Category Archives: Work

Nine.

Web

In which this website would be in fifth grade now, if it were human.

GOBLINBOX.COM is nine years old today.

gobbieIt’s been on at least seven different servers. It’s been hand-coded, it’s been run on Movabletype and WordPress. It’s had ten different forums. There have been as many as eight different databases at a time. There have been innumerable themes and color schemes and layouts.

It has suffered multiple crashes and some pretty significant data loss. There are sub-folders filled with broken image galleries. I’ve been asked to remove material a half a dozen times by both friends and employers. It’s been hacked twice, it’s been served take-down orders thrice, and it nearly got me sued once.

At its peak, it was getting ten thousand unique hits each month (now it gets about 2k), was spidered, indexed, and botted within an inch of its life, and it used upwards of 90% of the server’s total bandwidth.

It has been the cause of my learning FrontPage, HTML, Dreamweaver, graphic design and slicing, CSS, DNS, PHP, server security, MySQL, legal crap, and a lot of social crap.

I’ve written here about tech, work, sci-fi, gadgets, books, media, death, sex, miscarriage, love, divorce, travel, loss, weather, panic and anxiety, surgery, spirituality, film photography, knitting, and music – and there are even some pretty good recipes.

I’ve learned that some people will bitch at me for writing about them, and that other people will bitch at me for not writing about them. I’ve learned that there’s an awful lot of stuff I can’t write about, but that I can still somehow manage to convey what I need to convey.

Friends and family keep up with me through this website. I’ve made lots of new friends through this website. Some of them are old friends now, some of them dropped off the Internet, some of them I now know in real life.

Many of the blogs I’ve followed over the years are gone now. People are always announcing sabbaticals, or deleting their sites, or drifting away quietly. I’ve never announced a break, and never even felt the desire to do so. I love this website, and I really mean it when I say Here’s to another nine years!

When I’ve needed it most, I’ve received tremendous love and support here, and I truly cherish that. Thank you, all who come to visit, each and every one of you, old or new. I mean it. Even if you don’t comment.

If you want, you can take a trip with me down memory lane and look at the Internet archive entries. Remember when the site was orange? When it was purple? Those crazy Xmas themes I used to build? Hah!

GOBLINBOX.COM is nine years old today. Nine! Nine.

Don't mind me, I'm just trying to figure out what to do with myself.

Decisions, Work,

In which I flail around a bit more because apparently I’m a bit of a moron.

When you’re fourteen, you go to high school. That’s just what you do; everybody knows this. When you’re eighteen, you go to college. After college, you go to work and strive to pay off your student loans.

Eventually, you meet someone and form an alliance that involves bodily fluids at the least, and generally laundry and motor vehicle titles as well.

If you’re a breeder, you then proceed to breed. The expectation is so pervasive that you probably take a few stabs at it even if you don’t really want to. It’s just what you do.

After that it’s less clear what’s supposed to happen, or when, until the age of 65, at which point you’re supposed to be able to stop working. Beyond accumulating objects and thickening dramatically about the middle, there really isn’t a very clear action plan for people between, say, 30 and 65.

Hi! My name is Mush, I’m 41, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing!

I’m freaking out because I’m divorced with debt and no assets, and I have no job, no savings, no retirement fund, no car, no belongings, and no health insurance. A quick look at my UI paperwork confirms that I am mere months away from becoming a financial burden on my family/society. I have a lot of debt. I have no great skills or talents beyond a quick mind and a decent singing voice, and neither of those things have ever particularly made me much money.

I guess I’m supposed to be working a day job, engaging in hobbies on the side, and saving money for my old age. Sadly, I am not particularly good at this, and require many and varied vacations to keep me sane.

I am of a generation that thinks it should be happy more than responsible.

