elanya

I meant to, while I was doing other things, back up a bunch of stuff on this computer onto my external hard drive so that I could take it in to Best Buy tomorrow. That....didn't happen. I might take it anyway and take my chances. I don't have much on the go for writing atm.

Today is International Women's day. I wore a red shirt, and I baked cookies (chocolate with mini reeces pieces). I talked to a friend on gchat and was prompted to look at jobs, and there are a few I will try and apply for - one in Ottawa and one in Nova Scotia (Lunenberg). A project for tomorrow/Friday I guess!

It is windy AF out there. And I am stupid tired. I really hope I am not getting sick, as I was meant to be volunteering this weekend and I feel like that would be irresponsible, if I do have a cold. Which super sucks! But Nugsy is pretty sick right now, and probably I have been giving him too many hugs. I gave him a cuddle while we were trying to convince him to take his antibiotics, and just - you could tell he was not well. Too warm, among other things. And I'm pretty much out of the inhaler I need to keep my lungs from succumbing to terribleness. So I'll cross my fingers, and go to bed.

Well, after my last post, I got an email asking me to come for bilingualism testing for a job I applied for back in March. This is basically a weeding phase, but I'm confident I can pass it. Then maybe a real interview, eventually. The job is pretty much exactly what I was telling morbane that I wanted, but it is in Ottawa so I'd have to move. I already have tons of friends who live there, though, so that's cool.

The other thing that happened after my last post is that my laptop's issues came to more if a head. It can't find my desktop and some of its other important files... I have backed up all the things not previously backed up, I think, and am running more off a flash drive. None of the installed files are working, whee! I have a new machine coming on Friday. Thanks back to school sales!

And finally today I began my first forays into natural dyeing, and have some plain unbleached cotton sitting in a pot of tanniny water pre-alum mordanting, and I have a bunch of jars of dyestuffs to test out! I'm thinking of making a pillow or something. From my test scraps :)

This morning's Facebook memory was that my graduation was three years ago today. I still have mixed feelings about my degree and I'm not sure I'll ever get over them. ( And that about sets up the mood for this post. )

I'm not sure why it is easier to make any kinds of posts when all I have is meh news.... maybe because when I'm feeling better I'm doing other stuff and it is harder to find the time. I dunno, I'll try and balance things out, I feel like when I do make long posts it is always the same thing in just slightly different iterations. I need some new icons but I don't know what they should be.

ETA: Of course, having posted this, I just got a notification from a position I applied for back in March - they want to test my language skills. Not quite an interview, but a step in that direction I guess! And better than crickets.

Note: I wrote this up on Friday as an email to myself, and I was feeling a little despondent. Now I'm lazing in my room with Maze so while the situation is not really any better I'm more blazé about it.

So, ( Let me talk for a little bit about jobs, and working )

I start a new job tomorrow! I'm a Digitization Assistant! Digitizing stuff from archaeological collections at an Ontario-based archive and research institute.

I am not 100% sure exactly what I am going to be doing but boy do they have a lot of cool toys...

The contract runs through to the end of June, and I don't have to move! It is going to be a bit of an adjustment after being unemployed (but busy!) for so long, but I am looking forward to it, and to not having to stress about money. Hooray!

Bedtime now, I need to be up early in the morning :o

Yesterday I found out that I didn't get the job that I first tested and then interviewed for. It was basically a job doing exactly the same sort of stuff I'd done at my last job, so that was kind of a blow.

I have been making efforts. i finally signed up with a temping office last week, for which I had an interview on Monday. They have some things to put me forward for, but I would still have to get selected by their client and interviewed for those positions. I'm still applying to other positions on my own - I applied for one yesterday that is a part time casual thing at the library here, and wrote most of a cover letter for another museum position. There are still a ton of things I've applied to that I've never heard anything back from. Some I probably never will, but I had written off the one I interviewed for as well, since I'd applied in May and never heard a thing from it until...August, maybe? There are a few things I'm still hopeful about as well. So things proceed. In the mean time, I wrote to cash in on my Texas teacher's retirement plan thing, and will hopefully get some decent cash back out of them. Or at least something. Until then I have run out of money :/ I'm going to have to post an add to see if I can find someone to take over my gym membership, and I'm pretty sad about that, because rejoining at this point would be a lot more expensive. I need some more information from them before I can do that though - I need to know when my membership expires, what the fees would be for someone else after that time, etc. I tried to ask about stuff yesterday, but I didn't actually have a good grasp of what I needed to know. Now I do! Whee!

