Recently in Sigh. Category

Have a job interview Monday - really pulling for this one. I think previous interviews were ones I didn't want, so probably changed personalities for.... The subconscious is a powerful thing.

It's interesting, people will tell me, send out resumes every week, interview for everything, you should be getting X interviews... Yeah, someone needs to tell the world that.  I've had job searches conducted while I'm working that consist of four resumes sent, one interview - bam! another job. Being unemployed has been a total drag. None of the interviews worked, and roughly .00000000002% of the resumes have even resulted in a letter of any kind let alone a call.

I have never had difficulty getting a position I want, until I became a therapist. Either I'm a crap therapist and the therapist conducting the interview can detect that, or I'm a crap therapist interviewer. Used to be the computer skills got me a job every time. Well, I don't want to do that any more.

But I might have to. Starbucks is laying of mega-scads of people, as is Verizon. A careerbuilder search of my town resulted in.... one commission only sales job.

So, interview on Monday. In a mountain town. YAY.

In other news, still writing. Completed a fic, yo. Though it's probably not the fic anyone's looking for, what with that subliminal sort of lampooning of my other fic that everyone seems to really like.... Yes, jobless depression is doing a number on me. But if you want to see what my warped sarcasm is capable of, go on over to the fic blog and check out Something Betazoid. There's a lot of little parts that will seem really sorta familiar if the Captain and Counselor series is still in memory, but then, it's -- oh, that didn't happen the way it was supposed to....

Going to keep working on reorganizing the fic pages, I think. Restore the timeline and reformat a few more. I think it was all the Harry Potter smut I've been reading that triggered the fic mentioned above, so maybe if I go back to writing the Voyager/C&C adventure and doing tedious html it'll stop and I can write the other stuff again.

As for the dreams in the title... I had some pret-ty weird dreams last night. There was this one where I was trying to fight for my life and landed this really spiffy ninja kick - and I woke up with my foot sticking out of the covers, big draft of cold air underneath, and a really mad cat who usually sleeps between my legs. Forget sleepwalking - I sleep-flying-roundhouse-kick.

In the other dream, I was driving a little red Toyota and parked it properly in one of those little coastal destination towns where all the parking is two hour max, to attend a party of some kind (my friend on the coast is having a birthday party next week, so this actually makes some weird sense) and when I came out to move it the car was gone. So I spend hours wandering around looking at other little red cars with tickets on them, panicking, realizing it's a Honda or Fiat or whatever, and going onward.

Going to hold out hope that next dream is rehearsing job interviews. Might come in handy.

I finally saw the Star Trek movie. In a non-spoiler nutshell - Abrams has created an entire movie where teenage versions of our favorite heroes careen together in a haphazard fashion to reboot a failing franchise. There is no sense of purpose - no rational decisions - just a bunch of kneejerk decisions made by rash kids who then work through the fallout. It's muppet babies syndrome - fanfic has done this before. Remove a few decades and throw the canon to the wind to bring together Our Characters as youngsters. Meh. Clearly Abrams hasn't attended the same writing classes the rest of us get where the plot and character development builds and hangs together in an orderly fashion. Not that you couldn't tell this was so by observing the non-progression of Lost.

Might be laid off in two months. I hate politics.

Just moved into a better, more open, bigger place. Like most apartments there is a coat closet in the entry. The front door opens into the apartment, the screen/security door opens outward, the coat closet opens out into the entry at a right angle to the front door. My cat likes to pry open cabinets and closets to investigate the insides. The coat closet doesn't have a proper doorknob/latch. I sure hope my neighbors were at Easter service and didn't hear me swearing at my cat while I tried to figure out how she blocked me out of my own apartment. ETA: last night she opened every cabinet at knee level and hurked orange half digested cat food in three spots (that I found). I wish she would just tell me she doesn't like moving and get it done.

Walk out your door expecting a total bummer Monday, and discover policemen are just outside investigating the death of your next door neighbor. I didn't know the guy at all - he stayed mostly inside reading his newspaper. He was quite old and infirm; he'd evidently lost his vocal cords and was still smoking anyway. He was sort of collapsed on the couch. I could see him through the open front door, and waves of cigarette smell wafted out - the whole apartment probably reeks. It was an okay day. I talked to people a little, worked, and had a slight run in with someone - but you know, as much as life can be the pits what with the economy and all... the alternative is even less appealing. I had this immediate urge to put all my affairs in order. I suppose that's natural enough when confronted with this sort of thing. I imagine I will get my affairs in order at some point this year, as I've been meaning to do anyway.

