Deja Move
Posted on November 30, 2008 - Filed Under Just For Fun, adventure, back to work, brain farts
Hello again, yup I am back and yet I’m not…let me explain. It all started when I decided to move from the West Coast to the East Coast. There were garage sales and last time lunches, planes to meet, car repairs and in the end I was left with one blue car, one small dog, one fat cat, all that my trunk could hold (which turned out to be quite a bit more than I had thought), a very small amount of cash and an already weary boyfriend -plus some free road maps.
With this we began a trek toward ‘home’ new for me, old for him - with a couple of stops - and a pretty grueling driving schedule. By the time we arrived in the promised land I was ready to explode or maybe it was implode- if I never saw the inside of a car again it would have been all right with me. Once we got out of that torture chamber I was loathe to return to it.
The next couple of days were spent shopping for food, the neighborhood tour, sleeping, eating and other pleasant activities. Life was good once again. Then Black Friday rolled around and we were back at it again-because you see I am moving yet again. Well, I am not moving, I suppose technically I haven’t really moved yet, simply found a holding station until ‘we’ move.
On Friday, I did get over to our new house and unloaded everything that was in the blue car, cleaned a lot and organized what there was to organize. Took a walking tour around the neighborhood which is pretty good and has many nearby shopping locations which can provide for pretty much anything we need- which is good news for my cardio and my fat ass.
Saturday, back to the new house with some boxes and things from his place- and installing new locks on the doors -setting up temporary tethering for aforementioned small dog and discussion of placement of various belongings and workstations as well as getting doggie familiar with space.
Today it is raining not a good moving day kind of day - so we get boxes and box things today. Must be there early tomorrow to meet cable person for tv, internet & phone and then I guess it is flat out moving. I really am hoping that once we move this time, it really is for good and there will be no surprise or guest moves because I would simply have to kill someone if there were. We did manage to get a bed over there and I got some daffodil, iris & crocus bulbs(with appropriate hand tools) which I will plant along the front fence, around the guest house and around the deck for some wonderful springtime color and delight.
Tomorrow, we spend our first night in the new house which I suppose will officially make it home, though truth be told it will be days before we get everything over there. Anyway, at least I should be operating from the desktop instead of this measely little laptop-praise Jesus!
Again, will try to stick my head in to say, ‘hi’ but can’t promise much. So, how was your weekend?
Now What?
Posted on February 7, 2008 - Filed Under WTF?, back to work, brain farts, breathe
Okay, so lately my adventures have been weird to say the least. I started off on my job hunt and lo and behold my old bosses asked me back. I thought it was the answer to my prayers. I had always really enjoyed working with them and I was ready to come back.
Ooops, I sighed a sigh of relief too soon. Because their business is cyclic and connected to show business (can you say writer’s strike?) things were slow that first week. It made me worry and I resolved to ask them what was up on Monday.
Well, it wasn’t good news - not at all. So, once again I find myself on the job market. Which really makes me feel like a week old steak on sale in the clearance meat section.
I don’t know what it is about looking for a job that is so depressing and demoralizing but man does it get me down. I have to promote myself to strangers and try to convince them that they would be a fool not to hire me, when in fact, I often wonder if I really even want to work at their establishment. It’s a quandry - one must work in order to survive in the basic sense and yet working for others is about the last thing in the world I want to do. Am I lazy? Maybe. I’ve been reflecting on that a lot lately. But I’m thinking that isn’t really it. I think the real problem for me is that I’m just sick of office politics and being at the mercy of another person for my survival.
I have often considered starting my own business but can’t really come up with anything that seems feasible enough to generate enough income and frankly it’s confusing and overwhelming. I am in awe of those who do manage it though. I mean, how do they come up with this stuff? It makes me feel as though I am missing some vital brain cell or initiative gene because I can’t seem to do it.
The multi-level marketing thing is a no-go - aside from it smacking of being a scam, I just can’t see myself doing it and feeling right about it. The scams are everywhere and one starts to feel wary of most of it. Still, I do have a set of skills that should be marketable and should be able to be parlayed into some sort of going concern.
So, I ask you, dear readers - any ideas? Any tips or tricks you care to share with me?
A befuddled and confused WC.
