In which I get an offer!

My brake light went on a couple of days ago. (Big, bright, RED light, right there on the dashboard: BRAKE.) After the light came on, the brakes seemed squishy, but I don’t know if the symptom was psychosomatic or not. (And if it was, I don’t know if I was imagining it or if the jeep was.) Suffice it to say, the sticker in the upper left-hand corner of my windshield proclaims that I was supposed to have gone in for service last March. Oops.

This afternoon I stopped at Mi-T-Mart and bought a container of DOT3 brake fluid. Out in the parking lot, I popped the hood and put the fluid in the jeep. Sheets and Bailey pulled up beside me, grinning and hollering, “Hey! You need a man to help you with that?”

“Why? Do you know were to find one?” I quipped.

Sheets laughed and said, “I met one once, in a place one time!”

“Are you sure it was a man? Did you check?”

“Naw,” he said. “I used to check ’em all, but it just gets so time consuming.”

In which we linky-linky.

Seems I’ve lost some of my blogroll. Sometimes I want to check in on someone, but their site’s not there any more.

Sometimes I delete shit by accident. Whatever.

The point is that if you read me and I don’t link to you (over there on the right in my blogroll), LET ME KNOW. Leave a comment with your URL so I can add you!

It’s okay if your site doesn’t have a feed; I’ll use del.icio.us for you old-fashioned folks.

Update: OH COME ON, PEOPLE. THIS SITE GETS 10K HITS A MONTH, I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE. GIMMIE YOUR URLs SO I CAN LINK TO YOU!

In which there may or may not be a brief outage.

I’m backing up and upgrading to the latest version of WordPress, the application I use to run this site. It’s a security update. Safety first! (It’s also been out for a couple of months, which makes me an asshole. Especially considering that I may or may not have already been hacked once before through an unupdated version of WP.)

There should be no outage at all, but depending on how well I follow directions you might get a few garbled pages here and there during the process.

So far today I’ve done the dishes, cleaned my room, taken a shower, flossed and brushed, dressed, started laundry, and made chai and White Trash Breakfast From Hell. Go, me!

In other news, tomorrow is Bread’s birthday.

Update: Okay, well, that didn’t work – sorry about that 10-minute downage there. I had to go back to my backup. Gah. See what trying to be good’ll getcha? I’ve got a ticket open and hopefully someone will point me to proper upgrade instrux.

In which I contemplate a road trip I can’t afford.

I’m feeling better… physically. My snot’s clearing up, and I don’t ache all over. I talked with AmmZon about getting fired via email yesterday, and she sniffed and said what everyone will probably say, which was something along the lines of, “Well, ya really can’t mix business and friendship.”

I’m still feeling damn stupid, though. I felt the same way when the ISP laid me off, and that one wasn’t my fault at all — they were just cutting back. This time though, I suppose it was my fault: I apparently misunderstood what was wanted of me and gave the impression that I was a flake.

Oh well. Maybe I am. But I suppose it serves me right, for taking a job I found in a bar. Also, I know better than to assume that I can behave the same way other people do in a company: when you’re the new girl, you toe the line. Period. Pay your dues. Regardless. I should have been a Nazi about office hours, because I hadn’t been specifically told to work any other way; I just assumed because that’s what everyone else was doing. I watched their behavior — checking in via the Internet at all hours, loose on being in the office itself — and copied it. Not what was wanted. I wish they’d said something before terminating me, though.

Baby Girl told me over the phone to quit beating myself up about it; she thinks I should have gotten a warning first and that I’m not allowed to feel like a shithead any longer. I was only employed seven days, fer chrissake. If I felt any better I’d go and let her buy me the drink she offered me, bless her heart.

Anyway, the point is that what I really want to do is throw my stuff and my dog in the jeep and go see my mommy. She lives in Laramie. It’s probably a 10-hour drive from here. It’s not like I could live there; there’s probably even less work there than there is here. But it’d be nice if I wasn’t mooching off of my friends for awhile; it’d be a pleasant change to mooch off of family instead.

In other news, I’m still in love with All Consuming.

In which I’m sick. In two ways. At the same time.

I’m sick. Fever, aches, cough, and the sniffles.

I texted work at nine-something this morning; slept; called work at two-something; slept; went out for dog food at four-something; slept; got up at nine-something and had a cup of tea, some rice and dhal, and an icy cold Coke. I finally got online at ten, intending to login and work a little — you know I’m sick when I don’t get on the Internet all day — but first I checked my email.

I was still under new-hire probation at Redux. I received a message from dot-com saying he was sorry and if I’d been in the office today he’d have done it face-to-face, but he didn’t think it was working out. Tardiness. Not dedicated enough. Lack of proper notification when out sick. Redux is very small and dependent on a particular personality mix. I guess mine didn’t cut it, no hard feelings, etc etc etc. I guess my office radar no longer works, either, because I didn’t see it coming at all. I thought they were as happy with me as I was with the job.

