Saturday, August 27, 2011

A Weekend Conundrum

What to do, what to do? It's a Saturday sans big plans and sans big projects. What does one do with a weekend when there are no family parties to attend? No walls to knock down and build back up?

As Evan so-helpfully pointed out, we have lots of small projects to work on, but that makes things even more difficult. Which job do you choose, and how to you keep yourself from project-hopping like an ADD-riddled eight year-old?

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Very Important Things

In other news, I am now completely caught up on my back episodes of this season of Project Runway. I missed two whole weeks of drama queens and, well, queens battling to see who could make the crummiest outfit. No, really, there were a few cute articles of clothing mixed in with the dreck. Mainly, I just didn't enjoy watching it as much on my own. How can I form a proper opinion of anything--or mock the entries sufficiently--without my mother alongside? Not good. Not good at all.  Besides which, watching PR brings back alarming memories of being called into my boss's office and alternately having my opinion sought on the last episode of the show and being harangued for someone else's incompetence. (No! I will not let Jane ruin this for me again! No!)

Also, as part of catching up on the show, I finally got through all two weeks worth of posts from Tom and Lorenzo. Not that it mattered or anything.  It had just been a while since I'd read anyone tear apart some random celebrity's wardrobe choices, that's all.

And while I'm talking fashion, pretty-things, and the depths of the internet.... Whose idea was Pinterest? Seriously, I didn't get to all the housework I meant to get done today and my failure is directly attributable to that site.

No more isolation.

Not only do we now have reliable internet at the apartment, I have a super-fancy smartphone.

Ooooooh! Aaaaaah!

This is one of those things that I never really wanted but am now going to be completely addicted to and reliant on. Thanks, Evan. :o) It's amazing. My complete address book, email, Facebook, music: all with me all the time. Oh yeah, and it makes calls, too.


We were at the park this evening with a group of Evan's fellow MBA students and, while they played "networking games" I did not let myself check Facebook. Not even once.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

On the Hunt

I finally sat down and got serious about looking for a job today.

Wait...just....give me a minute....

SNIFFLE

Okay. I'm fine, really. It wasn't that bad. I put in an application at Starbucks, both my home office on the Capitol Square and two others in town. I also looked up all the banks within walking distance and applied to the two that were hiring tellers. I took a deep breath and an antacid and checked the city and county websites for jobs, since that would be the place to find something library-related. No luck there, but that's really okay. As much as I loved my library job, I'd really rather not work directly for the government again. It always made me feel a touch squeamish. While I was holding my nose (or was it my breath? I don't know...holding something and feeling ill, anyway), I also checked one of the job sites with paralegal job listings. Then I came to my senses and realized that I would rather work at Sears--now hiring 7 salespersons--than go back into the law office environment.

I also checked out Craigslist, for the first time ever, and was immediately sidetracked by the weirdness. "YOU CAN BE A SURROGATE MOTHER. $30,000+!!!!!!!" "Make $3,000 a day from home. Not a scam." "Apprentice seeking Jedi Master." All good options, I'm sure.

The search continues tomorrow. And every day until I am successfully bound in wage slavery.

Monday, August 22, 2011

What do your books say about you?

Thanks to Pastor and Susan Gehlbach, we are the proud owners of Enough Bookshelves (for now, at any rate). They brought a load of our wedding gifts--which they had been kind enough to haul up to WI last week--and added in two new shelving units. They're pretty enough to go in the living/family/dining room and we worked on setting up the first one last night.

Evan and I have worked on projects before--see my family's house--so we already know that we work well together. And he knows that I really don't know what I'm doing with tools, most of the time. And that I'm often dreadfully clumsy. So, I guess, when I say that we worked on setting it up, really I mean he worked on setting it up and I just tried not to undo anything important. I did take the job of hammering the wooden pegs into the screw holes and, let me tell you, those are some well-hammered pegs.