I have also inherited a bike, but I kind of hate it. The seat is at the right height for me to pedal, but then I can't touch the ground. I'm not really sure how to manage that. If I lean it to one side, or slip off the seat, I have trouble getting back on and balanced, and especially doing so quickly in the middle of traffic (at a light, say). I have never had a bike where this was an issue, and I don't really know how to cope with it - I can only really touch the ground if I'm wearing shoes with very thick soles. Also I don't have a helmet, and even if I did, wearing one requires me to completely re-do my hair every time I want to ride (I usually have it up, with a stick in it, which is not conducive to helmet wearing). Also drivers here are not good at dealing with cyclists, and the whole experience stresses me right the fuck out, even if I'm just going on the five minute ride to the gym -_-

Anyway, I did some adulting this morning to make myself feel better about life - sorted and put away some laundry, swept in the kitchen, child minded and took Nephew Jr. to the park, came home, made him and myself lunch. Look, I'm useful and helpful! Also yesterday I managed to cut Jola's nails all by myself in less than half an hour which, lemme tell you, is a triumph.

I feel like there were more things I meant to say here but I don't remember. I got N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season from the library, so I have actually been reading, and I am really really enjoying it so far. I got my copy of She Walks in Shadows the other day (the first of two crowd-funded women-author/character focused Lovecraftian anthologies I backed and unsuccessfully submitted stories to), but since I'm not on a timeline, who knows when I will actually read it >.> longpig got her copy of the Night Vale book yesterday, and I may read that next if she'll let me. who knows! But since I have been reading, I have been doing 0 knitting, because that's always the trade-off for me :p So I still haven't fixed my Art Deco shawl. And I may have to re-do the bind off on Tirceron and re-block it, because it it too tight. And I need to repair my big Malabrigo shawl as well. And make gloves... and maybe line my headband. Oh and post the pattern I used on Ravelry...

But the next thing I do is going to be finish my yuletide letter and sign up. Because I'm a damned adult, and I want to!

It is one hour until Hannibal. I actually watched it yesterday, but longpig is a super-invested fannibal and likes to watch the US airing on a stream and livetweet, and I join her. This week's episode is intense and amazing!

It has been a while since I've done any kind of major update.

I still have no job. I have been dooing very poorly at applying for jobs.

For the past two weeks I have been volunteering for two afternoons a week at the Ontario Museum of Archaeology. It's been.... very nice actually, even though I have done much that is particularly complicated or anything. Just getting out of the house and having something to work at is nice. I've done some re-boxing of artifacts and last week got to play 'where's Waldo' with a bunch of lithics that a donor wanted returned. The collection had been removed from its mounts with permission, but then the donor recanted about one particular show piece, so we had to find all the points (mostly points) on the original mount based on one picture, and then remount them. I got to do a lot of both of those things. They keep saying they are going to get me to write a blog on nautical archaeology, but we'll see. The commute is about an hour each way, including wait times for buses. I've been getting quite a lot of knitting done in that time, to the point that i am trying to plan my next bit of bus knitting.

This weekend was Nugsy's actaul birthday party, which was held at the local Children's Museum. It was dinosaur themed, and went quite well overall. He was a bit distracted for the activities but he loves the employee who was hosting for us, who was very good with him. And then when it was done, they all went off and played in various bits of the rest of the museum.

It was also a treat for me, not only because naryrising? and forthright came up, but also because they brought me my vey own tablet! I now have a piece of actually portable modern technology :V I am greatly appreciative! Forthright is very good at making the point buy system for Shoppers Drugmart, and basically managed to get it for free/by buying lots of dishwasher tablets on sale. Because that's how he rolls. They've gotten several other tablets and similar electronics the same way, and I am very happy and grateful to be the recipient in this case! To be fair, I am pretty sure that Nary wanted me to have it so we can stay in even closer contact, but I am quite okay with this! London has theoretical free wifi downtown, and I have been going places like McDonalds with Longpig and the kids where it will be very nice to be able to have some way of communicating with the saner outside world ;) Plus it gives me another device for using skype.

Hmm, what else. I have been doing a little bot of clickwork, but I'm not terribly good at it. I was writing adverts for car rental places in Germany, but they want them all to be very distinct and it is just not worth the time/effort/annoyance! i mean, I knew that's how ti would go. You don't get a reasonable wage for the jobs. But there is a line, I think. We'll see. It might just be more of a learning curve or a matter of experience. I am getting better, but I've yet to have enough of my work approved to make it worth while, either. I'm not giving up on it, but we'll see.