I guess that’s why they have probationary periods in the first place. I’m really trying hard not to take it personally, but of course I’m all sick and vulnerable (and PMSing, to boot) and my feelings are hurt and I’m close to tears. But I guess that’s the fast-paced world of Internet dot-coms for you.

So, yeah, now I’ve been let go twice in four months. My self-esteem’s taking a bit of a beating.

Perhaps I really should become a secretary; somehow I doubt it would bother me so much if I got let go from that.

In which nothing much.

I have a cold. I’m eating Indian take-out and drinking a China Cola at my desk. Several servers also have colds, and had to be restarted this morning.

It’s Rockstar’s birthday. I will probably go out for a drink.

That is all.

In which what a difference a day makes.

Happy Sunday afternoon, y’all!

NLW graciously acted as banker for me yesterday so my uncashable check dilemma went away. Yay! (God DAMN I hate not having a fucking checking account!)

I went out last night and played Megatouch with Baby Girl at the Dead Cock, and we ended the evening with a pass through McD’s drive-thru. (HOW DO THEY MAKE IT TASTE SO GOOD!?!?) I blame it on the season: normally I wouldn’t stuff my face full of junk food and go to sleep, but it is autumn.

Today so far I’ve done little more than make chai, and then scrambled eggs with diced tomatoes and cheese, and listen to my Pandora stations and read Network Redux trouble tickets. If you haven’t played around with Pandora yet, please do so. Music Genome Project, my babies. So hot.

Speaking of tuneage, I HAVE GOT TO GET MY ITUNES LIBRARY SITUATION SORTED OUT. My library is on Bread’s laptop and I no longer have access to it… he never did loan me that laptop when I asked him to. Bah. And honestly, it’s probably not even “my” library any more because I think he’s been downloading songs and ripping CDs into it.

I might just have to rip my whole library off of my iPod — which should take, oh, A MERE FIVE HOURS OR SO — and go from there. I need to arrange for an external HDD so I don’t fill Truck’s laptop up with my data… I’ll guess I’ll just pull the hard drive out of my tower (which is still at the farm) and stick it in my USB external HD enclosure and use that. Portable data. No more of this big-life-changes-seperating-me-from-my-data bullshit.

Update: I did this and then used this to get my library and metadata off my iPod and into iTunes on the laptop. (Later I’ll copy it to some external media of some kind — though Truck’s laptop has plenty of unused space, and my iPod’s only a 20Gb and it’s not full — and that media I will backup ad infinitum and guard with my LIFE.)

Copying your MP3s off of your iPod onto a computer, then getting all the artwork and playlists and shit organized, takes FOR FUCKING EVER. Just sayin’.

In which one is what one does.

I went to the grocery store and tried to cash my check; they refused to do it because it’s handwritten and drawn on an Oregon bank. Not having a checking account makes me feel like a goddamned second-class citizen.

I spent my last $2 at Taco Bell, then went to the car wash and used their trash bins to empty a bunch of garbage out of the jeep. I found the receipt for the battery core I’ve been hauling around since last November and went to the parts store to turn it in. They gave me $8.52 for it.

I bought $4 worth of gas and drove out to the farm. I have just enough money left for a pack of cigarettes.

Bread wasn’t home. I was half relieved and half heartbroken. I took my mail, some clothes, a thermos and a box of tea out of the kitchen. I got shoes and jackets and scarves and hats so I won’t freeze. I got my knitting and my guitar so I can have hobbies. I got the rest of my ID out of the desk in case I should need it. It was weird and made me equal parts sad and angry: sad because my marriage is over and I’m moving out and that sucks rocks, and mad because everything I took out of there is filthy and dusty and corroded or covered in spider webs and pet hair.

So here I am, with a check in my purse that’s useless (plus I owe cash to two of my friends, who spotted me a little here and there lately and who need their money back) and a jeep full of clothes and other junk packed mostly into garbage bags. I’m a fucking bag lady, only I have a car instead of a shopping cart.

I’ve marginalized myself. I can’t cash checks or do normal business transactions because a creditor fucked up my checking account and I *hate* that. And a significant portion of the few material things I still own are sitting in my car. And I had to turn in a battery core just to get enough gas money to drive to Batavia. If I am what I do, I’m a loser.

On the other hand, if I am what I eat then I’m a half pound bean burrito especiale. Yum!

AmmZon’s making chicken and cheesy broccoli rice and green beans for dinner. I don’t eat chicken, of course — and you shouldn’t either because chicken’s WAY TOO STUPID to eat — but cheesy broccoli rice sounds totally awesome. If I ever get my check cashed I’ll be able to pay her for groceries.