Right now, I’m having a crisis. I’m wondering if I should move so that I can find a day job… except that I don’t really want to move. Hell, I don’t even really want a day job – I want income. I have friends who fill my head with talk about doing music for a living. I have the idea that maybe I’m not finding a day job because it’s time for me to make money some other way. I have years and years of exposure to alternative ways of thinking that tell me sometimes it’s important to follow happiness rather than logic. I also live in a culture full of self-indulgent fuck-ups, so I have to consider that maybe the happiness-before-all-else approach lacks depth and creates debt. I also have a heart full of doubts about the kind of person I actually am because it seems to me that if I were the kind of person who lived in the city and gigged a lot, I’d already be doing that and clearly I’m not. I haven’t lived in a city for a looooong time. Honesty compels me to admit that I want to think of myself as a city girl, but I am not, in actual point of fact, able to call myself a city girl. Anyway, blah blah blah, I need to figure out if I’m going to stay here or go somewhere else, and to that end here are some bullet points, because who doesn’t love bullet points?

I should stay here because:

  • I can afford to pay off my debt and travel. Well, when I have a job, that is.
  • I’m in a good band, with good gigs lined up. I’m gaining recognition.
  • I have friends, family, community.
  • As the childless spinster in the family, it’s basically my duty to be here for G’ma.
  • There’s no good reason to throw out the life I just spent the last three years building.

I should move away because:

  • There’s no work here.
  • There is greater chance of doing more music in a major metro area.
  • Challenge. Pace. Exposure. Art! Culture!
  • The life I’ve built here is common and can be duplicated pretty much anywhere, really.

I think that I don’t want to move away, but I can’t tell if I sincerely don’t want to move away or if I’ve convinced myself of the overwhelming difficulty of doing so and/or the likelihood of my failing to accomplish anything but abject poverty and fatigue.

In other words, am I failing to appreciate what I’ve got here? Am I romanticizing city life?

Yes, and yes. I’m playing four blues festivals this summer, and I’m meeting lots of great players as I get around more. I can get any old job if I have to, and it’s not like I’ve ever really been career-oriented anyway – if I was, I’d have a better skill set by now.

In the city I’d be bitching about loneliness, commute times, and constant poverty. Cities are fun when you vacation there; when you live there it’s high rent, late busses, and so much social churn that it takes a great deal of time and effort to meet the right people. You’re working 40 hours a week just to cover rent and utilities and your fucking debt settlement program, and you find that every week you’re a little more tired and a little less likely to go out and meet musicians. (When I lived in San Francisco, everyone I did meet, on those rare occasions when I had the energy to go out, was just trying to save up enough money to move away.) If you lack discipline, you end up buying all that cute shit you see all over the place to pad your nest with, and you never take another vacation again. Five years later, you still have no equity, no savings, and you could have stayed in your grandmother’s attic for $150 a month and at least gotten to play some blues festivals. Your boyfriend is still a stoner because all of your boyfriends are stoners, you’re like a goddamned stoner magnet, and don’t forget that wherever you go there you are.

Or maybe not. Maybe you move to the city, get a job, meet awesome people, and have a gig in a couple of months. Maybe you’re so engaged and challenged and invigorated that you don’t actually just hole up in your apartment when you’re not doing your day job, maybe you finally blossom because you have access to the things you need. Maybe you finally meet a nice vegetarian Hindu boy, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Maybe it’s rural and small town living that makes you so weird, and your gut desire to get back into the city is a real impulse and not a daydream and it’s just a goddamned shame that it’s taken you this long to even be able to seriously consider it.

Being alone means that nothing keeps me anywhere; I could try anything I wanted.

Of course, there’s the question of where. Portland? Seattle? Chicago? DC? New York? And the question of how much: I don’t have any savings right now. I could probably move to Portland on a couple hundred bucks. New York would require, what, fifteen hundred minimum? Not to mention that not all cities are created equal; after you’ve been to Chicago and New York, most left coast cities barely qualify for the description.

Except I don’t think I want to move. I want to go on an extended vacation, but I can’t afford to because I don’t have a goddamned job.