Agent Update
Posted on November 1, 2007 - Filed Under Dear Readers..., back to work, crap!, update
Hi Guys,
Well, I didn’t want to say anything until I had something to report. A few weeks ago, I received an email from one of the agents I’d submitted and my gut clenched, expecting it to be a, ‘no.’ To my surprise they requested the full manuscript. To say I was jazzed puts it mildly.
Like a good little writer, I printed off a fresh copy of the manuscript, wrote a letter on my nice stationary and sent it off. The weeks passed. About a week ago, I emailed the agent toe ensure they received the manuscript. She assured me they had and they were still in the ‘review process’ and would let me know when they had decided. Again my hopes were bouyed and I allowed myself to be happy about it.
Today, I received another email and as it turns out they said, no. The language was politely vague and the bottom line seemed to be that they didn’t fall in love with the book like they wanted to. Now this was a little weird because there was another rejection on a story I submitted that used the same language. Apparently this is the new no. I didn’t fall in love like I wanted to with the story. Apparently, my book isn’t a good enough lover. Maybe it needs more foreplay? Or should rent one of those love making videos and learn a little new technique? I dunno.
So, it’s back to the drawing board and more submissions. Arrrggghhh.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know and say thanks for all your good wishes and prayers which I knew were there. I really appreciate your support and interest and it makes a difference to me, more than I could ever say.
Annie
Bossy Got Greenbacks
Posted on August 20, 2007 - Filed Under Humor, Just For Fun, back to work, brain farts, cubicle universe, little rants
(Apologies to Sir Mix Alot)
I hate my job and I can not lie
You other workas can’t deny
That when the boss walks in with an itty bitty list
And a ruler in your face
You get sprung
Wanna pull up tough
Cuz you notice that list was stuffed
Deep in the wants she’s bearing
I’m trapped and I can’t stop staring
Oh, lady I wanna spit at ya
And call ya a bitcha
My voices tried to warn me
But the pay I get
It’s really torn me
Ooh, jump for the money
You say I gotta work for it honey
Well use abuse me cuz you’re making me woozy
I’ve seen you dancin’
Your razor tongue glancin’
My Sweat, you get, cuz I can’t leave yet
I’m tired and don’t feel keen
I can’t quit that’s the thing
Take the average worker and ask her that
She gotta have the greenbacks
and that’s that
So Workas (yeah) Workas(yeah)
Has your boss she got the whip (hell yeah)
Well fake it, fake it, fake it, fake it, no if ands or butts
Bossy got greenbacks
Update
Posted on June 2, 2007 - Filed Under Dear Readers..., back to work, deadline, update, writing, writing life
Hey Everybody,
Sorry I haven’t been around much - though you all know my plight by now. The synopsis is coming along - but slowly. I think I may actually meet my deadline. I’m about 2/3 of the way through.
Of course, I have no idea what my writer friend will say once she’s read it, so I’m in no way out of the woods yet.
After the synopsis, I have a few stories I want to prep for submission as well. Don’t know how long that will take or how much work it will end up being - but it won’t be nearly as painful as the synopsis I don’t think. So…posting may be light for a little while.
I have asked a couple of fellow bloggers to do guest posts and they may well do so, so you may have something to read soon. Hopefully, I’ll squeeze out some posts myself. Fingers crossed.
I know you all know how important this stuff is to me and I thank you for your support in this. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.
Have to get back to work now - will check in again soon, I hope.
Have a great weekend and thanks for all the great comments of the last few days (which I finally managed to respond to).
Annie
Wrong on Climate Change?
Posted on February 12, 2007 - Filed Under Current Events, Deep thoughts, Life, Opinions, WTF?, What If?, adventure, algore, amazing, back to work, brain farts, double yoiks, future, global warming, i dunno, possibilities
(Here is a compelling article published in the Times Online, that challenges, conventional wisdom on the issue. WC)
February 11, 2007
An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged
When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.
The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.
Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.
Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.
Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.
The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.
What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.
Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.
He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.
The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.
In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.
Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.
Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.
The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.
