Hey now, THAT'S just fucking GREAT!

by Mush on March 5, 2007 · 2 Comments · in Work

In which the irony is not lost on me.

I talked to Kelly Services again today; I have an appointment to go in tomorrow at noon and take all their competency tests. Like, Writing A Letter in Microsoft Word and Using Excel to Total A Column. (It’s worth it. I’ve temped for Kelly twice before and loved it. Depending on their volume of work and number of temps, I should have no problem working full-time quite soon.) Their office is in Iowa City, and it’s an hour’s drive from here.

So naturally the jeep is sounding weird. I ran an errand earlier and it sounds odd. Like muffler/exhaust or tranny weird. If the fucking transmission falls out I WILL PITCH A FIT. (If it’s just my muffler falling off that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t do it too quickly.)

Now both my dog and my cage need attention. Christ.

 

The Four Dirtiest Syllables

by Mush on March 4, 2007 · 1 Comment · in Blurbs

I which I totally agree.

According to my roommate Truck, these are the four dirtiest syllables in the English language:

cocktail weenie

“Because,” he explains, “the phrase ‘cocktail assfuck’ would just be redundant.”

In other news, goblinbox.com will turn six years old on Friday!

 

Grease, Yum

by Mush on March 4, 2007 · 2 Comments · in Social

In which there’s food and drink.

My girl Raybo texted me last night and asked me what I was doing. I texted back that I was doing nothing. (Which wasn’t exactly true. I was sitting on my bedroom floor in my pajamas, winding a ball of sock yarn.) She replied that she’d like to take me out for a drink. I replied that she should come pick my ass up and got dressed.

We went to the Dead Cock and did shots with the bartender and complained that there was no eye candy and talked about sex in great detail. (In our defense, it was the wrestling on TV that started the whole sex conversation. I mean, just tell me that watching two smooth, buff men spending minute-long intervals in the Missionary position puts only me in mind of, I don’t know, sex maybe? Pshaw! It’s the gayest shit ever! Well, except for the part where they’re punching each other in the fucking head. The guy on the bottom even hooks his ankles together around the waist of the guy who is, well, topping him. Anyway. So I pointed the TV out to Ray and said, “Look, it’s hot boy sex,” and she immediately started doing MST3k voiceovers. It was hysterical: “Oh come on baby, you know you want it. Relax and stop punching daddy in the head. Cause if you don’t it’s just gonna make him KNOCK. YOU. OUT.”)

At one thirty in the morning, we went next door to the pizza joint, and we two inhaled an entire medium cheese pizza in about ninety-eight seconds. It was so delicious I count it among my most profound spiritual experiences ever. OMFG.

Then I came home and AmmZon’s dad was bleeding all over the kitchen because he’d fallen on the ice and cracked his head open. He refused stitches. When the bleeding was staunched, I ordered him to lie down on the couch and sleep, because otherwise he was just going to keep walking around talking about how falling made him feel like an idiot. Truck bandaged his head up. Then everyone else went to sleep, and I answered email until 3 in the morning.

 

Knitting, Knitting, Knitting

by Mush on March 3, 2007 · 7 Comments · in Knitting, Work

In which I bore my non-knitting readers half to death.

I’ve been knitting myself a hat. This is the third hat that I’ve started for myself; the other two I gave away because when they were finished they weren’t my hat.

A Hat... For Me!

This hat is brown and pink, which are totally my colors. It’s not fuzzy, but it’s not acrylic either — it’s wool. I think I might get to keep this one! It looks great in broad daylight, but the colorway kinda falls apart in indoor lighting and ends up looking weird… Of course, if you know me in person, you know I often put clothes on over my pajamas and go out in public, and that I’ve been known to wear brown shoes with black purses. So it’s not like I’m a paragon of style.

In other news, I had an interesting talk with a couple of friends last night and the end result is that I’m going to go apply here on Monday before I drive up to Iowa City to register at Kelly Services. They’re not actively hiring, but from what I heard omgwtfbbq do they ever need me.

 

Box o' Yarn!

by Mush on March 1, 2007 · 2 Comments · in Knitting

In which there’s a parcel! Yay!

