wordinista

All right.  So.  About five years ago, maybe four and a half, but who's counting -- about five years ago, I met with the headmaster of a private school in the area.  Really, really good school.  I was salivating to work there.  Alas, she had no openings, but she urged me to keep in touch.

About once every six months, I'd drop her an email.

Today, Mom calls me as I'm driving to work.  A call came for me at the house, and she told them they had the wrong number -- when she checked the caller ID, she saw it was Salivation Academy (aka "Drool School").  She gave me the number.  I called them.

...

I-I have an interview on Wednesday.  They have a position.

She held on to my resume for almost five years.

asdjfk;

There are no words to describe my current level of squee.  Y'all, consider yourselves lucky I'm spelling this entry correctly, because MY HANDS ARE SHAKING.

Now, off to obedience class with teh puppeh.

OMG DREAM JOB WTFBBQASDFJKL;

I want this. So. Bad.

I'd just have to come up with the money for it, and then resign myself to working on UT out in the living room, where our resident Mac is.  I'm not sure how well that'd work, but I'm totally willing to give it a try.

SO.  Fun weekend!  Tora and I took Darwin down to Petsmart, and then we went to the park where I took D for a nice leisurely walk while Tora... napped in the car.  It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day -- mid-to-upper 70's, with a fantastic breeze.  We wore shorts.  This is actually my favorite time of year in Florida.  The humidity is way down, and the highest temps we get are about 80 degrees, which, when coupled with a nice breeze, is really quite pleasant. 

We got back from the park and puttered around the house a bit before deciding to watch one of the Netflix movies -- a rilly bad teen flick called "Stick It."  So very formulaic.  Usually fluffy teen flicks are a guilty pleasure of mine, but I caught myself zoning out more than once.  It's also put me in a mood to watch "The Breakfast Club."

Sunday was nice and relaxed -- I made breakfast (first time since the Stomach Virus Sent From Satan) and we watched "Flyboys," which wasn't too bad, all things considered.  Then there was more puttering and Tora and I made dinner together (it's starting to be a Thing we do on Sundays -- I like it), then we watched the FMA movie.  I... actually quite liked it.  Tora was more ambivalent about it.  He doesn't see it as a proper ending.  I'm quite satisfied with the way it ended.  *shrug*

I have to work today but not tomorrow, and then class on Wednesday.  (OMG, getting v. burnt out on these accelerated classes.  Not. Fun.  I miss being an English major.)

Ugh.  Okay.  I need to get my butt in gear today.  Not gonna be easy, but gotta get done.

Last night we (me, Tora, R, and C) went to a concert at Hard Rock Live.  It's a yearly accoustic "jam" they do every year, and this is the first one we've gone to.

The good:

HRL is a pretty small venue, so even the "worst" seats in the house were pretty darn good.  Also drinks were not prohibitively expensive (mmm, tequila sunrises...). 

For the most part, the other people there were reasonably polite and not obnoxiously drunk off their asses.  (See exceptions below.)

HRL is connected to the HRC, so when we were all ready to faint from hunger (didn't have time to eat before we left), we were able to grab a burger.

The not-so-good:

NO FUCKING SEATS.  Well, there were seats on the second level, but those had sold out fairly quickly.  And now I know why.  Standing room only.  WTF.  Tora's knees were killing him by 10:00 and the show was only halfway over.  My back was killing me, R's knees were killing him, and C's feet were doing some hearty complaining as well.  We actually left before the show ended because of our aching joints and my growing hunger-headache.

The small handful of rude/stupid people were ridiculously rude and stupid.  Seriously.  There was one guy we'd nicknamed "Red Tide" because.... well, he was in a red shirt, but he kept shifting and inching his way across the venue.  Slowly.  Eventually he was on a collision path with my line of sight, and I'm sorry, that ain't gonna happen, so... I kind of arranged myself in such a way that if he tried to inch over, he'd inch INTO me.  When he realized I wasn't going to budge, he and his Lilliputian wife left our area.  (He was trying to get her into a spot where she could see, and while I can certainly respect that, he was a dumbass, and SHE COULD SEE PERFECTLY.)  There was another guy who kept trying to push C over -- an older guy too, actually (Red Tide was likewise at least middle-aged) -- and finally she just turned around to him and said, "ENOUGH."  And consequently scared him away.  I heart C so much. 

The HRC's quality of food has taken a seriously disappointing downturn.  Not sure I'll ever go back to eat there.

