the vampires of other movies like Salem's Lot. He's physically a brute, taller than practically everyone at the SGC, he can lift considerable weight. And he's pretty smart about all matters pertaining to his field of expertise: geology. But even with all the brute muscle he's got dexterity to finger the tiniest rocks up to a jeweler's loupe and tell you what made them.
Grasso has always been a weasel-faced kid, a descendant of mixed African-American race families with a little Asian and Arab thrown in, with unusual auburn color to his hair, which curls severely. Always trying to seem taller than his less-than-average height. His tendency is to try to squint his green eyes shrewdly or suspiciously at everyone and everything. He'd probably only look happy and not like he was trying to figure out where the world was trying to mess with his happiness while with his SG-15 team mates and while thinking deeply about why wormholes do what they do.
Colonel Anzovin... about all I picture of him is non-threatening, approachable. But he's got a voice that cuts through chatter and makes no mistaking his intents and orders. Age has been good to him but he's probably feeling it more every morning breaking camp on recon. I've started placing him in my mind as a former air traffic controler or grounds support admin and that's why he can direct Molly so well and perfectly understand her Air Force slang. But I don't think he's told too many people this background, he was former SG-3 and O'Neill perhaps mis-identified Anzovin's background as being from the Marines because of that.
Dr. Brandt is the most shadowy, under-described character of the lot. I'd be clever to use some sort of contrast to all the Air Force poster-children on the team and choose someone more like Oliver Platt from his role in the movie Executive Decision. Not in the best physical shape, not a lady-killer in the movie sense. After all, he's an astrophysicist who's doubling as the team's linguist. He's most at home in a library.</span> Short, dark and chunky does not work as a leading guy, but what he lacks he makes up for in loyalty and perseverance for an answer to problems the team finds.
(see how the physical descriptions get shorter? Oy!) This all came about when I started sketching my characters in Artrage and sort of stalled on Anzovin and Brandt. When reading other fantasy and sci-fi books I could easily scratch up a convincing cast portraiture of the characters in the book during one of the theater shows I ran in the mid-1990's. Now I just feel all those art skills are rusty. It's not a good feeling.
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| Aw, man. |
[Aug. 6th, 2009|11:19 pm] |
John Hughes. A film maker who holds a special place in the hearts of Glenbrook North alumni has passed. Damn heart disease. Even to students like myself, graduating twenty years later than he did, he "got" a lot about what the northern suburbs were about. And how they were so wrong! His school films like "Breakfast Club" and "Ferris" are a private "in" joke to any attendee of the early seventies through the early ninties. I was the girl in the huge coat. Classes were some kind of torture to avoid being "too smart" or too unpopular. Everyone was marking time, day by day, until they could turn in their textbooks and leave the restrictive and dull teachers (and miss sorely the truly fun ones) and high-tail it for the bright, fun world(TM) of college.
I was surprised to read he'd not gone back to be showered with praise at some awards assembly. Maybe he felt it was enough to have done what he'd been asked to do in 1987 with the "opening" of that year's assembly. Maybe somewhere in that small film is another "go to hell, Glenbrook" hidden in there. (I can't say for sure. I was busy running part of the show. Maybe Joel hinted this theory to me. He was a 1979 or 1980 Glenbrook grad.) He's presented a lot of the administration there as restrictive to the point of farsical, and I believe it wasn't all the 1968 enviroment that made it that way. The halls were so locked down between classes, I don't think you get much less in prisons. And in that enviroment, free thinkers stick out and need hall passes just to breathe (and like he presents in the school movies the ones who break free have to ply cunning to remain free) I think Hughes wrote optimistically of his hero characters. I took the last fifteen years to shake off the absolute control the Northbrook school district had instilled in my brain from the first day of kindergarden.
My father graduated from there in 1957. Hughes, 1968. Kevin Snow, 1979. Joel Monaghan, 1980. I got out in 1987. With schools that have a generational attendance( and add grads like Joel and the imfamous "Fry" returning to teach), I think stuff just gets perpetuated. Add some instructors that have been there since 1955 and things do get unreal and movie-like. Glenbrook has become some sort of entity that, now infused with over fifty years of emotions over it's existance, does create it's own reality on it's grounds. A lot like Hogwarts, I think.