The mailman came back this afternoon and left a box on the porch. This box contains the items I got with the Patternworks gift certificate my mom sent me for Christmas:

Talking Yarn, Man

I’ve been waiting for this box for over a week! I got a felted clog pattern, 2 skeins of Meredith Bay yarn, 2 skeins of sock yarn, 4 skeins of Lamb’s Pride worsted, a bottle of wool wash, a free scarf pattern I’ll never use, and 1 skein of Lopi (to round out the order).

Yarn! I’ll make socks. Slippers. A new hat. It’s super extra exciting cool!

 

Denied, Bitches

by Mush on March 1, 2007 · 4 Comments · in Blurbs

In which I feel a change a-coming.

It’s official. I didn’t get the office manager job. (I think the HR woman wanted to hire me but got overruled, but that’s just a gut feeling and I may have manufactured it to make myself feel better. I wanted that job, damn it.)

I’m going to drive up to Iowa City — Friday or Monday depending on the weather — and register at Kelly Services. Maybe they can start getting me temp office gigs. I have to get some income. Hopefully I can find a couch to crash on so I don’t have to commute two hours every day, but I’ll do what I have to. Well, until I run out of gas money, that is.

I’ve been knitting a lot and my sweater is looking very much like an article of clothing!

For fun, I’ve set up an email account and have been emailing the authors of various odd or amusing craigslist personals. The replies I’m getting are super fucking fun. I mean, mainly I’m looking for jobs and housing, but this post made me laugh out loud. I read all the personals, not because I’m looking for anything in particular but because sometimes, usually in the m4m section, there’ll be a massage ad with a picture of a totally naked guy in it, and it appears that I enjoy being startled by unexpected naked guy pictures. I mean, it’s just not something you expect after you’ve been surfing for job postings.

My sleep schedule has wound itself back around the clock and again I’m on India time. The weather sucks and it’s wet and cold and rainy and we have a flood watch because the ground’s too frozen to absorb the rain. My box of yarn (from the gift cert my mom gave me for Xmas) has been in the mail for over a week and hasn’t arrived. I haven’t washed my hair in at least five days. AmmZon made an asparagus quiche today. I have yet to file my taxes.

If I can get a job in Iowa City, I will move there and join a stitch’n’bitch and drink good coffee and shamelessly ogle the cute college boys. And girls. I’m equal-opportunity that way, although my thoughts about cute girls are usually less charitable, like, “She’s pretty but must she speak with that annoying voice?” and “That skinny little bitch ain’t got no ass at all.”

 

Why I Love The Internet

by Mush on February 27, 2007 · 7 Comments · in Social, Travel, Work

In which it turns out that complaining does do you some good.

Yesterday I felt all shitty and marginal and rejected and sorry for myself, so I wrote a big old whiny post about it. Within an hour of posting I’d had two heartfelt private emails and a long IM conversation aimed at helping me work it all out. That’s why I love the Internet.

No good news today on the job front. That last place isn’t going to hire me, I can feel it, so I’ve applied for a few jobs in Iowa City: one position at the University, a couple of cool jobs off of craigslist, an office job through Kelly Services.

The problem, I think, is that I have to rein it in during interviews. No one wants to know how smart I am. No one wants me to ask them why they chose the questions they use, nor do they even want me to answer their clever interview questions honestly. (When they ask me for my five-year plan, I will say I want to still be working for their organization). No one wants to hear about my work philosophy or that I’ve engineered myself out of jobs in the past. No one wants to hear personal anecdotes that take more than 15 seconds to tell, and no one gives a shit about what I’d like in a job.

Iowa City’s only an hour away, so I can easily drive up there for interviews. I might go up there this week and register at Kelly Services in person, maybe take their skills tests; maybe they can get me some temp work immediately. (There aren’t any temp agencies with actual work in Fairfield or Ottumwa; I’ve already tried that angle.)

