Fear my tiger pants!

So I’m thinking about going on a raw food diet. Not because I’m in any way worried about my health or making the leap from part-time hippie to full-blown flower wearing moon maiden, but because I am PISSED OFF AT APPLIANCES.

Last night the oven decided it was time to get really, really dirty. I was making one of those rising crust pizzas (which taste nothing like delivery, no matter what the commercials say) when the damn thing broke apart in the oven, coating the elements with steamy hot pizza goo. It burnt the crust, too. As it stands, I can’t use the oven for anything until I get good and intimate with an oven cleaner and some scrubby brush things. I’ve never cleaned an oven before in my life, and honestly don’t know how to go about it – my first instinct is to somehow damage the oven in a secretive way then call the landlord and asking for a replacement. That’s what people do with things they can’t fix, right? They get a new one? Just because I don’t want to clean the oven is a perfectly good reason to commit appliance fraud, wouldn’t you say?

Unfortunately, my raw food diet idea is going to have to be pretty limited to things that don’t require refrigeration at all, which means a lot of preservatives, which goes against the whole raw food thing. See, the oven is the least of my worries right now. Our fridge, for the last 4 months or so, has been stuck on the top-secret “deep freeze” setting. Every single thing you put in the fridge freezes solid. Vegetables freeze, split open, then freeze some more. All liquids freeze in their bottles – sometimes you’ll get a nice juice slushie, but most of the time my precious Diet Coke is a block of solid ambrosia that I have to vigorously manhandle before it’ll come trickling out in a stream of glory. I hate it. I can’t keep fresh foods in there; meat won’t defrost; frozen mayonnaise is a truly horrible thing, and I’ve had to clean up countless sticky messes made by beverages freezing, expanding, leaking, then freezing again.

We’ve called our landlord about it, but he just tells us we need to defrost the whole thing. Apparently when there’s too much stuff in a fridge the engine has to work overtime to keep it all cool – and then the thermometer freezes and thinks that this new frozen low is what it should be doing. The only way to fix things is to empty the fridge and freezer, unplug it, and let it sit there for a couple days. Sounds good, easy enough to do – but what about all the food in there? We’d need several large coolers, ice packs, and a standby freezer for all the mystery packages that I’m too scared to unwrap. While I certainly have the time to do all this (I still won’t willingly scrub out the oven though), I don’t have the necessary supplies or the money to go buying coolers all willy-nilly. So we’re stuck. I can’t have fresh veggies, my carrots split down the middle, frozen lemons do not juice, and I could probably seriously injure someone (or myself) with a solidly frozen tomato. This sucks.

Potato chips and microwave popcorn are considered raw foods, right?

Panic! I used a gift card to buy some books on the internets, and the tracking number for the package shows that it’s out for deliver – on FRIDAY! Where are my books? I only ever pay full price for books when I get a gift card, so these are very special books (ie: ones that didn’t cost me $4). We have a new mail person who doesn’t ring buzzers or leave package notifications, she tends to leave the item leaning against your apartment door. I’ve received two packages this way, but there’s nary a sign of my books. Where are my books! I hope no one stole them from my door. I will be a very, very sad monkey if that is the case.

(insert cynical comment about none of my neighbours being able to read anyway let alone wanting to steal books on miniature crime scenes [ooh, irony] or historical inaccuracies in American history)

I had yet another interview this morning. It went well, but all my interviews do – I know I interview well; it’s just getting past positions that aren’t quite right or we’re hiring internally but putting on a show or we’ll get back to you sometime in the next 6 weeks maybe. In the meantime, we continue the hunt. This has to end soon, right? Something will come along before I turn 50?

Yesterday I spent being sad about how much of who you are is defined by what you do for a living. When you don’t do anything for a living but sit by the phone and worry, there isn’t a lot you can contribute to the conversations around you. I’ve been struggling with this a lot lately; this whole feeling like I’m nothing because I’m an unemployed drain on society. You spend 8 of your waking hours at work, several more preparing for and getting to and from work, and the remainder taking in what relaxation you can before you go back and do it all again. That’s a huge part of life that I’m missing out on. I miss the money (a great deal – does anyone want to buy my XO so I can pay rent?), but I also miss the social interaction. I’m already somewhat of a complete loner freak; not being forced to interact with people on a daily basis is making me forget all about those social niceties I’ve worked so hard on. I remember being awkward. It’s not a place I want to revisit.

I have to go do groceries. Maybe I can socially interact with the soccer moms as they kill time before picking up their spawn in their shiny SUVs.