And then there are the things I know about myself: I’m not particularly driven. When I have the time, space, and resources to do stuff, I don’t do it. One can only blame lack of stimulation so much before she has to admit she’s fucking lazy by nature. Right now I’m not getting my CCNA and I’m not working out and I’m not playing guitar and I’m not writing and I’m not meditating. I didn’t do those things when I was a housewife, I didn’t do those things the last time I was unemployed and had free time, and why would I be any different somewhere else?

But there’s no work here and I need a job! I have bills to pay!

Gawd! I am having such a hard time figuring out what I want to do, and where I want to do it. I couldn’t possibly waffle any more than I am. Why do I have to be such a fucking Libra all the time?!

A disappointing interview.

Work

In which it was really exciting there for a minute, but then my hopes were dashed.

I found a job under Tech Support on craigslist. It looked good. I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and clicked the link to apply for it. After I finished the online quiz – five fairly interesting but slightly dated tech questions I answered with the help of my boyfriend, Google – but before I was able to upload my résumé, my netbook halted and I had to reboot. I tried to finish the job application afterward, but the site wouldn’t let me back in nor would it let me start over.

Fast forward a week, and I get the following email:

Your name and email came through on our JobVite system notifying me that you applied for our Solutions Center Engineer position and have passed our initial essay quiz; however, your information is incomplete in our system. If you are still interested in this position can you please complete your profile on our site or send me a copy of your resume?

Oh boy, can I! I get all excited and email my résumé. It’s a telecommuting job; I’d get to work from home. The main company’s in Seattle and I’d have to go there for training, but that’s no biggie. Tech support from home! Talk about an excellent solution to my employment/location issues! Before the day was out I had two phone interviews scheduled for today.

I went and read through the employer’s entire site. I learned they’re solvent and growing and in desperate need of technicians. I even joined their forum and answered a bunch of support queries. For free.

I went to bed early and got up early. By nine o’clock this morning I had dressed, eaten, and even made my bed. I had a mug of tea and I was sitting in front of my computer with my Bluetooth headset on, ready to go.

First thing the caller says is that I need to be in front of a computer, ideally with a headset on, so that I can search for answers. Since I hadn’t been told any of this, I was pretty thrilled with myself for being so insightful. Then he proceeds to start off with a question I don’t know the answer to (“Name at least five ways programs can autostart with Windows, in addition to the Startup folder”), followed by two more (“What does it mean to back up the registry?” and “Are you an expert in msconfig?”) to which I have to answer, “I don’t know,” and “No, I’m currently not.”

viruses

There are five ways Windows starts applications? Okay. I didn’t know that. I figured there were two: launch the app at startup, and do not launch the app at startup. I mean, an app’s either in the startup list or it isn’t, right? I told the interviewer that while I was furiously googling “how does Windows launch applications?” and giving great phone (“Typically, when I’m looking something up, I chat with the customer so they don’t have to listen to dead air, but in this context I don’t really have any small talk,” I say. The interviewer says, “We just put them on hold,” which tells me they don’t give a shit about customer service and are probably metric-oriented. Hmm).

I’m not a registry jock; I’ve spent ten years working for ISPs telling people to take their virus-infested shit someplace else for removal. I’m in my own computer’s registry maybe twice a year, and in customers’ registries, like, six times in the entire past decade. Pretty much every employer I’ve ever had has considered registry edits to be a liability nightmare and consequently I haven’t learned much on the topic.

I tell the interviewer all this, admit that I don’t believe that I understand the gist of his last question, and then qualify that I can learn whatever I need to know pretty much right away. He brusquely tells me that I can’t. “There’s a three-day training for this position, and it presupposes a deep knowledge of registry issues,” he says. “To remove viruses that are so new AV apps aren’t defending against them, you need to understand how programs start with Windows and cut them out surgically.”

Ah. It’s a full-time virus removal job. Yuck.