However, we always have a good time whenever we hang out with R and C, and we kept each other awake on the drive home by quoting lines from our favorite stupid comedies -- here are a few I vaguely remember being tossed around (we were sooooo tired):

"Coach, it looks like I jerked off an elephant!"
"'At first -- at first I was afraid. (*pause*) I was petrified!'  'I HATE THAT SONG.'"
"Make them stop smacking their asses!"
"'Is it next to the rabbit?'  'IT IS THE RABBIT!'"
"The peril is too perilous!"
"I superglued myself to...... myself."
"It's so warm!  I can taste the bubbles!"

We have such awesome friends.  <3

And I... really don't know what to say.  I'm... well.  It feels like such a cliche, to say I'm speechless, but... well.  I am.  I started crying when she did tell me, which was actually kind of embarrassing.

Thank you, whoever participated.  Thank you a million times over.  I don't know what to say other than that.

There is a "wrong side of the bed" and I got out of it this morning.  From the start.  The first words out of my mouth this morning weren't bitchy, but the second ones sure were.

Not sure what my problem is, other than Darwin seems to have a case of the stupids (every time I've taken him outside to do his business  [twice, so far, in forty-five minutes], he's distracted by the local stray cat, ducks, the dog barking across the canal, so I end up following him around the yard for twenty minutes while he figures out where he doesn't want to do his thing); I'm tired -- SO tired, because I wasn't able to fall asleep until 1:30 in the morning and then got woken up at a few minutes before seven; our bank account has less money in it than I thought it would (because someone is making charges and not telling me, so I can't keep track); and... well, that's it so far, but I've only been up for... not even an hour.

I am actually in a position to go back to bed for a little bit.  I think I might try it.  Because I'm not sure it's normal to swear this much first thing in the AM.

ETA: The day, she is turning around. I did in fact crawl back into bed and got a little more sleep. I then got up, had an onion bagel and made some coffee (something about coffee in the morning helps when I'm trying to do any writing -- it's like performance-enhancing drugs for my brain). As I was making coffee, The Best Dog in the World brought me his favorite ball to throw (he kind of... held it in his mouth and pushed it against the side of my leg to get my attention). We played a little indoor fetch, and I had a late breakfast.

As I'm finishing up my coffee and contemplating taking Darwin swimming, I get an email from Tora about some marketing stuff I wrote up for his boss as a favor (since they're a start-up company and have no marketing department). Incidentally, Tora's boss also happens to be "R" of the "R and C" duo with whom we spend a great deal of time. (I watched their kids while C had the baby, we get together for LAN parties, NCAA football parties, we go out to dinner together, and they were the reason Tora and I suffered no major meltdowns before the wedding.) I told R I didn't mind helping, as it'd take me no time at all.

Here is what the sales guy had to say about what I wrote:

Please find attached suggested revisions to marketize the text of the HEDIS document.

Whoever wrote the original did an incredible job and I love the way they write as it really shows their command of the material. The suggestions on the marked up version are just to marketize the text. Please feel free to keep what you like, remove / restore original text to your satisfaction.

There are now noises being made about possibly hiring me to be their one-woman marketing department.

This is wonderful.

( The Fandom Creed )

Well, springtime in Florida looks like it's pretty much here.  While I basically despise living in this state ten months out of the year, March and April are always very good to me.  The humidity is nice and low, and the days are just pleasant.  However, I know that many of you live in other places, so I will shut up about that right there.

I've also been trying to get back into the swing of writing my original fiction.  The holidays came and kicked my ass, and that pretty much killed any creativity I had going on, and then we got Darwin/I had the flu, and that kicked my ass further.  And then I was brought to the realization that I've been killing myself trying to stay on top of every little thing that I take care of around here.  Since we got Darwin, I've been trying to make sure that nothing else slides, like laundry or housecleaning or... anything, really.  And it turned out that something had been sliding: my creativity.  So Tora-kun and I had a little talk and he let me know that it didn't matter a damn if I made sandwiches for dinner three nights out of the week, and that it's OKAY if I crash for a couple of hours during the day (because while Darwin is sleeping in his crate for six hours at a time, it still puts me getting up at 4:30 or 5:00 for his potty-break, and it's so hard to get back to sleep afterward).  See, taking a nap in the middle of the day was making me feel like a big, lazy slug.  And copping out and making sandwiches (or something easy) for dinner was also making me feel lazy.  I don't like feeling lazy.

And, y'know what?  After we had that talk, I was able to spend yesterday reading through my UT chapters and working on fixing a few things that had gone wrong.  (Basically I ended up scrapping two chapters to change an event that just wasn't working for me, and that necessitated going back and editing a few things for continuity's sake.)  It also meant squeezing out some new dialogue, which went ... pretty well, actually.  And re-reading it also helped me see that I was overusing some words to the point of beating them into the ground, which then necessitated rewording things and/or whipping out my thesaurus.

And I'm starting to think I spend too much time setting a scene's surroundings. I'll have to be mindful of that.