I keep running in to things that make me regret some of my life choices, or make me feel deeply ambivalent, anyway. For example, there is a conference on maritime archaeology and maritime landscapes in Britain this year that dovetails so perfectly with my interests that it is still a little painful. or trying to explain to people why I'm in London, and so on. Part;y bad luck, partly bad choices, partly.... I don't know. On the one had, there have been a lot of circumstances I couldn't really control, but I am often left feeling like I could have done more to mitigate them if I had *really* wanted to succeed. And then I look at how basically content I am in my life currently, and wonder if maybe I didn't actually want it that hard. And if that's the case, then what was I doing with my time and energy, and what do I have to show for it? And of course, always, where do I go from here?

On that note, I have been plotting with Curtana to trying and write some niche-market original stuff for self publication, to see if we can have any success with that. I guess we'll see. I think we have some solid ideas, but we still have to make them into stories before we can even really try and do anything with them.

I also had the independent thoughts that I could try and get some arch field work work, but that I would need good boots (and possibly other gear), and also that I'd kind of like to NPC at least for the local Underworld LARP branch (Ralinwood), but that I would need, at the very least, good boots. Something to consider, as I did finally get my last check from A&M.

So life update - wavering between contentment, ambivalence, and existential crisis. But today I had a very nice day.

The interim university president, who is only here for about another month, decided to be magnanimous and give us half a day off for Good Friday. On the one hand, I am really not religious, on the other hand -yay, half day!

So, I am home, and have eaten (Subway purchased on my way home because I was lazy) even though it is still half an hour before my usual lunch time, and I am stretched out on the couch, relaxing. The dog isn't home, the cat is staring out the window. I accidentally wore my work cardigan home. I am very comfy.

I should probably put this afternoon, and indeed this weekend, to good use.

I am behind in my staff commitments. I need to do the newsletter and write up some other important emails.

There are always things to do around the house - in particular, cleaning, starting to sort out my stuff for soon-ish moving. Also, I need to fix the downstairs toilet, which should be a Fun Home Plumbing Adventure. Maybe I can tackle that?

And then there is the ever stifling job hunt to deal with. I still haven't heard anything back from my interview - it has been a week since the minimum time in which I could expect to hear back. I can't decide if I should poke them now, or wait until early next week, at which point it will have been a week since the end of the time frame I was given. Probably I will do that because I can put it off a little more >.>

I applied for one job last week... They are thin on the ground at the moment. I also got two rejections on Wednesday, within a few hours of each other, which sucked. On the other hand the letters were nice for what they were and, you know, they did get sent. I got another one a week or so ago? In writing, on very nice paper. anyway, lots of rejections, one uncertain interview... We'll see. I need to keep applying for things, clearly.

At least I got my taxes done last weekend! The refund will be nice - I might use it to go get a little more work done on my arm piece, if I can figure out how to wrangle the travel... It needs a little touch-up/fixing, and then I kind of want another burn incorporated into what's there now. So that would be a painful day.

And returning to the theme of 'what should I work on this afternoon', I have another trope bingo piece I'm working on that shouldn't be tooooo much longer than it is currently, that I'd like to try and get done this weekend. And then I have two more to finish after that. I had ideas, but they'll need to be waaaaaay scaled back. But that should be manageable, at least for one. The other needs more thought.

Anyway - on to staff things, I think. That needs doing for sure.

Hello Internets!

I have been pretty busy lately, mostly with getting ready for Webercon. I am looking forward to it and I think the game I am running will be good, but I also feel like this is eating waaaaay too much time that I should be spending on other things. Like more active job searching, and getting a more solid plan in place for what to do if I haven't found anything by, say, May, so that I'm not trying to leave the country in a disorganized scramble with no plans beyond couch hop between Longpig and Curtana's houses indefinitely. I need some actual plans like say - what is my timeline for giving upon a museum job and what will I look for if that doesn't work out? Can I get by mooching with some terrible part time job for the short term and keep looking for a bit? How long is a bit? Where do I actually want to live if I'm not chasing a job in a particular elite industry? What, in general, the hell am I going to do?

I'm not quite panicked yet, but I am also not at all encouraged by the response I have gotten from anything I've applied for to date, which has ranged from more or less polite rejection to dead silence. I *did* get a notification that one job I'd applied for was reposted under a different classification. I assume they notified everyone who applied so as not to get any kind of hopes I have up, though it would be a pretty awesome job.

In less life-flailing (or perhaps flailing in a different vein), naryrising will be here *tomorrow*! I'm super excited! This is the second year that she's been able to time her visit to coincide with Webercon, but I'm only working Monday next week, so we should still have plenty of time to spend with just us, or visiting more casually with local folks. We don't as yet have plans to go and do anything super exciting, but I may drag her out to see a movie if there is still anything good playing.