Evidently the spambots think this is an abandoned blog - I've gotten about 11,293,495 comment spam in the past week. Thank you, spam trapping add on. I'm very close to moving again. My lease is up in about... I don't want to think about it, but a month in a half. I know not what the complex will do about raising the rent and so forth, and Some Guy is still all for the cohabitation idea to save a little money and increase the likelihood that he will see me more than once a week. Since he's not likely to be able to fit his things into the 2" of space in the corner of my closet, and his current rental is in an area where mariachi music keeps him awake all night, there's a moving truck to rent. (I have nothing against mariachi music, or any other kind, until 2 am when as far as I'm concerned you need to turn that s#%^ OFF already! Especially when you can hear it three blocks away!) I've reconciled myself to my job situation. It's still a work environment ranking somewhere between fingernails down a chalkboard and piercing ultrasensitive body parts with rusty nails - however, I'm employed and almost done with the internship, and it's the only place in town actually growing instead of laying people off. The rest of my life remains in limbo. The more people I meet, the more I see that this is the way we are forced to live. So many ideas and dreams, so little time. We love stories of people who go write mega-novels and become wealthy, or climb that mountain against all odds, because we are caught up in this moment to moment drama of the little shit. Will I get my flat fixed before I need the car to go buy more hot cheetos? Will my kids stop throwing pencils and do their classwork? Will I find that #%%#$~! box of light bulbs so I can finally pluck my eyebrows in full lighting? I wonder if the do-ers are just really frustrated-past-endurance normal folks who can let the dishes pile up while they climb Kilimanjaro. I'll go ponder that while I do the dishes.

Like all my writing, the blog has suffered greatly for the duration of my internship. I've tossed around thousands of thoughts of simply terminating and storing the blog offline. Perhaps in the future a new one might pop up... perhaps I would lose myself in private offline life and disappear. But I have this attachment to online life and to writing that I can't deny. Just because it's on hold doesn't mean it's not still there. Just because I spend days hiking around with a backpack, driving around talking to kids and families about their problems, and the rest of my time with some guy doesn't mean the writing won't come back. I get the feeling these days that the bits of my life, like reading for recreational purposes and writing and posting online, might just come back once I get past those two hideous licensing exams. Not sure why I think that. Some Guy and I are looking at places to rent that have room for combined belongings. I haven't been fired. Nor have I been laid off. I'm within a couple hundred internship hours of done - I thought I was a lot closer, but it turns out my math skills are lacking (no surprise there). So more stress for more months.... So should I or shouldn't I kill the blog? I'll probably just leave it snoozing for a while. It works for Jemima.

There have been times that I have had a doctor I liked and wanted to keep. Then I changed jobs.... Now, I have Kaiser. There is a huge Kaiser medical center in town, and each time I require something simple like a prescription I have to go there. Today I went to the huge four story ultra-complex multiple building-named-after-a-tree center for the routine female tests. I was in and out in less than an hour. I find this amazing, after the three hour visits that were actually fifteen minute visits surrounded by long waits for the doctor/nurse practitioner to enter the room.... I have come to appreciate the conveyor belt approach to medicine. The days of the family doctor who knows you since you're two months old are nostalgic history. Viva la HMO. I was back to work in no time.

The upstairs neighbor is busy tonight, trundling his furniture to and fro, apparently with very large people still sitting in it. (I am going solely by the sound of it all, mind you - there might be skiing elephants, or rolling rhinos, or perhaps he is stripping the flooring with a hand axe.) That's okay, however, as I am listening to MASH episodes at full volume to cover the noise. Viva la neighborness.

Last Saturday I hiked 9 miles in 90F weather, on exposed ridges at ~7000 feet elevation. Sunday I slept most of the day. I think that the four liters of water I drank on the hike did not offset the heat exhaustion. Not Good. Still somewhat tired this week. Not wanting to get up for work in the mornings. Thinking I'm too old p'raps for pushing myself into the out of doors. But! Tioga Pass opens tomorrow. I may yet go backpacking in Yosemite.