After the shelf was built and in place came the very most important process of filling it. Cookbooks were an obvious first step, as they had already outgrown their original home in the cupboard over the stove. We have a pretty darn impressive collection of cookbooks, for newlyweds.  After the cookbooks were in place, we started searching our current shelves for "impressive books." I'm going to blame this one on the first week of business indoctrination: we were working on our brand through the books on our public bookshelves. Sigh. Anyway, our brand is, apparently, composed of old things, pretty things, and things no one else has ever heard of.  We still have that second shelf to set up, so we'll see how the brand goes from there. Of course, if they were to set foot in the guest room, they'd see that our brand is leans much more heavily toward "widely-read language and history geeks with 5 different copies of Pride and Prejudice."

Friday, August 19, 2011

Note:

Can I just say how much I LOVE having a wedding ring? It can be awkward, trying to find ways to use my left hand to make my status more apparent, but it is totally worth the effort. Seriously, it's like creeper repellant.

A View from Starbucks

We don't have reliable internet access at our apartment, right now. Madison has city-wide wireless, but it functions about as well as you'd expect. As Patrick said, "In Soviet Russia, you take what you're given." Being disconnected from the world at large is not an option, so I've been spending a couple hours every morning at the Starbucks on Capitol Square. Safely ensconced behind my laptop, drink in hand, I can watch and laugh at my fellow city-dwellers.

Someone just pulled a fire alarm inside the capitol building, so the square is flooded with people in suits, enjoying some time out in the sun. (There couldn't possibly be anything suspicious about a false alarm, pulled just before lunch time, right?) The fire trucks are gone and it looks like they've given the all-clear, but very few people have gone back in, yet.

There's a homeless lady who just came in and ordered a Venti latte in two cups, and the jerk on a bike who keeps riding through her pile of belongings. Sometimes I feel like such a sheltered, small-town girl. Despite having lived in a good-sized city, I am constantly shocked when I see the numbers of homeless people around here. Were they just better at hiding in Fort Wayne, or are there just that many of them here? I'm inclined to believe my hometown to be superior in all ways, so I'm going to say that this liberal Utopia of Madison is just a deeper hole.

A guy has been sitting two tables down from me since I came in. He's on his third iced coffee in an hour and looks wired enough to right every wrong complained about on the bumper stickers covering his laptop. He'd probably get along well with the father and toddler son duo riding around the square, their bikes bedecked with "TAX THE RICH!!!" flags.

In the same vein, there is a group across the square on a long-term hunger-strike. Their placards don't tell us what the strike is about, just that they're angry and hungry. Speaking of which, the Italian beef and Chicago dog cart just outside Starbucks has been taunting me for 3 days. I have food at home, I have food at home....

Busy-looking career women are everywhere, in their serious slacks and cardigans. Mostly I just make fun of them because I want so desperately not to be one of them. I'm perfectly content to sit here in my jeans and Cap'n Curt's t-shirt, looking forward (LOOKING FORWARD!) to vacuuming my apartment and doing more laundry when I get home.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Some Initial Thoughts

Blogging makes more sense when the people who want to know the mundane details of my daily life aren't also the people experiencing those mundane details with me. So this is for anyone who cares to know. :o)

1) Having a small washer and dryer is a pain in the rear. Seriously. The washer maxes out at four towels; I just stuck a sheet set in and it is making me nervous. Granted, there are only two of us here, so the laundry doesn't exactly pile up like it did at home, but the inefficiency of doing five loads where I formerly could have done one is driving me batty.

2) Shopping for two people is harder than I had anticipated. We went to the supermarket on Tuesday evening and neither one of us has any idea how to buy groceries in small amounts. How much milk will we use before it goes bad? How many eggs? If we buy a pack of frozen burritos, will they actually last more than a day?

3) The other side of only having two people eating is that cooking and post-meal clean-up takes no time. We've run the dishwasher twice in three days, and that was mainly to deal with new dishes, glasses, and storage boxes.

4) Leftovers. I get them.