Today, however, I start my Finance class, so I imagine any sense of well-being is going to be short lived.  *sigh*

I got such a laugh out of dqbunny's candy-making adventure that I thought it was only fair to give a little back.

Well, I've decided to make a bunch of baked goodies and share them with a few of my friends.  So I went looking through my cookbooks and family recipes and have found a collection of cookies and goodies that either (a) I've always wanted to make or (b) I've made in the past and they've gone over very well or (c) something from my childhood that my grandmother used to make and my mother doesn't make anymore.

So far I've got:

Cinnamon-almond biscotti
Pistachio crescents
Candycane crunch cookies
Almond/Anise sesame cookies (not almond and anise together, of course, but they can be flavored with either almond OR anise)
Scottish shortbread cookies
Snickerdoodles

I figure the biscotti would be the most time consuming, so I started that this morning.  I've got a recipe from my great-aunt, which I begged for after she sent us a batch a few years ago.  Something about the recipe intimidated me then, but I can't tell what it was.  So this is my first try making them.  Everything went very smoothly until I got to the part where it said to handle the dough with buttered hands, and mold dough into three strips per cookie sheet.  The recipe then said:  "Warning: Dough will be sticky."

No shit.

I felt like Brer Rabbit upon meeting the Tar Baby.  Probably looked a bit like him, too.

So the first batch of biscotti is in the oven and the house is starting to smell distinctly cinnamon-y.  Should start on the second batch now, I think.  It's kind of nice, because I've got holiday music going, and the house is decorated, and... I'm starting to get into the spirit of things, I think.  It doesn't hurt that we've got a cold front going through and I've got the windows open.

I really do anticipate getting all of this baking done today.  Especially if I, you know, don't spend a whole lot of time on LJ.

EDIT: 1:00 PM -- Well. Homemade biscotti? Is really ugly. But tastes reallygood

EDIT: 2:07 PM -- Okay, so I've made it through the biscotti, the shortbread dough is chilling in the fridge, and the sesame cookies are in the oven, and I think I'm just about ready to quit for the day. The kitchen is a disaster area, and I'm totally wussing out and getting tired. And I have to stop snacking on the biscotti.

Okay, so there's this breeder I've been in contact with for about a week now.  I started writing to her with general questions about Aussies, and what questions I should ask other breeders.  We kind of clicked, and when the landlord gave us the okay to get a dog, I wrote her first and expressed interest in one of her pups (at the time she'd been expecting a litter -- the pups were born today).  However, her prices were... well, a bit steep. 

Very steep.  About $200 more than we were prepared to pay.  I was heartbroken, because I really liked this woman, and was really impressed with her dogs and the series of health checks she puts the puppies through, and -- just everything.

So, today I was out and about, and decided to come home and write Tora-kun, and tell him that I'd be more than willing to make some sort of sacrifice to make up the difference -- even taking a few temp jobs to help pay for the puppy.  When I sat down at the computer, there was an email from L, the breeder.  She was writing to tell me that one of the pups had a "mismark," which had no negative effect on his health, sight, or hearing, and she would let us have him with the stipulation that he'd be "fixed" and never bred (which is totally okay with us).

She's offering the puppy to us for $300 less than she normally charges, and $100 less than the lowest price we were prepared to pay.

From the email she sent:


I have no idea if the puppy is male or female (I don't even know if SHE knows, since the litter was just born TODAY), but I don't think it really matters.  It's a red merle Aussie -- and I love the merles.  And the blaze surrounding the eye on one side sounds too damned adorable for words.

And I'm just really excited right now. 

I'm totally sharing pics when she sends them.

EDIT: OHMYGOD, IT'S AN EXPLOSION OF CUTE! I HAVE CUTE ALL OVER ME!

( Picture behind the cut! )

There's something inexplicably pleasant about sitting in a darkened room, in fuzzy, comfy clothes, your hair wet from the shower, minty lotion on your feet (which are encased in thick socks) while there's a thunderstorm raging outside.

The only thing that's missing from this scenario is tea. *looks outside* And a harder downpour. It's looking rather wussy out there.

Finding it difficult to get motivated to write anything, even though these are the conditions under which I prefer to write. (Ooh, the rain's coming down harder! Come on, little raindrops!) But mostly I just feel like cozying up in my chair (after I've made some tea) and being blissfully lazy.

Unfortunately, Florida rainstorms don't last very long -- hurricanes excepted. Those last far too long.

I'm about halfway through Tam Lin and while I'd love dearly to curl up and plow through more of the novel, I'm so relaxed that I'm pretty sure I'd fall asleep, and I don't really feel like falling asleep.

Hmm. First, tea. Then I'll consider my options on how to waste a rainy Sunday afternoon. :D