I need to do some house prep type things tonight, as I'll be out a big chunk of the day tomorrow, hanging out with tethys123, eating pie, doing yarny things (I am going to help her card some wool for her to spin, and probably I will use the time to graft the toe of a sock. I want to work on some game stuff if time and toddler permit, as well. And maybe I can start unfucking my Ishbel shawl, which is totally fucked up in a subtle but serious way for about 4-6 rows of lace. *cries* But there will be pie (for pie day!) and tea (always tea) possibly in a fancy tea set, and we might watch Pride and Prejudice, which I am honestly not a huge fan of, but I *am* a fan of wet shirtless Colin Firth, and I like the idea of Pie And Prejudice as a tradition of sorts, and it will be something on in the background that I can mostly happily ignore. Tethys123 is a fan though. We'll see how it goes, again, toddler permitting.

Oh and yes, the sad. I am Sad at Leonard Nimoy's passing and I am sad at Terry Pratchett's passing. I'm glad they were both surrounded by loved ones and, in Pterry's case, a kitty. They were both kind of iconic for me - I used to watch Sunday Star Trek re-runs with my mom and my sister when I was little. And I still remember picking Guards! Guards! out of the the Science Fiction Book Club list out of vague curiousity when I was signing up and trying to choose all my free books (along with City of Bones, the Martha Wells one from....several years ago) and falling in love (with both - I found two of my favourite authors that way <3). I think I am caught up on *ownership* of Discworld books after this Christmas, but not on reading them. Maybe if I wind up living on my sister's couch we can start a (possibly Selective) Star Trek re-watch...

Well, that was a week, all right!

I feel like there is just not a while lot of interest going on with me these days that is of much interest. My work days are all fairly similar - I'm cataloguing the paperweight collection, which is going fairly quickly. Some of them are very pretty, and some of the modern ones we have aver very striking. they're also mostly from the 80s and 90s, and when i go look up the artists to see what they are doing now I get even more impressed. I think my favourites are Paul Stankard and some of Chris Buzzini stuff for modern botanical paperweights. Parabelle made the best millefiori I've seen, but they are out of business (an image search is your best bet if you want to see what I mean). I think of the artists we have in the collection that I have looked up, though Debbie Tarsitano is doing some of the most interesting stuff, having moves away from paperweights and in to other ways of doing art with glass.

I usually do lunch with a handful of friends who also work on campus, but they have not all been available this week. Yesteday i just had lunch in the break room and then went downstairs and poked at the crazy long Diablotin fanfic I've been working on until it was done. It is done! yay! I'm super happy with how it turned out, but also sad because, as always, it really hasn't got much of a growable audience. It is basically WWI with magic and gangsters? well, theoretical magic, anyway, there is no actual magic in this story, just references to it. I think there is probably just enough references to the larger world and historical stuff for it to be harder to access for people who don't know the world though. There is a scene full of microaggressions that probably wouldn't make sense, which is a shame. They are world-building microaggressions, darnit! I am proud of them - narratively speaking, I should clarify.
In case you are curious, the fic is posted at AO3 over here: Dinner Date. It has a terrible title.

Uh, what else of interest from last week... I turned the heel on the sock I am working on yesterday, and am over halfway through the lace repeats on my shawl. I found a really cool job I need to apply for, probably after I finish this entry, at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown. It is a registrar position, and I think I would be really well suited to it. Lets see if I can even get as far as an interview.... Which has not happened for anything else I've tried for, save the local one where I had a semi interview before I actually sent in a resume at all. And which I haven't heard back from the director on in like two weeks. So you know, very encouraging stuff there :p I'm debating whether I ought to make a linkedin. Yes? Probably? Meh. I hate online profiles, especially ones that require maintenance :p Perhaps this is evident in the fact that my LJ/DW onces have not been updated for years and are not really likely to be :p

My regular gaming schedule has been a bit disrupted - Thursdays we have been playing Gamma World, which is a very silly and fun game. Last Sunday we didn't play Adventure World, but did some online Arkham Horror instead. I think my GM for those needs a bit of a brain break, which is fair. We've shuffled the Diablotin schedule as well, as the Gm for that one (naryrising) has house guests who are also some of the players (longpig and wererogue).

I'm babbysitting tonight for tethys123 and will probably use the time after her kiddo goes to sleep to poke more at Trope Bingo stuff. I've finished one story for it so far and have ideas for all the others. or, I might be clever and work more on my game for Webercon, which is only a month away, after all. I do have a solid idea for it at least! And I also need to submit my story for Dreams in the Witch House this weekend as well. Oh, and laundry. One load in already!

I think that's all... with me anyway - how are things for *you*, internets people?