While the job description does say, “Troubleshooting Windows XP platform to registry level,” it doesn’t emphasize that quite enough, IMO: there’s a bunch of other stuff on there that I’m actually really good at. I think it should say, “We do massive quantities of zero-day virus removal and we need registry phreaks. Your apprehension of TCP/IP is pretty much irrelevant to us because people call their ISPs for that shit.”

The interviewer somehow managed to make me feel stupid – I’m not! I p0wn support! – when he said, “Well, we really need people who actually know how Windows works, so I see no reason to continue this evaluation. I thank you for your time–”

“Your job description,” I interrupted, “says that you’re looking for responsible phone techs with networking skills and the ability to set up and troubleshoot LANs and peripherals. But what I’m hearing now is that you actually just do remote virus removal all day? Is this correct?” He affirms. I really don’t want to remove viruses for a living, but I’d been really excited yesterday and now I feel uncomfortable and belittled, like I’m wasting his time when his company called me for an interview. He starts to conclude the conversation again. I childishly interrupt again and invite him to have a nice day. The interview terminates.

Oh, well. At least I don’t have to remove viruses for a living.

Quick Update

Music, Work

In which I drop by briefly on my way to a gig.

The co-op finally emailed Friday afternoon: they thanked me but declined, deciding instead to hire from within.

I am having a full-on romance, complete with poetry and chocolates and necking and stuff. It’s awesome. We’re apart this weekend, though, because we’re both gigging in different towns.

The only work interest I’ve gotten appears to be a recruiter for a 3rd tier support gig. The pay sounds too high to be legit, though, so I suspect it’s crap.

Windows Update killed my netbook; a system restore seems to have solved the problem.

Played the Parkade in Kennewick last night; fun little bar. Tonight we’re at Dax’s in Richland.

Oh, I really need to be in the shower about five minutes ago! Ciao!

It'd be time to panic, if I weren't so mellow.

Love, Work

In which there’s no new job, but there is a new beau.

The co-op hasn’t called.

My last contact with them was on January 19th; it’s been nearly three weeks. If they were going to hire me, they’d have done so by now.

I’ve been applying for three jobs every week just like I’m supposed to, and I haven’t even gotten a call back. The most encouragement I’ve gotten is the occasional automated “Thank you for your interest” email.

There’s no work in my industry. I’m either going to have to get a secretarial job or move away. Period.

There is some work in the Tricities, but I am not driving two hours a day for work; I utterly and unashamedly lack the commute gene. I’m not interested in moving to the Tricities, either, because the whole point of living around here is family and free rent while I finish paying off my debt settlement program. Living in Pasco would be not only silly, but counter-productive.

I don’t want a bookkeeping job, I don’t want to make nine bucks an hour, and I literally have no office-appropriate clothes. None.

So, yeah: this is beginning to suck.

~+~+~
But then there’s the bass player. (He’s actually more of a guitar player/songwriter, apparently, but I usually see him playing bass.) He’s six feet and change, has long black hair, and wears an AC/DC hat most of the time. I can’t remember how to spell the name of his tribe, but he’s Native (yes, this means virtually no body hair!) and he’s more or less from Alaska though he hasn’t been there in years.

I’ve known him socially for a couple of years, sat in with his band a few times. His number’s been in my phone for the past year; he texts when they’re playing somewhere.

Not too long ago we started texting each other a lot. I don’t remember why; it just happened. Thank yous, jokes, anything-happening-tonight questions, that sort of thing. Then I went to one of his gigs with Curt & Shelley, and he and I talked between sets. Then there was more texting, and a week or two later we ended up in the same room and started talking again. We went to the Green; he kissed me apropos of nothing. Then there was an after hours and he caught a ride with me in the truck…

In the past six days, we’ve spent about seventeen hours making out while parked in his driveway. (For various reasons neither of us can bring people home, so we’re just parking like teenagers.) It’s been epic and awesome and consuming and fantastic, and since I’ve been so busy staying up all night and sleeping all day I’ve been in total denial about the fact that the co-op hasn’t been calling. Yay!

