Hrmm...

So I'm not so good at keeping up with this, but I really want to...does that count for anything?

Things are going pretty well at work, I'm now an official keyholder and can close the store all by my lonesome (though really they had no other option, one of our experienced employees left last week). Still, not bad for having worked there for two months. I'm trying to think of amusing customer interactions, and the thing that springs to mind was a woman who called and asked for "pH neutral adhesive." I had to pause, and informed her that we do indeed have acid-free glue. Such a strange way to phrase it...like asking for linseed oil pigments.

I cannot praise this website I recently discovered enough: Paperbackswap.com.



You go on, list the books you don't want anymore (the ones Half Price Books was going to give you three cents for), and for the first 10 books you list, you get two free credits. Anytime someone requests one of your books and you successfully mail it to them (costs less than $2.25 to ship most paperbacks, so fuck you Amazon and your $3.99 book shipping cost), you get another credit. All books are 1 credit each, so you just go request one (or put yourself on a wish list for a popular book). I've sent out six books so far (mostly romances), and have gotten seven books. It's cheaper than even buying them at HPB, and I've found so many books that I've been looking for for months. If you have an excess of books lying around, and the post office is relatively convenient to get to, you should go try it out. And if you do, my screen name on there is "katieann" so go sign up and say that I referred you, and I get a free credit. :)

new job

I had forgotten how weird working in customer service can be at times. (Oh yeah I got a job, the one I really really wanted, and it's pretty cool so far.) An interaction observed between a mother and her probably 5 year old son:

Boy: MomcanIhaveaneraserthey'reonlyeightcentseach? [spoken in one long breath]
Mom: No.
Boy: CanIhaveapencilsharpener?
Mom: No.
Boy: Can I have [insert any of the items on our shelves]?
Mom: No...*looks down*...I have chocolate on my pants...

Kind of sums up motherhood, no?

I think I'm going to like this job. Before, I'd only ever used a cash register, and I was all intimidated by credit card transactions and such, but they are much easier than I thought. I've only worked there two days but I've caught on really quickly, and the people there are nice (which is good, since I'm only one of five employees). Plus, there's a Sonic about 2 minutes from there and I can get there, eat, and get back in like 15 minutes. And best of all, I get to wear jeans and comfortable shoes, which I can kiss goodbye when I start teaching.

I gotta say, it needs to quit raining and being all cloudy and shit. I want to go swim and get some color on my legs and I kind of need the sun for that. Take note, sun.

bear with me

I feel so neglectful of this little blog that no one reads. Also, I feel like an unfit blogger for starting one with no purpose or theme. I'm not a mother, so I can't talk about my kid's wacky hijinks, nor do I have any pets to take memory card after memory card of pictures. I'm not (publicly) dieting, so no one gets to follow my weight loss (or pathetic lack thereof) with encouraging statements. Plus, school just let out and I haven't yet found a job, so I don't even have any cool stories of classmates dumb enough to inspire spontaneous violence, nor silly customers. In the mean time while I stall look for a job, I'll pretty much be sitting on my couch on the computer or watching movies, or reading in bed. Both highly thrilling to read about, I know. I'll try to think of some interesting things soon, so just you wait.

nnnngh

In preparation for the impending job (wherever it may be, I just know that it will exist this summer) that will most likely necessitate a normal schedule, I've been waking up progressively earlier this past week. For the last semester or two I've been pretty good about not sleeping past 11:00 am, a statement which seems to make most people want to slap me. Especially when I defend myself by saying that that's a whole lot better than the 2:00 pm limit I used to have for the first few years of college. But see, just because it's not normal to you, it's is regular, which is what I need. Naps fuck me up bad, so I try to avoid them most of the time, but they happen anyway sometimes. My body hates me and thinks that just because I dozed off for half an hour that evening that I'm totally recharged and can still be wide awake at 3:30 am that night, and then I feel like shit when I force myself to get up at 10:something the next morning. I get up to an alarm every day, otherwise I wouldn't get up at all, and I've been setting it 15 minutes earlier each day, I got up at 9:45 am this morning, which isn't bad. Really, the fastest method for me is to just start waking up at 8 and let my body deal with it, but that will undoubtedly lead to napping and such. Plus, I've barely been at all productive in the 2 hours I've been awake today, I can't imagine what I'd get done when getting up at 8 for no reason.