And like poor Harry, you can be dragged by your amused classmates to a trophy case to see you're father's awards. And any other mortifying and less than stellar event a relative ever did there will be on paper somewhere to haunt you.
I've probably rattled on somewhere in this blog about "how I was there" at Glenbrook for the "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" location filming. This is one of the times I'd wished I'd been less shy. They'd used the lobby of "my" theater building and damn if I felt the "film police" or the superintendent or someone else in charge would get me if I stuck a nosy nose into even watching what was going on. At the time my focus was so narrow. Theater and photography. Heh. Don't that equal movie making? And why didn't someone round up the acting and tech kids and let us watch what was going on? I woudn't be so clueless about making the jump from theater to film production I never even took the chance.
I think that's where we try to get to. Schools on the north shore don't instruct students in being free.
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| Here we go with more fan fic |
[Aug. 5th, 2009|10:29 pm] |
Well, the strange story I keep working on keeps getting goofier. It originally began as a "what will Lieutenant Caston be doing while she's recovering?" And takes place over the end-Second Season episodes. Well, damn it all if an entire outline to another SG-15 mission is beginning to show up in there. Of course now I got to figure out where in season two this thing might have happened. My brain even gave it a title of "Prometheus' Mistake." AND then bits of how Caston and Dr. Brandt got recruited into the SGC have started showing up.
Mechanically in a writing sense, I think I have a plan. The current story of Caston's escape from the hospital will be in first person. Any memories will be... shoot, I forget what to call it... The other one I use. Meh. It gets a bit sticky with this plan. The first narrative is from Dr. Fraiser. And for the first memory it's Caston recalling going through the gate the first time and it's in first person. I don't see a good way to revise it.
A whole lot of this is written in what I'm starting to call Farscape Special. All the "how did we get here" bits are "off camera." I don't know if any of it would make sense that we're sort of along for the ride with Caston as she tries to escape and then we're along with a non-linear smattering of memories of how she joined the SGC and started her career there.
It's just sad I don't have the website to put the draft up on like I used to.
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| WIP: the greater adventures of Molly Caston & SG-15 |
[Aug. 4th, 2009|09:58 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | writing | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  hyper | ] |
Let's see if you can figure what movie I lifted this from...
“What’s going on?!” Caston demanded as Grasso and Brandt crested the rise at a full out run.
“I think we’re on plan ‘C’ right now!” Grasso shouted.
“What’s plan ‘C?’” Caston shouted back.
“Run!”
She took a look behind the men, judged how fast they were running and grabbed her hat and gun off the ground. “Aw, crap! What happen’d to plan ‘B’?”
“Ask Brandt.”
Caston looked over at Brandt as she overtook him.
“They ate it.”
“Aw, hell!” she exclaimed. “Where’s Ross and the Colonel?”
“Hopefully not being eaten,” Brandt said.
“How’s it feel to be in charge, Lieutenant?” Grasso asked.
“Grasso!”
He pointed at Caston, “First lieutenant.” He pointed at himself, “Second lieutenant. Pretty clear, that.”
“Pick now to force the issue? Thanks.”
“I’m out of plans. It’s technically your problem now.”
“CYA.”
“Right. First rule of the streets and office work.”
“’T hell with plan ‘C.’ It’s too much work.” Caston slowed and examined the ambling chitin horde behind them. She unlimbered her pack and drew out the propane canister for the stove.
“Um, Lieutenant, did you forget the part about ‘Asgard protected’ with some orbiting whatsit up there? You light that up...”
“I didn’t forget the hummer. I want to put it to work. For me.”
She set the assembly on the path edge. “Now, we run again. Chop-chop.”
Caston keyed open her radio. “Colonel, Ross, I know you’re probably busy, but you might want to find some flame-resistant cover. In Ten.” There was a distant crack-bang. Caston kept an eye to the sky. “Technology can be fooled. Four, three, two, One. Down!” |
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| Mom wants her control on my troubled finances to last to 2015 now... |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|09:08 am] |
My mom's reply to my thinking of returning to house is, "Well, Susy Orman says recovering will happen in 2015, now." Oy. I wanna go! Now the excuse to stay in this stupid single bedroom is the very personal-finace-capable Orman, but I wouldn't trust her for being the difinitive long-term, national economist my mom felt she was.