The other morning, moments before dawn, we unclinched to smoke. The windows were fogged. My Zippo wouldn’t light. His Zippos wouldn’t light, and neither would the Bic until we opened a window. Suddenly they all worked. (I have no idea why we had five lighters between us, but it made for excellent testing.) Science! I’m still trying to determine why, if there wasn’t enough oxygen to light a lighter, I didn’t just go ahead and pass out. Maybe it was a pressure or humidity thing? Either way, it was profoundly amusing at the time. “We broke fire! The entire concept of fire, we’ve BROKEN it! NO ONE MAKES OUT LIKE WE DO!”

He explained about his last breakup. I explained that I just don’t want anybody to want anything from me. He said he wasn’t even remotely interested in meeting anybody. I told him I wanted a relationship like I want an ice pick in my eye socket. He told me how his relationships end. I told him how mine end. He squinted at me and asked me if I was going to dump him. I squinted back and said I had no way of knowing that. He hugged me and told me that he’d teach me to play Russian backgammon. I said Russian backgammon could very easily be the secret to longevity.

He introduced me to most of his friends and the entire Feedback entourage. I told my friends about him. He came to my gig last Saturday. I met his mom. We’ve been holding hands in public.

Which means I have a fucking BOYFRIEND, people. Me. The one who totally did not want a boyfriend? Yeah.

I’d probably be pissed off about it if it weren’t so freakin’ awesome.

Loss of: job, vehicular mobility, and Xmarks.

Work

In which I’m not really having a very good day.

I got a heads-up yesterday that I was going to be laid off today so I did the right thing last night and cleaned up my work computer, uninstalling silly applications and clearing browser caches and passwords and blah blah blah.

Today I went in to the office at nine o’clock to sign the paperwork. The drive was ultra treacherous because of the freezing rain and snow. (Yes, you read that right: I got up early to lose my job and went to do it even though all the schools are closed due to the shitty weather. Bah humbug.)

Freezing Rain

I was given a week’s severance, which I hadn’t expected since I was only there for four months. They were really nice and apologized for downsizing. Eight minutes later I was walking out the door with some COBRA paperwork and my trackball mouse in my hand.

The truck was stuck. I rocked it, but it was sitting on a sheet of ice and wouldn’t go anywhere.

The guy they laid off right after me had a 4WD, though, and was awesome enough to tow me onto blacktop. I drove home gingerly, put the truck in the damn garage, and walked to the store on ice because I wanted a fucking consolation latte but wasn’t willing to get the truck stuck again just to get one. (Have I mentioned that 1. Walla Walla doesn’t plow, and 2. THE FREEZING FUCKING RAIN?!?)

When I finally got home, I made Vegetarian White Trash Breakfast from Hell and a cardamom latte. Then I came upstairs to study base 2 a little more, but when I went to click on the tutorial link I noticed my toolbar was empty.

Yes, last night, Xmarks somehow synched with the server AFTER I deleted all my local shortcuts and CLEARED ABOUT FIVE YEARS’ WORTH OF FUCKING BOOKMARKS. I’m really smoking pissed off about it, too, because I don’t have a local backup any more (which is my own fault, I know).

I did everything in the correct order, too (I’m not an idiot luser, I do this shit FOR A LIVING) and Xmarks fucked up anyway: I uninstalled Xmarks for IE, then deleted my IE Favorites. Then I deactivated Xmarks in Firefox, then deleted my shortcuts. When I closed Firefox, it asked me if I wanted to sync my changes AND I CHOSE NO! It apparently synced anyway, for fuck’s sake, and now I have NONE, ZERO, ZIP, ZILCH of my 500+ saved and carefully organized fucking bookmarks.

Of course, because I’m a geek I was able to restore using these directions (once I cooled down enough to look for them) but my newest links are lost and I was really, truly smokin’ mad there for awhile.