Most of the time, eating at Denny’s is a quick, tasty, affordable experience. It’s not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but it does fill you up nicely.

Then there are the times when the Denny’s in question is staffed by the unholy fry cooks of the damned, and your immortal soul is in danger with every bite you choke down your trembling gullet.

I don’t think I’ll be eating solids for a while.

I woke up this morning thinking about pre-natal vitamins. What the hell? Bad brain. BAD!

I finally heard back from one of the jobs I had interviewed for yesterday, and I did not get it. It sucks more than usual, because I had a really good interview with them and I felt really positive about it all. Unfortunately, they decided to promote from within and gave a current employee the position instead of bringing in someone awesome, ie: me. Their loss, I suppose.

I’m a little angry about it all, though. Yes, not getting the job sucks – however, they’ve known since Monday that they decided to keep it in the family and I had to call THEM to find this out. I’ve been anxiously waiting by the phone and email since day one, and they didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me until I hunted them down (literally, I had no contact information) and asked for an update. That’s three and a half extra days of worry I really, really could have lived without. Not cool.

So, I’m left waiting to hear back from interview one (4 weeks, 1 day and counting!) and the flicker of hope is fading daily. I do have another interview lined up for Monday that sounds promising – here’s hoping something good comes my way soon, because we’re running out of money and I’m getting scared.

Oh, and I’ve given up on working in the video game industry. I tried for four months straight and got exactly 1.3 nibbles that resulted in two “thanks but no thanks” – it was a nice idea, but I need a job and the statute of limitations on “follow your dream” has officially run out.

I enjoy the fact that my friends know to tell me to put on pants before they come to my apartment.

So, how’s stuff by you?

Apparently, I still have some secrets.

I’ve been spewing things onto the internet via this website for almost 7 years now, and sometimes I feel as though I’ve run out of things to talk about. It’s especially difficult to come up with interesting topics now that I’m not out on the town every day doing the 9-5 thing – there are very few good stories to be found in the domestic fondue that fills my day.

However, thanks to an off-hand comment made at yesterday’s breakfast, I have at least one more thing to talk about to stave off the inevitable flow of “what area of the apartment I cleaned today”. Are you excited? Are you salivating with the thought of new titillating tidbits from my mysterious life? Yeah, I bet.

I used to work in a car dealership.

And .. that’s about it. I was a hostess, the one who would greet customers on the lot and try to find out what they were looking for, then pass the information on to a salesman who would then do the selling. I hated it. I’ve never been good at feeling people up for information, and it just felt so slimy to me. I was very bad at it, and I think I only kept the job for 6 months or so – at any rate, I quit just before my “graduation” because they weren’t going to give me time off to go to Lollapalooza. There’s a lot more to the story of course, but it was actually a really bad time in my life (alcohol, shady people, date rape) and I honestly don’t feel like telling it all. The whole “car dealership” thing only came up during yesterday’s group breakfast at Dadeo’s when we were talking about dream cars – mine is a red convertible Cabriolet, just like the one that split my left index finger open like a grape and left a memorable scar. Before that moment, I had pretty much forgotten it all.

There. One less secret!

Yesterday’s pot roast turned out amazing. I made some Yorkshire pudding to go with it, and I honestly thing the whole thing is one of the best meals I’ve ever made. I am so proud of me! It was my first ever pot roast, too! In fact, I think I’ll go have some leftovers now.

Mmmm.

Via Darren Barefoot, the CD Cover Meme:

1. The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

I took Darren’s advice and reloaded the Flickr page until the third image loaded was Creative Commons-licensed. With this in mind I present to you:

Fun! I adore how the “album title” fits the image really well. Plus, the sign in the picture reminds me of Portal. So everyone wins, but especially me.

Here’s the article I random’d to on aliline leather; the quote was said by Mark Twain (“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”); the image came from this person’s photo stream. Good times!

I’m feeling peppy, so I went out today and did stuff like get my girl parts examined, buy some groceries, stand in line, and explore my options concerning a misbehaving DS. It’s wet out there. I do not like January so much.

I called Ed to give him a choice for tonight’s dinner: would he like Thai food lovingly prepared by me, or corn dogs? I made him decide because I couldn’t – while I love Thai food and I make a damn good curry, corn dogs. Corn dogs are for all seasons and are delicious!

Ed did not like my follow-up idea of Thai corn dogs. This is probably for the best.

So, we’re having Thai food tonight. I’m going to make the portions tiny, though. If we get hungry again later: CORN DOGS!

The doctor’s office (or someone close by) has unsecure wireless.

Dropping my pants and spreading my legs has never been so fun!