I think there's a bit of wrongful thinking of economists like Orman in throwing that out on the Oprah show and radio this week. Focusing on when the economy will recover to 2004 standards dis-serves everyone that will be happy to get back to just being able to pay daily expenses. That should happen sooner than 2015. Yes, if by then you want to start a personal business in your town you might have conditions to succeed. Otherwise just be greatful to live in your home and pay your bills.
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| My mom is at it AGAIN |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|11:53 pm] |
So, three weeks ago my mother dumped a rolling cart in my bathroom. And I refused to use it. She removed it and moved it to the kitchen and proceeded to put all my kitchen stuff on it. Two days ago she drops another wire shelf in my bathroom. She tells me to use some hooks and put it on the wall. I set it aside on the floor. Today I come home and she has put the shelf up. She has touched stuff I had on the vanity and has put the items on the shelf. My mother plainly does not approve of the way I leave things in the bathroom. Maybe I just have to shut the door there too so she cannot see it. I really want to get out of here. I miss privacy and solitude. I miss not being my own flavors of paranoid where I don't have to picture people touching my belongings.
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| Mom mom junk! |
[Jul. 12th, 2009|10:37 am] |
Mom tried tempting me to a trip to Lowe's by saying I could put plants on her patio. This was denied to me when I moved in here. She, in fact, gave away my plant stuff. So, why the heck is she talking this trash now? I declined to get into it with her over it. It's pretty tempting with what she did to put conditions on my living here. And I left her to take her trip to Beaufort to Lowe's and Big Lots by herself.
I guess this is a touch of apathy. I can't have my pets. I can't live in my house. I have a job that barely lets me pay mortgage on the house. The service I signed up with has not found me a renter. I've had it with life.
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| Air France 447 one month later |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|08:27 pm] |
From the BEA prelims on AF447 "Nothing had been found before June 6th, then the first bodies and parts have been found."
Because, unfortunately, they started searching in the wrong place! Searchers were so eager to find debris they got stuck finding ship debris. New Google maps of the recovery of bodies and pieces shows the Brazilians were starting in the wrong place and focused searches on the south of the flight path. Debris was turning up to the north. It feel this is the ultimate fail of the searchers.
The prelim is also saying the plane hit at a nearly level, upright attitude but with greater than usual speeds. And the plane was more or less whole when it hit. The idea is from the condition of the bottom sections of the things found. The recorders' batteries are nearly spent and searching for them with the sound will end July 10th.
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| June 1985 |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|01:00 am] |
My father progressed though pilot training to get instrument rated. And we graduated up from a Cessna 172 to a six-seater single-engine prop Piper Cherokee. We were making a trip from Savannah, Georgia to Chicago, Illinois. We're somewhere around Kentucky or Indiana. It was mid-June. I still remember it being a sunny day, breaks in clouds, stuff building up but not enough to scare me. I know too much about what could go wrong flying... I probably was trying to read a book and not fixate on aircraft stuff. He's reasonably experienced at this point and maybe eager to complete the trip. And Whoo! We got caught in an updraft. Like nothing I'd experienced for six years as a passenger. At the time I didn't know why he was concerned but perhaps we were flying at the limit of his comfort. Or he's in fear of being taken to the limit of his small plane (which a quick search tonight reveals to be 14,300 feet (4400 m) He liked to cruise at a good bit of 9,000 to 10,000 because you make good time. And of course you [i]do[/i] because you [i]can[/i])-- So he makes a turn and things return to not feeling like a high-rise elevator. But he's a bit in awe or shock, maybe. (At the time I didn't know about the too-fast-too-go-too-slow conundrum. He might have been considering what he'd almost been thrown into. I don't think small planes of the 1980's had computers figuring this out for you in real time.)
After we got home or we put down somewhere I must have asked him what the heck went on back there. He said it's in the pilot training books to [i]not[/i] turn back out of that situation. Because you would stress the airplane. Riding it out, at least riding it to some point you can gracefully exit the situation, without fighting it is recommended. On the other hand, if he hadn't chosen to make a break out of this rising column, would we have then been at 20,000 or more feet with no options? I'm thinking it is possible.