I Love My Job
Posted on January 31, 2007 - Filed Under Deep thoughts, Humor, Life, ab fab costumes, acts of idiocy, adventure, back to work, bad hair day, brain farts, breathe, classics, clueless, cool cats, double yoiks, dr suess, empty head, favorites, funny bone, i dunno, in my head, laughs, nerves
Oh For a Scotch and a Pack of Cigarettes
Posted on January 17, 2007 - Filed Under acts of idiocy, acts of valor, adventure, american idol, back to work, bad hair day, breathe, crap!, double yoiks, head exploding, in my head, little rants, nerves, really stupid shit, yoiks
Okay folks, so you want a story about my new job? Let me just tell you about my glorious day.
I got up early and got ready - determined to get there ahead of everyone else. New schedule, new commute still trying to hit it just right. And yesterday I was broiling in the office because I wore a sweater, so today just a cotton turtleneck and trousers.
Out the door and the air is like ice - 39 degrees - in California mind you. That’s really cold for us out here. Already I’m rethinking the cotton turtleneck but there’s no time so I jump in my little Chevy. But wait, what’s this? Why did it practically take two hands to turn the ignition? No radio, no heater, no lights, my ABS light is stuck on and there’s this funny smell….
Okay, clearly not getting in ahead of anyone. Drive straight to the mechanic (who I only just saw last week for one of those delux tune-up jobby-do’s) - but only the non-english speaking mechanic guy is there. The manager will be back in an hour - the owner who I’ve known for a bagillion years had just left. Nice big cold wind coming up. Hmmm…who can I call at 8:15 in the morning who won’t want to kill me? Why Zelda of course. Call home phone. No answer. Call cell. No answer. Decide to call work to tell them I will be late. No answer.
Yay, Zelda calls back. Yes she will take me to work. Be there in a few. Now with Zelda a few minutes can mean anything from 5 minutes to an hour. More standing in cold office and cold parking lot at mechanic’s. Finally Zelda arrives, I get in the car, which isn’t quite as cold as outside but not doing much to thaw me out. See Zelda doesn’t like heaters - in fact, she runs the A/C pretty much year round. So I keep my shivers to myself since she is doing me a favor.
Now I’m dreading how many bagillions of dollars it’s going to cost me to fix the car. I have visions of redoing the entire electrical system and various other stomach-churning possibilities. Enough. I throw myself into work. The place is a mess. There is stuffed crammed in every nook and cranny. Old papers, old envelopes, parts of equipment that no longer exists. Magazines, notepads, broken clipboards, Halloween decorations - pretty much everything but the fricking kitchen sink. So I spent most of the day going through all that crap. It did warm me up though - so I suppose that’s the upside.
Then I needed to talk to the bookeeper which took forever because she had to do this or that or whatever - long story short, I finally got a few minutes with her and got her on Quick Books tutorials. During which I discovered she doesnt’ know much about Quick Books and really pretty much computers. Cool, so it’s going to be a long road there.
Then the soon to be ex office manager had a fit because she didn’t get her overtime and she’s going to walk out and ooh, it’s such a drama. I mean we’re talking about $20. Right? So I told her I’d talk to Zelda cuz she was the one who put the kabosh on that - don’t even ask. So I just got off the phone with Zelda and she’s all pissed. And the other one is all pissed and it’s all on my plate anyway cuz well, it just is.
The good news is my car only needed a $50 part - a relay? And it works just fine now. I’m still alive, that’s good news. And there are only two more days left to the work week. Also good news. But Friday we’re having a little party for the ex office manager whom everyone hates and can’t wait to have go - but any reason to have cake and coffee, right?
Right now, a scotch and a pack of cigarettes would do a lot to improve my mood. I gotta tell you I’m not sure I’m cut out for this kind of crap. It’s all stupid and petty to me. I’d rather be writing. I’d rather being reading. I must be out of my mind. Oh well, maybe it will be better next week.
Though the 2nd night of American Idol tryouts is on tonight. I think I’m having a bad day? I’ll betcha there will be others who have a way worse one than me after all is said and done.
Later.
WC
Cross Your Fingers
Posted on January 15, 2007 - Filed Under Dear Readers..., Life, WTF?, acts of valor, adventure, back to work, breathe, crap!, double yoiks, good wishes, nerves, voices in my head, wishes
Okay guys, back to work with me. My first day. Got my new underwear, new shoes and fake smile. Wish me luck. See you later.
WC