Happy holidays!

Facebook support.

Work

In which I totally don’t even work for Facebook, but you’d never know it by listening in on my calls.

Me: …this is Michelle, how may I help you?
Caller: Is there something wrong with your network in Idaho?
Me: No sir, there are no current known service outages. What symptoms are you experiencing?
Caller: I keep getting blank pages in Facebook.
Me: The problem is specific to Facebook?!
Caller: It’s just not working right.
Me: You’re able to view other web pages, and send and receive email though, right?
Caller: Oh, yeah, everything else works just fine. It’s just this Facebook application called FarmVille that —
Me: –Facebook has been having problems for days. They were all the way down yesterday for awhile. Also, when you attempt to login to FarmVille, you’ll see a notification inviting you to play at farmville.com if you’re having problems playing through Facebook! This has nothing to do with our network!
Caller: Really? No kidding. That’s, like, wow. You’ve been really helpful!
Me: Oh, my pleasure. For real. Have a great evening.

Teh tech support, it rulez.

It's Sunday, and there are two things.

Work

In which I’m suddenly considering where I might be living next Spring.

1. Dear Walla Walla: It snowed. YESTERDAY. And today, the streets are still full of snow! Why don’t you plow when it snows? What the hell is wrong with you?!

2. For reasons I haven’t been working here long enough to understand but which may be political as much as financial, it appears that I’m likely to get laid off this week. I will probably spend the winter holed up in the attic, hoarding UI benefits and getting my certs.

Apparently all the tech jobs have migrated to Denver. I don’t really want to move there, but there sure as hell isn’t any decent work here. I checked tech jobs in New York (of course), but they all seem to want a year’s worth of experience administering freakin’ Blackberry Enterprise. *shudder* Get thee behind me, Microsoft Exchange Server and derivatives!

There is a very cool-sounding support gig currently open in Chelsea, though, and a couple others in Brooklyn I’m qualified for…

Due to technical issues, this post has been replaced with a poorly-structured second attempt.

Social, Web

In which my fucking browser ate my post so I had to write the whole thing all over again! Gah! So NOW this post is totally an exercise in Weird Tense. It’s a good thing I majored in Literature, y’all, or we’d never make it through this.

iya09Yeah, so I’d started out today’s missive with something about this morning’s yoga class and how after only going twice I can touch my toes again, and how I paid for the rest of the sessions to make myself keep going.

And then I told you (again, but you forgave me) that I bought a yoga mat, and that it will be here Tuesday, and you were all happy for me and my yoga class.

Then I said something about how every time I want to write a blog post, all I can think about is stuff I’ve seen online, and how I’m not really doing anything IRL but working and sleeping. And then I cleverly said something about how I should get excited and make things so everyone would know that I know all about the Internet’s meme-of-the-week and I thereby retained my geek cred, which is totally important since obviously that’s all I have.

Then I cleverly segued into something along the lines of how much I love the Internet because it’s so awesomesauce and I was all ‘and here’s a story to prove it,’ and I went on to tell you about how last week someone on Twitter – where my entire social life takes place – linked to these totally fantastic posters some guy had designed for IYA09, and I told you about how I’d left a comment on the post – because hello! did you see those posters?! how could I not comment? – and that that’s what got me an email this week letting me know that the posters were now available for purchase.

Then this morning, Keef (the humanoid who has awesomely been hosting my site for free for about a geological age) hit me up on IM to discuss some server stuff, and I asked him if he’d seen the posters, and he hadn’t, so then I linked him, and then he had, and he allowed as to how wouldn’t they be great screenprints, and I totally agreed, and then it evolved into him emailing the artist to see if he, the artist, was interested in actual honest-to-God screenprinting, not that giclée stuff, which basically means “ink jet” anyway, and the artist said he’d already been asked several times if the posters would be available in that format, and it turns out that Keef totally does screenprinting, and so there you go.