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| AF 447 question denied pilot/expert consideration |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|09:55 am] |
My post on PPRuNe got deleted. So my question still remains about the messages sent by the plane system on 6/1/09 at forty-five minutes into the flight were not answered by an expert. I really hoped they'd be able to read the code and say how severe a problem was being indicated. Inside the plane, outside the plane. An answer would have been nice to get. But those pilots don't feel it's worth wondering at. The air-john isn't so pilot-y. That's for the flight attendants to worry about, I guess. So no answer there.
However, air crashes are a combo of stuff which at first telling are too crazy to consider being able to bring a plane down. One crash it was theorized to start with indulging a parent's request by showing their kid the cockpit. I do wonder if what was a normal failure became key to how the fly by wire systems reacted to the weather.
So, at least I still have my own a blog to put it up on. At forty-five minutes into the flight there's a ACARS message that there's a problem with toilet waste. There's still nine hours of flight left to their destination. There's 230-something people aboard. They're about to go up to 37,000 feet. The pilots appear to choose to thread between some likely "normal-looking" storm cells at the equator. Since they didn't divert for the toilets it must not have been all of them, or the plan was to get to Africa and reassess some sort of stop there. People were probably snoozing. So, maybe the thought was there wouldn't be a complaint about having to cross forward to back of the plane to use a different set. Maybe it is minor and not crash-related. Three hours and twenty-five minute later the plane is headed into the ocean-- the auto pilot is off, the airspeed indicator and back-ups are not agreeing, two flight control systems have crashed. |
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| Air France 447 |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|12:42 am] |
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I'm a bit troubled by the air control and other planes not getting some radio chat from them from 01:34 on. I wonder what was going on with that. I have a small amount of small plane flying with my father so I know a bit of the procedures. And a bit of what night flight is like. They had some time to see a bit of the weather they were heading for if radar, moonlight and twilight was on their side, but took the bold route to continue and thread what they must have felt (from what I read from the weather deconstruction) was likely a gap right along the vector between two cells. Now, the weather dc showed the straight line of the expected computer controlled, fair weather route across the storms but I'm betting on that slight left to thread a gap and that jives with the last ACARS on the image being north of the line. It feels reasonable. But no radioed questions to other flights for how far this line was or how strong? When they must have seen it from the other waypoint? If I recall other crashes and near crashes, it's not the only time a radio was bumped into "off" or another channel unknowingly but makes me curious to what was going on. They had the chance to really go north from that waypoint and clear everything and didn't. The (text?) message from the pilot about turbulence has been mentioned but it's not part of the ACARS or the Wikipedia page so I'm unsure about the time it was sent. And it was of such a nature to message it that way vs. using the radio? So some clue is there that there was opportunity to type it up even as they planned their next move into the line of weather. But why would they risk it if they had sight of a way around it? |
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| Hell no, I don't want to go |
[May. 5th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
My mom is trying to float another trip to Tampa this weekend. We just went last month. She says she bought her stepfather sheets and a blanket. So, now we're supposed to hand deliver stuff like this? Why another trip to put miles on her van? FedEx. Simple. No loss of another weekend. Believe me, driving down Friday and back Sunday is an honest waste of a weekend. Seven hours one-way drive.
I really wish she'd just come to the realization that she could drive it by herself. She turns up the radio really loud the rest of the time she drives alone. Two four hour sessions of driving and she'd be there. He told her the route he prefers to drive.
On the trip in April, there was this perception on her part that I'm "in charge" of picking the routes and the hotel to stop at. From the five or more times we’ve done this trip, there is now a standing perception that I'm the navigator. I don't want to be anymore. She's demanding I accompany her. She should grow up and choose how to get there. But instead I have to pay attention the whole trip and tell her turn-by-turn like a live GPS voice when to turn the wheel. It's mixed in with this blame game. It's arguing with her at 11pm on the pitch dark highways of Florida about how she thought where to stop for the night was supposed to be my plan. I the hell didn't plan to go to Florida. I didn’t ask to leave the comforts of her condo that she opened to me and lose a half day of work. Nor that she drive the van that night when she was up at 4am and cleaned all day. And then she pulls some bullshit that she can't read the billboards for hotels while driving. So it's back on me. But she continued to drive for another hour. Then it's my fault for that extra hour. It’s like the evil version of how my sister and I can argue about stuff. We learned it from losing arguments with our mother.