This has been a thrilling post, I'm sure, but it's given me one more thing to do to try to wake myself up a bit.

i <3 my books

A month or so ago, Alex and I were operating under the assumption that he would get hired on where he is doing his internship, we'd move out of this on-campus apartment when our lease was up at the end of May and into the complex that's within walking distance, and all would be well. Then the job didn't happen, and we decided that if we were going to have to live in a shitty cheap apartment we might as well stay in our shitty reasonably cheap apartment and save the cost and hassle of moving. But in the original moving excitement, I had some boxes lying around so I went ahead and packed up the books that I'd already read, and they stayed in their boxes up until about half an hour ago.

It was kind of neat to get to go through and reorganize them. My favorite hobby is reading, hands down, and I purge my book collection pretty regularly to keep the volume down, so the ones that I have kept are the really, really good ones and the ones with sentimental value. It was nice to organize them and remember how awesome each book was, and how I felt after reading it. I will admit to fondly caressing one or twelve. I still have around 30 on the to-be-read shelves (c'mooonnn summer!!), which is exciting.

On an unrelated note, I probably should not be able to smell the molten lead from the bedroom where Alex is soldering shit. Does this mean he has already filled up half of the apartment with his lead fumes and they are seeping into the living room...?

yeah another one

SCATTERGORIES...it's harder than it looks!

*Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following...
*they have to be real places, names, things...nothing made up!
Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same
1st initial.

(WHICH BY THE WAY IS HARD IF YOU ALREADY READ THEIR ANSWERS)
You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl.


1. What is your name: Katie

2. 4 letter word: kelp

3. Vehicle: Kia

4. City: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

5. Boy Name: Kenneth

6. Girl Name: Katy

7. Drink: Kool Aid

8. Occupation: kite maker

9. Something you wear: knickers

10. Celebrity: Kirsten Dunst

11. Food: Kitchen Sink Soup*

12. Something found in the Bathroom: kiwi strawberry body wash

13. Reason for Being Late: kid missed the bus

14. Cartoon Character: Kiff (Futurama)

15. Something You Shout: kick 'im good honey!!

16. Animal: kid (different from #13, this is the bebeh goat)

17. Body part: knee

18. Word to describe you: katieriffic

*I just searched allrecipes.com for "kitchen sink" because they're recipes that just have a lot of shit thrown in ("everything but the kitchen sink"...get it?), but oh my god the thought of soup coming from my rancid dish-filled sink makes me more than a little nauseous...

success!

I finished two of the three paintings I'm working on this semester in my independent study painting course, which is quite an accomplishment since I've been working on these bitches since Jan/Feb. Fuckin' oil paint needing multiple coats for everything to get an even color...but they do look awesome. I'll take some pictures next time I'm on campus and post 'em.

Also, I made an A on my last psychology paper on the first try! The first two papers we had to revise and resubmit, and I managed to make As on both of them after some editing, but on this one (which I wrote in a weekend pretty half-assedly) I made an A on the first go round. Woop woop.

Yesterday I finally got the rest of the money from selling my car waaay back when, like probably eight or nine months ago. We sold it to a friend of a friend of my parents, who I'd never met, and he agreed to give me $300 up front and $200 later in the week. (Ha.) I called him a few months ago and said hey give me a call so we can meet up, he's just on the other side of Dallas, and he agreed to call me the next day to let me know when he would come by. Yeeaaah, as you can guess, that never happened, and I pretty much gave up hope. (I'm perhaps too laid back, and would rather just forget about something than cause a fuss.) Then yesterday the friend of my parents called me and asked why I hadn't told him the guy never gave me the rest of the money, I explained that I pretty much gave up on it and wasn't too worried (this car was a piece of shit, I felt grateful for just the $300), but he told me the guy was on his way, he needed me to sign some paper to finally transfer the title. So I'm thinking if he hadn't needed that paper signed I never would have heard from him again, which I'm still okay with, but $200 is always appreciated.

AND, I am here to announce to the world at large that following up on job applications pays off. I submitted an application somewhere on Friday, and decided to call them today to see if the position had been filled yet (either way, at least I'd know whether to stop crossing my fingers), and it hadn't. The managed sounded like he hadn't really looked through the applicants yet, so I think that already put me ahead. :) Anyway, I have an interview tomorrow at 3:00, and this is my first choice for a job right now. I figured I had nothing to lose, if they said no thanks I could move on and look elsewhere, but this worked out in my favor this time. Wish me luck...