Point being, I didn’t actually get excited and make anything myself, but I know people – online – who totally do that shit all the time.

And I watched CERN’s tweets as they spun up the LHC, and hung out at a live talk about Drake’s Equation at Astronomy.fm (during the moments I was blowing off the Tedious Data Entry Project I’m involved in at work) and so basically, other than going to yoga class and smiling at a bunch of strangers and being reminded yet again of my total and complete lack of muscle strength, I’ve really basically just had my head up the Internet’s arse all day.

Oh, did I mention that I love the Internet?

I did?

Greetings from Sunday.

Health, Work

In which I bitch about my current work schedule, but find some stuff to be excited about.

I had yesterday off, which made it my Saturday. I have today off too, which means it’s my Sunday even though it’s your hump day.

I hate my new work schedule, I really do. Let’s look at the monstrosity again, shall we?

Thursday 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Friday 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Saturday 11:00 am – 8:00 pm
Sunday 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
Monday 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm

It’s a horrifying mix of days, nights, and weekends. Last week I worked a respectable Monday-through-Friday daytime gig; now my schedule looks like I’m nineteen and working at a 7-Eleven in Compton.

Luckily I’m scheduled to meet with my boss tomorrow about adjusting it. Since the NOC1 is open 6am-10pm on weekdays and 8am-8pm on weekends and there are only six bodies to cover all those hours, it’s hard for anyone to get a decent schedule (but especially if you’re me and have mad experience but no seniority).

I told them at my interview that I love working swing shift but need weekends off to be a rockstar, and they said they understood. I agreed to work the Awful Schedule for a few weeks as needed, but basically no one else wants to work weekends or nights so someone has to get stuck with a shit schedule.

I’m going to make an adult compromise and ask for the weekday swing shift (1pm to 10pm, Monday through Friday). If they agree it will mean I can never gig on a Friday again, which SUCKS ASS, but at least I’d be at work at the same time every day and not have to do this sucky nights-to-days translation every single fucking week.

Seriously. Let’s transpose the Awful Schedule to daytime hours and see just how fucked up it really is:

Thursday 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Friday 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Saturday 11:00 am – 8:00 pm 7:00 am – 5:00 pm
Sunday 8:00 am – 5:00 pm 4:00 am – 1:00 pm
Monday 1:00 pm – 10:00 pm 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

Four in the morning?! I can’t figure out how the poor guy who was working it did it for as long as he did. If I have to do this for more than a month I’ll explode. Or go postal. Or simply pull a no-call-no-show because I’m ASLEEP.

. .. … ……….. .. ……… . … .. .
There’s good news, though. Deep thought revealed that my schedule change might enable me to find a yoga class!

The last time I looked into yoga classes, I couldn’t go to any of them because I was always at work when they were offered; now that I work swing I have my mornings free. I dug around online and found two yoga classes on Friday mornings and emailed the studios to see if I can join. One’s actually a Hatha yoga class that starts tomorrow!

Beings are numberless, I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Buddha way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

-Four Great Bodhisattva Vows [pdf]

I also found a Buddhist meditation day retreat (with an enticing “focus on gratitude” theme) that I’d very much like to go to, on November 21st. Of course I’m currently scheduled to work that Saturday, but a girl can hope.

I could really use a meditation retreat right about now, so I’m hoping they’ll let me attend even if I haven’t been to any of their group meditations or classes. It’ not like I haven’t been meditating for twenty years, even if in a different tradition.

I’d find a retreat closer to my own discipline if there was one. A quick google shows there was an ISKCON in Walla Walla once, but as it’s no longer listed on the main site I guess it’s closed. No other hits. Buddhist meditation will have to do… and if I get to go I’m sure it’ll do just fine.

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Update 11/12: Good news! My new schedule is equitable and starts next week: I work 1pm-10pm M-Th, have Friday and Saturday off, and work Sunday from 11am-8pm. Sundays after gigs will suck, but that’s what coffee’s for, yeah?