I'm wary of choosing anything because she'll say "no" to what I choose. And she did say no to a lot of stuff on other trips. I’ve had hissy fits when she’d say my ideas were wrong. I think she gets off on my irritation. I’m unhappy with indecision unless it’s just me and my own wanderlust taking me around a city. The flip side is making it seem I'm demanding choices be made because I'm put upon to make this trip whenever she requests it be made. I am angry that I have been dragged along. And I do act out about it. But maybe I'm done with how inconvenient it is to go down there. It’s a pointless twenty—six hour turnaround. There's no Internet. It’s boring trips to the same restaurant. It’s the same stories I’ve heard since 2003. The TV is going to be unbearably loud. Mom is going to snore. She’s going to make up stories about the drivers and she’s going to give them the finger. She’s going to ridicule me when she relates what I’ve been doing. Granddad is going to play the organ at 4:30am. I’m going to be ridiculed for bringing my computer and my airbed.
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| Tiring repetition |
[Apr. 4th, 2009|06:55 pm] |
For weeks now I've had to endure my mom repeating that my sniffling is because I have plants in my room. And she knows I'm allergic to the pine pollen. And she knows this year has been a terrible season for it. But every few days it's, "because you have those plants in your room" again and again. She's made me give up pretty much everything else but something in her wants one more thing from me. If I cleared out the plants I think she'd start up again on how much time the computers are on and the time I spend in front of them. Maybe at that point I take her TV. Maybe I go out to the cable box.
It's still insane here. Some times I really miss my cats but have to face that I won't be getting any even if I move out again. I do a budget for living at my house and it's far beyond what I'm being offered for the admin job. So, I should still be looking for a second job being a cashier somewhere. Work myself to death to not be able to spend any time at the house at all. The American Dream!
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|06:51 pm] |
First no cats. Then no cable Internet. Then got rid of all my furniture. Still wants me to throw out my belongings and buy stuff at thrift in two years... Now my mom says I can't have the crock pot plugged in while I'm out of the house. She outright stated I would only be allowed on weekends when I'm in the house. So much for crock pot cooking. At least I know her paranoia enough to have asked if she'd freak out if I tried it. Her crock pot reasoning is backed up by hearing about Frigidaire fridges catching fire recently. Nothing relating to crock pots.
I can't stand living here. I can only pretend to like her and what she does.
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| The funny ha, ha for the day |
[Mar. 9th, 2009|10:24 am] |
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| |  crazy | ] |
The Jetsons were living in an economic slowdown of the future. People only worked a few hours a day... |
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| This morning's nightmare |
[Feb. 1st, 2009|09:14 am] |
First I'm digging out someones vandalism on a pit of sand in the sidewalk in a city. The vandals have pressed "ABCD" into the sand. The "D" is backwards. I dig and broom and stomp the sand down. There's an access door in the pit. I write an advertisement in the sand. My mom picks me up in a van. She points out the key to the door is in a cubby in the van ceiling. At first we're driving together and later I'm following her to the doctor's office. I almost lose her because she's moving fast and she takes a corner but I arrive in the doctors' office. Mom is in the check-in line. The waiting room is full. At the door a Schnauzer is biting an old woman's leg. My approach stops it. Then I proceed into the waiting room. A toddler looks up at me and trips over the Schnauzer.
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| darkness before dawn deepens |
[Jan. 21st, 2009|06:21 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  aggravated | ] |
Well, today is one for the record books. When it rains... you know the rest, Bucco.
I get a call around noon from the agency who (when I called Friday) said to call back before 10am and after 3pm daily for being considered for work. Well, this agent calling me has a six day long job for me to forward my resume to him for. I send off the resume and try his number but the cell number left in the message is incorrect. So I leave a message at the regular temp office number and head out the door to the store and hair salon. (If I'm going to work I better get cleaned up, you know.)
I come home freshly showered with itchy hair clippings and with snacks. At two-thirty Man #1 calls to ask if I got his message from earlier. I tell him I've already e-mailed the resume to his box as requested. Then I get a call from my second temp agency (who had happily called to check in with me Monday) about a three day data entry job. I took the short job offer thinking was no overlap. Man #1 only said "real soon" as the date of his job so I think I'm safe. Five o'clock PM the agent #1 with the other company calls and says I'm a shoe in for his assignment and the boss lady will be emailing me details. "Ho! Hey! Sorry, when does it start?" I ask. Ends up both jobs started on Friday and I buggered up this poor man dropping the news that I'd just accepted the other offer. He says he's calling me back but I think I pissed him off and he won't.