I can’t move very far away because I haven’t got enough money to achieve escape velocity, but I could get to Iowa City. I like it up there, it’s a college town, there’s coffee and books and jazz, and there’s work. It has it’s own craigslist (where I saw three dog-friendly housing situations!!!). I even know a few people up there, one of whom told me to apply at the University — for the second time — in yesterday’s comments. After a stint there, I could escape Iowa altogether, if that ever seemed necessary.

In other news, my dog has a big old lump on her side. It’s driving me nuts. It came up rapidly, isn’t affecting her appetite or digestion or behavior, and doesn’t hurt her, but I hate it anyway.

 

What To Do

by Mush on February 26, 2007 · 7 Comments · in Work

In which I’m utterly directionless.

I’ve mentally reviewed my second interview here and have convinced myself that I’m not going to get hired.

They told me last Tuesday that they hoped to have decided “by the end of the week.” Although I exchanged email wishes with the HR chick for a pleasant weekend last Friday, today hasn’t brought any news at all. I remember that the CEO had asked me off-handedly if I’d “be interested in doing help desk work instead,” and at another point he implied that I was perhaps too smart for the job in question. I’ve concluded that I’m not going to get that office manager job because I’m either overqualified or have the wrong temperment.

So. Of the last three jobs I’ve interviewed for, I haven’t been hired for any of them. I have nothing else in the works because I haven’t submitted a resume in over two weeks. I am weeks away from a paycheck at the very least. I’ve always been able to get work, but there’s just no work for me here.

Continue reading »

 

The Ron Jeremy Knit-gasm (Big Ram Remix)

by Mush on February 23, 2007 · 6 Comments · in Knitting, Social

In which NLW cracks me all the fuck the way up.

The Ever-Handsome Mr J was out of town last night, so NLW called me and took me out to dinner at Pizza Hut. I love that about her. We talked about me, then we talked about her. Then we bought cranberry juice and chocolate sandwich cookies and went to her house and talked about knitting.

We’ve designed the hardest knitting pattern ever, to wit: a nine-foot long Entrelac scarf, knit in the round on size 0 needles, with steeks! Hah! (“If you knit that, your knitting cock would be so huge that all future knitting would be optional! OPTIONAL!!!”)

Then we surfed Flickr for “entrelac” and decided that Noro Silk Garden (a brand of yarn) really is pretty much made for Entrelac. Then we sighed, “Noro” a few times. Then we decided we need to find some software with which to lay down a thumpin’ house track, and layer recordings of knitters squealing/sighing/screaming various yarn names: “Oooh, Noro!” and “Koigu! Koigu!” and then a few forceful interjections of a Ron Jeremy sound-byte something along the lines of, “UUUUHHHnnnnnnnnggggghhhhh!!!”

Knitting house. It’s funny. It’d get mad play, bitches. MAD play.

 

WordPress Themes

by Mush on February 22, 2007 · 10 Comments · in Blurbs

In which I complain.

I need a simple, clean, working 3-column WP theme (because I’m tired of the one I’ve been using for the past two years or so!). Today I went to the Theme Viewer, searched for Widget-ready 3-column themes, downloaded six of them, and tested them out.

Three didn’t work at all — bad coding. Two work technically but won’t work with my content because I have too many Pages and it fucks up the layout. (Most themes expect fewer than five Pages, but I have a lot.) One doesn’t work in IE. The final one is groovy looking but it’s not clean enough, not simple enough. I want goblinbox.com to be utterly accessible and readable. I don’t like sites that are overwhelming; if you want to dig through my sidebar that’s cool, but mostly I want you to read the post, comment if you’re moved to do so, and not have to do a lot of scrolling and clicking and crap to do it.

On top of all of that, I no longer have Fireworks installed so I can’t tweak images, which bums me out and means I have a hard time incorporating my logo into new layouts. All in all, highly unsatisfactory. I’ll probably go back to my old stand-by tomorrow. *grumble*

Update: I tried a variety of templates and they all have problems save this one. They don’t work in IE (I HATE IE OMFGWTFBBQ), they don’t work with my content, they aren’t Widgetized, they suck, I don’t like them, you don’t like them, or they’re just ugly. So I settled with this one. At least it’s clean.