I feel like an idiot. I'm reeling from not making good communication with everyone involved. I should have asked more details from the new agent people I'm working with. And it sure sounds like I got a three day data entry thing more than anything truly career-rescuing-like.
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| This morning's dreams |
[Dec. 8th, 2008|10:37 pm] |
Had more dreams of airplanes in trouble near my house. Only it was something more like my original home in Northbrook rather than what I've got here in Bluffton. I suppose there's some paperback psychology to your "original" family home being more symbolic of yourself than other homes.
Been stuck in 1984 for several weeks now watching Airwolf on Hulu. And true to form I started a fan fic. And that turned into a three story arc. Which probably now has not a connection to what the true TV show was about. Another wacky Mary Jane character is in this one. God! What a waste of time. On the flip side I can't argue. This is the sort of creative thing I was upset that I wasn't doing while medicated. But I do see the unhealthy obsession thing going on. Sitting and staring at the computer is no way to spend a day. Not unless I'm getting paid to write. And I'm not.
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| One of them days |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|12:33 am] |
I knew the day was doomed when idiot behind me in merge lane followed me down the lane on my bumper and took the spot I was aiming for. Sad to say he looked Mexican. No one lets people take turns properly in that merge lane. It was heavy traffic just after the light turning. I eyed an open spot in front of a slow accelerating truck from beyond the stoplight's turn lane and this dufus behind me messed it all up. He pulled into the spot in the lane behind me before the cars beside me had cleared my car and I was at the end of the merge pavement. Add to that the fact drivers don't know how underpowered my Kia is. He had to slow down for me. Everyone behind him had to as well. There were horns blaring. That corner is just an accident waiting to happen. But if they'd simply stop at the yield sign... but no one wants to! They lay on the horn if I stop at the yield sign at the start of the lane. They crowd onto the lane if I make a running start and then they take my slot. This happened before a number of mornings when I had a different office job on HWY 278. And its still enough of an annoyance I'm ready to not take that route to the island. I can't afford to play a game of chicken with traffic every stinking morning.
I don't like to start my day with road rage. I was trying to get over a PMS headache that had been dogging me all night and morning. Today I struggled to let this annoying event go. I don't want to be talking at drivers like my mom does. My mom makes me so annoyed with her for flipping drivers off and making up stories about why they pass her van. Her paranoia drives me crazy. Or, it makes me fearful I'm susceptible to developing it. The fanciful, "He wants to be first! Here's your finger for the day." is getting older every ride with her. People just treat the highway through Bluffton as their personal speedway. If you go forty-five miles per hour(the speed limit) you're tailgated and passed quickly. But my mother wants to think every driver is conspiring to come up on her van and send her some kind of message as they come close to her bumper and then go by to make their pass. She's always needed more friends that are not clients but I don't see that happening my entire lifetime.
So, back to my day, day three on the job. It got a bit crazy doing paperwork for the orders. I got taught how to work on fax orders and drop ship orders. The manager likes my progress. Sometimes I'm slow on understanding the invoice computer and a bit too fast to ask follow up questions before she's formed part of what she wants to tell me. I have to work on that, of course, and shut up and listen. I almost made it to the end of the day getting most of the stuff assigned done and I go to check my feminine product in the bathroom. Epic fail! I nip out to the car to check my purse for a replacement. None. DISASTER! I had to bum a tampon off my new manager. CRIPES!
I hope I didn't look sound like an idiot telling them I had an issue. And on the third day. So embarrassed! Manager took pity on me and let me skidaddle out early. It's been forever since I've had this kind of trouble. Or, at least while away from home. This was a overnight, long length pad and it was soaked end to end in four hours. The brand I use is good so I can only blame the very job I needed so freaking badly for creating stress that made flow go out of control. How ironic, eh? Can't afford to buy feminine supplies to keep in the car, can't afford to drive to the job at all, and I need to be paid barely enough to cover only my mortgage. Let's hear it for the rapid collapse of America into a third-world power. Hurray! |
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cynvision's journal
moody
